Wilson created an optimistic version of existentialism that rejected its gloomier assessments of life
Evidence
Wilson encouraged his readers to take his writing personally. He called his thinking ‘the new existentialism’, and gave it a life-affirming and even an ecstatic spin. In an autobiography, he revealed that he had once come close to suicide as a teenager, but decided not to go through with it. At the moment of choosing to live, he had an overwhelming experience: ‘I glimpsed the marvellous, immense richness of reality, extending to distant horizons.’ He tried to communicate this sense of the sheer worthwhileness of life in his books, believing that the old existentialists had made an error in assessing life too glumly. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 908
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines Wilson’s self-invented ‘new existentialism’ as a life-affirming, ecstatic corrective to the mainstream movement’s perceived gloom.
- XREF: connects to: Existentialism is accused of teaching passive despair and quietism — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 2; Accusations of existentialist pessimism mask anxiety about real choice — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 5; Post-war existentialism thrived on the excitement of a shattered world — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 529
Broader Connections
- Existentialism is accused of teaching passive despair and quietism
#responds-to(0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 2 - Post-war existentialism thrived on the excitement of a shattered world
#corroborates(0.82) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 529 - Accusations of existentialist pessimism mask anxiety about real choice
#complicates(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 5