Week goals:
1. Been introduced phenomenology as a philosophical method
2. Considered the nature of intentionality
3. Started to understand the distinction Sartre draws between being-in-itself and being-for-itself
4. Developed skills in critical argument and textual analysis by discussing Sartre's
phenomenology and his writing in your seminars
Existentialism – Week 2
Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’
Pre reading research:
The study of the consciousness of being
‘pre-reflective cogito’ = self-awareness
Descartes questioned Cogito’s functionality
En-Soi – being in itself
To describe things that have a definable and complete essence but are not conscious
of themselves or their essential completeness – e.g., trees, rocks, birds
Pour-Soi – being for itself
To describe human beings who are defined by their possession of consciousness; by
their consciousness of their own existence – Sartre writes, by their consciousness of
lacking the essence of en-soi
Catalano reading Sartre:
When we are younger, we question everything
‘Who/what am i?’ ‘What is the world in which I live?’ – questioning touches the
existence of all things, also shows that we must be both united and separate to what
we question
United – question is about ourselves or reality
Separate – we can take a new stance on it
Sartre describes the bond between the questioner and what is being questioned as a
‘nothing’ or a ‘nihilation’ – maybe an elsewhereness that referring to the identity
between questioner and what is being questioned
How many kinds of things shall we claim exist in the world before we distinguish
them?
Our ability to question is the underlying theme throughout the book
Refer to the world as ‘being’ and human existence as the ‘nothingness’ that
distinguishes one thing from another
‘…the title of the work (being and nothingness) is an extended reflection on the
relation of the free human body to the world of things and people
We aren’t all equally capable of questioning the meaning of our lives. Catalano
believes that 'being and nothingness’ is made for those of us who have been blessed
with love, health, and satisfaction of needs since birth, so that we can reflect on the
meaning of life
Sartre - Being and Nothingness
Must return to the plane of the pre-reflective cogito - which never gives anything
other than what is asked of it. The pre-reflective cogito is a unity of intention and self-
consciousness
, Descartes questioned it's functional aspect, 'I doubt, I think' - because he wished to die
without a thread of this functional aspect to existential dialectic, he fell into the error
of substance
Husserl remained focused on the functional description and because of this, he
became absorbed in the cogito - deserves to be called a phenomenalist (the doctrine
that human knowledge is confined to/founded on the realities or appearances
presented to the senses)
His phenomenalism approaches Kantian idealism
Heidigger wanted to avoid the descriptive phenomenalism that leads to the Megarian,
beginning with the existential analytic without going through the cogito
He provides human reality with a self-understanding that he calls 'ekstatic pro-ject' of
its own possibilities
'The being of consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question' -
means that the being of consciousness doesn’t coincide with itself in full equivalence.
Such equivalence is shown by: being is what it is.
Lecture notes:
Last week recap: introduced 'classical' existentialism, said we wanted to approach it as
an ethical theory, this ethics being grounded in 2 fundamental claims (1) that human
existence entails a freedom that can't be reduced by circumstance, and (2) that this
freedom has an intrinsic value and that all other values are derived from it
The slogan of existentialism: Sartre's claim that 'existence precedes essence'
According to Sartre, there is no fixed/universal human nature - humans have no
essence and no inherent purpose - our lives have no intrinsic meaning, instead, we
simply exist and it is our task to invent a meaning/purpose for our lives through our
actions
The idea that 'existence precedes essence' does help us understand what the
existentialist means (by freedom and how we can believe that it cannot be limited or
diminished by the situations we find ourselves in). However… Sartre hasn’t really
demonstrated that we do possess this freedom
Sartre and De Beauvoir are interested in using philosophy as a tool to understand the
basic question of what it means to be human - interested in ethical questions
Compare human beings to manufactured objects - like a pen or a knife. Their essence
comes before their existence. Before a pen comes into the world, we think about what
we need them to do
For human beings, we can't really say that. Human beings exist, but we don’t have a
particular purpose to our existence. We haven't been made for any reason
Sartre says this is to do with freedom. If our existence has some kind of meaning, we
can't look and find it, or ask someone, we have to invent it for ourselves
The fundamental difference between different human beings and rocks, trees, and
insects is that human beings know they exist, we are conscious that we exist
Not only is there no reason for my existence, I am confronted with the fact of my
existence
If we think anything is important, etc, if we are talking about art, murder, kindness, -
if anything has a value, this is derived from human freedom - if humans disappeared,
all the value and meaning would disappear
1. Been introduced phenomenology as a philosophical method
2. Considered the nature of intentionality
3. Started to understand the distinction Sartre draws between being-in-itself and being-for-itself
4. Developed skills in critical argument and textual analysis by discussing Sartre's
phenomenology and his writing in your seminars
Existentialism – Week 2
Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’
Pre reading research:
The study of the consciousness of being
‘pre-reflective cogito’ = self-awareness
Descartes questioned Cogito’s functionality
En-Soi – being in itself
To describe things that have a definable and complete essence but are not conscious
of themselves or their essential completeness – e.g., trees, rocks, birds
Pour-Soi – being for itself
To describe human beings who are defined by their possession of consciousness; by
their consciousness of their own existence – Sartre writes, by their consciousness of
lacking the essence of en-soi
Catalano reading Sartre:
When we are younger, we question everything
‘Who/what am i?’ ‘What is the world in which I live?’ – questioning touches the
existence of all things, also shows that we must be both united and separate to what
we question
United – question is about ourselves or reality
Separate – we can take a new stance on it
Sartre describes the bond between the questioner and what is being questioned as a
‘nothing’ or a ‘nihilation’ – maybe an elsewhereness that referring to the identity
between questioner and what is being questioned
How many kinds of things shall we claim exist in the world before we distinguish
them?
Our ability to question is the underlying theme throughout the book
Refer to the world as ‘being’ and human existence as the ‘nothingness’ that
distinguishes one thing from another
‘…the title of the work (being and nothingness) is an extended reflection on the
relation of the free human body to the world of things and people
We aren’t all equally capable of questioning the meaning of our lives. Catalano
believes that 'being and nothingness’ is made for those of us who have been blessed
with love, health, and satisfaction of needs since birth, so that we can reflect on the
meaning of life
Sartre - Being and Nothingness
Must return to the plane of the pre-reflective cogito - which never gives anything
other than what is asked of it. The pre-reflective cogito is a unity of intention and self-
consciousness
, Descartes questioned it's functional aspect, 'I doubt, I think' - because he wished to die
without a thread of this functional aspect to existential dialectic, he fell into the error
of substance
Husserl remained focused on the functional description and because of this, he
became absorbed in the cogito - deserves to be called a phenomenalist (the doctrine
that human knowledge is confined to/founded on the realities or appearances
presented to the senses)
His phenomenalism approaches Kantian idealism
Heidigger wanted to avoid the descriptive phenomenalism that leads to the Megarian,
beginning with the existential analytic without going through the cogito
He provides human reality with a self-understanding that he calls 'ekstatic pro-ject' of
its own possibilities
'The being of consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question' -
means that the being of consciousness doesn’t coincide with itself in full equivalence.
Such equivalence is shown by: being is what it is.
Lecture notes:
Last week recap: introduced 'classical' existentialism, said we wanted to approach it as
an ethical theory, this ethics being grounded in 2 fundamental claims (1) that human
existence entails a freedom that can't be reduced by circumstance, and (2) that this
freedom has an intrinsic value and that all other values are derived from it
The slogan of existentialism: Sartre's claim that 'existence precedes essence'
According to Sartre, there is no fixed/universal human nature - humans have no
essence and no inherent purpose - our lives have no intrinsic meaning, instead, we
simply exist and it is our task to invent a meaning/purpose for our lives through our
actions
The idea that 'existence precedes essence' does help us understand what the
existentialist means (by freedom and how we can believe that it cannot be limited or
diminished by the situations we find ourselves in). However… Sartre hasn’t really
demonstrated that we do possess this freedom
Sartre and De Beauvoir are interested in using philosophy as a tool to understand the
basic question of what it means to be human - interested in ethical questions
Compare human beings to manufactured objects - like a pen or a knife. Their essence
comes before their existence. Before a pen comes into the world, we think about what
we need them to do
For human beings, we can't really say that. Human beings exist, but we don’t have a
particular purpose to our existence. We haven't been made for any reason
Sartre says this is to do with freedom. If our existence has some kind of meaning, we
can't look and find it, or ask someone, we have to invent it for ourselves
The fundamental difference between different human beings and rocks, trees, and
insects is that human beings know they exist, we are conscious that we exist
Not only is there no reason for my existence, I am confronted with the fact of my
existence
If we think anything is important, etc, if we are talking about art, murder, kindness, -
if anything has a value, this is derived from human freedom - if humans disappeared,
all the value and meaning would disappear
