Martin Heidegger and Phenomenology

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

• Born in Baden to Catholic parents with the intention of him becoming a Jesuit priest
• Entered seminary in 1909, but discharged due to heart problems
• Encountered the work of Brentano, a proto-phenomenologist, during this time
• Brentano was an Aristotelian scholar who believed all knowledge originates from the senses
• Brentano was also an early professor of Freud
• Later, studied theology and scholastic philosophy at the University of Freiburg
• In 1911, shifted focus to recent philosophy and Edmund Husserl's "Logical Investigations"
• Graduated with a thesis on psychologism
• Worked closely with Husserl afterward

Edmund Husserl and Phenomenology

• Husserl is credited with founding phenomenology: "a return to things in themselves."
• Phenomenology aims to overturn Cartesian metaphysics and ontological dualism thoroughly

Descartes and the Cogito

• In "Meditations," Descartes uses radical doubt, questioning everything known
• Descartes rejects the evidence of senses
• The only certainty for Descartes is the cogito: "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am)
• This provides no reliable information about the external world, leading Descartes to turn to God to mathematically confirm certainty
• According to Descartes, only quantifiable things can be considered true of the external world, with everything else being subjective

Cartesian Dualism - Subject/Object Split

• Consists of two substance types: res cognitas (thinking, perceiving) and res extensia (extended, physical things)
• Neither substance type can account for the other
• Creates a division between subjective and objective reality where senses do not directly access the world, leading to illusion
• The division is at the heart of the modern scientific worldview

Phenomenology: A Return to Things in Themselves

• Husserl posits that all knowledge of the world is derived from perceptual and conscious experience
• In order to fully experience something, one must experience the Lebenswelt, the life-world

The Phenomenological Reduction

• Husserl refers to the return to the phenomenally given and by reduces phenomenon, renouncing theory
• Closely related to Epoche by suspending all knowledge and coming back to the senses to cleanse the palette

Consciousness

• Consciousness is intentional, directed towards an object
• Consciousness involves awareness of something separate

Epoche - Phenomenological Reduction

• Husserl attempts to discern the structures of consciousness by suspending judgment about world in Ideens
• Focus lies on what's given in the experience to instead "bracket out" assumptions

Universal vs. Local Epoche

• Husserl differentiates the universal epoche and local epoche, labeled with asterisks in the text

Husserl's Phenomenological Project

• Husserl envisioned phenomenology as a science with phenomenologists applying reduction to all existence
• The Nazis opposed Husserl's project due to his Jewish background, despite his conversion to Christianity

Heidegger and Husserl

• Heidegger becomes Husserl’s assistant in 1923
• Husserl views it as a science to re-establish the grounds of science as it's own discipline and Heidegger has a more poetic temperament

Being and Time

• Heidegger publishes "Being and Time" in 1927 and dedicates it to Husserl for being appointed to Husserl Chair at the university the following year
• Husserl disagrees with Heidegger’s approach

Heidegger's Nazi Affiliation

• Heidegger becomes Rector of Freiburg in 1933 and joins the Nazi party
• There were rumors of him taking away Husserl's library card because Husserl was Jewish
• Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party is a controversial topic that will come up time and time again
• Heidegger resigned the Rectorship in 1934, yet remained a Nazi party member until its dismantlement following WW2
• Some claim Heidegger protected Jewish friends, while others dispute it
• In response to his time as Rector of the University of Freiburg, Heidegger was charged after 1945, later dismissed then reintegrated in 1951
• Heidegger did not recant or apologize for his Nazism, despite the fact he had many Jewish students

Heidegger Against Nazis

• Heidegger refused to display anti-Jewish posters as a rector
• Heidegger forbade planned book burning and Nazi officials expressed doubts

Later Life

• Despite the above, Heidegger refused to account for his actions after the war, , with personal notebooks containing antisemitism evidence
• His later works included "Letter on Humanism," "What is called thinking," and "The question concerning technology"
• The later works are more mystical, and in his last interview, Heidegger claimed, "only a god can save us!"
• Heidegger became pessimistic towards technology, and was rebaptized Catholic

Fundamental Ontology

• Fundamental question in Heidegger's writing is "What is the meaning of being?", with answers present in everyday existence
• In modern day, dualistic mentality of being with materialist things and consciousness

Pre-Ontological Understanding

• Everyone has a sense of ontology, which is vague, unformulated and on which reflection occurs
• Tacit pre-reflective know-how is usually hard to make explicit
• Questions can conceptualize and clarify the grasp of things from day-to-day lives
• Ontology is simple, like Hegel debates

Forgetfulness and Being

• Heidegger states that those in west have answers, shaped and framed by science's objectified view
• The scientific worldview approached as a frame to everyday life

Scientific Worldview and the Subject/Object Distinction

• This distinction challenges meaningfulness in daily lives
• Objective reality consists materialism, whose value and meaning, as subjectivism, have nothing to do with external reality
• It is subjective beings attempt to get view, however we have access to the world through representations
• Actual experiences are more real than the scientific worldview, with models sometimes distorting reality

Return to the Everyday

• In the everyday, Heidegger wants to return to how reality is experienced and uses this to critique dualism
• Practical engagements is how the world is learned and wants to use language

Being and Dasein

• Being in the world engages and is already out there with necessities
• There is a mutual informed relationship, where the self/world distinction is a pseudo problem
• Being and world interrelate separate sides of the subjective process, where the subject/object division is false

Dasein

• Dasein is not a thing, but where the meaning and dont impose structure
• World reveals and Dasein experiences
• As care, Dasein invested and things have values

Heidegger's View on Nihilism

• Humans dont have essences, but are what we do

Self, Thrownness and Futurity

• Self is defined by what we continue to do, which is I am what I become
• There is no control, or direction for Geworfenheit denoting arbitrary moments of human history, but have a culture and time
• Futurity is related to the future of Dasein that will inform our actions

Authentic Historicity

• Authenticity is to not forget individual projects and value what is true by acknowledging emptiness
• Possibilities is authentic from recognition and relies on public roles
• The lives are enmeshed where historic moments are heritage

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

• Synonymous with existentialism in France and America post WW2
• Absolute freedom speaks to the people
• Only child born in paris and spent his time being bullied, losing both parents
• 1929 meets Simone de Beauvoir with a free-love vibe

Wartime

• Served in military from 1929 to 1931, then returns in 1939
• Was a POW

Existentialism is Humanism

• Spoke at Parisian to defend against communism and christian which suggest they focus on negatives
• Subjectivity which is self-fashioning comes from everyones responsibility and good values
• Lead to anguish
• Choose the situation and imagine choices as one identifies with the individual

Key Ideas in Existentialism

• Instead, Sartre insists that we are continual project
• Man can do anything and is key to Sartres philosophy
• No morality and freedom is what is given
• If performative, then consciousness is always intended
• To transcend or be transcendent

Last Works

• There is facticity to which one is bounded by, but can choose

Bad Faith

• Defined as mauvaise foi, the concept is traced to the notion of authenticity not being true to oneself
• A "lie to oneself”, “self-deception"
  • Denial of one’s essential freedom, when one conceives of oneself as en-soi and not pour-soi
    • This would seem to conceive of all acts of self-identification as bad faith
• Examples of Bad Faith:
  • A man decides he wants to seduce a woman he is on a date with, and puts his hand out across the table to her and the woman neither rejects nor accepts the advance
    • Sartre says this an example of bad faith because the woman should be absolutely sure, one way or the other
      • We should all be decisive or more accurately, transparent and avoid being coy!
        • This specific example is controversial
    • A waiter in a parisian cafe identifies himself in terms of his career and social standing and his identity is so fused with his occupation: this a self-deception

Robert Solomon’s Interpretation of Bad Faith in Sartre

• Solomon argues that interpreting bad faith as simple self-deception misses the mark of Sartre’s true intentions, which he argues is more Heideggarian in its aspirations
  • Like Heidegger, Sartre believes we are thrown into a world of facticity, but by virtue of consciousness being empty or transcendent, we can always imagine other possibilities for ourselves, alternative ways of the world
• We have certain facts about ourselves and ways of choosing to transcend them
  • Bad faith is the denial of either one’s facticity or one’s transcendence, conceiving of oneself as nothing but one’s facticity

Sartre Ends “Being and Nothingness”

• Sartre promises an account of ethics
• The big controversy in Sartreian studies: Some have argued he did not fulfill that promise; others have suggested that “existentialism as humanism” was his attempt
  • We are both completely free and completely responsible.
• Ends "Being and Nothingness" promising ethics but in its form there is no responsibility