DE Weekly: Barron, Modern Thought, & the Influence of Ideas
Below is an archived email originally sent on December 22, 2025.
Barron, Modern Thought, & the Influence of Ideas
Last week, I wrote about Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, a book explaining how perception of the modern world is dominated by “simulacra,” or “copies without originals.” Baudrillard argues we endure a “hyperreality,” wherein signs replace reality and our perception is defined by said signs.
If you haven’t read last week’s newsletter yet, I highly recommend doing so to get caught up on what I’ll be discussing this week.
The key takeaway I sought to imbue with last week’s newsletter was in fact a question: to what degree does simulacra affect our perception of the world, and how do other peoples’ perceptions shape our own?
I ended the newsletter with a quote from Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, who said, “If you don’t understand the thought of great philosophers, you have no idea . . . why you think the way you do . . . they have shaped the way that we see the world on a very profound level.”
What Peterson says is true and, in my opinion, one of the most important points to consider when discussing existentialism.
This is because I believe that existentialism has profoundly influenced modern thought and the way that we perceive and interact with the world even today.
How is this?
One of the ways I’ve heard this explained most eloquently is from Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, whose series of talks “Ideas Have Consequences” explored the philosophical impacts of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault.
Bishop Barron argues that modern day social unrest can be attributed to the upending of traditional moral values, coupled with the undermining of systemic frameworks. This, of course, all tying into the promotion of radical individualism above traditional values.
Purely for the consideration of time, I will focus more on Nietzsche and Sartre today than I will on Marx and Foucault, but that is not to say the latter two are any less important or responsible for the effects I’ll be discussing in this newsletter.
Both Marx and Foucault in their own right own their share of the burden of influencing today’s “culture of inversion,” which Bishop Barren blames for our various societal ailments.
Marx is directly responsible for the scourge of communism, and its goal of destroying the “oppressive superstructure” of capitalism to supplant it with itself.
Foucault is directly responsible for the pervasive view of the “archaeology of history,” which concludes that the powerful people in history arrange society to their liking to maintain their power. Through the way society is arranged in this manner, Foucault argues, we unconsciously allow ourselves to be shaped by those established values.
Both men are deserving of their own newsletters at another time. For now, let’s move on to Nietzsche and Sartre.
Nietzsche is famous for his proclamation of the “death of God.” He proclaimed that (in our hubris), humans had killed the need for God in inventing our own objective truths and moral values.
Uprooting a universal truth and value system for one invented by humans leads inevitably to a clash of wills; my will competes against yours, which competes against another’s, etc.
Now we come to Sartre.
Sartre practically formulated existentialism as we know it today. In existentialism, Sartre established that our existence precedes our essence. By this, he means that we first exist before we become what we are.
I am born into this world, and then I get to live my life as I see fit and make myself into something. This is the logical, radically individual continuation of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Objective truth and value is denied in favor of subjective truths and individual values.
Now that we have established each of the philosophical inputs from those four philosophers, let’s return to the question posed earlier: to what degree does simulacra affect our perception of the world, and how do other peoples’ perceptions shape our own?
The point I want to make is this: the philosophical contributions of these four philosophers are the simulacra. Whatever we do with these simulacra in our lives are the perceptions we have.
So, how has the simulacra produced by existentialism influenced modern thought and perception?
Bishop Barron argues it has been a negative influence. He says that Nietzsche’s ideas have manifested into a rejection of God, which has led to a clash of wills in the absence of objective truth and values.
Further, he attributes the cons that come with a rampant culture of self-invention and radical individualism to Sartre; namely, the will of the individual trampling traditional societal constructs.
I will say that I agree with Bishop Barron in a few respects. I believe that existentialism and its philosophical impacts have fostered a modern culture obsessed with absurdity, anxiety, self-awareness, and alienation from society.
However, I also believe the same obsessions have positive counterparts that have been fostered thanks to existentialism.
Authenticity, confrontation with the challenges of existence, embracing freedom and responsibility, shaping one’s identity, and overcoming meaninglessness; all of these things are positive consequences of existentialism.
In short, while existentialism and its proponents have had some negative influences on the modern day, there have also been positives. Such as it is with anything in life.
Instead of being acted upon by society and the world, existentialism asks us to be creators of our own purpose and meaning, overcoming our limitations. Take the good and leave the bad, I say.
“The world is… the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is the world, and only in the world does he know himself.” –– Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
We’re almost at the end of another year. One last newsletter after this one. Now’s the time to take stock of things important to you and think about what kind of life you want to create next year.
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