Existentialism - Revision Notes

There is no point to anything. There is no right or wrong, no moral compass, it is all about choice. Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view. It is the brave decision to do something even though it is utterly pointless. Existentialism is the agent for political change.

NIETZSCHE-
“God is dead and we have killed him” – this marks the end of certainty.
We are faced with a crisis and need something else to sustain us. Nietzsche thinks this crisis is a good thing because it means complete freedom!
It gives us the freedom to find value for ourselves as there is no hierarchy to tell us what is right or wrong. 

Our ships can at last be put out to sea in the face of every danger.
Human nature is not universal; people’s natures are different so they have different moralities. The Ubermensch overcomes what has so far defined us. The Ubermensch carves his own place in the world according to his will. The Ubermensch will define himself and ignore the rules.

HEIDEGGER-
Claims he isn’t an existentialist but is regarded as the father of existentialism.
Interested in what it means to exist and the problems of human life. What is being? He responds to this with “Dasein” (Being in the world).
Mainly attacks DESCARTES and his Cartesian dualism (mind and body). Heidegger thinks this is nonsense. How would these two things interact if my mind is one thing and my body another? How would I control my body and interact with the world?
Instead of consciousness, Heidegger simply talks about Dasein. This is our interaction with the world,  it denotes a certain amount of engagement. For Dasein to exist it must exist in the world, there is no Dasein without the world.
All we are is our interaction with the world, and we are defined by our choices. If you make and face your decisions then you are living an authentic life. If you follow social constructs then you are living an unauthentic life, you are a slave. You should not be defined by your facticity (your past).
We are thrown into the world, it is nothing but blind luck. There is no reason to it. You can re-create yourself, for existentialism your potential is just as important as where you are now.

SARTRE-
Existence precedes essence. We create our own purpose.
There is no guiding spirit, no teleological driving force, stuff just happens, good and bad, without reason. Heidegger’s existentialism is right wing and Sartre’s is much more left.
The life of a person is not determined in advance. The only thing I cannot escape  is my right to choose. This is frightening so people try to avoid this which is “bad faith”. We are not defined, we define ourselves.
A table is a table because it has an essence, human beings have no essence, there is no one way it has to be, as it is possible for us to change or reflect on our behaviour.

Existentialism is the reaction to the realisation there is no reason to anything.

Existentialism

There is no point to anything, there is no right or wrong, there is no moral compass. It is all about choice. Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view, you use your own internal morality to make choices. The brave decision to choose to do something even though it is ultimately pointless.

Nietzsche – “God is dead” this marks the end of certainty. We are faced with a crisis and we need something else to sustain us. Nietzsche thinks this crisis is fantastic because it means complete freedom. It gives us the freedom to find value for ourselves as there is no hierarchy to tell us what is right and wrong. “Our ships can at last put out to sea in the face of every danger”. Human nature is not universal; people’s natures are different so we all have different moralities. The Ubermensch over comes what has so far defined us. The Ubermensch will define himself and ignore the rules.  

Heidegger - Claimed he wasn’t an existentialist. His book, “Being and Time”, is all about human existence. Heidegger is interested in what it means to exist and consequently, the problems of human life. What is it to exist? What even is this “exist”? Heidegger mainly attacks Descartes and his Cartesian-Dualism (mind and body). Heidegger thinks this is nonsense, how do these two things interact? If my mind is one thing, and my body is another, how do I control my body and interact with the world? In place of consciousness and subjectivity, Heidegger simply talks about Dasein. Dasein=being in the world. It is not a spatial relationship, Dasein is our interaction in the world, it denotes a certain amount of engagement. For Dasein to exist it must exist in the world, there is no Dasein without the world. All we are is our interaction with the world, and we are defined by our choices. If you make and face your decisions then you are living an authentic life. If you follow social constructs then you are living and unauthentic life, you are a slave. You should not be defined by your facticity (your past e.g. your upbringing). We are thrown into the world, it’s nothing but blind luck. There is no reason to it. Transcendence is your reaction to your facticity, you can re-create yourself, it is your potential.

Sartre- Existence precedes essence, we create our own purpose. Simone De Beauvoir “one is not born a woman, but one becomes one”. There is no guiding spirit, no teleological driving force, stuff just happens, good and bad, without reason. Life is in its own way absurd and ridiculous. Heidegger’s existentialism is right wing, and Sartre's is much more left wing. The life of a person is not determined in advance. The only thing I cannot escape is the need to choose. This is frightening and people will try to avoid this freedom which is “bad faith”. We are not defined, we define ourselves.

Existentialism is the reaction to the realisation that there is no reason to anything.  

Ethics

There are many moral philosophers, dating back to Plato and Aristotle, which have treated happiness as the supreme good. However Kant in his “Groundwork” stated that duty, not happiness, was the supreme moral motive.

Bentham is one of the philosophers who does identify happiness as the supreme moral principle, but Bentham identifies happiness as pleasure. Bentham is a Utilitarian so he argues that pleasure is the main cause of all action, and an action should be considered in regards to the amount it increases pleasure or reduces pain. He not only regarded happiness as being the equivalent of pleasure, but he also regarded pleasure in itself as simply a sensation. “Pain and pleasure are what everybody feels to be such”. The relation between an activity and whether it causes pleasure or pain is just cause and effect. The value of every pleasure is the same, regardless of what has caused it, so the happiness you feel when you see a fine piece of art, and the happiness you feel when you when you itch that scratch you couldn’t reach, are the exact same. The important thing is the quantity of pleasure or pain caused, not the value of the action. Bentham offered systems for measuring pleasure and pain which are laid out in his “Felicific Calculus”. There are seven elements that have to be considered;

1.       Intensity

2.       Duration

3.       Certainty (how likely is it that the pleasure will happen?)

4.       How soon it will occur

5.       Fecundity (how likely is it that it will result in a subsequent series of pleasures?)  

6.       Purity (how likely is it that it will subsequently cause pain?)

7.       Extent (how many people will it affect?)

Number 7 is the most important one as the main foundation of utilitarianism is “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. Bentham contrasted utilitarianism with asceticism, which is to judge an action by the amount it reduces happiness. However Bentham admitted that this principle of self-inflicted misery could never be upheld by any living thing.

John Stuart Mill was also a utilitarian, but in his “utilitarianism” he laid out that some kinds of pleasure are more valuable than others. This solved the criticism that utilitarianism reduces humans to being no better than swine by simply following our pleasures. It is this ability to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures which sets us apart from the animals, “it’s better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”.

Schopenhauer  links his ethics to his metaphysical view that the world of experience is merely an illusion, and true reality (the thing in itself) is the universal will. Morality is a matter of training the character. The will is free from eternity to eternity but everything in nature, including human nature, is determined by necessity. If you could get complete knowledge of a persons character and the motives which drive them, then you could predict all of their future conduct. We believe we are free to decide because prior to the choice we have no knowledge of how “the will” is going to decide. The belief we can decide for ourselves is merely an illusion. Our wills can never change but there are different degrees of awareness of will. Repentance or regret never comes from the will, but from a greater sense of self awareness. Schopenhauer believes that it is unlikely we will ever be content. The will by nature is insatiable. The basis of all will is need and pain, we suffer until our needs are satisfied, but if the will becomes satisfied and loses desire then life becomes boring.

Kierkegaard’s moral system is similar to Schopenhauer’s in that they both take a pessimistic view. However whereas Schopenhauer’s ethics aims towards erasing individuality, Kierkegaard aims to put the individual in full possession of their own character as a unique creature of God.

Nietzsche says that history shows two types of morality; master morality and a morality for the herd (the poor and weak). Nietzsche argued that the revolt of the slaves triumphed with Christianity, “the success of Christianity lead to the degeneration of the human race”. To save the human race we must reverse the values of Christianity. Life forces us to establish values, and human life is the highest form of life so far, but it has sunk back to the levels of those which had preceded it. We must bring life to a new level past the system of master and slave, the Ubermensch (superman). The Ubermensch would be the highest form of life, the will to live. The will to live must not favour the weak, it must favour power, “man is a bridge, not a goal”. The Ubermensch will not be achieved through evolution, but only through the exercise of the will. Nietzsche encouraged war, war is an education in freedom.    

Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche thought of himself as a successor to Schopenhauer (the will is evil; suffering is essential to all life), however for Nietzsche the will has both ethical and metaphysical meanings.

The nature of Greek Tragedy is born out of a combination of Apollonian and Dionysian world views. Apollo is the God of visual arts, dreams and reason. Dionysus is the God of non-visual art and music. The Dionysian God represents human nature as sensual and emotional and is presented through the analogy of intoxication. A painting of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” would be close to a Dionysian experience. True tragedy is said not to have existed since the Greek period because there has been a loss in the balance between Apollonian and Dionysian themes.  

Every artist is an “imitator” of either Apollonian dream or Dionysian intoxication, or in the case of Greek Tragedy, a combination of both. Nietzsche believed that this combination created the perfect drama – A tragic hero who struggles to make sense (Apollonian) of his chaotic life (Dionysian) but ultimately fails. This struggle allows the audience to have a “connection with the heart of creation”.

Nietzsche hated Euripides(Greek playwright)  because he added a narrator. Nietzsche argued that this was destroying art and was effectively getting rid of the Dionysian aspect of tragedy. Euripides also took away the chorus, a mainly musical aspect sung by Satyrs, which represented animalistic thoughts. Instead he produced more realistic plays. This coincided with the Socratic movement towards rationalism. Nietzsche believed that understanding human existence wasn’t just down to reason, science cannot explain the mysteries of the universe, the will is also very important.

Nietzsche saw music as the most Dionysian form of art and Wagner expressed the urges of human will through his music, such as in “The Ring Cycle”, which is an apparent rebirth of tragedy.

His most famous quote “God is dead” was intended to illustrate that the Christian God was no longer a reasonable source for absolute moral principles. Fewer people are believing in God and God will die as people are losing absolute values of themselves. This loss of morality lead to nihilism and Nietzsche saw Christianity as quite nihilistic.

Nietzsche argued that we must look into artistic forms to understand our existence as they are the closest forms to human nature. This is similar to Schopenhauer’s immaterialism – the world does not exist independent of perception. This is also similar to Kant in that you can deduce by reason that there is a necessary, pre-existing something, which is a necessary condition for the existence of everything.

Schopenhauer also takes Kant’s idea of the duel nature of objects, the “noumenal” (things in themselves) and the “phenomenal” (our perception). It is almost exactly the same for Schopenhauer as it was for Kant, except for Schopenhauer there is only one undifferentiated “thing in itself” which he calls the “will”. The concept of the “will” in Schopenhauer is the same as it is for Nietzsche, “the will to power” or “the will to be”. The “will to power” is that every human has a function which we must embrace. Whereas Schopenhauer argued that everything which exists has a “will” and that will is “evil”, it represents people’s needs and desires which result in endless suffering.  Schopenhauer believed in the truths of Buddhist teachings-all life is suffering and all suffering is caused by desire. Schopenhauer wanted to deny the will but Nietzsche wanted to embrace it.

Weber on Bureaucracy

Four Great Sceptics: Marx
                                Nietzsche
                                Weber
                                Freud

Weber (like Marx) is a Kantian - humans cannot know the objects in themselves, no absolute reality; we only have a mental picture. The ideal types of social organisation – socialism, nationalism, liberalism etc. Ideal type is compared to social reality. There is no absolute knowledge but it is possible to be honest and to have reasonable beliefs (generalized agnosticism).

Four Fundamental Types of Social Action (Weberian Analysis):
1) Instrumental Social Action – Believe it will benefit you
2) Value Rational Action – You have values
3) Affectual Emotional Affirmation/Disaffirmation- because you like/love/dislike/hate tradition
4) Traditional Orientation – Rational Inheritance

Three Types of Domination
Authority + Legitimacy = Dominative Power
Weber states that “all legitimacy contains an element of myth”, which means no one person can truly dominate and just because you are told to do something by someone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.
1) Tradition – Always had power e.g. monarchy, Inheritance, customs, superstitions, ancestor worship.  “We have always done it this way”
2) Charismatic – magical powers, costumes and ceremony e.g. a priest. Charismatic leaders often attack and destroy existing legal national regime. Sometimes the underdog and often have a gimmick or point of interest.
3) Legal – (Rational/ Bureaucratic) – Qualifications, routine, “normality”, professionalism. The rulers often obey the same rules as everyone else.

Weber on Bureaucracy
“Bureau” = a desk, or by extension an office.
“Bureaucracy” = rule conducted from a desk or an office.
Those who invented the word wanted to suggest that the servant was trying to become the master. Weber was aware of this tendency and attacked the Prussian bureaucracy to be an objective and neutral servant of society, above all politics. Weber emphasized that every bureaucracy has interests of their own. The bureaucracy is merely a means to the end.

Modern bureaucracy is developed from the Kings clergy, the ruler does not have to fight or travel much, and they send messages through the bureau. The messages are normally acted upon because of the governments moral authority or prestige, and also because they can be backed up force; police and military. Weber points out that the military has become bureaucratized- Napoleon would watch the battle from horseback, but the modern general sends and receives messages. 

Weber sets out an “ideal type” for bureaucracy- an elaborate hierarchal division of labour, directed by explicit rules, which are impersonally applied. In a bureaucracy a job is full time, life time, and is occupied by a professional staff who live off a salary. Bureaucrats must be removed from property; they only have a salary because if they have any other form of income they will not reliably follow the rules, which is one of the highest values in a bureaucracy. An employee does not own their job, or any of the means of administration, such as; files, chairs or laptops. This is because if they fail to do their job, or someone more efficient for the job becomes available, they can be replaced immediately as the job belongs to the state. It is therefore important in a bureaucratic society to be educated and to have credentials. Weber argues that bureaucracy is the most efficient way of implementing the law.