Philosophy 024: Big Ideas
Prof. Robert DiSalle (rdisalle@uwo.ca)
Talbot College 408, 519-661-2111 x85763
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 11:30-12:30
Course Website: http://instruct.uwo.ca/philosophy/024/
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Being and Time (1927)
Basic Problems of
Phenomenology (1927)
“What is Metaphysics?” (1929)
Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics (1929)
An Introduction to Metaphysics
(1953)
“The End of Philosophy and the
Task of Thinking” (1964)
Some Background to Heidegger:
Phenomenology: Philosophical analysis of the nature and
qualities of immediate experience, and analysis of objects
solely as we are immediately conscious of them-- not in relation
to any possible scientific understanding of them.
Franz Brentano (1838-1917)
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874)
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)
Logical Investigations (1913), Ideas (1913)
The phenomenological approach to philosophy
(“phenomenological reduction”):
The “natural attitude”: Acceptance of the reality and
importance of ordinary material objects and the ordinary
concerns of life
The “phenomenological attitude”: “Bracketing” the reality of
the things of ordinary life, and considering them only “as they
are in themselves”-- that is, as objects of our immediate
awareness or thought.
Phenomenological reduction separates philosophical analysis
from psychology and all other empirical sciences, because it
isolates the analysis of experience from all presuppositions
about material nature and existence.
More background to Heidegger:
Existentialism: The idea that human existence is a peculiar kind
of existence “in and for itself.”
Existing things in general are determined by their own essences,
by other things, and by conditions imposed by nature and
history. “Essence precedes existence.”
Human existence is open and undetermined. The essence of a
human being is shaped by the decisions and commitments made
in an individual life. “Existence precedes essence.”
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Either-Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), The Anti-Christ (1888)
The predicament of human existence:
Our experience of existence is inherently subjective.
But our sense of the meaning of existence comes from the sense
of connection to something objective: philosophical or moral
principles, religious ideas, etc.
The subjectivity of experience and knowledge means that we
must always be in doubt about the objective ground of our own
existence and its meaning.
Individuals must determine their own “authentic” response to
the meaning of life and the nothingness of death.
Kierkegaard: Overcoming the human predicament may
require an irrational “leap of faith,” based in passion rather
than thought.
The story of Abraham and Isaac: Abraham must decide
whether universal moral principles can be set aside at the
command of God. Such decisions are necessarily made in
complete isolation.
Nietzsche: The human predicament means that individuals
must be strong enough to create meaning for themselves.
The “superman”: Unlike the common herd whose sense of
meaning and purpose lies entirely in conformity to rules of the
herd, the great are those who “re-valuate all values”.
Still more background to Heidegger:
Romantic anti-modernism: The advance of modern civilization
has removed people from their own authentic existence.
Three enemies of the authentic German spirit:
Technology: removes people from the simple, and direct
contact with practical life that characterized pre-modern societies
Cosmopolitanism: lowers a people’s culture to decadent
international standards, causing them to lose the characteristic
spirit of their own nation. According to Heidegger, the German
spirit in particular was being undermined by the “cosmopolitan”
Jewish influence.
Liberal democracy: apart from encouraging technology
and cosmopolitanism, places all people on a level and
undermines natural hierarchy.
Heidegger’s association with the Nazi Party:
1933: Joins the National Socialist Party
1933: Elected Rector of the University of Freiburg by the proNazi faculty members; enforces anti-Semitic laws and pro-Hitler
policies with apparent enthusiasm.
Embraces the “Fürher-principle,” that University decisions are to
made by Party-appointed leaders rather than local committees.
1934: Resigns as Rector, apparently because of resistance to his
methods
1934-1945: Continues to pay his Party dues, and to speak publicly
in favor of the National Socialist idea.
1945-1976: Keeps pretty quiet about the whole thing
Heidegger’s address to the students of Freiburg, 1933:
“ ‘Academic Freedom,’ celebrated so often, is banished from
the German University; for this freedom was not genuine
because it was only negative. It meant mainly lack of concern,
randomness of intentions and inclinations, lack of all bonds in
what one did and omitted. The concept of the freedom of the
German student is now brought back to its truth.”
“German Students! The National Socialist revolution brings
complete upheaval to our German life....Do not let dogmas and
“ideas” be the rules of your being. The Führer himself and
alone is the German reality, present and future, and its law.
Learn always to know more deeply: from now on every matter
requires decision and every action responsibility. Heil Hitler!”
Philosophical questions raised by Heidegger’s life:
Can philosophy be separated from the historical context in
which it arises, and be analysed solely on its “intrinsic” merits?
Is a great philosopher somehow responsible for being a great, or
at least a halfway decent, or at least not particularly revolting,
human being?
Can philosophers’ evil political ideas be separated from their
“purely philosophical” contributions?
Or does embracing political evil imply that there is something
wrong with the philosophy as well?
Heidegger’s problem with traditional philosophy:
Philosophy has always tried to grasp the totality of “what is”,
considering it in itself, independent of our existence.
Science represents the culmination of this attempt, the “total
submission” to “what is” as an object of neutral
contemplation by a disembodied “I”.
But the real questions of metaphysics arise precisely when we
consider ourselves in relation to this “what is,” because
metaphysics must seek to “transcend” this given totality.
Science is concerned with all of “what is,” and “Nothing
else.”
But what about this Nothing?
A box full of nothing*
*Actual nothing may differ.
Heidegger’s approach to metaphysics:
“Da-sein”: “Being-there,” “being-in-the-world,” existing in
connection with things in the world instead of “being” a
detached observer.
Metaphysical “angst”: the dread that comes from sensing that,
beyond the totality of “what-is,” there is Nothing.
“Resoluteness”: the response of an authentic character to the
angst about Nothing and the emptiness of Death.
“Care” (Sorge): sense of connection and responsibility instead
of mere objective observation of things
“Community”: the group of people within which the individual
finds an identity and a common destiny-- especially the
Volkgemeinschaft of the German people
Dasein:
Angst:
Resoluteness (Beschlossenheit):
Care (Sorge):
Community (Volkgemeinschaft)
More Volkgemeinschaft
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Nausea (1938)
Being and Nothingness (1943)
No Exit (1944)
Existentialism is a Humanism
(1946)
Critique of Dialectical Reason
(1960)
The existential question: pipe or cigarette?
The café thing
Highlights of Sartre’s political career :
1939: Enlists in the French army
1940: Captured by the German army
1941: Released from POW camp, returns to Paris
1941-45: Various resistance activities and Socialist organizing
1954-62: Supports the Algerian war for independence from
France
1956: Supports Hungarian resistance to Soviet control
1967: Participates in war-crimes “tribunal” to judge US war
against Vietnam
1968: Supports student uprisings in Paris, democratic uprising
in Czechoslovakia
Sartre on existentialism:
Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he
must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned
on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without
help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no
other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
(Being and Nothingness, 1943)
Sartre on the traditional view (“essence precedes existence”):
The conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that
of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man
according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan
manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a
formula. Thus each individual man is the realisation of a certain
conception which dwells in the divine understanding….Man
possesses a human nature; that “human nature,” which is the
conception of human being, is found in every man; which means
that each man is a particular example of a universal conception,
the conception of Man.
(from Existentialism is a Humanism)
Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism:
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence?
We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges
up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the
existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin
with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then
he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human
nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man
simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be,
but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already
existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence.
Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.
Analytic Philosophy:
Traditional metaphysicians have never been able to solve any
traditional problems, because they have never bothered to
analyze the problems themselves.
Careful analysis of the language in which we frame
philosophical questions shows that much of our philosophical
confusion is caused by the language itself.
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
“What is the meaning of life?”
We ask questions like these because we are confused about the
concepts we are using, taking them out of any context in which
they can be meaningful.
“Scientific Philosophy”, a.k.a. Logical Empiricism:
In general, statements can either be true or false.
If true, this means:
If it is a logical or mathematical truth, it can be logically
derived from first principles.
If it is a statement about what there is in the real world, or
any matter of empirical fact, it can be verified by some
observations.
If false, this means either that it is logically contradictory, or
that it is contradicted by the facts.
Verification and Meaning:
A statement that cannot be verified by any empirical
observation or logical reasoning, even in principle, is neither
true nor false.
It is completely meaningless.
Example: “Nothing nothings” is neither true nor false.
It simply has no cognitive content.
Whatever content it might have is emotional rather than
cognitive.
(It is not a direct statement about any state of affairs. It is an
indirect statement about the emotional state of the speaker.)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“On the electrodynamics of
moving bodies” (1905)
“The foundation of the general
theory of relativity” (1916)
Einstein and the philosophers:
What Einstein did was not merely to propose a theory with
powerful philosophical implications (e.g. the relativity of space,
time, and motion).
He actually created his theories by applying philosophical
analysis to the fundamental concepts of physics.
His theory of time is not a hypothesis about time, but a
philosophical analysis of the concepts involved in our thinking
about time and how we measure it.
Relativity reveals that our usual notions of time are based on
concepts that have never been clearly defined.
Heidegger on the notion of time:
Temporality gets experienced in a phenomenally primordial way
in Dasein’s authentic Being-a-whole, in the phenomenon of
anticipatory resoluteness. If temporality makes itself known
primordially in this, then we may suppose that the temporality of
anticipatory resoluteness is a distinctive mode of temporality.
(Being and Time, 1927)
Einstein on simultaneity (1917):
We encounter the same difficulty with all physical statements
in which the conception " simultaneous " plays a part. The
concept does not exist for the physicist until he has the
possibility of discovering whether or not it is fulfilled in an
actual case. We thus require a definition of simultaneity such
that this definition supplies us with the method by means of
which, in the present case, he can decide by experiment
whether or not both the lightning strokes occurred
simultaneously. As long as this requirement is not satisfied, I
allow myself to be deceived as a physicist (and of course the
same applies if I am not a physicist), when I imagine that I am
able to attach a meaning to the statement of simultaneity.