Condemned to Freedom.

No Excuses.

As we will see the Sartrean conception of freedom is quite distinct, even from the rest of the existentialist line of thinkers, from its psychological starting-point to its moral outgrowth. The starting-point Sartre takes with consciousness marks him out from his precursors, Nietzsche saw consciousness as quite overrated.¹ There is an interesting convergence between the particular route Sartre would eventually take on moral questions and the critique of traditional morality Nietzsche had put forth in the late 19^th Century. Not to mention the highly different ideas of selfhood which emerge from Sartre's framework and from Nietzsche's thought-processes. To both the authentic self is something that has to be created through a rejection of the inauthentic, which may be constituted as a set of social norms or moral values.² We will explore Sartre's view of human freedom with critical reference to Nietzsche where the conception seems to fall short of its aims.

The notion of consciousness as freedom is the vital element of Sartre’s existential phenomenology.³ It fits in with his general project that places freedom as the central dimension of human existence. This is where the existential themes of responsibility, commitment and notions such as bad faith and authenticity fit into the picture as well. The modes whereby we may relate our being to Being can be authentic and inauthentic. For Heidegger there was more truth in authenticity as it was a self-directed rather than a moral ideal. This is where freedom enters with the existentialist focus on the actions we undertake and, by extension, the way we choose to undertake them. Sartre went as far as to claim that the actions which we undertake can have consequences that we did not foresee and which we are responsible for insofar as we are solely responsible for own actions. The motivations we may hold are irrelevant insofar as they may provide ‘excuses’ which allow us to avoid our own responsibility. This is the reason that we fear and often shirk from the acceptance of our condition as radically free.⁴

When we look at Sartre’s conception of freedom we have to keep in mind that his body of work was a reaction to Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology. As part of Sartre’s reaction to Heidegger he reverts to some extent back to Husserl – in that the focus of phenomenology should be consciousness – and brings with him modified vestments of Cartesianism which Heidegger wanted to ‘throw out’. This conception of freedom is predicated on consciousness as nothingness because freedom is consciousness it is detached from the causal forces of the external world. At the same time, there is literally nothing which traps the self ‘inside’ consciousness because there is nothing there.⁵ Nietzsche had noted that this particular kind of selfhood is detached from the world of causes and that it meshes well with the purposes of morality for this reason. Sartre may not have disagreed, his notion of consciousness precluded it being determined.

The Ethics of Ambiguity.

It may even be that this version of selfhood was put forward to generate a particular kind of moral conduct. It certainly led Sartre in a particular direction. In an attempt to craft an evaluative moral code Sartre reached out to Kantianism with which he was very familiar. The aim was to get away from the instability inherent in the radical subjectivism that seemed to be built into existentialism. Even as Heidegger preferred authentic modes of being over inauthentic modes. It's all too clear that authentic behaviour can have consequences of the moral and immoral kind. The amorality of authenticity in Heidegger’s work meant that there was nothing about it which ruled out Heidegger dabbling in the politics of the Third Reich at a moral level. This was something that had to be rectified for the philosophers who emerged on the other side of WW2. Especially for the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who had been embedded in the French resistance.

Sartrean thought seems far removed from Kant at the outset. It may testify to the need for a kind of moral realism, even as Sartre rejected Christianity and traditional modes of morality he found that he had to go back to Kant in the end. It was the categorical imperative which interested Sartre, it stipulated that there are objective demands on us. It is an impersonal moral duty which takes two forms and we have access to it through reason. Firstly, that we should "act only on a maxim or rule that you can will to be a universal law". And secondly that, we should "treat others as an end in themselves, as opposed to a means to an end".⁶ The imperative is relentless in its universalism, cutting through all wants, desires and circumstances. This may seem completely at odds with Sartre's framework. But the emphasis in his conception of freedom on responsibility is compatible with Kant's insistence on universality.

To put it simply, when we act as individuals we act as we would expect others to act and this is the key to morality for Sartre.⁷ This is consistent with the Sartrean notion of freedom insofar as it can be seen as an extension of the claim that we are responsible for the extent that we act in accordance with our evaluative capacities. It could be seen as built on Sartre's idea of radical choice, which comes out of Nietzschean influences on his thinking. It was Nietzsche who put forward the suggestion that we create values. There aren't actually any out there for us to latch onto as the myths which supported our values are destroyed in nihilism. The only way out is to put man where God once was.⁸ For Sartre we have to choose rather than create our values and this begins with a radical choice, the act which opens up a new space of moral conduct. But it seems that the universality Sartre wants to go for would have the effect of instituting conformity at a self-directed level.⁹ This would seem to be too tight a constraint on Sartre's radical notion of freedom. Then again it has always been the case that this tradition has given preference to certain behaviour and attitudes, we can see this in Nietzsche's own favouritism for master-morality.

The Radical Self.

Perhaps then the emphasis on universality is what's wrong here and not the framework itself. Instead morality may be about particularity, it always boils down to a matter of interest.¹⁰ But it's unclear where this takes us, if anywhere else other than a return to the instability of moral subjectivism. It may be more in accordance with the creation of values rather than the simple choosing of them. Nietzsche would prefer to confront us with the idea of the Eternal Return of the Same than a set of duties.¹¹ The Eternal Return functions as a test for one's attitude towards life and our ability to live as ourselves without any evasive behaviour. The test is to imagine that you would have to live your life as it has gone so far and as it will go on over and over again indefinitely. So any moment of life is one which we could dwell on for all eternity. To meet this test is to affirm life and to failure is something quite pathetic. In part this functions to push us. Eternal Recurrence can force us in part to accept life as imperfect it is, so that we can 'become' who we are.

Although the alternative to moral universality seems flawed and impractical, much more in line with being-toward-death than any code of conduct, it seems clear that the venture into Kantian ethics may have been a poor manoeuvre on Sartre's part.¹² Freedom may be the primary dimension of human existence for Sartre, but its symptoms include abandonment and responsibility. Existence itself is factical because we are transcending beings, the way we exercise our freedom can transform the circumstances under which we live. We can remake the world and ourselves in accordance with our ideas, in doing so our facticity is recreated. And yet we are condemned to restlessness where we are never satisfied with our accomplishments. Each instance of facticity cannot be taken on its own to represent who we are, for we still have the capacity to act once again and redefine ourselves. The real problem may lie with the elements of Cartesianism that Sartre brings into his framework.

As it's not clear that the certainty which Descartes attributed to consciousness characterises it at all. For Nietzsche knowledge involves a finite entity with finite abilities engaged with a world of infinite becoming. The extent to which 'I' can refer to something autonomous and total is highly suspect, as Cartesian selfhood relies on an unsustainable dualism which cuts mind from body. Similarly Sartre cuts the world from consciousness. Descartes would have placed consciousness at the centre of his notion of selfhood and we can pick up an element of this in Sartre too. But Nietzsche did not reject the notion of a self. For Nietzsche the self is indistinguishable from the person and the body, which are in turn embedded in a socio-cultural context and inseparable from all sorts of contingent natural forces.¹³ Thus the importance of culture in Nietzschean thought. The self is always contextualised and cannot be broken-off from the world, to pretend it can be completely detached is illusory.¹⁴ The self is not 'I' rather 'I' is just the development of the self.

1 Solomon, RC; Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate & Responsibility 2/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GaO7wvRLsU

2 Wartenberg, Thomas: Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.125-145

3 Solomon, RC; Sartre’s Phenomenology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGzpEqKK-Y

4 Wartenberg, Thomas: Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.37-46

5 Solomon, RC; Sartre’s Phenomenology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGzpEqKK-Y

6 Kant offered four examples of the categorical imperative in play: we should not commit suicide, we should not break our promises, we should be lazy but develop our talents and we should not ignore the happiness of others but help them.

7 Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.140-143

8 Richardson, J; Heidegger (2012, Routledge) pg.324-325

9 It could be argued that Sartre never really found an easy way to adapt existentialism for the moral and the political. Simone de Beauvoir may have come closer to a practical ethics, the ambiguous condition of the human being as a part of a world that their consciousness is not. It is this ambiguity which makes ethics difficult for existentialists, de Beauvoir's answer was to insist that 'every man needs the freedom of other men and, in a sense, always wants it, even though he may be a tyrant'. Human freedom presupposes the possibility of inter-subjectivity, taking the individual to the social realm.

Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.143-145

10 Sedgwick, PR: Nietzsche, The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2009) pg.69-72

11 Solomon, RC; Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate & Responsibility 3/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7skKQHGTdFE&feature=related

12 Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.40-46

13 The limits of knowledge are what give it meaning and concreteness to knowledge. It is absurd to claim that ‘I think’ has any immediate identification with thought. The neglect of human capacities for creativity by this conception is intolerable, such capacities are not extensions of a ‘pure intellect’ above the body. Rather the self and the intellect can be best grasped in the drives of the body. The individual as a nexus of drives, instincts and passions is central to Nietzsche’s vision, with the self as the realm where such drives can be refined.

Sedgwick, PR: Nietzsche, The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2009) pg.137-142

14 The talk about free-will confuses causes and effects, we shouldn't talk about our behaviour as though there is first an act of will (cause) and then comes an action (effect). As every effect must have a cause we might say that the preceding cause is a mental one to action, but for Nietzsche there is just action. We just do things most of the time, it is only every so often that we have to push ourselves and will something. Most of our lives are not so reflective and deliberative, we just do things because of the kind of creatures we are. It is a matter of necessity. This is consistent with Nietzsche's attitude towards consciousness, which Sartre seems to elevate by contrast. Nietzsche puts aside the focus on justifying actions in favour of explaining actions in terms of motivation and who we are. Character is constituted by a set of automatic actions which we cultivate.

Solomon, RC; Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate & Responsibility 2/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GaO7wvRLsU

G-d and Phenomenology.

Perhaps as a consequence of the close ties between phenomenology and existentialism in the 20^th Century so it may be associated with atheism. This association of existentialism with atheism is not unfounded as existentialists such as Albert Camus subscribed to the view of life as totally meaningless. And indeed Jean-Paul Sartre was a vehement atheist. The same may be said of Nietzsche though in many respects it may be argued he remained firmly within Lutheranism.[1] Then there is Kierkegaard, a man who may even be deemed a Christian fundamentalist by some. The most significant reaction to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology came from Martin Heidegger was a student of theology before he moved onto philosophy and developed hermeneutical phenomenology. But it was the reactions to Heidegger which took the most overt stances on the question of God. It may safely be said from the outset that there is no reason phenomenology can be strictly either theistic or atheistic.

The reactions to Heidegger took both theistic and atheistic forms. In Sartre’s reaction to Heidegger he presented an existential phenomenology which was atheistic as it acknowledged the human desire for God. Then Emmanuel Levinas introduced an ethical element into phenomenology which went further than a mere acknowledgement of the desire for God. If we take phenomenology as the study of appearances, as Heidegger did, then it may seem as though it begins at a secular point and doesn’t necessarily rule out the existence of God. As it would seem that the study of appearances could well be agnostic on the question of God, as it is beyond appearances, phenomenology may be better described as non-theistic rather than atheistic in this sense. We might be able to maintain this stance on Husserl and Heidegger, but it is disputable and even more so when we move to the later phenomenologists.

The explicitly atheist phenomenology can be found in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, where God is a contradiction as God would have to exist at the modes of in-itself and for-itself. Being-in-itself is the mode of being held by inanimate objects, whereas being-for-itself is integral to human freedom – a human being is not a human being in the sense that a stone is a stone.[2] The for-itself arises once in-itself has been negated by it, then it rushes into the future as the human subject strives towards authenticity. In this process then the for-itself becomes what it isn’t – being-in-itself – and negates what it was. This is the exact condition of human freedom from which the desire for God emerges. There is a hypothetical being-in-itself-for-itself and that is God, it implies a coincidence of the self with the self and absence of the negation that it takes to form the self. But it is the instability of the subject, which Sartre described, that opens up a temptation to ‘flee from being’ and into bad faith. This is where the desire for God comes from and it is followed by the futile attempts to reach out to this impossible mode of being.

Of course, it may be said, it is the framework in which Sartre works that has closed off any space for God from the outset. So it is the framework which is to be questioned here. But not to revert to a non-existent ‘neutral’ space from which we can see whether there is or isn’t a God. Rather we should look assess the problems with Sartre’s framework and then look at a rival framework. The problem might be down to some of the vestments of Cartesianism that Sartre brings to the table. The conception of freedom that Sartre develops is predicated on a notion of consciousness as nothingness.[3] Because freedom is consciousness it is detached from the causal forces of the external world. There is literally nothing which traps the self ‘inside’ consciousness because there is nothing there. It boils down to a modified version of the mind-body distinction that Descartes drew. It’s precisely this aspect of the Cartesian tradition that Heidegger wanted to throw out completely.

It is this levelled plain of radically free individuals, with the subject as an unstable moral agent – lacking any objective moral values – whose relations with others is typified by feelings such as shame. Sartre was preoccupied with the ‘look’ which separates the subject off from the world and turns them into a thing. The Other raises the instability of our already fragile consciousness.[4] The existence of the Other is not problematic, though the Other is a potential threat to the freedom of the subject.[5] The subject exists as in-itself and for-itself but does not exist in isolation, to the contrary the subject must coexist with others and so the subject is not just for-itself it is being-for-others. The Other reduces the for-itself subject to a thing-like in-itself existence, the subject is deprived of its autonomy and freedom. The relationship with the Other is inevitably prone to conflict, the subject can only dominate or be dominated. As Garcin says famously at the end of Sartre’s No Exit “There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is – other people.”[6]

The important thing to remember about Sartre is that he was writing in reaction to Heidegger, who had thoroughly rejected the Cartesian tradition. To do this Heidegger had questioned the basic claim that the knowledge we have of ourselves differs from the knowledge we have of others at a fundamental level. Heidegger used the word Dasein to signify not just the subject, but the temporal unfolding of existence – we might think of it as experience. In this way we are embodied experiencers of a world that we are thoroughly wrapped up in and share with others who compose the They.[7] The mind-body distinction is something to be thrown aside, along with the notion that there is an external world from which we can retreat. Heidegger had conceived of being-in-the-world to signify the human existence as bound up with reality, both as constitutive and constituted by it. For Heideggerians then Sartre fails insofar as he doesn’t totally reject Cartesianism, even if it only survives in modified form.

This is where Emmanuel Levinas enters the picture with a take on the Other which is in opposition to the position that Sartre had carved out. Levinas shared Heidegger’s worries about the implications of a selfhood which is cut-off from the world in its autonomy. And at the same time Levinas was concerned about the absence of an ethics in Heidegger’s project. For Levinas the Other is not a threat to one’s freedom, that we can only dominate or be dominated by. Rather the face-to-face encounter with the Other is positive as it challenges the self-assurance and self-containment of the subject. It inaugurates the possibility of an ethical code.[8] The naked face of the Other appeals to the subject in a way that cannot be ignored or forgotten. It is an appeal for the subject to go towards, to welcome and to take responsibility for the Other. The identity of the subject is dependent on the Otherness that is always and already present before the subject is constituted, it is founded by the ethical demand to take responsibility for the Other. This is where a space for God is prised open.

Recall the words of Terry Eagleton that “To move from Husserl to Heidegger is to move from the terrain of pure intellect to a philosophy which meditates on what it feels like to be alive.”[9]  We might add that Levinas takes off from ‘what it feels like to be alive’ to the realm of the ethical. The encounter with the Other is a mere glimpse of the Infinite, or more bluntly God, from which the most we can receive is an imperative.[10] The only means of relation to God is through moral conduct and this is especially the case in regards to the Other. Levinas was one of a line of Jewish phenomenologists, which began with Husserl and included such unlikely bedfellows as Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. But Levinas may have been the first in this line to introduce a Judaic turn to phenomenology. The trace of the ever elusive Infinite which we detect in the face of the Other comes in the form of an obligation in the same way that all Moses received from God at Mount Sinai were the mitzvoth – the commandments.[11] The Infinite seems to hold no content for us, but what we can relate to and that is moral in character.

There is a moment in A Serious Man (2009) which holds some relevance as Rabbi Nachtner says “Hashem doesn’t owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way.” God has left us to our own devices, which is why we can and must do His work. We might even go to the end and conclude that God does not intervene because we are the intervention. For Sartre it is the Other which is presupposed, for Levinas it is the Infinite which is presupposed. But it is Levinas who grounds our moral obligations in theistic terms. In doing so, Levinas reformulated the Cartesian case for the existence of God by substituting the Infinite for the Other. And so we could charge him, as we would Sartre, with bringing back the old baggage as part of his bid to bring morality into phenomenology. Though it should be noted that Levinas called for a revision of intersubjectivity as developed in the Cartesian tradition and by Husserl. This means that the basic concept of the subject: a mind which grasps what it confronts in experience and turns it into its content. The troubling assumption being that everything is ‘given’ as representation, even though everything is ultimately other than the mind it can be possessed by the mind.[12]

There is a more direct way whereby the subject can stand in such relations, e.g. face-to-face with another person. For Levinas the relation to the Other is essential to what it means to be human, it is irreducible. It’s a negative theology of sorts as Levinas shirked from a theorisation of God. If you can theorise about him then he isn’t God, this view that we cannot theorise Him seems compatible with the Heideggerian view of phenomenology as a study of appearances. Deliberately Levinas avoided the game of providing an argument for the existence of God as that would be ‘bad theology’. So the idea of a practical atheism may have had its use in terms of coming to grips with what it means to be human. This differs with the early work of Heidegger which carries the panentheistic tones of Heidegger's Christian background. But it also differs sharply with Heidegger's later nostalgia for the Pagan plethora of Greek gods. By contrast Levinas refuses any compromise with polytheism and insists on a universalist approach tempered by particularism.

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[1] Jackson, R: Nietzsche the Key Ideas (Hachette UK, 2010) pg.118-124

[2] Macey, D: Dictionary of Critical Theory (Penguin Reference, 2001) pg.201-203

[3] Solomon, RC; Sartre’s Phenomenology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGzpEqKK-Y

[4] Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.60-69

[5] Macey, D; Dictionary of Critical Theory (Penguin Reference, 2001) pg.284-286

[6] Sartre, JP; No Exit (Samuel French, Inc. 1958) pg.46-47

[7] Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.51-60

[8] Macey, D; Dictionary of Critical Theory (Penguin Reference, 2001) pg.284-286

[9] Eagleton, T; Literary Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1983 | Second Edition, 1983) pg.47-57

[10] Putnam, H; Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to life (Indiana University Press, 2008) pg.68-82

[11] Putnam, H; Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to life (Indiana University Press, 2008) pg.87-94

[12] Mautner, T; Dictionary of Philosophy (Penguin Reference, 2001) pg.348-349

Yell "Dasein!"

The account of being-in-the-world is significant in the part it played in the Heideggerian break from the project of Edmund Husserl and the development of phenomenology thereafter. The break itself is also a vital underpinning of existentialism, as Terry Eagleton notes “To move from Husserl to Heidegger is to move from the terrain of pure intellect to a philosophy which meditates on what it feels like to be alive.” This particular form of phenomenology might be referred to as hermeneutical in contrast to the transcendental phenomenology which Husserl promulgated.[1] In fact it has been said that Heidegger seized on the conception of phenomenology for his own ends, to the extent that the definition of “phenomenology” came to mean almost the exact opposite of the Husserlian proposal. Rather than emptying out the intentional contents of our belief system, to uncover datum, we let the things which are shared but cannot be articulated to reveal themselves.[2]

If we accept the notion of intentionality put forth by Husserl then we take consciousness as always consciousness of something.[3] So there is an internal relation between the act of thinking and the object of thought, a mutual dependence. Thought points towards some object. The mind does not passively acknowledge the world, it actively ‘intends’ the world. This is where the idealism of Husserl is quite overt, he thought it was absurd to see the world as external to thought and experience.[4] Husserl goes on to claim that the way to establish certainty is to do away with – to ‘bracket’ – everything which is beyond our consciousness. All realities must be treated as appearances in our minds, pure phenomena and this is the universal data from which we can proceed. It is universal in the sense that it has universal implications, so that the examination of what we perceive, through the phenomenological reduction, is a way to get at the universal essence of the things we perceive as well as the act of perceiving.[5]

Martin Heidegger breaks with Husserlian phenomenology with the ‘transcendent subject’ as its beginning. This is rejected as a suitable beginning by Heidegger and with it he rejected the ‘bracketing’ method. For Heidegger the subject-object distinction is an unwelcome bi-product of Cartesianism, for it is not only artificial but unsustainable.[6] We can refer to the relation between the self and the world, insofar as we must refer to that relation as a distinction in order to move beyond it. Being-in-the-world captures the involved nature of the human subject, it is not dominant as the Enlightenment thinkers had thought, but is engaged in dialogue with the world. The point is to return to a pre-Socratic position, before the dualist distinction and wherein both of which can plausibly be encompassed by Being. We inhabit a reality which we are incapable of subjecting to objectification, for we are as much constituted by reality as we constitute it.[7] So we should listen rather than speak in this dialogue. Whether or not we can charge Heidegger with idealism over this is complicated.

We could run with the view that Heidegger is an extreme idealist going by what he tells us about Reality, which is composite of: the Being of beings and Being as the pure presence-at-hand of Things. Robert Solomon argues that the dichotomy of idealism versus realism is insufficient for the bold moves Heidegger made. The problem is with the labels themselves as Heidegger should not be seen as a philosophical opponent of realism.[8] By realism here we designate the view that there is a reality which can be known, which Heidegger does not deny, whereas idealism is the view that we can only know the products of our own minds. This is the reason that it has often been said that Edmund Husserl is an idealist.

There is a sense in which the world refers to being-in-the-world for Heidegger, at the same time being-in-the-world refers to Dasein and care is its primordial structural foundation.[9] For Heidegger it is not that the concept being-in-the-world can be simply sliced into easily digestible components. Heidegger goes as far as to claim that care encapsulates Dasein in its’ entirety. It is not meant in the usual sense of caring for something, even indifference to something counts as a part of care.[10] Dasein must deal with the world as it is being-in-the-world, without the world there is no subject and without the subject there is no world. Sartre would say Dasein is “condemned to be free”, but it is important to add that it is ‘condemned’ as it is ‘thrown’ into a world which has already set the ready-at-hand equipment and the paths we can take. For this reason Heidegger is closer to Nietzsche than Sartre on the question of free-will. We are not totally free individuals in a leveled world from which we are only floating through, but we are embedded and engaged without a choice in the matter. When we talk about being-in-the-world we are talking about a future-directed agent in its aware of possibilities in the situations it is involved in. It can encounter objects when lost in activities and this may be the way that we ‘flee from being’ which we might think of as ‘bad faith’ since Sartre.

For Heidegger we are ‘thrown’ into the world, so we take hold of ourselves locked in a particular cultural and historical context. We cannot choose the circumstances under which we have to care and act.[11] The self is definitively in time and we never live in the moment.[12]This is where authenticity enters as the manner of the relation of beings to Being, it can be authentic or inauthentic. Robert Solomon specifies Heideggerian authenticity as about lifting yourself up by your bootstraps, which captures the definitive path provided by death accurately. For Heidegger when we face the inevitably of our impending death it can provide the force necessary to extricate ourselves from the ‘dictatorship of They’.[13] Authenticity is self-directed rather than a moral ideal, though it is given preference by the existentialist tradition. The way that we can relate our being to Being is where freedom comes in and the strong focus of the existentialists on freedom may be pinpointed in exactly this relation.

At this point we should go back to the Heideggerian break, as it is important to stress, as Hubert Dreyfus does, that the break with transcendental phenomenology to establish hermeneutical phenomenology is not simply attributing a primary status to practical activity. Rather it is Heidegger’s position that the relation between a self-sufficient mind and an external world cannot be understood as detached contemplation or practical activity – as we have already seen, the separation itself is a problematic assertion. Nor should we take practical activity or contemplation to be specific to such a relation. The Heideggerian strategy is a reversal of priorities, now it’s doing over knowing and not knowing over doing. The point of this is to clear the ground for the question of the way of being of intentionality. It is not a dichotomy between practical and theoretical forms of intentionality. Heidegger wanted to burst out of the tradition. He aimed to overcome the subject-object distinction in all domains and move on from the old account of intentionality altogether.[14]

Heidegger accepted that there is an intentional directedness to human activity, but rejected the Husserlian view that the mind is directed towards an object which mirrors an object in the external world. Practical engagement is important, though we have to go above and beyond practical activity to raise the question of Being. The problem is the gap which is allowed to open up between the subject and object, the directedness which Husserl puts forth is meant to resolve this problem. But it just exacerbates the problem as it maintains intentionality as a feature of mental states. Intentionality is not mental, as it is for Husserl, it should not be attributed to consciousness but Dasein – which is being-in-the-world – and in that sense refers to human activity at a more general level in that the practical intention goes through the thing we use towards the purpose of the activity.[15] The directedness is in the embedded nature of being-in-the-world, it is a part of the human existence and undoubtedly an aspect of the dialogue between the human subject and the world (if we must refer back to that troublesome distinction).

In the attempt to overcome the old notion of intentionality Heidegger opens up a new kind of intentionality. Similarly with Heidegger’s ‘confrontation’ with Friedrich Nietzsche – who he deemed responsible for the ‘end of metaphysics’ – could only be conducted within the framework of another metaphysical system just as Nietzsche had opened up a metaphysics of becoming in the attempt to overcome metaphysics.[16] Even the conscious attempt to overcome a philosophical tradition fails to do so insofar as it may succeed, but in doing so reconstitute the system that was meant to be overcome. It may even be that the move Heidegger made to critique Cartesianism and ultimately transcend the subject-object distinction might have only perpetuating, or more accurately, recreated the old distinction in the act of trying to sweep it away. The account Heidegger provided of being-in-the-world is important as it is part of the philosophical project through which he attempted to radically reorder philosophy as it has been since Socrates. This is the greater importance to which the significance the concept has in relation to existentialism and phenomenology is just an addition.

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[1] Eagleton, Terry: Literary Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1983 | Second Edition, 1983) pg.47-57

[2] Dreyfus, Hubert: Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1 (MIT Press, 1991) pg.30-39

[3]  Becker, Oskar: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl, Elveton, RO: The Phenomenology of Husserl (Chicago Quadrangle Books, 1970) pg.60-71

[4] Ludwig Wittgenstein (who had a great deal in common with Heidegger in his later philosophy) was perplexed by the very notion of an external world and what it is supposed to be external to specifically. Heidegger had this in common with Wittgenstein as he conceived of being-in-the-world to signify the human existence as bound up with reality, both as constitutive and constituted by it. So the suggestion that there is a world ‘out there’ which can be analysed is quite strange from this perspective. Whereas Husserl concedes that there is a world external to thought and experience insofar as objects can transcend our consciousness.

[5] We might be drawn to Hume’s sceptical view that there could be more than just the experiential, but we cannot know if there is. The difference is that for Husserl it is not that these things are beyond our knowledge; rather we should exclude them in order to get back to the things themselves. But it should be noted that this kind of phenomenology is not another form of empiricism.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#UniIma

[6] In a way Descartes held that we can step outside of being-in-the-world where an object can be placed before a subject. For Heidegger it is important to reject the Cartesian tradition because it seemed utterly hopeless to him. This might explain why he avoided talk of subjectivity as well as consciousness and the mind without the use of his own meta-language. Note that Heidegger saw our basic experiences as a holistic and unified experience of our being-in-the-world. Descartes propagated dualism, which posited a mind-body separation which can both be encompassed by Being for Heidegger. Cartesianism is a road with a dead-end for Heidegger, the separation between being-in-the-world and something else (e.g. consciousness and the external world) leads us to paradoxical ways of thinking. To understand Dasein is to understand the world and it works both ways, Dasein and the world are a unified phenomenon according to Heidegger. So the self cannot exist independently of the physical world, there can be no Dasein without the world and no world without Dasein.

Solomon, Robert: Lecture Fifteen; Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4MAYguC1Mc

[7] Eagleton, Terry: Literary Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1983 | Second Edition, 1983) pg.47-78

[8] Solomon, Robert: Lecture Fifteen; Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4MAYguC1Mc

[9] Dreyfus, Hubert: Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1 (MIT Press, 1991) pg.238-246

[10] In Goethe’s Faust the role of care is important as it refers to the burdens of worry and the world explicitly. Heidegger uses care in a much more radical way, it is not only about ends and purposes but about the world as equipment where we engage in tasks. The world is not a field of objects and subjects which might interact. To see the hammer and the plank as ‘things’ means that we would have to stop hammering, the hammer is no longer just something used for a purpose along with the nail and the plank serves as a material to work with.

Incidentally, for Nietzsche Goethe was an example of the Übermensch and the Will to Power who exercised all of his talents, ‘created’ himself as a unified being through his art and he experimented in life – taking jobs as a civil servant and a lawyer, as well as a playwright and a poet. As a writer he flirted with many styles and his works are voluminous. In Nietzsche’s terms the passion for life is the greatest of passions and Goethe was passionate at a creative and spiritual level. Nietzsche describes Goethe as “not a German event but a European one: a grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century through a return to nature, through a going-up to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century.”

Nietzsche, Friedrich; Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (Hollingdale, RJ; Introduction and commentary | Penguin Books, 1968) pg.102-104

Solomon, Robert: Lecture Sixteen; Heidegger on the World and the Self.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPlZCkh0AE0

[11] Heidegger seems to take a very similar response to the question of free-will as that of Karl Marx (someone he no doubt detested for political as well as philosophical reasons). We might think in particular of Marx’s words “Men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted.” This is where Heidegger is actually closer to Marx than he is to Sartre.

Marx, Karl: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Surveys from Exile: Political Writings vol.2 (Edited and introduced by David Fernbach, Verso, 2010) pg.143-150

[12] Solomon, Robert: Lecture Sixteen; Heidegger on the World and the Self.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPlZCkh0AE0

[13] Wartenberg, Thomas: Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.125-145

[14] Dreyfus, Hubert: Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1 (MIT Press, 1991) pg.40-54

[15] As Harrison Hall points out, using the most famous example, the hammer has perceivable properties which go unrecognised when the hammer is being skilfully employed and only arise when we take a timeout from the task to think about the hammer. The attention is aimed at the work and the ultimate end, but not the equipment which enables us to do so. The function of the hammer is in the practical activity to which it is used and that is definitive of their being. We can spot this network of relations essential to their instrumental nature whenever the task breaks down. We find that the ready-to-hand tools are always pointing towards an end, which we assign in the task.

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger: Hall, Harrison: Intentionality and World pg.123-139

[16] Sluga, Hans: Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.110-113

Memento Mori.

A Tabula Rasa.

Christopher Nolan's film Memento (2001) explores the dull archetypal story of revenge combined with aspects of traditional detective stories, which have been recycled and churned out repeatedly by Hollywood over the years, through the cliche of a amnesiac narrator. Perhaps, what is so original, compelling and truly brilliant aspect of Memento is the structure that the story takes and the way in which Nolan combined old ideas in the piece. The protagonist, Leonard Shelby, suffered a head injury whilst trying to save his wife from intruders who had broken into their house. Since then Lenny has suffered from anterograde amnesia, amnesia in which he retains his old memories and knowledge but is incapable of maintaining new memories. The film is structured, to fit the unsettling subjectivity of the protagonist's view of reality, in reverse chronological order. As Nolan explains, Memento does not have a non-linear structure, at least not in the conventional sense, because each scene is directly dependent on the one before just as in a linear structure.


Though the film is enthralling on many levels, it introduces an age-old area of philosophy to popular culture and its audience. In the opening scene, we are confronted with a polaroid photograph of a man who has been shot dead. In reverse of the process taken in photographing the corpse, the polaroid slowly fades as it gradually returns to it's initial blank state before retreating back into the camera. The polaroid itself is passive to the camera and it's owner to determine the image of which it will ultimately convey. This is almost a metaphor for the blank slate, or tabula rasa, description of the mind, favoured by empiricists like John Locke. Empiricism is a philosophical school of thought focusing on the nature of knowledge, empiricists argued that all our ideas and knowledge are derived from experience via senses. For instance, our ideas of ‘white’ and ‘cold’ come from the first time we encountered snow. Our experiences shape our knowledge of reality and all the ideas we’ll ever have are taken from our experiences. There are parallels to this in Memento. The polaroids, notes and tattoos are the only ways in which Leonard Shelby can collect knowledge - which is derived from his daily experiences in his search for John G.

The way that a camera can serve as a model for the empirical view of the mind. Images are received and after a flash imprinted onto a polaroid, the tabula rasa, as the human mind is blank upon birth and develops an understanding of the world from sense impressions, according to the empiricists. The opening shot of the polaroid is a metaphor for the inner-workings of Leonard's damaged psyche - a truly empirical mind perhaps is one in which memories cannot be made. The distorting effect amnesia has had on Shelby's consciousness is why a priori knowledge is absent in his life after the incident. We do not live like Shelby because we can make new memories, we don't need all those notes and tattoos to get by. The reason: because Lenny is lacking something we are not. We can hold onto knowledge, probably because the mind isn't a blank slate normally. Rationalists would argue that we have a priori knowledge, which is independent of experience and sense impressions (if anything) "unlock" such knowledge. There has to be something in the camera to hold images, it can't just be a void.

Reason and Experience.

Immanuel Kant proposed a synthesis, a compromise in the epistemological argument between philosophers of the rational and empirical traditions. Most animals receive information through sense impressions, a dog can hear us speak but will not understand our language. It takes reason to understand the received information, which is what may separate us from the animals. The reason interacts with the experience and is not passive, if anything, reason dominates experience shaping it into concepts that we can understand. The concepts of ‘white’ and ‘cold’ exist to us, not because they exist objectively. But because we have imposed these concepts onto our subjective experience of reality, snow can appear to us as both ‘white’ and ‘cold’. This is not because the world is inside our minds. This is because our minds only have the capability to perceive the world in such a way. For instance, the unified notions of time and space that we hold are not entirely independent of our minds. We just cannot perceive the world without applying the concepts of time and space, otherwise nothing would be comprehensible.

This is a point enforced by the reverse linear structure of Memento. If we could perceive the world without applying the concept of time, as we understand it, the reversed structure of the film would be insignificant. Though, we can follow the storyline because we put things together as we're watching, the structure has a major impact upon how we interpret the story. When we first come across Natalie we see her as a possible love interest. This is due to the traditional depiction of female main characters as a love interest or play-thing for the leading man. In Memento, this assumption of Natalie is further played on when Leonard awakens after sharing a bed with Natalie. It is only as the story progresses, that it becomes apparent that Natalie is not a love interest at all and appears to be a manipulative character with her own goal of avenging her boyfriend's death. All of this is predicated on the fact that the audience would be caught off guard by the structure of the film. Though it's possible that the film could not even have been made if the concept of time was totally objective and unconnected to the human experience.

During the conclusion of Memento, which is actually the beginning of the story, Leonard acknowledges that there is such a thing as a priori knowledge when he says "Yeah, we don't need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different." In doing so, he rejects the notion that knowledge is derived only through sense impressions. We do not need to sense ourselves to know ourselves, we simply are ourselves and therefore know ourselves a priori - it is not acquired through experience but known. So this would mean that the metaphor of a camera for Shelby's mind is only partially accurate of his "condition" - a state of near passivity to knowledge, to others etc. Leonard has anterograde amnesia and the way he has been led along by Teddy shows the depth of his passivity. It is in the film that we see the transition Leonard Shelby makes from "bad faith" - acting as if one is a object passive to the forces around them - to authenticity and all the responsibility that comes with it.

The New Man.

Leonard Shelby is a highly original character, standing out against scenery in his cream suit and even standing incongruous to the banal revenge story he is part of. Shelby is remarkably independent, resourceful and determined for an individual suffering from such a "condition" - in contrast with the story of Sammy Jenkis who ends up in a home. But at the same time, because of his "condition", he vulnerable to the power of others. We can only watch as Leonard is manipulated by those around him. Teddy, Natalie and even Burt use his "condition" to further their own ends, whether it be for financial gain or revenge. Though the trust Leonard places in his notes keeps him from being easily manipulated by Teddy. On several occasions Leonard looks at the picture of Teddy and his comment "Never believe his lies" which stops him from following his guidance blindly. Partly this is the way that Leonard continues on his own independent path to find the killer-rapist John G. Of course, John G is already dead and Shelby is already free but trapped in "bad faith", allowing others to determine his actions.


Though it could be that this element of Memento cannot be understood fully without exploring the ideas of existentialism. Existentialism is a radically subjective philosophy that places the individual, autonomy, authenticity and the self, at the centre of importance. Fanon believed that the only way individuals could achieve true freedom, as opposed to the spurious bourgeois freedom of the West, is through violence. The very experience of violence would be cathartic and can awaken individuals from the West's insidious form of control. At the heart of existentialism rests a view of human beings not too dissimilar from empiricism. The way in which empiricists view the mind as a tabula rasa at the beginning of life is similar to the way in which existentialist philosophers viewed the attaining of essence after existence. But for the likes of Sartre, the individual is not a passive and blank slate waiting to experience the world. Sartre would have argued that the individual must not act in "bad faith" in order to attain authenticity and experience true freedom. "Bad faith" being to act as if one is passive and conform to the pressures that surround you.

The story of Memento relates closely to the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon. This is also appropriate as Sartre was heavily influenced by Kant and pursued merging the duty-based ethics of Kant with existentialism. The act of killing Teddy may be the emancipation in itself, as it is Shelby's action that destroys the powerful force that he has been passive to for so long. After which Leonard emerges as a "new man" who has taken charge of his life and has purged himself of the "bad faith". The paradox of this relationship being the comfort and security of it, but also the turmoil and horror that is innate to the relationship. However, it could be argued that the emancipation Leonard achieved by killing Teddy was set in motion when he first wrote down Teddy's license plate, in the film's conclusion and the story's beginning, and in that sense it was that action, not killing John G, which was truly authentic.