He barely touches on a distinctively existentialist idea - Sartre's idea of "the Look." I found this particularly striking. In chapter 6, Cooper introduces the notion of the self and of interpersonal relationships as understood in the phenomenological tradition. Moreover, it is important to distinguish between presence-at-hand and readiness-to-hand these are two modes by which we might interact with objects, including our very selves, and the rejection of the way objects show up under the latter mode leads to many theoretical mishaps in western philosophy. Also, our subjectivity is identical with the values that objects take on in our lifeworld there is no 'inner' self, but the self is revealed through the world that shows up for the subject and the activities that subject may engage in. These involve the existential view that we are irrevocably concerned with our own existence, with our projects and with how objects show up in the world for us in light of our projects. He sketches out Heidegger's views, with focus on his distinctive views which break from Husserl's. In chapter 4, Cooper continues this introduction of phenomenology. He sketches out Husserl's views, including the view that we are immersed in a "lifeworld" (the world as we experience it and that is imbued with values and meanings contributed by our subjectivity) that it is a worthwhile project to examine these meanings and that there is a particular method for doing so (the "epoche", which involves bracketing our intuitive assumptions about the object at hand, noticing how our experience of the object changes according to these changes in subjectivity, and finding out what meaning the object might have after we've 'stripped' it of values that fall from our assumptions). In chapter 3, Cooper begins introducing the phenomenological tradition.
These dualisms are elaborated on in chapter 5. For example, assumptions that the items in the dyads of fact and value, reason and emotion, and subject and object, are metaphysically independent of one another yields a way of life which includes holding unachievable aspirations and pursuing means that are counterproductive or misleading. Alienation happens when we have distorting assumptions about the world which makes us feel that our activities and efforts are futile. This is a practical problem which we encounter in our actual lives. In chapter 2, he introduces the problem that drives the thinkers whose philosophies we identify as phenomenological and existential - alienation. In chapter 1, he gives an overall introduction of the history and public conceptions of existentialism. So Cooper does a lovely job building up all the foundations required for understanding existentialism. Or, these ideas are presented by thinkers who are unfamiliar with phenomenology and so distort the articulation of them. Often, existentialist ideas are presented independently of this background, and this yields misinterpretations of these ideas by the naive reader. Cooper's key pedagogical move is that he recognizes that the principles of existentialism cannot be understood independently of the metaphysical-epistemological background provided by the phenomenological tradition. That aside, this would be the perfect book for readers who are totally unfamiliar with the phenomenological tradition and want to know more about existentialism.
I found that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on existentialism summed up all the key topics introduced in those final two chapters that are actually about existentialism and this article is much more concise, and perhaps even theoretically richer. I have a background in the phenomenological tradition, so most of this book was redundant for me. The rest of the book is focused on articulating the particular strand of pragmatism that developed in Germany - the phenomenological tradition (i.e., Husserl and Heidegger) and the social philosophy of Hegel and Marx. I was left disappointed there are only three chapters that are devoted to concepts distinctive of the existentialist-heavy philosophers (rather than to philosophers of phenomenology who have an existentialist bent, like Heidegger). The rest of the book is focused on articulating the particular strand of pragmatism that developed in Germany - the phenomenological tradition (i.e., Husserl and Heidegger) and the social philosophy I went into it this book hoping to learn more about existentialism.
I went into it this book hoping to learn more about existentialism.