Phenomenology and Existentialism

In the beginning there was Descartes. Or so there was at the start of this HCJ course. An early rationalist of the 17th Century and a key influence upon the Scientific Revolution, Descartes famously exposed, 'I think, therefore I am'. This was his fundamental truth, the basis of his entire rational philosophy, which sought to answer that ancient, ontological question. For him, the simple fact that this conundrum existed, that human beings wondered about their very existence, itself proved a state of physical existence within a material universe. Three hundred years on and this ideology was being challenged like never before.

Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, refuted Descartes' way of thinking, instead stating that only ideas in themselves, exist. Phenomenology, a school of teaching originally founded by Edmund Husserl during the early twentieth Century, is that which believes essentially in the power of the mind. All objects exist only mentally, perceived by an immaterial consciousness, similar to Kant's theory on the noumenal world. The main difference between the two, perhaps, is Heidegger's belief in variable perception, whereby he said that the state of conscious registering of the 'world' around us is intentional. In other words, we each make the decision to perceive objects of our own accord, therefore meaning and ideas themselves are mere structures of subjective values.

Heidegger also believed that, quite correctly I think, ideas define a person's character, gifting an insight into one's logic and perspective. However, he stated that this one person is fundamentally a mixing bowl of those ideas belonging to his parents, his best friend, his lovers, his business partner, the guy he met at the poker tables in Vegas; in fact, all the people that this person has met and interacted with during the course of his life. It would stand to reason then that by this argument, there is a part of myself in every other person on the planet and vice versa. Perhaps then, Frigyes Karinthy's proposed theory should be scrapped in favour of the 'One Degree of Separation'!

So, the German philosopher did not believe in the concept of 'self', making him an existentialist. It begs the question, if there are no original ideas, that everyone is a like a cake, (made with the exact same ingredients but to different measurements), then where did the original ideas (those delicious ingredients) come from? Thus, although I agree that we are certainly heavily influenced by the people we meet, (particularly parents in my view), human beings must have a core, a 'self', which determines personality.

We can see that existentialism rocked the foundations of the Enlightenment and, in particular, Romanticism, both of which reinforced the importance of the self-willed individual. The philosophy also gave birth to several other areas of study, including anthropology and hermeneutics. The former explores the influential properties of society upon an individual, including traditional values and conventional practices, while the latter teaches a skeptical view of the world, attempting to reveal hidden meanings and perspectives in visual texts of everyday life.

At the heart of existentialism is the supposed answer to another burning ontological question: what is time? Kant proposed it as an absract constraint that the human mind adhered to in order to construct one's life; Einstein famously exposed it as the fourth dimension, physically existing but which cannot be perceived by our three-dimensional sight. In a somewhat Nietzschian manner to the unanswerable questions in life, existentialism merely decides: time is irrelevant. The three universally accepted 'strands' of time are represented as follows: past = guilt, present = dread, future = unknown. Existential morality teaches to forget the past, (what has happened is not important, because it cannot be reversed), and indifference to the future, (what will happen is only going to be affected by what happens now). Thus, the present, the here and now, is all that matters.

Existentialists also believe we should seek to become the authors of our own lives, (to achieve authenticity), although the school accepts it to be impossible to solely write our future. Others, as was already explained, will always have an impact and a bearing upon ourselves. In other words, we should try to become less inauthentic.

To my mind, it is impossible to ignore the past. That is human nature. But it would also be naive to do so; mistakes of the past can be learnt from, in order to make the present a healthier living. That is also human nature, not merely to survive, but live in healthy body and mind. And a healthier present, often relates to a better future.

Yes, become as 'less inauthentic' as possible. But do so in tribute to the past and for the benefit of the future.