Contemporary Philosophy: Philosophy in current era

CONTEMPORARY

Prepared by Raizza P. Corpuz

Contemporary philosophy

• refers to the current era of philosophy, generally dealing with philosophers from the late 19th century through to the 21st

• The19th century also began to see a division in the approach to philosophy being taken in different areas of western philosophy.

• In the United Kingdom and North America, a focus on logic, language and the natural sciences was becoming predominant in philosophy, and this tradition was labelled analytic philosophy.

• Those who did not find themselves in this analytic trend were mostly based in Europe, and the idea of continental philosophy was born.

• The names are already considered obsolete, in some senses, but many philosophers still observe a difference between the logical and scientific approach of analytic philosophy and the existentialism, phenomenology and other approaches of continental philosophy.

EXISTENTIALISM in CONTEMPORARY

PHILOSOPHY

• that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.

• individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude"

Existentialism and the World• Focuses on limitless capacity for ethically and

intellectually engaging people to enact change in the world.

• No explanation of why we are alive instead, we are “abandoned” with nothing more than an awareness of our surroundings and a need to cope with surroundings in order to survive.

Thus, 1. Perspectives, aesthetics, and approaches to

dealing with the world and its inherent difficulties

2. Deals with the recurring problem of finding meaning in existence.

3. The individual must create meaning for him/her self.

4. Gets a reputation for being pessimistic and meaningless or absurd and is associated with things like angst, boredom and fear

Therefore, the self is always in process

Individualism, Self-Actualization, and Self-Branding/Personal Branding

Disavows a sense of pattern in the universe.

Creativity is much more highly prized than conformity

Therefore, effort is prized more than skill

Sincerity, self-analysis, and conviction is what one can expect in regard to ethical decisions

It simply implies that : IT SIMPLY ABOUT YOU!

PHILOSOPHERS

1.Soeren Kierkegaard

2.Friedrich Nietzsche

3.Martin Heidegger

4.Jean -Paul Sartre

5.Arthur Schopenhauer

Søren Kierkegaard• 1813-1855, Danish

• Considered to be the first Existential Philosopher

• Considered as “the Father of Existentialism”

• Insisted on the distinctiveness of personal experience/subjectivity.

• He argues, “subjectivity is truth, truth is subjectivity

Human Nature• For Kierkegaard, human beings stand out

as responsible individuals who must make free choices.

• According to him the deepest "inwardness" of the human being is the place of passionate choice wherein one must take a "leap of faith" despite one's finitude, the fact that we can never know with certainly the outcome of our choices despite our accountability for them.

• His psychological work explored the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices.

There are three modes of existence that can be chosen by an individual.

(3 Sphere/Stages of Life’s Way)

1.aesthetic = a redefined hedonism, consisting of the search for pleasure

2.ethical = involves intense commitment to one’s duty in faith and social obligations 

3.religious = submission to God, and only God’s will 

“Christianity is therefore not a doctrine, but the fact that God has existed.” 

"...the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which

I can live and die"

Arthur Schopenhauer

• The World as Will and Idea / Representation

• The human body and all its parts being the visible expression of the will and its several desires. The teeth, throat, and bowels for example being "objectified" hunger.

•  For Schopenhauer, who is considered to be a pessimistic philosopher, the tragedy of life arises from the nature of the will, which constantly urges the individual toward the satisfaction of successive goals, none of which can provide permanent satisfaction for the infinite activity of the life force, or will

• The title of Schopenhauer’s masterwork contains the central thesis of his philosophy.

• The world is a “phenomenon,” a representation or idea ; Schopenhauer makes no distinction between a phenomenon and an appearance; he says that the two are identical.

• The world as we know it is an appearance or deception.

• The Sciences, meanwhile, could be utilised to provide understanding of the Empirical World of time, space, and causally interconnected material objects. 

Jean Paul Sartre• 1905-1980• 20th century’s greatest existential thinker• French• “Existence precedes essence”-

– What makes you who you are by what you make

of yourself.

• Only person to ever decline the Nobel Prize in Literature

• We are all “condemned to be free” Believed that there is no authority that defines freedom or provides rules or guarantees decisions.

Existence – Humanism-- Essence

IT MEANS:

Being and NothingnessExistentialism is Humanism

• Meaning there is total responsibility on the individual for all actions.

• Sartre is convinced that human responsibility

makes sense only if there is no God; otherwise divine foreknowledge and predestination necessarily exclude alternative options and consequently responsibility.

There are at least three circles in the extension of our

responsibility:1. Individual responsibility: If existence

precedes essence man is responsible for his own actions (and his individuality)

2. Total Responsibility: If man is free to choose what he is going to make of himself, he is entirely responsible for what he is becoming; 

3. Universal Responsibility: If man is fully responsible for what he is presenting as the image of man, he is responsible for all men

•  Individual responsibility corresponds to the common sense notion of responsibility.

“Hell is other people”- NO EXITHell is other people because

we can try and force the others to see us in the way we want them to see us, but they will always see us in the way they want to see us. The form which is easiest for them in most cases.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism

• So in saying “God is dead” this was what he really meant:

• Nietzsche sought to draw the consequences of the death of God, the collapse of any theistic support for morality

• In such a situation the individual is forced back upon himself.

AKA. Personal responsibility

There are two ways to take this:

• On the one hand, if he is weakly constituted he may fall victim to despair in the face of nihilism, the recognition that life has no intrinsic meaning.

• On the other hand, for a “strong” or creative individual nihilism presents a liberating opportunity to take responsibility for meaning, to exercise creativity by “transvaluing” her values, establishing a new “order of rank.”

• Friedrich Nietzsche is notable for having declared that God is dead and for having written several of his works in the presumption that man must find a new mode of being given the death of God.

GOD IS DEAD

• Implications of the Death of God according to Nietzsche:

• Rejection of absolute values. (Can’t have a "secularized" form of Christianity)

• Nihilism (because most men in the West know no other values but Christian values)

• "Active nihilism" a nihilism that seeks to destroy what it no longer believes

SUPERMAN• Ubermensch or superman [Zarathustra]

is not superior in breeding or endowment, but in power and strength. The superman confronts all the possible terrors and wretchedness of life and still joyously affirms it.

• In Thus Spake Zarathustra Nietzsche proclaims, "Not `humanity’ but Superman is the goal." "Man is something that must be surpassed; man is a bridge and not a goal."

• Superman is not inevitable, the result of some determined process. It is more a myth, a goal for the will: "Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: Superman is to be the meaning of the earth." Superman cannot come unless superior individuals have the courage to transvalue all values.

• For Nietzsche a recognition that God is Dead to his own generation of men and women ought to come as a Joyous Wisdom allowing individuals to lead less guilt-ridden lives in a world that was no longer to be seen as being inherently sinful.

• He considered that earthly lives could become more joyful, meaningful and "healthy" when not lived within narrow limits set by faith-related concerns for the state of an individual's eternal soul. 

• Nietzsche seems to be suggesting that the acceptance that God is dead will also involve the ending of long-established standards of morality and of purpose.

• Without the former and accepted widely standards society has to face up to the possible emergence of a nihilistic situation where peoples lives are not particularly constrained by faith-based considerations of morality or particularly guided by any faith-related sense of purpose.

• Given what he saw as the "unbelievability" of the "God-hypothesis" Nietzsche himself seemed to favour the creation of a new set of values "faithful to the earth."

• This view perhaps being associable with the possibility of the "Overman" or "Superman."

• "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment..."

Martin Heidegger• 1889-1976• German philosopher known for his existential and

phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being".

• Maintained that our way of questioning defines our nature.

• As with Kierkegaard and Sartre, Heidegger believed the existence of a physical body preceded the essence of self.

• At some point in the development process, a being becomes aware that it exists. This pivotal point in time is when essence begins to form; the individual decides to acknowledge and embrace an essence at this moment.

• Heidegger is a controversial figure, largely for his affiliation with Nazism prior to 1934, for which he neither apologized nor expressed regret, except in private when he called it "the biggest stupidity of his life- this calls to question Heidegger's thought and his connection to National Socialism.

Dasien Sorge

Dasien Sorge was Heidegger's term for concern and caring about the self and its existence. When confronted with the world and other beings, the individual feels anxiety and dread. The world appears complex and unsafe -- which it is. As a result, the human being, Dasein, must care for itself as no one else can or will.•Concern, or Sorge, is the ability to care about the self, in relation to phenomena. This belief that death defines life complements Søren Kierkegaard's thought that God does not exist, but is real. •Existence, or Existenz, represents knowing one is and is changing. •Finally, moods, or Stimmungen, are reactions to other beings, further allowing one to define the self.

Five Modes of Dasein• The five modes of Dasein described by

Heidegger are: authenticity, inauthenticity, everydayness, averageness, and publicness. Authentic being represents a choice of self and achievement. All other modes represent a failing to embrace the individuality available to all people.

Phenomenology• A theory of knowledge that had a

keen interest in the problems of perception.

• The study of structures of experience or consciousness (as experienced from the first-person point of view).

• The study in phenomena-the appearances of things or things AS they appear in our experience or the way we experience things, therefore the meanings things have in OUR experience.

• Studies conscious experience experienced from the first person point of view.

Nihilism- nothingness

• Nihilism- belief that traditional morals, values, ideas, etc. have no worth or value

• The denial of existence as any basis for knowledge or truth

• There is no meaning or purpose to existence (nil).

For the Activity next meeting per GROUP

Instruction: Create your own Existentialism Philosophy based on your favorite cartoon story e.g

http://myretrospace.blogspot.com/2008/09/existentialism-in-sunday-funnies.html

Email it to me for your presentation