The final lecture of Year 2, Semester 1

The final lecture of the semester was based around the concept of Existentialism which was a cultural movement in the 19th and 20th centuries whereby philosophers  believed that human beings were the key to thoughts. Soren Kierkegaard who can be considered as the father of Existentialism, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl and Jean Paul Sartre were amongst this group of philosophers and their theories will be outlined in this blog.


Kirkegaard was a disciple of Friedrich Neitzsche and he wrote many works surrounding the feelings and emotions of human beings when they are faced with a choice. He had a very unhappy life and despised the fact that he was alive as life symbolised pain and suffering. He turned to religion and Christianity for guidance on how to live his life in a happy state. He also believed that every person should experience a "leap of faith" which described the emotions that would be felt when they fell in love or believed strongly in God. As humans we are better off putting our faith in Christianity as it is as valid as any other religion around the world, no idea is more valid than another as eventually everything in life mounts to nothing as we are all going to die. This discussion of Kierkegaard leads on well to the film "Wings of Desire" which was released in 1987. The film is a German black and white film that focuses on Kierkegaard's theory that Christianity is the saviour of humanity.The film is based around two immortal angels who populate Berlin help people who are in pain or are suffering. One of the angels  falls deeply in love with a trapeze artist. The angel chooses to become human so that he can experience human emotions so he can feel the power of love. 
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Front cover of Wings of Desire
showing the angel who longs for
love

Heidegger is well regarded for his work in phenomenology and greatly explored the idea of the 'question of being'. One of his most important works, Being And Time was written in 1927 and outlined his concepts of "Dasein". He thought that a person's personality changes constantly from second to second and humans are simply a structure of time that are always looking ahead to the future to predict what will happen. Human thoughts are surrounded by a notion of dread , events in our lives cause us to feel pain and there is no escape until we die. This is also a key theory of German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who also believed that human lives were plagued with hurt and people needed therapy in order to help them to cope. Heidegger argued that the "dasein " is just a way in which humans are able to deal with dread, to question who they are. If we do not know who we are then we can not feel dread as nothing is for certain. He also devised a tri part theory for the existence of time
The past= guilt
The present= dread
The future= unknown
As humans we feel guilt about the past as we were not living, the present is unknown as we are unaware of our true identity and we dread the future as we do not know what will happen.


Husserl believed that humans have a subjective perception of objects, we choose what images we wish to see and in what context we wish to interpret them. We do not find a definitive explanation for what we see, merely a perception as different people interpret images in totally different ways. For example take a look at this image, people may see a duck or a rabbit, both interpretations of this image are true and there is no definite answer.


Sartre wrote the book La Nausee in 1938, outlining how our ideas are the product of real life situations. It is centred around a protagonist who constantly feels sickness and dread and attempts to resolve this by doing good deeds such as charity work in an attempt to find his true being. He believes that objects are an obstacle to his identity, both intellectually and spiritually and this is the cause of his near insanity. He eventually finds a revelation and is happy with who he is.  In the book Sartre uses the ideas of dread and "dasein" and implies that the only way to defeat dread it to be honest with yourself and have good faith. After all we are all doomed to death together so why not have good faith.

Seminar on Totalitarianism

For the last seminar of the semester we looked at Totalitarianism and Hanna Arendt and how her theories can be easily applied to many historical events. As a group we focused on Hitler and the Nazi Regime and how methods were enforced on the Jews that can be regarded as Totalitarian. Hitler used state terror in order to round up the Jews into concentration camps and then punished them with torture should they speak out. We also discussed whether there could ever be another incident of extreme totalitarianism, I argued that there could because it only takes one extremely power hungry dictator to introduce new ideology and terror to the masses within a country and then a totalitarian state to be formed. There will be no end to this method of rule as throughout the world today there are many dictators in countries such as Congo and Zimbabwe and it only takes new forms of repression for terror to spiral out of control.  The group also discussed how it is difficult for the masses to speak out against a dictator as they will get punished by either torture or death or a combination of the two. Totalitarianism can be seen as one of the most repressive methods of rule over the masses as it succeeds in destroying a whole group of innocent people who have a different way of life and religion to the ruling government who consider themselves to be the superior class. We concluded that everything should be done in order to attempt to prevent any more Totalitarian rule as the Nazi Regime and Apartheid in South Africa show the devastating effects of power with thousands of innocent people being killed as a result.