Freud

• Similar to Descartes, Freud was concerned with the misery of human condition. Our unhappiness means that we are undivided and therefore alienated from ourselves this is the same starting point as Marx. We don't know what we want, unhappy inside. Freud therefore came to the conclusion that we're all troubled and so Freud's career was an attempt to answer why the human condition is the way that it is. Freud says we are controlled ( psychoanalysis) even if we don't realise we aren't as rational as we believe to be. Therefore it can be said that Freud discovered the unconscious mind- says he discovered in psychoanalysis the archaeology of the human mind.
• Dreams, Freud said, are the road to your unconscious.
• Seen as sexual renegade- sex is at the centre of our motivation this causes humans to be damaged ideas of ourselves as noble creatures. This is a challenge to the Enlightenment because we aren't the type of people the Enlightenment would want us to be- we're not ran by our rational mind (Newton part of the brain).
• Overall Freud was very pessimistic about human beings. He described his philosophy as being: 'full of darkness but with a little light'.

Attack on Plato

• Freud followed Plato's idea of the tripartite self E.g humans are made up of reason spirit and desire ( the allegory of the chariot). Plato stated that our rationality, our ability to control our mind is of the most importance. However, Freud believed rationality to be our weakest point because we are driven by our desires and we don't realise (alienated-Marx term).

Attack on Marx

• Marx thought of the self as the tripartite self: natural, alienated, species self. He believed that we progress towards a better, happier self. We have the ability to evolve therefore it is possible to overcome the state of unhappiness. Freud rejects this idea by calling it idealistic. Unhappiness is part of us,  the most dominant part of us is aggression which is caused by unhappiness. Unhappiness is a state which will always find ourselves in, can't escape it- consistent with Hobbes.

The Freudian Personality

• Pain is what it means to be human. We are divided, we cannot find peace because we are at a constant war with ourselves. Divided into 3 distinct parts- always in dispute with each other:

1. The Id
2. The Ego/Self
3. The superego

 The Id is the most dominant part of us- at our core from birth. A reservoir of the unconscious, 'a cauldron of seething exoitations'. The Id demands fulfilment, full of aggression an sex- there is an instinct to gain pleasure and avoid pain. The Id dominates our personality even though we don't know that we are dominated by feelings of aggression and sex.

The Ego or Self - reality principle, the least powerful part of the personality- the voice of reason. Moderation, commonsense. It is turned towards reality- the real world. It is hopelessly embattled and besieged. We are all born with the ego.

The Supergo - internalised rules of parents or society, therefore we are not born with the Superego. It is gained and developed from wider society eg external influences. It is irrational just like the Id and is constantly fighting against the Ego.

• Society is full of suffering because it is full of pain:

1. We are decaying, nature.
2. Nature- the external world- the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
3. The greatest pain is our everyday interaction with other people. Other people are out to get us, to hurt us but we are irrational beings and so we are inclined to hurt others.

• Freud thinks the answer is psychoanalysis- but not open to everyone ( needed to strengthen  the Ego) the masses will continue on their destructive path.
• He outlines some ways to contain these urges- the Id is so powerful that it needs distracting but you cannot control it, too dominant, can only contain it.
• Coping mechanisms are:

1. Intoxication- only a temporary chemical solution.
2. Isolation- also temporary as only for a few people.
3. Religion - a type of sublimation- a way to control constant demands of the Id.

Sublimation is finding socially acceptable ways to release our aggression eg through sport or by working hard. This is the only thing he believes is to give you real satisfaction is to be aggressive.

• Imposing moral limits on the Id ''Love our neighbour as ourselves''. Men are not gentle creatures, they're aggressive forces. Religion puts impossible demands on us, all animals can't reach level of divinity.
• The key to psychoanalysis is that you are hiding something from yourself. Freud claimed he had found a way to deal directly with the unconscious- this is the Id.

Attacks on Freud

• Popper - Freud was vague so Karl Popper believed that his theories couldn't be proven.
  Schopenhauer spoke of similar things such as controlling sexual urges and being controlled by internal, irrational forces therefore it is possible that Freud was actually not the first person to raise these theories.
• Reich believed the complete opposite- the unconscious forces inside the mind are good and it is their suppression by society that distorts them and made people dangerous ( similar to Rousseau). He believed that the underlying energy was sexuality and if this was released then humans would flourish.

27/11/2012 Channel 5 News

I thought the layout of the news was different, I like the fact that Channel 5 thought of a a different way for the presenter to be on screen. Although it was strange to see her stood up at first, I soon got used to it and thought it made the bulletin stand out from any other news bulletin usually shown on TV.

There was a good mix of stories but I got the impression that celebrities usually feature in this bulletin as there was two celebrity stories in tonight's bulletin. This also indicated to me that this news bulletin is aimed at women. I could be wrong but it was just the general overall feel I get from the language and wording used in the links and also, as I previously explained, from the choice of VTs.

The footage from the RNLI of an elderly woman being rescued from her flooded home was really interesting feature in this VT because we have been bombarded with flooding stories over the past few days so it was a refreshing idea which I liked alot. I also thought there was a good variety of interviews. However, I thought the VT went on for just abit too long and also I didn't feel that it was necessary to have two correspondents, one in Yorkshire and  one in Wales. I felt that they took up too much time of the bulletin when both correspondents were talking about the floods.

The David Cameron interview was a good angle to take in the 2nd VT though, as it showed the viewers what the government are planning to do.

The interview in the Norovirus VT included an interview with someone from the Health protection agency. I thought the positioning of the interview was odd, I don't know why Channel 5 prefer to have their reporters in shot but slightly blurred in this case. To me it seems unnatural as you can't see the reporter's face and also the reporter detracts from the interviewee. I did think that there was a good use of graphics in this VT though.

Before the adverts and also before the credits the presenter winked to the camera which I thought was really cheesy and made the bulletin informal. To me it just seemed like an odd thing for a news presenter to do.

I also didn't like the fact you could see the gun mic in the Vox Pops in the last story about Sports Personality of the year.

Modernism

• Kant's influence on aesthetics was to study the emotional sense to beauty. Artists are the closest to the beauty form of real objects. All of us 'normal' people can only see the shadows of the beautiful, perfect forms.
• The most powerful aesthetic response is to music according to Nietzsche etc. Materialists believe that our reaction to music is our neurons responding, however, Nietzsche believed music to be a tool that can be used to overcome 'the will'.
• Nietzsche concerned himself more with art than with beauty and Wagner was one of his greatest influences.
• Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's ideas of 'the will' are very similar. They both agreed that every human is a function of power which must be embraced.
• Similarly both men stated that the two ways to successfully escape misery is:

1. Intoxication
2. Dreaming

• Schopenhauer was strictly Kantian but the main difference between the two philosophers is that Schopenhauer believed that is only one noumena in the world which is the universe. We have the 'will to survive'.
• Human happiness is created by controlling 'the will'. This can be done through intoxication and music can be used as a tool to overcome desire as well as 'the will'.

Aesthetics

• According to Plato and Aristotle believed that happiness is supreme good. Kant challenged this because he believed that duty was the supreme ethical motive.
• Bentham believed that the greatest happiness principle was pleasure. Aristotle made distinctions between pleasure and pain as he refused to link happiness with the pleasure of the senses.
• Bentham promoted the Utilitarian motto: 'Greatest amount of good (happiness) for the greatest number of people'. This motto was open to criticism since people argued how you measure happiness or the greatest number of people? Also is it just people that should be considered to be happy? Recent Utilitarians have included animals.

• Kierkegaard observed aesthetics as ethical rather than an aesthetic category. An aesthetic person searches for immediate pleasure whether this is from a natural source or an artistic source.
• He believed that there are three modes of life:

1. Religious
2. Ethical
3. The aesthetic

• Life is the progress through these modes of life onto the most important mode, the religious mode.

Economics

In the 18th-19th Century economics was a popular subject amongst philosophers such as Nietzsche, Freud, Ricardo, Malthus and Smith. Economics claims to be a science and came about in the period of anti-enlightenment.

All of the following are Economists:

• Adam Smith wrote the book 'The Wealth of the Nations' which explored the reasons why one country is richer than another country. He believed that one of these reasons is Racism, wealthy countries are characterised by free individuals. Countries find themselves poor when there is too much government intervention.

Another one of his books which he wrote had a similar moral philosophy to Hume. For example, people always looking out for themselves- giving to charity to give yourself a good feeling, an ego boost. Therefore he believed in a philosophy which says that we are constantly weighing up what will give us the most pleasure by avoiding pain.

The law of unattended consequence - trying to help people but then you end up damaging them more in the process. You must allow people to be completely free economically.

• David Ricardo believed that all money comes from trade- reveals in a scientific way its true value. This is a metaphysical view. A spirit of value of things which is in things. According to Ricardo a world of contingent objects is worthless and is only valuable once humans apply conscious effort. This therefore can be described as the labour theory of value, a theory that states that the more labour that is put in to an object, the more value something has.

• Tom Malthus was associated with the Victorian period and had an outlook on life which believed that humans will always starve to death, since we always eat everything. To be man is to be on the brink of extinction. This is true since agriculturally we cannot make our own food.

Another theory of his was that marriage and no sex means that there will be no starvation. This is because in the 19th Century the human race almost bred itself into extinction, there just wasn't enough  resources to satisfy the vast population. Modernists disagree with this statement since they believed that with every mouth brings another pair of hands.

• Karl Marx believed that labour is the only real source of value. However, the more workers there are the more of a decrease in worker's wages.  Profit and capitalism consequently causes a large fatal flaw in the system. People won't be able to buy aggregated food. It is the workers that make objects valuable.

• Keynes Philosophy Keynes solved the Marxist problem of wages. Keynes offered the 'trade cycle' which means that if wages were so low people could be employed again.  The great depression of the 1930's was solved by World War 2 because men went into the army and this allowed women to work in factories. Everyone then stopped worrying about the superstition of gold as now people were able to use money in everyday life.