Existentialism and (insert witty joke here)

The final lecture of the first semester was on Existentialism, a subject which I found a little difficult to understand at first. I think I now have a grasp on the basic principles but some subjects such as nihilism still stump me. A lot of existentialism comes from Phenomenology, the objective perception of things, one of the best examples of this is Husserl's Duck-Rabbit picture which you can see here. You can only see the duck if you want to see it, and the same with the rabbit; the University of Winchester logo it was pointed out, also has a duck rabbit situation going on, probably inadvertently but you can see first the cathedral, and then if you look again, a little Scottie dog (have a look for yourself). The choice of what we want to see is the fundamental activity of human existence.

One existentialist thinker was Heidegger, a student of the aforementioned Husserl, whose main book: Being in Time, examined how personality changes over time. We constantly look forward to the future, to what's going to happen or be said; but we dread the future, we have a feeling of angst similar to Freud's idea of ordinary misery. Heidegger pioneered the idea of Dasein or being; our dasein keeps us from the dread of the future, so if you're a carpenter you just think to yourself, "I'll keep banging in these nails and it'll be the same next week so I needn't worry about dread."
Time for Heidegger went a little like this: 1. The past - guilt
2. The future - unknown
3. The present - dread
It is our dasein that keeps us from this dread and enables us to carry on. Heidegger though is often criticised for being, well, a bit of a Nazi. In fact he would reject this, as he felt the Nazi's weren't Nazi enough! He wanted a return to nature, a bit like Rousseau but with genocide. He eventually fell out with the Nazi's because they loved technology.

Jean-Paul Sartre was a student of Heidegger, but was a far left thinker. One of the few ideas he took from the far right Heidegger was dasein. His most famous phrase, "Hell is other people", came from his play No Exit. A kind of salvation for Sartre was being brutally honest all the time: he called this good faith. We're doomed in this existential mess, but so is everyone else! Really, you should just let people get on with things, there is no particular way in existentialism for people to live, no real way for people to be. If someones dasein is a priest, you should let them be even if you are an atheist. You've been thrown into this pointless existence at a pointless time, so just get on with it. It's a little bit angst-y but that's how existentialism is.

Finally, I'm going to try and briefly and basically explain nihilism, using the internet. Good old Wikipedia tells us "Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value." Cheers for that Wikipedia, other free to edit encyclopedias are available, probably.

Until Next Time (and next year). Stay Classy Internet.