Seminar Paper on Phenomenology and Existentialism

Freud and Psychoanalysis

·         Freud was the greatest influence on Anglo-American philosophy even though he was technically a scientist and not a philosopher.

·         Freud was born into an Austrian family of non-observant Jews in 1856. Later in Vienna, Freud trained as a doctor and went on to study brain anatomy. In 1895 Freud published a booked based on ‘hysteria’, this was to be the first analysis of mental illness which led him to develop his idea of psychoanalysis.

·          In 1900 he published the most important book of all his works: ‘The interpretation of Dreams’ in which Freud argues that dreams are repressed sexual desires.

·         Freud summed up psychoanalytic theory in two fundamental theses:

1.       The greater part of our mental life, whether it’s our feelings or thoughts, is unconscious.

2.       Sexual impulses are supremely important and can cause mental illness if suppressed. Sexual instincts are basic human instincts.

·         Towards the end of his life Freud focused on the ‘Mental Apparatus’ which includes the personality being divided into the Id, ego and the superego. As long as the ego is in harmony with the Id and the superego then all is well but if not then mental illness is inevitable.

Husserl’s Phenomenology

·         Edmund Husserl’s life can arguably be compared to Freud since both men were born into Jewish families in Austria and also both men devoted their lives to scientific study of the human mind.

·         Husserl believed that the data of the conscious comes in two kinds:

1.       Physical e.g. colours and smells

2.       Mental phenomena e.g. thoughts

·         In his logical investigations of 1900 he argued that logic cannot be derived from psychology since there is a sharp distinction between logic and psychology.

·         Husserl also believed that there are two essential parts to a thought:

1.       That it should have a content and

2.       A possessor

For example, a dog. When you see a dog you know it is a dog and then the thought that you have that the dog is a dog is your own thought therefore you are the possessor of the thought.

·         Concepts are therefore, in the ‘Logical Investigations’ defined on the basis of psychological terms. This means that Husserl was able to disown his earlier psychologism and make a clear distinction between psychology and logic. A line was also drawn between psychology and epistemology (the study of knowledge and justified belief). Husserl managed to do this through a reinvention of psychology as a new discipline of Phenomenology.

·         Phenomenology was developed during the 20^th century by a group of collaborators in Munich who created the ‘Phenomenological Movement’.

·         Phenomenology is :

1.        The science of phenomena as distinct from that of the nature of being.

2.       An approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience.

·         Phenomenology is not the same as Phenomenalism. A Phenomenalist believes that nothing exists expect phenomena and also that statements about such things as material objects have to be translated into statements about appearances.

·         Husserl deliberately left open the possibility that there is a world of non-phenomenal objects although, these objects are of no interest to him- we have absolute immediate knowledge of the objects of our own consciousness while we have only distorted knowledge about the external world.

·         Immanent perception provides the subject matter of Phenomenology; this is because immanent perception is a person’s immediate acquaintance with their own current mental acts and states. Immanent perception is self-evident. Whereas transcendent perception is a person’s perception of their own past acts and states of physical objects and events and of the contents of other people’s minds.

·         Only Consciousness has absolute ‘being’ since all other forms of ‘being’ depend upon consciousness for their existence and so Phenomenology is the most basic of all disciplines- all items that are its subject matter provide the data for all other branches of philosophy and science.

·         By the mid of the 20^th century all had changed amongst philosophical thinking, English and foreign philosophers went their separate ways with their philosophies. In Europe Existentialism (which is a philosophical theory or approach that emphasises the existence of the individual person as free and responsible, determining their own development through acts of the will.) was fashionable and was led by Jean Paul Sartre in France and Martin Heidegger in Germany.

The existentialism of Heidegger

·         Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), was one of Husserl’s many pupils.

·         Heidegger published the ‘Sein Und Zeit’ was published in 1927 which translates as ‘Being and Time’ in English. Within the book Heidegger claims that Phenomenology up to that point had been half-heartedly studied. He adopted consciousness as the subject matter of Phenomenology and so the first task was to study the concept of being (Sein) since ‘Being’ is the starting point of all philosophy.

·         Heidegger invented words to help him explain his philosophy in greater depth. ‘Dasein’ meaning ‘being-here’ or ‘existence’, is the most important of all the words Heidegger created.

·         Thinking is the only way of engaging in the world. ‘Dasein’ is prior to the distinction between thinking and willing.

·         He emphasises the temporal nature of ‘Dasein’- think of it not as a substance but as the unfolding of a life:’ Our life isn’t a self-contained, self-developing entity’

·         The activity of ‘Dasein’ has three fundamental aspects:

1.       Attunement- the situations into which we are thrown manifest themselves as attractive or alarming etc. and we respond to them with moods of various kinds.

2.       Discursive- It operates within a world of discourses among entities that are articulated and interpreted for us by the language and culture that we share with others.

3.       Understanding- in a special sense- that is to say, its activities are directed towards some goal.

These 3 aspects all correspond to the past, present and future of time.

·         Heidegger’s opponent Gilbert Ryle admitted at the end of Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ that he had nothing but admiration for his ‘Phenomenological analysis of the root workings of the human soul’.

·         Concepts and judgements can be thought of as instruments for coping with the world. However, there are more primitive instruments, things that are tools in a literal sense. E.g. A carpenter relates to the world by using a hammer- doesn’t need to be thinking about the hammer to be using it well. Consciousness of the hammer may get in the way of the concentration on his project that is his true engagement with reality.

·         In 1929 Heidegger succeeded Husserl as professor of Philosophy of Freiburg and in 1933 became Rector of the university.

The Existentialism of Sartre  

·         In contrast to the right- wing existentialism of Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre developed a form of existentialism that was more left-wing.

·         Sartre was born in Paris in 1905-1980.Later in life he taught philosophy in high schools from 1933-1935 where he began to develop his own philosophy. His first essays are detailed studies based on the philosophy of the mind in the Phenomenological mould.

·         In 1943 he published ‘Magnus Opus’ ‘Being and Nothingness’ which was greatly influenced by Heidegger.

·         ‘Being’ for Sartre is what underlies all the different kinds and aspects of things that we encounter in consciousness. To say that an object is without a cause isn’t to say that it is its own cause, the object is just simply there. Sartre call this ‘gratuitous’.

·         In Sartrean existentialism, ‘being in itself’ (en-soi) refers to objects in the external world- a mode of existence that simply is. It is not conscious so it is neither active nor passive and contains no potentiality for transcendence (go beyond the limit). This mode of being is relevant to inanimate objects, but not to humans, who Sartre says must always make a choice.

·         One of the problems of human existence for Sartre is the desire to obtain ‘being in itself’, which he describes as the desire to be God -this is a longing for full control over one's destiny and for absolute identity which is only attainable by achieving full control over the destiny of all existence. The desire to be God is one of the ways people fall into ‘bad faith’.

Derrida

·         Jacques Derrida possessed hostility towards Phonocentrism, the idea that sounds and speech are superior to written language. He believed this to be the case because speech is closer than writing to the thinking that is idealized as the ultimate, transcendental object of signification.

·         Phonecentrism was part of his attack which he called the ‘Metaphysics of Presence’  and was mainly focused on targeting the philosophical work of Husserl.