Video Summary - PHPC 110: Existentialism/Phenomenology/Hermeneutics
Husserl, Heidegger & Existentialism
Hubert Dreyfus & Bryan Magee (1987)
On the interview on the Existentialist thoughts of some prominent and influential philosophers of the early 20th century, we are led to a discussion on Edmund Husserl and his Phenomenology. From the discussion, we are able to: learn about phenomenology; find a critique/reaction of Husserl to the traditional philosophical enterprise (specifically the Cartesian tradition); find a reaction to Husserl from Martin Heidegger with a new understanding on and its implication on existentialism; and determine the modern repercussions of Husserl’s thoughts.
- 1. On Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was a German philosopher who authored the masterpiece entitled Logical Investigation (1900 [Volume I] and 1901 [Volume II]) and launched a school of philosophy called Phenomenology. Husserl claimed that he found the indubitable certainty that should serve as our unshakable ground for our knowledge of reality, and it is our own conscious awareness. In our analysis of this conscious awareness, we discover that “awareness has to be awareness of something; consciousness must be consciousness of something.” With this finding, we are not able to differentiate (in experience) between states of consciousness and objects of consciousness; skeptics even argued that there is no way of knowing if the objects of our consciousness have a separate existence from us. In addressing this predicament, Husserl insisted that they do indubitably exist as objects of consciousness and that we have direct access to them (as objects of consciousness), therefore we can investigate them as such. This systematic analysis of consciousness and its objects became later known as Phenomenology.
One of the processes (which was discussed in the interview) of Phenomenology is the Phenomenological Reduction. In this step, one brackets what one perceives and just study the fact that one takes what one perceives, in other words one reflects on one’s own intentional content.
- 2. Reaction to Cartesian Tradition
Husserl’s importance in the history of philosophy could be recognized as his thought was in a way a reaction to a whole philosophical tradition; his idea was a culmination to the Cartesian Tradition.
The Cartesian Tradition views the relationship of man to the world through subjects knowing objects. Husserl’s reaction to this was his idea on intentionality. This idea basically explains that the mind is always directed toward objects under some aspects. Say, I perceive this laptop that I am using. I am perceiving this as a laptop and I could remember, have beliefs, have desires about it. This, according to Husserl, is the essence of the mind: the mind has the this kind of directedness to something other than itself. This directedness is technically called intentionality; there is this intentional content in the mind like a description of reality which enables one to perceive and remember an object.
- 3. Heidegger’s Reaction, Dasein, and Existentialism
The phenomena’s true description is what Martin Heidegger wanted to look into. Husserl exclaims in his phenomenology, “Zu den sachen selbst” which translates to return to the things themselves [and let them show themselves as they are in themselves]. When Heidegger looked into the way human beings are related to the world, he discovered that it was not as subjects related to objects and that awareness and consciousness did not play any role. He saw that it was not as if the subjects contemplate or pay attention to objects. With the Cartesian Tradition of thinking that subjects relate to objects, the problem of philosophy is centered on how subjects have knowledge of these objects; the central problem to be addressed was about perception of some other reality. Heidegger reacted to this by explaining that although these problems exist, they are not what is central to the human situation; it is not that man is separate from his world. Heidegger argues that we are already “amongst it” from the beginning; we are not just observers or knowers, and that we are coping beings. On the lack of role of the consciousness, Heidegger suggests that our activity is not characteristically determined by conscious choices.
With regards to our status as coping beings, Heidegger suggests that we are already involved in the world, and when something goes wrong we become a problem solver of sorts. We become conscious only when something wrong happens or when there is a specific problem. This kind of thinking then could dangerously lead to the traditional conception that the existence of the world is something we infer upon. In contrary, Heidegger argues, that the situation is actually that the world is something we start in and are in. We are not to argue about an external world for we are actually in it, and we are not stuck with this ‘internal world’, too. We are being in the world, i.e. Dasein, as he could not use the terms subjects, persons, or minds like the traditional philosophers.
Heidegger further explains that it is on the background of the world and one’s capacities for being in that world that anything gets encountered at all. Dasein, or “being the there”, is an activity of being the there which means we are actively in a situation where directed activity is going on. This new understanding of being is also related to time (as his book, Being and Time suggests). Dasein lives in the world and is using some tools in order to pursue some goal, which implies that Dasein is always oriented/pressing toward the future. Dasein is both being already in amidst things and always ahead of itself pressing into the future. This is where he gains a different view on phenomena.
Since Dasein is in the world and is with others, Heidegger notes that we all do what anyone else does. In other words, “no one does what one does and lives the way one does because that is how we are socially conditioned and we have to do it for the most part”. The interviewer arrived at a notion that the human agent is reduced to a sort of zombie due to man’s unreflecting nature. However, we find in Heidegger an existential thought about the subject of authenticity.
According to Heidegger, “any Dasein anywhere is always dimly aware that the way the world is, is ungrounded.” This suggests that there's no reason why one has to do things in a certain way. At one point, he says that the essence of Dasein is its existence: there is no human nature; we are what we take ourselves to be how we interpret ourselves in our practices. This unsettling realization challenges one to choose between fleeing it (in which case one becomes a conformist), i.e. flee into inauthenticity, or own what it is to be Dasein, that is, to hold on to anxiety and not flee it. “You go on doing probably the same thing you did but how you do it changes completely.” One responds to the current situation without concern for respectability and conformity, and this makes one an individual.
- 4. Husserl’s Thoughts and Modern Times
Thanks to Husserl, one is given the ‘license’ to describe the phenomena and the necessary steps to do it. Also, he was able to lay down the general guidelines for cognitive science (which empirically studies the structure of our mental representations. Another modern time contribution of Husserl’s thoughts is on the field of Artificial Intelligence as his idea that the mind follows hierarchies of strict rules was of big help in creating AI’s.