Heidegger, Husserl, Descartes

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

• Born in Baden to Catholic parents who wanted him to be a Jesuit priest.
• Attended seminary in 1909 but was discharged due to heart problems.
• Discovered Brentano's work during this time, who believed all knowledge comes from the senses and was an early professor of Freud.
• Studied theology and scholastic philosophy at the University of Freiburg.
• In 1911, began focusing on recent philosophy and Edmund Husserl's "Logical Investigations".
• Graduated with a thesis on psychologism and worked closely with Husserl after.

Edmund Husserl and Phenomenology

• Husserl is credited with founding phenomenology, described as "a return to things in themselves."
• Phenomenology seeks to thoroughly overturn Cartesian metaphysics and ontological dualism.

Descartes and the Cogito

• In "Meditations," Descartes uses radical doubt, questioning everything he thinks he knows.
• Descartes rejects sensory evidence.
• The only certainty for Descartes is the cogito, "cogito ergo sum" ("I think therefore I am.")
• He can not get reliable information about the outside world.
• Turns to God for confirmation of mathematical certainties.
• Only quantifiable things can be true about the external world; everything else is subjective.

Cartesian Dualism

• The split is between subject and object.
• It posits two substance types: res cognitas (thinking, perceiving) and res extensa (extended, physical things).
• Neither substance can account for the other.
• A subjective/objective reality division exists.
• Senses do not provide direct access to the world; they create an illusion.
• This division is central to the modern scientific worldview.

Phenomenology - A Return to Things in Themselves

• Husserl argued that only perceptual and conscious experience allows knowledge of the world.
• He aims to describe the Lebenswelt, the world as we experience it.

The Phenomenological Reduction

• Aimed at returning to the phenomenally given as such, rejecting metaphysical construction.
• Closely tied to the epoche, suspending all knowledge and focusing on senses to cleanse the palette.

Consciousness

• Consciousness is always intentional.
• When conscious, it is directed towards another object, something distinct from oneself.

Epoche - Phenomenological Reduction

• In Ideens, Husserl explored the structures of consciousness through epoche.
• Epoche involves suspending judgment about the natural world to focus on the experience itself.
• Requires bracketing out assumptions

Universal vs Local Epoche

• Husserl differentiated between universal and local epoche.

Husserl's Phenomenological Project

• Husserl envisioned phenomenology as a science involving an army of phenomenologists applying phenomenological reduction to all existence elements.
• The Nazi party was not supportive because Husserl was born Jewish.

Heidegger and Husserl

• Heidegger became Husserl's assistant in 1923.
• They had different approaches to phenomenology.
• Husserl viewed it as a science to re-establish the grounds of science.
• Heidegger had a more poetic temperament.

Being and Time - 1927

• Heidegger published "Being and Time" and was appointed to Husserl's Chair, dedicating it to Husserl.
• Husserl disagreed with Heidegger's approach.
• Heidegger became Rector of Freiburg in 1933 and joined the Nazi party soon after.
• Accusations: taking away Husserl's library card because Husserl was Jewish.

The Heidegger Controversy

• The question of whether Heidegger was a Nazi has come up repeatedly.

Heidegger's Nazi Party Membership

• 1933: Heidegger became a Nazi party member.
• A year later, he resigned the Rectorship but remained a member until the party's dismantling after the war.
• Some believe Heidegger protected Jewish friends and students.

Heidegger After 1945 and Denazification

• Charged due to his position in the Nazi regime as rector of the University of Freiburg.
• Dismissed from the university in the same year, and described as Nazism by the State Commission for Political Purification.
• Reintegrated in 1951, granted emeritus status, and taught until 1976.
• Heidegger had many Jewish students.
• Heidegger never recanted his Nazism or apologized.
• Some believe his choice to never apologize was due to the times and opportunities; some believe he was more devoted to it than that

Heidegger Against Nazis

• As rector, Heidegger refused to display anti-Jewish posters and forbade book-burning.
• Nazi officials expressed doubt over his loyalties

Heidegger's Refusal to Apologize

• After the war, Heidegger repeatedly refused to apologize or account for his actions.
• Some of Heidegger's personal notebooks have been held to contain evidence of antisemitism.

The Later Heidegger

• Later works include "Letter on Humanism" (1946), "What is Called Thinking" (1954), and "The Question Concerning Technology" (1957).
• Some argue that these works mark a departure from his earlier works and tend to be more mystical.
• Analytical philosophers are not very interested in these works.
• Heidegger claimed in his last interview with Speigel that “only a god can save us!” which is pessimistic towards technological paradigm.

Being and Time: Fundamental Ontology

• Explores the meaning of being.
• Heidegger considers this the most fundamental question for humans.
• This struggle to uncover the answer is fundamental to human existence.
• It is a central dimension of human existence and life, found in everyday existence.
• Heidegger believes there is already understanding the being of entities.
• Modern day contains a dualistic mentality of being: materialist things, and consciousness

Pre-Ontological Understanding of Being

• Everyone has some sense of what things are (ontology), often vague and unformulated.
• Philosophical reflection builds upon this pre-ontological understanding.
• Entering a room involves an implicit understanding of its components.
• Making this tacit know-how explicit can be complex.
• Questioning aims to clarify the grasp of things in day-to-day life and their significance in context.
• Conceptualizing what is already known can be difficult.
• Heidegger thinks the ontology of things is very simple to us when looking at the phenomenological debate by Hegel.

Forgetfulness and Being

• While everyone prereflectively grasps the question of being, Heidegger argues that modern science and its objectified view has shaped this.
• Heidegger is not anti-science but aims to reveal how the scientific worldview informs everyday life.
• This is especially confusing for those who view consciousness as computational.
• The universe is seen as an aggregate of material objects in causal relationships, devoid of intrinsic meaning and value.

Scientific Worldview and the Subject/Object Distinction

• Challenges the significance of the subject/object distinction in daily life.
• Presents objective reality as material objects interacting causally.
• External reality is depicted as mechanistic.
• Meaning and value are subjective, unrelated to the external world.
• Subjective beings attempt to understand the world for functional efficiency, distinguishing internal and external reality.
• Access to the world is mediated through internal representations or ideas.
• Heidegger asserts that this scientific worldview is an abstraction, while actual experiences are more real.
• Scientific models can distort understanding of reality, and mistaken as reality, forgetting them as models.

Return to the Everyday

• Criticizes dualism and seeks a return to experiencing reality non-abstractly.
• Learning about the world occurs through practical engagements.
• Language should disrupt familiar usages and understandings.

Being in the World

• As agents of being, we are already in a world with necessities and objects at hand.
• Mind is not separate from material objects and the world; there is a mutual relationship.
• The self/world distinction and the Cartesian problem of knowing the world is a pseudo problem.

Dasein

• In being in the world, it transcends the separation of self and world.
• Being and the world are interrelating sides of the subjective process.
• The subject/object division is a false one, derived from a primordial way of being as agents in the world.
• The world is how we understand ourselves.

Dasein is its World Existing

• Dasein is a clearing or lighting, a space where the meaning of things show up.
• The clearing appears when we are thinking.
• Dasein is the manner in which we experience the world.
• We don't impose structure and understanding; rather, the world reveals itself.

Being as Care (Dasein as Zorgen)

• The worthwhileness and meaning of life are primary concerns.
• Life is not approached neutrally, one is invested!
• The world is of concern because it assigns meaning to things, relating them to projects.

Heidegger on Nihilism

• Caring about who we are means already taking a stand on our lives; neutrality is impossible.

Humans

• Humans are what they do, having no fixed essence given in advance and generating being through active lives.
• Humans are self-interpreting or self-constituting.

The Self as Event

• Defined not by essence, but by ongoing actions.
• "I am what I become in living out my life-story as a whole”.

Thrownness (Geworfenheit) - Facticity

• Denotes the arbitrary character of Dasein's experience, born into a specific family and culture at a moment in time with no control.
• I am a "such and such being" at "such and such" time

Thrownness as Embedded in Broader Context

• Just as we are thrown into bodies and abilities, we are thrown into specific cultures and time periods.

Thrownness as Facticity and Project

• Encountered as a task that must be undertaken somehow.
• Delivered over to myself as something that must be.

Thrownness as Futurity

• Dasein exists as an "ahead-of-itself-as-already-in-the-world".
• Relates to the future directness of Dasein's life-story.
• Each person has taken a stand on a life-story and already has a goal or ending.

Being-towards-Death

• Events in a story gain meaning from contributions to the whole outcome, and events in one's life only gain their meaning from how they relate to overarching life projects.
• Actions in the present must be understood in terms of future implications.

Authenticity

• Dasein is inherently socially and historically situated, leading to authentically social beings.
• The broader public or "The They" (Das Man) can cause forgetfulness of individual projects.

Falling

• Absorption into everyday affairs is called falling.
• In falling, basic existential conditions are forgotten.
• Heidegger wants awareness that life can be wasted on trivialities.
• Life is short; certain things matter more than others.

Das Man and Fallenness

• Tendency to go with the flow and forget important projects.
• Lacking a sense of what life is about causes us to accept the socially accepted outlook as the truth.
• In the prevalent outlook, we play by the socially prescribed rules leading to us no longer see our existence as a question.

Anxiety and Fallenness

• Faces emptiness in anxiety.
• Avoidance of this condition comes through embracing social norms.
• The message is individualistic where we are asked to think about one's own values, not societies value.
• Anxiety can shake prescribed norms, or also does other life events.

Authenticity as Recognition of Responsibility

• Recognition of one's own most possibilities.
• Seizing on roles drawn from the public world and making them personal through resolve.

Authentic Historicity

• Authentic historicity involves understanding the past as legacy and shared destiny.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

• Influential in France and America post-war, synonymous with existentialism and philosophy.

Sartre’s Philosophy

• Focused on absolute freedom and responsibility, relating to war.

Sartre’s Early Life

• Son of a naval officer and cousin of a novel-prize winner coming from Parisian Bourgeoisie.
• Father died shortly after Sartre was born
• Mother moved in with her parents, where a German taught Sartre math and classic literature.
• Mother remarried when Sartre was 12, then moved to la Rochelle.

Sartre and De Beauvoir

• Met Simone de Beauvoir in 1929; the two were partners for 51 years.

Sartre’s Military Service

• 1929-1931: Military in Meteorology at the lowest tank.
• 1931: Philosophy at a school before earning PHD

Sartre and Phenomenology

• 1933: Lived in Berlin, discovering Phenomenology, admiring Husserl.
• Heidegger did not admire Sartre's philosophy, but thought it misunderstands his own.
• Sartre and Heidegger did not agree on subjective/objective distinctions.

Sartre’s Post-Berlin

• 1934: Transcendence of ego is published.

Sartre’s Publications

• 1936: publishes the Imagination, 1938 the wall, and 1938-1940: publishes Nabakov, Faulkner, and Husserl articles.
• 1939: Publishes article.
• He is then called up for military duty.

Sartre’s War Years

• 1940: imprisoned in Germany.
• 1941: liberated, founded “Socialism and Liberty”, in the intellectual resistance.

Key Speech

• Existentialism is Humanism (1946).

Existentialism

• Stesses self-fashioning.
• Instead of focusing on essence, it emphasizes making yourself.

Sartre's Concepts

• "Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself."
• "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

Sartre’s Paradox

• Infinite freedom and responsibility is both paradox and the cause of anguish.
• Morality and direction comes from essence or absolute freedom, to make choices.
• Always responsible for actions, condemned to be free.

Sartre’s Philosophy

• "We are free!”
• Freedom is ontological, phenomenological from basic thought to reveal objects.
• Responsibility for the bad or good is always a choice.
• Mauvauise foi (bad faith) is denial.

Criticism

• The linkage between bad faith and freedom is not always clear.

Sartre’s Phenomenology

• An investigation of first-person point of view with return to simple level.

Sartre’s Basic Ontology:

• Two irreducible categories of the being for itself and within itself.
• Being for itself: is consciousness.

Sartre and Pure Freedom

• Pure freedom consciousness is nothing but what something is.
• Hegel’s philosophy’s main influence: that to be aware of consciousness implies we cannot be something else.

Sartre’s View of Freedom

• We are free because we are nothing or the ability to have perspective in regard.

Sartre's Bad Faith

• Bad faith (mauvaise foi), or that not to be who it is.
• It is a lie to oneself and self deception or identity.
• This would be something to avoid.