Seminar Paper - Existentialism, Phenomenology, Heidegger, Sartre and Husserl (Updated)

This seminar paper will take us through the workings of existentialism from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Derrida, this will include Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger and Sartre on existentialism.

Freud and Psychoanalysis: Philosophers seldom described themselves as ‘Freudians’, but all who were engaged in teaching philosophy of the mind, ethics or philosophy of religion were forced to take account of Freud's novel and proposals. He had an all encompassing theory of everything. His work casts a long shadow as it addresses the whole human condition, which is highly contested. Freud states that we are always unhappy because we are divided, even alienated from ourselves. Freud himself was a psychiatrist and claimed to find the reason we are unhappy. He claimed to have found away into the part of our brains that control us - the thing is that we don't know we are being controlled and we have no actual control over our actions. If we think that we are doing these things, for example, if I think I'm sitting in my room blogging on my own volition then I'm very mistaken, because it's actually my brain that is controlling me; basically we don't make our own decisions and we have no idea that this control is even happening. Think about when you choose what to wear, your sub-consciousness will tell you to wear blue because you associate that with looking fierce. This is explored greatly by psychoanalysis.

Freud used to use hypnosis in his treatments but he moved away from this and replaced it with a novel form of therapy which he named psychoanalysis, which was just talking between the patient and doctor. The premise of the treatment is that all people harbor these deep seated feelings or trauma that has to be addressed by talking about your feelings. The patient would typically be lying on a couch and is encouraged to talk about whatever was on their mind, which we’re usually traced back to childhood trauma or sexual issues. Freud collaborated with Josef Breuer, whose works laid the foundation of psychoanalysis and Jean-Martin Charcot is work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology. He was the foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France and has been called "the Napoleon of the neuroses".

Existentialism: Nietzsche claims: "God is dead and we have killed him" this is meant in a metaphorical way and it demonstrated the ever growing aversion to religion - it means that it is an end to something to pray to, something to guide is through life and give it some meaning - this is all religion (to me) is; people being too scared to believe that we are not being guided by some higher power. This now means that we will have more choice - no more control from religions, we can make up our own minds as there is now nothing to influence or affect the choices we make, we are alone and must choose for ourselves, albeit forced - this is known as the 'Trans-valuation of all values' as we find the value in us and it in turn makes us free.

This freedom of our own choice is key to Existentialists - choosing is everything, it defines who we are and if we are not making choices for ourselves then we are living in what Sartre calls 'Bad Faith'

Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology: Husserl’s phenomenology stands in opposition to naturalism, which is to be approached with natural-scientific methods, which are inclined toward empirical facts. Phenomenology turns directly to the evidence of lived experience - of first-person life - in order to provide descriptions of experiencing, rather than causal explanations.

Husserl has been likened to Freud, insofar as they both devoted a majority of their lives to a personal project that was intended to be the first really scientific study of the human mind. Where Freud was exiled due to Nazi anti-Semitism, Husserl had his books burn by German troops marching into Prague 1939. Husserl is often credited as the founder of phenomenology, and he addressed the body throughout his philosophical life, again likened to Freud. Husserl was highly influenced by Franz Brentano in Vienna between 1884 and 1886 by attending his lectures about philosophy and this is what got him interested in it. Brentano’s book, ‘Psychology from an Empirical standpoint’ brought up the data of consciousness, and this comes in two kinds - the first physical phenomenal and the second being mental phenomena. Physical phenomenal are things like colours and smells, whereas mental phenomenal is thoughts and these are characterised by having a content, or object. This feature by Brentano reintroduced the term intentionality (essentially the target of a thought) - this is the key to understanding mental acts and life.

Husserl still focused his attention on mathematics and his habilitation thesis was on the concept of numbers, and his first real book published 1891 was the ‘philosophy of arithmetic’ and this sought to explain our numerical concepts by identifying the mental acts which are our psychological origins, for example our concept of plurality, was supposed to derive from a process of ‘collective combination’ which group many items together. However, after a great deal of criticism, Husserl maintained a sharp distinction between logic and psychology , however Husserl saw the psychological side as philosophy's rightful home, as opposed to Frege who followed by the analytic tradition and placed himself on the side of logic.

The aim of phenomenology was the study of the immediate date of consciousness, without referring to anything that the consciousness may yield to us about the mental world, for example the concept of a Unicorn, the intentionality of my thought is the same, regardless of whether or not a Unicorn exists. Husserl prefaces this by saying “it makes no essential difference to an object presented and given to consciousness whether it exists, or is fictitious”

Martin Heidegger’s Existentialism: Heidegger was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most associated with phenomenology and existentialism. Heidegger's philosophical development started when he read the work of Brentano and Aristotle. The demand placed in the Metaphysics by Aristotle, the idea to know what it is that unites all interpretations of being is the question that sparked off Heidegger's philosophy, and from here he delved deeper into the work of Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

Heidegger insisted that the first task of phenomenology was to greatly study the concept of Being, which was prior to the divide between consciousness and reality. To gain a clear concept of the nature of philosophy it is assumed we should go back, however Heidegger claims that simply going back to Aristotle and Plato will not yield us the answers we seek. Heidegger decided to come up with an entirely new vocabulary for philosophy and one of his coined terms was the ‘Dasein’ this literally means being there, and it is a very common word in German. It is important to note that the Dasein is always relative to the beholder and is either entirely buried or firmly grounded in subjectivity, for example it is in your mood, which opposes the earlier ideas of the Logical Positivist who believed that the truth is grounded in facts and empirical data. Being is not some abstract concept, it is concrete - it is you being at a particular time and place and being engaged in a particular task of thinking.

Heidegger believes that they only way we can be free is if we are completely absorbed in a task, such absorption does not lessen existential pain but makes existence slowly fade away, for example being really into a song or playing a game, you will be entirely focused on that one task and existence seems to be gone. If there was infinite time then there would be infinite boredom, and the perception of a ‘lack of time’ makes you throw yourself head on into your Dasein and if you are not absorbed in a task, according to Heidegger, then you will be overcome with utter boredom. Heidegger claims there are three aspects of time, the first being attunement - this is expressed as mood, a reflection on the past produces this mood. Outside of the Dasein the normal mood of attunement is a looming angst and the mood of guilt. Secondly, Dasein - this is caring about the task at hand, being ‘in the zone’ so to speak, this is essentially the present. And thirdly, directiveness, this reflection on the future produces the mood of dread a fear of the future that we try and block out.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism: Sartre (1905-1980) focuses upon the construction of a philosophy of existence (existentialism) and his early works are characterised by a development of early phenomenology, very much following the same structure as Heidegger and to a lesser extent Husserl, but he diverges from Husserl on the concept of the self, and with an interest in ethics. These differences are the foundations of Sartre’s existential phenomenology, the purpose being to understand human existence rather than the world.

Sartre’s main book ‘Being and Nothingness’ is where he defines two types of reality which are beyond our own experience: these are the being of the object of consciousness and the being of consciousness itself. The object of consciousness exists in itself, this means that it is independent and not defined in relation to anything. However, consciousness is always are of something, which means it would be defined in relation to other things. This allows us to also experience a ‘nothingness’ and this power is also at work within the self, which leads to a lack of self-identity.

Sartre goes on to set up his own idea of the individual human being. He does this by first getting rid of its grounding in a stable ego. Sartre claims that Existentialism is a Humanism, this means that to be human is characterised by existing. This was put forward in Sartre’s early that would later become ‘Being and Nothingness’. Sartre’s early works are seen as improving the material to make an existential account of being human. But Sartre’s approach to understanding human existence is formed by his interest in ethics.

Fun fact - Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir wrote many love letters to each other and had them published after their deaths

WILLIAM COBBETT - RURAL RIDES SEMINAR PAPER

This is going to be my first blog post of this year and of course it had to be a monster of a post - my seminar paper about William Cobbett the cantankerous old devil that thought it would be fun to ride around the country to see the relationship between land owners and the labourers. Hope you enjoy!

Context:

England benefitted greatly from the French revolution, this is because the Napoleonic War was a very costly time and it saw the creation of the “Income Tax” in 1799 to help pay for the war. The Battle of Waterloo was eventually won by the Seventh Coalition (England, Nassau, Prussia, Brunswick, Hanover and United Netherlands), and managed to defeat the leader Napoleon Bonaparte and after this the British Navy had gained total naval power – they now controlled the waterways that gave them the means to block off the French trade routes, allowing the British trade to grow.

Britain now experienced an economic boom thanks to the trans-Atlantic triangular trading of cotton, sugar and slaves (slavery was ultimately abolished in 1833 thanks to William Wilberforce and the Anti-Slavery Society). Furthermore, this time period also saw Scotland and Ireland being joined with England, consolidated by two separate “Acts of Union” one in 1707 for Scotland and the second in 1801 with Ireland, which together formed the United Kingdom. The Industrial Revolution brought about a new  age of technology and this meant that many farm workers were forced off their land and made to move into cities such as Manchester to find work in these new pollution spewing factories. Manchester eventually became the centre of the Industrial Revolution – its population was rapidly increasing and this was because many former farm labourers were looking for work.

This brought about the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were in effect from 1815 – 1846 and the laws were brought in to try and maintain the agricultural industry – it planted a gigantic import tariff on any cheap corn shipped from abroad, which meant that people would want to buy British home grown instead. It was during this period when William Cobbett wrote Rural Rides.

The people were growing increasingly restless due to the state of the country and this lead to the public calling for radical Parliamentary Reform – Cobbett, who was a huge radical, supported such campaigns and ended up in prison. Parliament was getting worried for any more outbreaks of revolution or rebellion so the Parliamentary Reform Act in 1832 was introduced – this however was more of a smoothing over than a solution.

Charles Dickens, William Cobbett and Rural Rides:

William Cobbett was born 1763 and grew up in the countryside. Cobbett worked and grew up as a farm labourer until he was 20 years old and then he went off and joined the army for 15 years. While in the army he was branded a bit bad news when he exposed a thief of stealing resources and so he fled to France and taught English refugees. Cobbett pioneered his own newspaper entitled the Political Register, which was distinctly conservative until he moved to a more radical stance as the years progressed and this is what lead to him calling for Parliamentary Reform and landed him in jail because of it. After being in jail, Cobbett’s enthusiasm and resolve was now stronger than ever, so much so that he even began campaigning against newspaper tax (which was essentially a tax on the news) and also bringing attention to freedom of speech.

The News tax had become a problem for all newspapers because the price on them skyrocketed which meant that only the more affluent people that could afford them could read them – which meant they were probably trying to freeze Cobbett out of the news market. From this introduction to Cobbett I think it’s pretty clear to see what motivates him to force reform and even his inspiration for Rural Rides.

William Cobbett was constantly angry with Parliament due to the constant flow of decisions being made without any real concern or insight into the rural lives that it was having a profound impact on. Cobbett despised the landowners that had turned their back on the community and environment that he himself grew up in, this can be seen through how he explains the existence of the farm workers as walking skeletons. One of the key themes present throughout Rural Rides is arguably a huge feeling of nostalgia – he talks about the people planting different kinds of trees (pine trees) means that they are “destroying the beauty of the estate”. As mentioned earlier Cobbett wholeheartedly believed that these landlords and landowners had no idea about the rural areas and were slowly destroying the culture that Cobbett found so familiar and safe. This is where we can see hints of nostalgia – like when you go back to a place you used to know and find that it has been altered radically.

When it comes to Cobbett, it’s always beneficial to mention Charles Dickens; though the two had their differences they were both campaigning for pretty much the same thing. That being said, Dickens was far more successful in his campaigning, he managed to make himself more approachable to the middle-classes – Dickens did attack the establishment in his famous novel “Bleak House” as he describes it as a sort of thick fog, which paints a rather macabre picture.

Cobbett and Dickens go hand in hand when it comes to their thoughts about the government being infatuated with industry and profit – here Dickens focuses primarily on the people who are living in urban areas (as opposed to Cobbett who focuses on rural) and how the industrial revolution has lead to many lives being ruined; the machines and factories produce far too much pollution so people would fall ill, places were overcrowded, poverty was rife and the poor were being majorly exploited and this was all going on within the key cities of the time so Manchester and London for example would have borderline un-inhabitable.

Jean Jacques Rousseau and Cobbett

Rousseau was born 28 June 1712 in Geneva. He was a philosopher, writer, and the driving force behind the period known as 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy had a profound impact on the French and he pretty much influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political and educational thought. 

Rousseau and Cobbett had a surprising amount of equal ground when it came to their ideas, insofar as the idea of natural beauty which Rousseau alludes to in his writing primarily when he talks about the statue of man being slowly eroded by change until it is unrecognisable. This is related to how Cobbett feels that things would have been perfectly fine if the industrial revolution never happened and we allowed things to play out according to nature, not to go and make all these abhorrent machines. That being said Cobbett seems like he would be content with his success while a man like Rousseau would have wanted more and more, for example he detest the idea of any kind of land ownership so it makes sense that he would want to ban land ownership.