Everything Will Be Ok aka Exceptionalism
It will not do to say that every age has been like this, that man has always felt threatened and yet managed to survive. The point is precisely that every age is different: each time has been unique, both in what it promised and what it threatened; sometimes the catastrophe has occurred.
Irrational Man – page 271
By William Barrett
Published 1958 Doubleday
Who Was William Barrett?
William Barrett began post-secondary studies at the City College of New York when 15 years old. He received his PHD at Columbia University. He was an editor of Partisan Review and later the literary critic of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. He was well known for writing philosophical works for non-experts. These included Irrational Man and The Illusion of Technique, which remain in print. He knew many other literary figures of the day, including Edmund Wilson, Philip Rahy, and Albert Camus. He was deeply influenced by the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger and was the editor of D. T. Suzuki’s 1956 classic Zen Buddhism. In fiction his taste ran to the great Russians, particularly Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Barrett died in 1992, aged 78
