Writing a forty pager on existentialism

[rachmiel]

are you discussing logotherapy?

and, in general, is existentialism a relic (like freudian psychoanalysis) ... or still alive and humming?

[runagate]

I just wanted you to know I did grab this and will be listening ad commenting when I get home.

Damn those guitar ditties (the 3 or 4 I heard?) were tasty

[Genetic_Junk]

are you discussing logotherapy?

and, in general, is existentialism a relic (like freudian psychoanalysis) ... or still alive and humming?

I'm not discussing logotherapy in the paper. However, in class we compared it to Freud's will to pleasure, Nietzsche's will to power, Adler's individual psychology, and Maslow's humanistic psychology.

Existentialism is a historical movement in response to the enlightenment tenet of positive rationalism (through reason man can reach his ideal or his full potential). After the shear violence, hatred, carnage that was witnessed in WWII, people began to see themselves in a different light. All the horrible things that people witnessed during the war were totally counter to reasonable action.

The movement also stemmed from increased categorization. The creation of bureaus, greater hierarchy in the corps. and govt threw people together based upon similarities rather than differences. This loss of individuality created a feeling a dehumanization. Existentialism if anything is extreme individualism.

I don't know if people are becoming more individualistic or are falling into "das Man." I think it would be an interesting study. Do things that bring a foundation for communication (internet and tv) exterminate individualism? Globalization one world wide culture?

Thanks for listening runagate. Always look forward to your comments.

Which guitar ditties?

[gambaytheunspoken]

GeneticJunk wrote: "The creation of bureaus, greater hierarchy in the corps. and govt threw people together based upon similarities rather than differences. This loss of individuality created a feeling a dehumanization. Existentialism if anything is extreme individualism.

I don't know if people are becoming more individualistic or are falling into "das Man." I think it would be an interesting study. Do things that bring a foundation for communication (internet and tv) exterminate individualism? Globalization one world wide culture?" Heidegger would certainly answer yes to these questions in that he viewed the technical organization of society as stemming from what he termed technological reason, and which, not surprisingly, he linked to the history of metaphysics. He also countenanced a kind of pietistic waiting for a kind of turning, the so-called "Kehre" which was his way of dehumanizing metaphysics by getting away from representational thinking and individualism. Weber on the other hand took it all with a kind of muted despair because he saw no way out of the "iron cage," his term for the kind of bureacratic and rational forms of social organizations that define the modern era and the "sensualists without heart" (his term) that run things. It would be interesting, however, to get a bead on what Habermas makes of the internet, but I haven't read him for a while so I don't know where he stands on this issue. But of all the German thinkers he is cerainly more upbeat about things and not generally given over to melancholy and despair.

Ciao!

[Genetic_Junk]

Speaking in a strictly technological sense, I agree with that analysis of Heidegger. But what if we look at the question from an angle of communication? I won't even try to clarify Heidegger's thoughts on language/communication. That man loved to hyphenate his words, loved the idea of unifying.

[gambaytheunspoken]

Speaking in a strictly technological sense, I agree with that analysis of Heidegger. But what if we look at the question from an angle of communication?

Yeah, the communicative angle is Habermas's main contribution to this discussion, and he has elaborated it in his theory of communicative action and his notion of an ideal speech situation, which is a troubling notion, since it is virtually impossible to speak from a position that is not socially structured or determined in some way. But like a true Kantian, this notion of an ideal speech situation that plays a powerful role in his theory of communicative action - and democracy, distributive justice, liberation, art are all rolled up into this theory - and functions as a sort of Kantian regulative idea: You can't really prove that God or heaven exists but act or speak as if they do and they come closer into being. Same with Habermas's angle on communication: Truth, Reason, all those words that you can capitalise play a regulative role in human intercourse and we absolutely need them or we fall off the beam and end up becoming anarchists at best and fascists at worse, something he accused Foucault's thought of fostering. But judging anecdotally from the impact that the internet has had on democratic politics and grassroots movements around the world suggests to me, and perhaps to Habermas as well, that certain forms of modern technology certainly look promising and it's a question on how they are used, regulated, who has access, etc. Of course all of this is rather superficial, but the notion of communication and more specifically language is certainly central to the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger where he goes from "idle talk" in Sein und Zeit to "saying" in the later essays, certainly to Foucault before he died and it goes without saying to Habermas. So yeah, the communicative angle is a very suggestive one.

Ciao!

[Genetic_Junk]

Speaking in a strictly technological sense, I agree with that analysis of Heidegger. But what if we look at the question from an angle of communication?

Yeah, the communicative angle is Habermas's main contribution to this discussion, and he has elaborated it in his theory of communicative action and his notion of an ideal speech situation, which is a troubling notion, since it is virtually impossible to speak from a position that is not socially structured or determined in some way. But like a true Kantian, this notion of an ideal speech situation that plays a powerful role in his theory of communicative action - and democracy, distributive justice, liberation, art are all rolled up into this theory - and functions as a sort of Kantian regulative idea: You can't really prove that God or heaven exists but act or speak as if they do and they come closer into being. Same with Habermas's angle on communication: Truth, Reason, all those words that you can capitalise play a regulative role in human intercourse and we absolutely need them or we fall off the beam and end up becoming anarchists at best and fascists at worse, something he accused Foucault's thought of fostering. But judging anecdotally from the impact that the internet has had on democratic politics and grassroots movements around the world suggests to me, and perhaps to Habermas as well, that certain forms of modern technology certainly look promising and it's a question on how they are used, regulated, who has access, etc. Of course all of this is rather superficial, but the notion of communication and more specifically language is certainly central to the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger where he goes from "idle talk" in Sein und Zeit to "saying" in the later essays, certainly to Foucault before he died and it goes without saying to Habermas. So yeah, the communicative angle is a very suggestive one.

Ciao!

Its difficult for me to speculate about how these guys would respond to these questions because I haven't studied them enough to really get into their heads. I think that Heidegger got into poetry (the arts) because it was a step towards returning to our basic true perception of the world. The experience of what it is to Be, Being and turth coincide. Heidegger believed poets are the true creators of language. He might say they are the ones who enable us to Be (share) in the same world. They linguistically construct experience, giving communication a context. Personally I'm not sure if I'd buy that belief.