Constant Reader discussion

Three times in the last hour of watching some news shows, I've heard the phrase "existential threat." I don't think they're talking about Camus and Sartre. This new catchphrase seems very clunky to me. What do you think it means?

I never took it to be a deep reference to existentialist philosophy, but merely that the threat is to one's existence, possibly corporeal but more usually to one's selfhood, to the qualities and history through which one defines oneself to oneself.

There is a notion in Sartre and others of existential anxiety which underlies humans as "becoming" -- an unfinished state from which we derive all those qualities which rocks don't have but which leaves us in the uncomfortable position of needing to act but without guidance as to what course of action to take. The famous existential freedom. The inability to act is the source of the "absurd" condition much discussed in the 50s and its suspicion that action cannot be supported by reasons, an uneasiness which is typically traced back to Kierkegaard.

It is also the source of Sartre's ideas of 'engagement', which I take to mean an honest confrontation with the problem and an attempt to act in that knowledge.

All of which might be viewed as the existential threat, but I doubt it. People who talk this way on (non-French, anyway) media would mean the first.

These things do have their fads. Some years ago it was "chthonic" which I had to look up every time and which I think came to mean nothing at all.

They're probably talking about human extinction or global catastrophe. Depending on the news you're watching, they may also just mean american lives, or even that oldie but goodie, the american way of life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_c...

but also

http://www.jargondatabase.com/categor...

Mentally, I guess I can figure out what they mean, but I can't help but picture some sort of Grendel monster sitting down on a curb, working out in his mind whether to kill or not to kill.

Poor Grendel. First he had to weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and now this.

Ah -- Grendel -- my favorite monster.

It can also be a threat to the very existence of a country. I think Israel feels Hammas represents an "existential threat" to their nation, e.g.

ha! a piece in the LA times that links the two meanings of "existential":

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/...

Thanks for posting, Nicole. I read The Plague (Camus) years ago, but it would be a good time for a reread. Maybe someone should nominate it when we look at classics next.