Seminar Paper

Existentialism is a term which was used by many philosophers in the late 19th to 20th Century. These philosophers shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject, stressing the importance of personal experience and the acts and feelings of the living human. 

To begin the idea of consciousness, it is important to mention that consciousness ‘just is’, it is not the result of anything or the cause of anything in particular. Freud, who was an Anglo-American philosopher throughout the twentieth century, invented the idea of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, in Freud’s mind, was the answer to everything. In simple terms, it is much like having therapy, a conversation where a patient and a doctor discuss issues the patient is having, and the reasons for these issues. Freud believed in the unconsciousness mind, which he manifested in three different ways. The first being through every day trivial mistakes. The second, through reports of dreams and the third through symptoms of neurosis. Freud thought that free association in analysis, reveals the underlying pattern of the unconscious mind. It is sexual development that is key to this pattern. Infantile sexuality begins with an oral stage, followed by an anal stage and a phallic stage. This is named the Oedipus complex, which is a crucial development in each boy. Towards the end of his life, Freud replaced earlier ideas of the conscious and unconscious, with a threefold scheme of mind. In his book ‘The Ego and the Id’, Freud describes the three separate personality traits, the ego, the id and the super ego. Freud believed that the way to deal with the unconscious, is through the id. The reason for this is because in sleep, the ego switches off and in dreams the id is rampant. Ultimately, dreams show the complete truth.

Edmund Husserl, born in 1859 was born into a Jewish family and in many ways his life resembles that of Freud. Husserl was the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. Husserl’s interest in philosophy began by the lectures of Franz Brentano in Vienna between the years of 1884 and 1886. Brentano sought to relate Aristotelian philosophy of mind to contemporary experimental inquiry in his book ‘Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint’. In this book, it explains that the data of consciousness comes in two kinds. The first kind is physical phenomena, which are such things as colours and smells. The second is mental phenomena, which are things such as thoughts and immanent objects. The aim of phenomenology was the study of immediate data consciousness, without reference to anything consciousness may tell us about the extra-mental world. Husserl believed that it makes no difference whether the ideas we have represent the real world or whether they are hallucinations. He states that it makes no difference to his life whether the table in front of him is in fact really there or if it is actually a hallucination. Only consciousness has ‘absolute being’, all other forms of being are dependent on consciousness for their existence. 

Martin Heidegger, a pupil of Husserl, published Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927, a book that claimed that phenomenology up until then had been too half-hearted. The aim of the book was to examine the data of consciousness, but employed notions such as ‘subject’, ‘object’, ‘act’ and ‘content’. Heidegger proclaims in this book that it was the end of the metaphysical age, as many were doing in this period of high modernism. However, he believed that this change began in the 1790’s with Kant and the French Revolution. The primary idea in the metaphysical age was to make thoughts correspond with an underlaying substrata of independent reality, similar to Schopenhauer's Will, the universe as a thing in itself. Heidegger believes that truth is the agreement of knowledge without the use of objects. These ideas are similar to that of Aristotle and Kant, who believe that objects are prior to mind or can be mind dependent. Kant’s idea of the noumena and phenomena are reflected largely in the work of both Husserl and Heidegger. Both philosophers take away the noumena and keep the phenomena, hence the idea of ‘phenomenology’.

After Heidegger, there is no absolute truths, there are only subject truths which are either weak, convenient or practical. These are necessary to being, as for Heidegger, being is always concrete e.g. ‘being in the world’ or ‘being there’.
This can then bring us to the idea of Dasein. Dasein, comes from the German every day word which can mean ‘way of being’, and is used by Heidegger as meaning ‘being there’. Dasein is relative of the point of view of the perceiver. It is shown in your mood, and for Heidegger, he believes your mood is you. Heidegger emphasizes on the temporal nature of Dasein, that we should think of it not as a substance but as the unfolding of a life. From the outset, we find ourselves thrown into a physical, cultural, and historical context which can be called throwness. This is simply the idea that we are always thrown in to something. This can relate to the way that ‘being’ is always concrete. We are always ‘being’ at a particular time and being engaged in a specific task. Freedom and authenticity for Heidegger is by being completely absorbed in task. When you fully engage in a task, you no longer exist. Heidegger believes that boredom is ‘the problem of being’ and the opposite of boredom is Dasein. Dasein is not thinking, but caring. 

Heidegger’s project was to clear away all philosophical terminology and concepts since the time of Socrates. He wanted to liberate himself from any constraints of objectification to live an authentic life. In practical terms, to live a simple life in the forest. Ultimately, Heidegger hates everything modern. Similar to Neitzsche, Heidegger believes that Socrates corrupted western civilization.
Heidegger, although having some similar ideas to Kant, disagreed about Time. Kant believed that there was 12 types of time, whereas Heidegger thought there were only 3;

1. ‘Attunement’ - which is expressed as mood. This is often a reflection on the past, and is outside of Dasein. You reflect on these past moods and experiences, and often feel the emotion of guilt about things you have done previous. Ultimately Heidegger believes you should leave this past behind. 
2. ‘Being for itself ‘or ‘Being there’ - You care about the task in hand and you are doing your own thing. This is the present mode of Dasein.
3. ‘Directedness’ - This is the reflection on the future. It produces the mood of dread as you are in fear of what is going to happen in your future.
   
   Ultimately, the past is guilt, the present is boredom (unless it is obliterated by Dasein) and the future is fear. 

In contrast to the right wing existentialism of Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, who was once a student of Heidegger, developed a form of existentialism that was far more left-wing. 
Sartre, similar to Hediegger, complained that Husserl had not taken the phenomenological reduction far enough. Sartre’s main work ‘Being and Nothingness’ attempts to remove the boundary of space and time from being. Being, for Sartre is what precedes and underlies all the different aspects of things that we encounter in consciousness. 
He believes that if we strip off all of the distinctions that consciousness has made, we are simply left with pure being. Being in itself is one of the key concepts focussed on in Being and Nothingness. The other, is for-itself which is related to human consciousness and refers to objects in the external world. Sartre believes that negation is the element which separates being in itself, and for itself. 

One main problem of human existence for Sartre is the desire of humans to attain being in itself, which he describes as wanting to be God. Ultimately, this is human natures longing to be in control of his life and destiny. Sartre thinks that the life of a human individual is not determined in advance. Human freedom is absolute and because of this, we try and hide it from ourselves and instead, adopt a role which is offered to us from outsiders such as society or religion. In the end, however, these efforts of concealing our freedom are bound to fail and we will end up double minded. This is the condition that Sartre refers to as ‘bad faith’. The alternative of this is to accept one’s freedom and the responsibility for ones own acts and life. In ‘Being and Nothingness’, another topic covered by Sartre is the idea of being-for-others. This relates to the way in which you are presented to other people, becoming nothing more than an object for them, often an object of envy or contempt. 

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher who developed a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction. His work was associated with postmodern philosophy. In his work on deconstruction, Derrida proposed that the first task of deconstruction of philosophy and afterwards in literary texts, would be to overturn all the binary oppositions of metaphysics. Derrida attached great importance to the distinction between what is spoken and what is written, attacking what he calls ‘phonocentrism’, which relates to the overemphasis in Western civilization on the spoken word. This can relate to Heidegger and his idea that previous philosophers such as Socrates corrupted Western civilization with philosophical terminology.