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

WINOL Critical Reflection - Year 2, Semester 1

WINOL (www.winol.co.uk) has gone through a vast transformation this term, the website to begin with was very up and down - it took some time to get it off the ground but now, I believe it's fair to say that the site is now flying high and will not stop soaring. The site has been changed to a broadsheet newspaper format, which was received as more appropriate for our news. The decision to change the site to Wordpress instead of Joomla is also a noticeable difference in the site, Wordpress does limit flexibility with what we can actually do and post to the site in terms of format, but it seems to be highly, if not more, fit for the purpose of WINOL. The massive overhaul of the website has been a fantastic move for the site and the results speak for themselves - the Alexa traffic rank now places the WINOL website currently 10,424 in the UK and 477,045 worldwide.

My role in WINOL this term has been the Entertainments Reporter and occasional presenter. I believe that this term I've done a good job, but, especially to begin with, there was and probably still is room for improvement. Overall, I feel that my contribution to WINOL has been of a good standard, every week bar 2 I have delivered a VT, which has then either been used as an OOV, been scrapped or used as a full package in the bulletin. My role as entertainments reporter has taught me that I need to be proactive; organisation is the key - insofar as if there is an event a few months away, depending on the event, I would need to get in touch with the event managers in advance, to ask for permission if necessary and to set up what I want to do with the event and how I want to report on it.

Along with going out and getting a story, I have presented the WINOL bulletin once this semester and I thoroughly enjoyed myself while doing it. I know that it wasn't the best but I had gone into this ordeal with no previous training, for example, voice coaching and I felt like I had been thrown in the deep end, especially considering that I only had about 15 - 20 minutes or rehearsal to get used to the setting of the whole thing, it really was a sink or swim moment, and I feel that I managed to stay afloat because I don't think that there was anything majorly wrong with it. That being said, I was picked up on my voice, I needed to change my tone according to the story, for example while reading out a link for a court report, I sounded strangely cheerful, contrasted to when I read the link out for the baby giraffe story where I sounded monotonous and uninterested. Given the circumstances, I feel that I did well presenting and I would very much like a chance to try again and do myself justice, as I know I can do better.

Over the course of this semester, I have produced 7 VT's, of these 7, 4 have been placed into the bulletin, usually filling the spot of "and finally” When I first started however, I was not very organised with my contacts and I failed to get in touch with a few people who would have been key to my packages being that much better and worthy of being in the bulletin, put simply, I was not proactive enough and thought that I could send an E-mail and maybe make a call, then just turn up on my own volition. With that in mind I feel that after I stopped only sending E-mails to people and actually started ringing and planning through my stories a good week or so in advance is when I got my real results.

The first ever story I produced for WINOL was the story of a willow installation being added to the Winchester Discovery Centre this package was not used for the bulletin and this is because I feel that I failed to hit the right angle with this story, instead of it being just about this woman, Laura Ellen Bacon, using twigs of willow to create works of art, I could have potentially taken the focus away from that and had a bit of fun with it, instead of taking it so seriously. This was my first story, it was not a good one in my eyes and I could have done a lot better, but that being said, I managed to produce a package for the first WINOL, regardless of if it was used.

The second story I did was the Chronicles of Light event at Winchester Cathedral, this was also not featured in the bulletin, this is because of many reasons, this package was somewhat doomed from the start because I couldn't get my hands on any footage of the event actually happening, for example I was not allowed to film the event happening in Winchester Cathedral, because of copy right issues. This means that my package turned into an interview with the event manager of Winchester Cathedral, Simon Barwood, which just told people that the event was happening. If I had been more proactive I could have done something more with it, but then again everything looks better in retrospect.

My third story was covering an event held by Naomi House Hospice they hosted a James Bond charity event in the shop to raise money for the charity, this was one of my better packages but it didn't get used in the bulletin or as an oov, this is because, I think anyway, that the other 'and finally' package that we had was just better in every way and far more engaging. I worked very hard on that package and was disheartened when it didn't get put into the bulletin or used as an oov, but as i said, the alternative story was better in my opinion, just because of content and the level of interest.

This is where I hit my stride, the story I covered was about pub owner, Colin Flitter, located in the New Forest, has converted a double decker bus into a mobile pub. This story was my debut into the bulletin as a full package. I thought that this went very well overall and the guest editor that week, Graham Bell, told me that it was a great story and just the kind of thing you want to see as an 'and finally' because it's just a brilliant, fun and light hearted story to end on. However, the package really needed to be more than just one long interview with Colin, and more me explaining the whole idea, with shots of the bus and then cut to an interview with him just for a fun little snippet just to make it a great light hearted story. The other thing I was picked up on was that during my sign off I took a sip of beer, which would make me appear highly unprofessional.

The next story of mine to go into the bulletin was the graduation ceremony at Winchester Cathedral. This could have been a lot better than it was, I should have gotten vox pops of the people there, even the graduates parents talking about how happy they are would have been good, but while I was there i only managed to get one interview and no vox pops - people just were not willing to talk to me or to be filmed which really impeded the progression of my story and made it less than what it could have been. The shots i took needed to have been better, for example I didn't get any natural sound of cheering or anything to that effect, the best i managed was to capture the all important hat throw, but that was not enough to save the package. It was used, but I feel that I should have done a lot better with this. This is where I had massive issues with my voice over, it sounded like I was under water at the least, it just sounded bad no matter what I did and I must have re-recorded it about 6 times to try and get it, but to no avail.

I covered the Winchester Christmas lights for my story and I had very good natural sound with this in the beginning, with the countdown and cheering. I was told that it was well scripted and I took on the advice of my peers to be more enthusiastic and assertive that it is now officially Christmas in my voice over, it really raised the tone of the news bulletin because it was all doom and gloom. However, the shots did need to be better, they were all very dark and I didn't get enough footage to match all the celebration I was talking about in my voice over, if I'm talking about people loving the event, I need to show it happening.

The Winchester Christmas Market was my final package for WINOL this semester and I thought that it was a very good package. The guest editor, Geoff Hill, the Channel 5 news editor, said that the camera work was fantastic because it was very dark and in the package the lighting was perfect, the focus was dead on and the camera work was just altogether brilliant considering it was pitch black when it was filmed, along with this, he said that it was also well scripted. However, this certain package was just screaming out for vox pops, I've said in the package that everyone was having a great time but I should have reinforced this with the stall owners or just people attending to voice this.

The issues that I have encountered during my filming have been: wind noise, not enough shots of the area or not enough relevant shots, for example I found that when it came to editing, especially in my first few packages, that I really did not have enough footage of people 'doing things' which made it difficult to get a good, solid VT out of it. Moreover, other issues include, filming in the dark (Christmas Lights and Christmas Market) I feel that the most trouble I've had through all of my VT's is my voice over. My voice overs have tended to sound dreadful, every time I tried to make them better they either sounded the same or they just deteriorated - I tried recording them with the gun microphone, the radio microphone, the lip microphone but nothing sounded good, the only time my audio has been good is when I've been out on location for my story. Perhaps in the future to remedy this I should plan and draft my script ready for going out and filming, just to avoid the terrible audio issues when it comes to voice overs I always seem to have throughout my video packages.

Overall, I have enjoyed my time on WINOL this semester and I am looking forward to next semester after Christmas and I plan on being far more efficient at news reporting and I will take all of this into great consideration to constantly strive to better myself.

Sigmund Freud

Here are my notes on old Freud, what a stand up guy he knew his stuff! Got Always Sunny on in the background, just enjoyed steak night and there will be a hilarious picture at the end very relevant to this topic courtesy of Cyanide and Happiness comic, so read on!

Freud: 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 - which correlates to what Marx says about the working class - we have no idea what we need but we have to work. 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 subconsciousness will tell you to wear blue because you associate that with looking fierce. This is explored greatly by psychoanalysis which we will come to.

The most common aspect of Freud's work you will hear of is people talking about 'Freudian slips' this is when we say something that we didn't intend to, but these slips are supposed to be our real thoughts creeping through. This is linked in with dreaming - dreams are supposedly the royal road to the unconscious and they can explain some sort of deeper meaning within a person, for example if you have dreams of running away or 'running up that hill' then, this supposedly means that you're not having enough sex - dreams just express our true thoughts and this can only happen while we are asleep. Freud stated that if he didnt treat people then this would cause a downward spiral - this is because Freud would help you address these underlying feelings and if they were to go unnoticed then you would become greatly neurotic and life would just get progressively worse.

Freud was seen as a secluded renegade, he was a massive sex addict and thought that sex was the center of everything - which damaged the old view of ourselves as being noble creatures who were chivalrous and decent. Freud claims that we are brutal creatures that cave into basic desires and will not go out of our way for someone unless we benefit from it. This links into pessimism - which is seen as the center of all - Freud was highly pessimistic and he saw humans as having a little light but an overwhelming amount of darkness inside. This pessimism is somewhat understandable when you know of Freud's origins - for example he was lived through the first world war, general aggression from the German state, he was of Jewish descent living in Vienna so he would have been very fearful and if that wasn't enough, he lived through the Great Depression and would have seen a phenomenal amount of unemployment and strife. These factors and I'm sure more, are more than responsible for his dark and pessimistic view on humans.

Attack on Plato: Freud agreed with Plato on the idea that there is a tripartite self - a person is made up of three parts - reason, spirit and desire. Plato's example of a charioteer is used to explain this idea - there are two horses, which represent spirit and desire and then the charioteer at the reins is reason, dictating the actions of spirit and desire. However, Freud doesn't agree on the order that Plato put forward; insofar as reason is not in control as he thought reason to be the weakest of the three and completely unable to control desire or spirit. I believe that Freud would say that desire is the one in control of spirit and reason.

Attack on Marx: While Marx believed that humans have unlimited potential and that we can always become better version of ourselves, Freud believes that this is complete nonsense and this is because there is a part of us that we can never escape - our aggression. For example, if we were to live in a communist state Marx would say we would all get along just fine and would all be equal, whereas Freud would argue that we would still be ourselves, nothing would change and that deep down we are all just aggressive, we only ever want to hurt people or we want to goad people into hurting us so we have a reason to hurt them back, this is all we want to do deep down. This is linked to Hobbes and his state of nature, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short - we need the Leviathan to rule over us and stop us from being animals.

The Freudian Personality: The reality of human nature is pain - this is what it is to be human, to be in and feel pain perpetually. This is because we are divided in ourselves, we are always at war with ourselves and these divided parts within us are fighting themselves and the most dominant force in ourselves is the 'ID' which is and has been a part of us all since the very beginning.

The ID is sex and aggression, which is the most dominant part of us all which Freud called "a cauldron of seething excitation" always bubbling away, demanding to be noticed, demanding expression and fulfillment. The main thing is that we are never aware of the dominance of the ID and the problem is that the ID is essentially a spoiled brat in a toy shop that wants everything and wants it now - this is the ID.

The 'EGO' is the rational self, it is also supposed to be the weakest and least powerful part of a personality, which concerns the voice of reason, moderation and common sense - these rarely have an effect on our life decisions, says Freud. In terms of reality, we don't make choices based on facts - we are not rational beings in the slightest - for example with the charioteer, Plato's charioteer is not in control, the ego is just constantly embarrassed and is overruled by stronger forces within us.

The 'SUPER EGO' is essentially the nice parts of us, the part that wants to respect authority and be nice to other people. The super ego is the values that have been passed down to us through our parents and other outside influences. The super ego and the ID are just irrational and are always fighting with the ego. So really the super ego is essentially the parent who is screaming at you to do better, to revise more so you do well as it would reflect on them, the super ego is the guilt you feel when you don't get something right, when you don't get the right grades. It is equated to religion insofar as that sets very unrealistic demands - don't be a bad person, love thy neighbor and so on.

Why is society awful? 
1) Freud says that this is mostly because of other people - this is loaded with pain as they are always out to get us and other people are always trying to do better than you; just trying to get in your way, every single person is some sort of a road block on your path to success. When you see others you don't see friends or family, you see a multitude of people just trying to attack you. This is the greatest pain of all.

2) Because we are ever so slowly decaying. We are always getting older and with old age comes more problems, for example back pains, illness, dementia and so on, our bodies are going to run out some time and this is what adds to life being miserable and we are in a state of perpetual pain.

3) The external world - for example nature, you look outside to find it's raining again, you hate the rain as it makes you cold and soaks you through, this is just a daily occurrence to some people and it makes life that bit more of a chore and we just cant help it, nothing we do can change the weather.

Freud believes that the answer is 'psychoanalysis' which was an expensive treatment, not open to everyone. It is seen as necessary to strengthen the ego and it was just the answer to the people being upset. However, psychoanalysis is expensive and only a few people are trained in it, which means it is not an answer for everyone. This leads us to a way to contain urges, coping mechanisms for people who cant afford to go through psychoanalysis.

1) Isolation - just cut yourself off from the world and people altogether
2) Chemical Solution - this is reverting to drugs and alcohol to cope with the world
3) Religion as a type of sublimation - religion acts as a mass delusion
4) Sublimation -  is a type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior. However, the only real satisfaction is to beat someone you hate to death.

Civilisation is essentially a collective super ego, for example we are expected to respect authority, sit in rows, be respectful of others. Imposing moral limits, for example love your neighbor as yourself - unrealistic demand as we are animals, how would we do this? and even worse, we have to 'love your enemy', which is just insane according to Freud - again linked to religion placing outrageous limits on us and vast expectations.

Dreams are the royal road of the unconsciousness because while we are asleep the ego is like a sentry asleep at its post. this is when the ID would run rampant and the dreams we have reveal our true thoughts.

Attack on Freud: Popper and falsifiability would say that Freud's scientific predictions could be proven wrong, Freud was always vague, it can't be tested and he made up loads of his research and facts anyway. Furthermore, Freud claimed to be the only one to mention the unconsciousness but that is untrue, because Schopenhauer actually mentioned it in a round about way, insofar as he mentioned the 'Will' and so on, for example the will is the secret antagonist of the intellect.

Well there we have it, all my notes on Freud! Helpful revision session too as well as me now being up to date on my blog! FINALLY, took some time, but I got there. Hope you enjoyed, here's the picture I promised!

Freudian Ice - Comic Strip Courtesy of Cyanide and Happiness!

http://www.explosm.net/comics/2630/

Channel 5 news bulletin review

This will be my review of the Channel 5 bulletin from last night, i'll try and go into as much detail as possible! Overall I thought that it was well done.

Floods: Flooding story didn't really have much in the way of natural sound - maybe some gushing water would have worked well. I noticed a lot of cross dissolves being used to hide the cut ways but then they may just be a visual thing, I've personally never used them.

Good shots of people struggling with the floods, makes it very personal and people will react to that. The interview with the person in the house was amazing, it definitely made it more interesting to see the reporter shouting across a pool of water to a man leaning out of his window - brilliant and impressive improvisation

People taking shelter in sports hall - good because again it shows distressed people which will make an impact, however I didn't understand having the back of the reporters head in the shot and in some cases having the gun mic in clear shot.

Sickness: The story about the norovirus had a good use of graphics but there was the same shot re-used with the medical staff in the background with a microscopic image of the virus imposed over the scree - it was a good thing but maybe find something else to use as the second shot. It also seemed to make it out to be more than it was, yes it's bad but it's not nearly as bad as it was made out to be.

The news recap after the break was good, kept people interested and it is for the benefit of people who maybe didn't catch the show from the start, it was a very charming feature.

Nadine Dorries story: Seemed to me that it was just to have the novelty of being in Westminster in the shot when they didn't actually get her after the event or anything, it was nice but was somewhat lacking in a sense.

Yasser Arafat: This story was interesting from the get go and it was easy to be involved with it - as it stands to be a very profound aspect that they are investigating and I found it to be a great story. Furthermore, the interviews used were very memorable and strong, they had a good impact on the story and the footage of them looking through his personal effects was a nice touch.

Sports Personality: Liked the use of Chris Hoy being there and about to deliver his answer, then cuts out to keep you interested, very nice touch. However, I think that maybe more people could've been used to judge and maybe delay as much as possible to give off the big reveal, just to keep people that much more inclined to listen to the story and see it to the end.

General overview: I liked it really, just the main thing that I took issue with was having the reporter talking and being in shot during any interview, this also applies to the gun mic being in shot. However, this may be a style thing that has become the norm but I found it to be odd, as I'm never in shot during an interview.

Sometimes the framing of the shots we're not all that great, some people didn't have their heads or were just having the side of their face shown while talking to someone who was standing in front of them with the camera to their left - it just looked strange to me is all. Furthermore, I wasn't entirely sure about the cross dissolves, but again maybe just the norm - it didn't look bad by any means but it just seemed odd.

I liked the use of having the reporter's twitter account in the strap line - very good same goes for the OOVs, ver nice shot of the crane collapsing.

The recaps were also a very nice touch - just kept the news fresh in the viewer's mind and it held interest.

Modernism

This blog post concerns modernism, aesthetics, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The notes are a bit bare but this is only really for my understanding, hopefully you all get it!

Aesthetics: Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy which concerns art, beauty, and music - the process of making it and enjoying it. From the late 17th to the early 20th century Western aesthetics underwent change into what is often called modernism. European thinkers placed a very high profoundness on beauty as the key aspect of art and would go as far to see art as necessarily aiming at absolute beauty and art it is the closest thing we can get to absolute beauty - this idea of absolute beauty is linked heavily with the form theory.

For Hegel all art or beauty is a matter of "absolute spirit" showing itself, changing to a perfection that only philosophy can approach. Art is the first stage in which the absolute spirit is manifest immediately to perception. For Schopenhauer aesthetics is a way for people to understand what beauty is and for one to lose themselves in it, as sort of a coping mechanism to an extent - which allows people to hide from a harsh world. therefor Schopenhauer saw it one way to fight the suffering of people.

Nietzsche - Philosopher of Music: Nietzsche wanted to understand why somethings are considered beautiful and some are not: this is heavily linked again to Plato's cave and forms theory - the idea that there is a perfect woman or chair or table out there somewhere but we cannot perceive it but we do know when they are close to them. One of the most outstanding features of Nietzsche's work is his ornamental poetic language. He liked to be seen as an artist and to be judged solely on that fact. 

Man is the main balance in the universe and this balance is struck by people using their language and ideas to shape the way they live. For Nietzsche, art is not the imitation, but more of a metaphysical complement that will allows nature to become more than it is, to transcend itself and art is the highest form of human activity. From this it is understandable to say that artists are the closest people to the forms.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner believe that music is the very purest and profound form of art and aspect. This can be linked back to the aesthetics approach to why people find things beautiful and their own personal preference to what beauty is.

Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer's book "The world as will and representation" mentions the 'will' which, linked to his possible Hindu roots, is the Hindu God Brahma. For Schopenhauer, human desiring, "willing,"  just ends up causing suffering or pain. A temporary way to escape this pain is through art or aesthetic contemplation. Aesthetic contemplation allows one to escape this pain because it stops one perceiving the world in one way and to see it in a better light - you get lost in it.

He believes that people have to overcome desire, when you experience this - that is the will, which can be linked to the 'force' from Star Wars and denial of the Will is the only way to be perfectly and absolutely happy. The Dionysian view of being perfectly happy would be to use intoxication on yourself, just to numb the pain of a harsh world by getting drunk, taking drugs and over indulging yourself, but these will all have their own drawbacks, for one they are only temporary releases - you will sober up eventually. Contrasting with this is the Apollonian way, the "healthy" option, for example losing yourself in art or music or something that you find beautiful - this is known as a healthy intoxication.

Economics

This is my stab at the economics lecture from a couple weeks back, again, this is very late so i'm trying to catch up! Have fun reading them - if they make sense that is. Enjoy!

Adam Smith: Smith was a contemporary of Hume and was named one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and is best known for his two original works - "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) and "The Wealth of Nations" (1776). The Wealth of Nations is usually deemed Smith's most prominent and profound piece of work as well as the first modern work which detailed economics and it addressed why one nation is wealthier than another. Smith looked at China and why it was a 3rd world country - he came to the conclusion that due to far too much government intervention, for example the Great Wall of China was built to protect them, which ultimately failed and bankrupted the economy.

In terms of wages and labour, Smith stated that in societies where the amount of labour exceeds the amount available for waged labour, then competition among workers is greater than the competition among employers - this means that eventually the wages will fall. However, if you were to flip this on its head, then it means that where revenue is abundant, labour wages rise. Smith argues that, therefore, labour wages only rise as a result of greater revenue disposed to pay for labour. 

Adam Smith says that basic human morality is everyone is living for themselves in order to gain happiness or some sort of ego boost. For example in terms of people donating money to charity, Smith states that people don't donate to charity in order to help other people, they do it so that they can feel superior or develop some sort of standing as a charitable person in society. His ideas are linked very closely to Utilitarianism - maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain - in terms of donating money, it is explained through the amount they donate and this is determined by how highly they value the feeling they gain from it or how little they value their money.

That being said, Smith hates the idea of charity - it leads to what he calls the law of unintended consequences. This in terms of charity, he argues, makes the person receiving the charity more dependent on the welfare and the charity which gives them little to no incentive to get off a system of welfare and get their own jobs.

David Ricardo: Ricardo was a British political economist and stock trader. He credited work, among others are systematising economics, and he was one of the most influential classical economists, along with the likes of Malthus and Smith. Ricardo is noted as being the contribution of the law of comparative advantage - which is a key argument in favor of free trade among other countries. Ricardo believed that there is a mutual benefit from trading - even if one of the people involved with the trade are far more productive.

Thomas Malthus: Malthus was very pessimistic  he stated that it is our destiny to eventually starve to death. This is because there will always be unlimited wants from the people and we only have limited resources which we will blow through in no time. He also claims that we are perpetually on the brink of extinction, for example if we ran out of petrol resources, we wouldn't be able to drive to the shops to buy food or ambulances would stop operating. He says that people being married is a good thing as it would reduce the birth rate which would impede the inevitable starvation - less food would be required and people would be able to hold on to rations. Contraception is also credited for being a huge help to lowering the birth rate, but then this has it's own flaws as we know.

Malthus was heavily criticised by the "moderns" when he talks about the idea of every new mouth needing to be fed and cared for. The moderns pick up on the fact that with every new mouth comes a new pairs of hands.

The Moderns: Adam smith said that money was solely a way to keep score and it has to be kept the same for everyone but the money will not affect a human's nature in any way. Moderns would oppose this view and say that money does have a deep, a very profound impact on people and their choices. War is always good for the economy and it managed to remedy the great depression - this is because it created a multitude of jobs and everyone had something to do - this also managed to rid the world of the "superstition" of gold, this replaced gold with actual notes, coins; real currency (ration slips).

Governments would print extra money, they would give this to factory owners to secure the workers that they employ. This in turn meant more people would have jobs and more people were earning money - this lead to more money being spent which gives the economy a very nice boost which would continue to cycle.  The money that is being fed into the government is taken out and turned into taxation - which is implemented to control spending patterns which means the government would be greatly involved in the market.

Logical Positivism and Karl Popper

The Logical Positivists: The logical positivist were a group of highly influential thinkers before the first world war and their philosophy combines empiricism with a form of rationalism. Logical positivism, began from discussions of a group called the Vienna Circle which gathered during the earliest years of the 20th century in Vienna. After World War I, Hans Hahn, a member of that early group, helped bring Schlick into the mix. The Vienna circle took it upon themselves to rid the world of Hegelian metaphysics and they tried to apply science to philosophy

The opposition to all metaphysics was a key aspect and stance of the Logical Positivists, especially ontology and synthetic a priori propositions; they rejected metaphysics however not as wrong but as having no meaning; and they came to this conclusion based on Wittgenstein's work; the idea that all knowledge should be codifiable.

The whole idea was demarcation- splitting the world into metaphysics and actual science to try and gain the absolute truth. They believed that any statement that could not be verified are just plain nonsense, for example the Hegelian idea of the Ziet Geist leading history. The main question was - can we prove this claim, if not it was deemed as untrue. The Cogito by Descartes is rejected, as it cannot really be proven - it contains a non-verifiable induction. The Cogito was re-written by Ayer as "there are ideas" this is verifiable unless solipsism applies.

Karl Popper: Popper was born to Jewish parents and fed the Nazis to the University of London - he lived in Vienna during the golden age of the city: the Vienna Circle. Popper didn't see himself as one of the logical positivists and many of the logical positivists saw him as a direct opposition to the positivists.

Popper's main addition to philosophy was his theory of falsification - which holds the principle that if something cannot be proven, then you must disprove it.

Popper's concern was with distinguishing scientific from metaphysical statements. Unlike the positivists, he did not claim that metaphysical statements must be meaningless. Popper profoundly said that a statement which was metaphysical and unfalsifiable in one century could, in another century, be falsified which in turn makes them scientific. Popper stated that people should not rely on induction when it comes to science however most scientists think that science does rely heavily on induction. This is known as the problem with induction.

Popper eventually realised that everything was potentially untrue as people such as Newton had been proven wrong by Einstein - he says you have to assume what knowledge we have is incomplete and we will strive to be exact as you possible can.