Every now and again a serious philosophy sweeps belatedly into intellectual fashion
Usually as a result of some particular set of circumstances
Between the two world wars this happened to Marxism mainly as a result of the Russian Revolution
after the Second World War it happened to
existentialism the fashion for which began on the continent of Europe in response largely to the experience of Nazi occupation
When I talk of a philosophy being fashionable and speaking of it's catching on not only with a lot of academics
but with writers of all kinds novelists playwrights
Poets journalists so that it begins to pervade the whole cultural atmosphere of the time in post-war France there seemed to be
 
existentialist novels films plays and even conversation on all sides
The most famous name associated with that development both then and now is that of jean-paul Sartre
but the
existentialism of this century really began not in France but in Germany and in the period following the first world war and
In serious terms the most significant figure of the movement is not Sartre
But Heidegger that's to say there's virtual unanimity among students of modern existentialism
That Heidegger as well as preceding Sartre in time is the more profound and more original thinker so
In this program we're going to approach modern existentialism
Chiefly through the work of Heidegger though later on we shall have a bit to say about Sartre and how he fits into the picture
Martin Heidegger was born in southern Germany in 1889 and lived in the same small area of Europe for virtually the whole of his life
He studied under the famous philosopher Husserl before himself becoming a professional teacher of philosophy in
1927 at the age of 38 he published his most important book called being and time
He was to live for getting on for another half century after that and he wrote a great deal more some of it very interesting
But nothing else of his was ever to be as big or as good or as influential as being on time
It's not an easy book to read
But we have here to talk about it the author of what I think is the best of all introductions to existentialism for the reader
William Barret professor of philosophy at New York University and author of that excellent book
irrational man
professor Barrett if you can imagine for the moment that I'm somebody who knows absolutely nothing at all about the
Philosophy of Martin Heidegger and you were going to start setting about giving me some basic idea. How would you begin? I?
I think I would try to locate the man in this historical context to begin with
It would be a little bigger context than the one you indicate namely. It wouldn't be measured in terms of decades, but centuries
and I've
tried to locate him first in relation to the
What say the whole epic of modern philosophy which begins with Descartes?
It was rather interesting to place him in in in that context because it relates him and differentiates them from other
philosophers in the 20th century now as you know the Descartes was one of the
founders of the new science that is of modern physics and
part of his scheme for launching the science dependent upon like the same kind of split between
consciousness and the external world the mind schematized nature for
quantitative measures
for calculation
For the purpose of manipulating nature and at the same time the human subject the consciousness doing that was set off
Against it so you
What came out of it was a second kind of dualism between mind and the external world?
Now most philosophy nearly all philosophy in the subsequent two centuries
Accommodated itself to the Cartesian framework
At the beginning of this century a number of philosophers began to feel that in some sense it was uncomfortable
And we find that the a kind of revolt or rebellion against the cartesianism takes place among different schools
Both in England and on the continent as a matter of fact with the American pragmatist ill
Now Heidegger is one of those rebels against a car, and if you stop to think of it
In this rebellion against a car I think
We would get the key idea of hiding this philosophy with which I would would want to start educating somebody in the philosophy
Let me make sure that that yes. They're together up to this yes, right what you're saying in effect is this that
With the development of certain science, which really began in the 16th century
We get this the development of the assumption that there is somehow a split in reality between subject and object
There are humans observing the world and there is the world which they are observing and this dualism this
Assumption that there is a division in reality between subject and object
Goes all the way through our science and all the way through our philosophy though in fact
Contrary to what probably most Western men and women suppose
It's really a view of reality which is peculiar to the West and peculiar to the last
Four or five century right right now now. It's an uncomfortable view because there is in some sense
We don't live with this view. I don't I don't consider you as a mind attached to a body or I don't consider them
I'm conscious of you there, but I infer your existence your existence is is doubtful in
Ordinary life. We move back and forth between mind and body is
perfectly
recognizable fashion
without proposing to ourselves any particular philosophical puzzles
In these transactions so that it becomes somehow
contrary to our ordinary feel of things to proceed in this way as if
The mind and the external world was set off against each other in this way and this revolt against dualism
I think is one of the features of
20th century philosophy Heidegger has his own mode of dealing with it I think
You and I are together in the same world
I mean you're not a mind attached to a body and I'm not a mind attached to a body
Primarily we're two human beings within the same
So you me how would you start introducing somebody someone to heidegger's philosophy?
I mean I would say you start with this
Fundamental concept of being in the world that we are beings of of course now the word being makes us
Recoil because it sounds very far-fetched in highfalutin
But in the primary cases in this case we have to understand that the most mundane
Factual ordinary everyday sense the way in which average ordinary or extraordinary?
Human beings are concretely in the world
That's where we start from and that's where we begin to philosophize
But may I say that I find this a very congenial starting point because the notion that reality is split between
Observer and observed or subject and object isn't something that ever presented itself naturally to me. It was something
I have to learn so to speak in school, or as a student and at first
I thought it a very strange idea. I think that the
experience of the individual accords much more with what you are now saying that is to say we we emerge from the
Unconsciousness of early baby hoods let's be to find ourselves
As beings in a world, which is the phrase you just know if we just find ourselves here in this world and this split
That's where we start
Well the split between
Subject and object doesn't appear in philosophy until you get really at formulating they kinda said known to the Greeks and the medieval philosophers
No having having established the difference between
Heidegger and the tradition mmm-hmm how does Heidegger then proceed what does he how does he proceed to formulate his problem?
Well you see the once you're planted in
In the world we are being to the world then the task of philosophy becomes primarily one of
description you are
The philosopher then aims to describe the various modes of ways in which we exist within this world
now in
In this respect to see highly this approach is a little different from some of the anti
Cartesian rebels in
British philosophy, let's say more Vic and Stan who start with very definite problems of knowledge and perception how do we know the external world?
now
What I would like to say is that you see that in in this respect when you propose an epistemological
Question you are already in the world to propose it
Your ticket of admission to the ordinary world is not contingent upon your solving that puzzle
When you say epistemological do you mean anything to do with the cereal aisle?
I can't believe the reception and so yes, so that knowledge is is simply one other mode of our being in the world
And the various modes in which we are in the world. I mean some of them are a
Much more urgent and less theoretical knowledge. We're in the world in various fashions. We're
anxiety-ridden sometimes worse
Essentialism imply that the existentialist philosophers see existence as a problem
It's a problem since we have to cope with it, but it's it's the given in any case
I mean it's not inferred
but the the problem is then to
Characterize it descriptively. I think it's quite important to to emphasize that both Heidegger
Then his his aim is descriptive. He is not a speculative meta physician. He's not he's not erecting any abstract
speculative
theory about
what ultimate reality is if his if his ideas stand or for they stand a fall in terms of whether they're
Adequately then they adequately describe you see our actual interfere
What would you agree with this formulation that throughout the history of Western philosophy?
The central problem really of our whole philosophical tradition has been the problem of knowledge. What is it to know?
What do we know how do we know that we know how can we be sure etc that is the the key?
problem all the way through
but
Heidegger isn't concerned with that problem centrally he's concerned with the problem of what it is to be
Right what it is to exist how is it that anything exists at all what is this existence that we find ourselves in and?
That's a quite different kind of problem isn't it which is there fascinate some people?
But I think it's hard for other people to get hold off because it's unusual in my say
There's a you know a tradition
but I'd like to point out that the
the pre-empting of the central
Role in philosophy the problem of knowledge is really something which is characterized philosophy more or less since Descartes
I mean it was discussed by earlier philosophers, but it didn't have quite that
That absolutely central place that it had after they caught so in some sense
It's a returner Heidegger thinks of himself in some senses
a follower of the Greeks
You say that what Heidegger is trying to do is to give a description of the reality in which we find ourselves to do the
Description of being of existence of what there is human existence human existence, but I mean a layman might ask well
What's the point of this I mean we have this existence here. We are we are living it
It's it's it's in a sense all we have what is the point of describing?
That which we are already having all that with which we already uh turley familiar
What could can a description of this give us that we haven't already got?
Well, it's the familiar. That usually eludes us in life. I mean what before I knows is what we see last
It's true that the features of human existence, which he describes up in
Many ways commonplace when you get through with his analysis?
but you haven't seen them quite in this way before and
I I think it's the case that people don't see what's before them
they look past that or look through it and in one way or another and
Adequate description of of experience with in some sense enlighten our eyes to what what there is
and
Which is not a easy easy to see in all cases?
But uh does this mean that that there is throughout Heidegger an emphasis only Everyday on the ordinary beginning
familiar
Yes, and it's for many things, but there's also an emphasis on the extraordinary the unusual
You see if I compare hiding in this respect with another philosopher of the everyday use in general sense. Let's say the later victims died
the
The comparison is rather interesting in one respect because Vic and Stein envisages the task of philosophy to be
Unraveling the snores of our ordinary language so that then we can continue functioning on the same plane
Let's say that sort of level plane of fishin
communication within the world
now and in this sense we almost envisage with Vic and sound possibility if we
Unraveled or with snails and language philosophy would disappear so are the problems or questions, which set us into philosophy would disappear
But now you see in heidegger's case
We move along that plane of ordinary reality and there suddenly or extraordinary gaps
Kinds of experiences which are very?
Well now I think we are getting Heidegger in our sight so yeah
But I think people watching this discussion will be beginning to ask themselves well. Yes, but what does he actually say?
What does he talk about what are his doctrines now?
What are some of the central themes with which he is concerned and let's start going into what he has to say
Well for example
the one characteristic of human existence in them we've talked a little bit about you and I
this notion of what he calls the
thoroughness of human existence
The word in German looks very imposing give orphan height literally throwing us, but it's a simple notion
we're thrown into the world and
This is a case of where what is most ordinary man, how?
It is nevertheless a quite extraordinary fact about our individual human destiny
What do we simply find ourselves?
Yeah, without as it were a by-your-leave or anybody does we didn't pick our parents
We are born of those parents. We are born at this particular time
We are born with whatever genetic structures given to us
And this is the load we take upon us in order to fashion a life in this sense
We are thrown or projected into a world so that human life starts at birth
Very beginning is a cast of the dice
Its contingency is rooted in the very fact of
the
inescapable facts of your individual birth and parentage
Your individual time in history we're born in the 20th century and not in some other and what is right
I don't have to say about that
Well we begin our existence as a task in the sense is something we take upon ourselves
because you see existence is not a neutral fact when you
Concern with human existence existence is ongoing it has to be
We are always involved thus in the task of as a were creating ourselves
Always from this contingent moving back into an open future right all the time the future is the predominant tense and hide again
He sees what he sees man is essentially a so to speak an ongoing right creature
Yes, and as a matter of fact is is a count of we
Construct the notion of clock time we make watches and other chronometer
Because we're planning to use that time, so we're projecting ourselves into the future and on that basis
We can calculate time so then again with the the dimension of time
That is is most compelling for him as the future
In the sense that the present has meaning only insofar as it opens toward a possible future
He was saying just now that Heidegger in his attempts to give an illuminating description of our
Actual everyday experience of life is aware. You said of the sudden holes in it yes
What will you think I mean were you thinking of death? Yeah this would be one case
Yeah, what would the others well now in death anxiety?
He gives an analysis of conscience, but if we stop for a moment them and death I think that's because you asked me
How does this description give us something which we don't already know
It's very interesting that the description of death it gives us is something which rather turns over
Our usual notions because our usual notions
Try very much to escape from the fact of death now. This is something very
peculiar about deaths
We usually think of death is a fact in the world we read about people dying
We read obituaries, and so um it happens to other people
To be sure it'll happen to me, but not yet, so it's something out there in the world as yet external to me
But the curious thing is if I start to think of it as my death
Now my death is will never be a fact in the world for me. I will never read my obituary
Which is I think very significant little fact, so it can never be a public event in the world for me
Well as Vidkun stein says
Death is not an experience right in life. That's because we don't live to experience death
It's not live yeah, and therefore not an experience we have yes. It is. It's not in lesson. My death is as
An assent has essentially mine is
something which
Cannot be invented an event in the world for me, but it's a compelling possibility for me now
I mean the meaning of death is that it is
a present possibility I may not be at anytime that the meaning of death is that it's the
Possibility of not being or as he puts it. It's the possibility which cancels all my possibilities
Now in this sense is the most extreme of possibilities, but his point is once you realize that this particular
Possibility inhabits your existence. It's sort of the Walker dwarf of it in some way
that then you can either collapse and
Scurry away from it and fear
Or you can face up to it
And then you ask yourself the question there is that possibility in the face of that possibility what meaning does my life have
Yeah, I think for hiding yeah
He would agree with Tolstoy that the fundamental or at least
At this stage of how to just think you would agree with Tolstoy that the fundamental question that philosopher as well as every man
Has to put is this?
Since there is death what meaning does my life have
And I'm and that I think is is where suddenly if you think of it death is this interior
possibility it takes on a new dimension from what and Oertel ordinarily carries you see when we
refer to someone so died and and so I
Must say again. This is something that I find deeply congenial although. I was trained in philosophy and in an entirely different tradition from this
Watch everything you're saying makes very much sense to me
I have
I'm very strongly this feeling and I suppose large numbers of people must have it that our everyday life is at one in the same
time sort of banal
over familiar and
Platitudinous and yet at the same time
mysterious and extraordinary
I have that double feeling about life
And I certainly have very strongly the feeling that in the face of death one wants to see some meaning in my existence now
Having reached this point does
Heidegger call in aid a
traditional
Religious explanation of existence so what does he do no he has no no and said all he's pointing out is
The structure of human existence or the framework within which one has to pose these questions he's showing them. This is a
Dimension of human existence which has to be faced what answer you give to the question what meaning do I have?
Will depend upon the particular individual. I mean Heidegger has no ethics in the sense one feature of human life
Which he does draw a great deal of attention to in addition to this what you called give often highly effect
But we are flung into it and find ourselves in the middle of it is the fine it to dove it
Isn't it? I mean not only do we just kind of wake up in the world and find ourselves here, but the whole situation
Lasts a very short time. I mean we've scarcely got used to finding ourselves here, then it all stops again
And the fact that it all stops again is for most human beings as you were just saying very frightening and very alarming
What how does he recommend that we
Proceed from there no recipes the point is he points out that whatever
whatever decision you take
To give your life meaning or to encounter death it is the human condition that must be faced in one form or another
And I've said I mean he doesn't say this, but there's suggesting Tolstoy and others perhaps all philosophy
is a response to this question of death
There's Socrates remark that all philosophy is a meditation on death which we might interpret
liberally in this fashion that man wouldn't
Philosophize if he didn't have it to have to face the fact of death - if we all had him living
Eternally in the Garden of Eden. We just saunter along and death
Ruminate about this or that but not any serious philosophical issue. One thing that Heidegger and the existentialists face
Which I think previous philosophers didn't face is the fact that our
knowledge of death
Induces anxiety it's terrifying. We are frightened right when we try to look in the eye the fact that we are gonna die and so
Anxiety in the face of our own finitude or mortality becomes one of the central themes of existentialist philosophy - yes
and I think it's important to see that this place is a
What I consider a fundamentally a sound and healthy
Assessment and the fact of of
anxiety anxiety is sort of
led a checkered career in modern culture I
Mean it became fashionable of a few decades ago remember when or denote his book the age of anxiety
Well it seemed to be the thing that was fashionable it was the in thing people went around
Cultivating their anxieties and so on which is rather silly because if we've followed our previous
Description of deaths we realize that anxiety is there anyway as my fact anxiety is is simply our human existence
in its contingency
Coming to the level of consciousness it is the sheer contingency of human existence sort of vibrating there through it
On the other hand you see the other modern attitude
which is partly the result of our being technical society, which commands certain instruments we have a
Command of drugs or remedies of various kinds we imagine that there should be some instrument or means by which we can simply
Press a button and get rid of our anxieties that they're not something which
Which have to be faced and live through and I think either extreme is rather
Unfortunately it is simply a part of the condition of being human and in the certain sense at one point
Heidegger says well there are all sorts of modes of anxiety and
Then in some forms it has the kind of peacefulness of a creative yearning if we weren't anxious we would never create anything
But man's men's
Attempt to evade to said speak run away from his own anxiety to evade the reality of his own mortality
Leads doesn't it to the next
Existentialist the namely alienation that we we avert our eyes from the from the stark reality of our own
Existence and in a sense cease to participate in the realities of our own existence now. This is something that
Existentialist philosophers had a great deal say about too and another term like act like the term
Anxiety which has become much misused by sort of fashionable and trendy writers, would you agree with that?
Yes as a matter of fact alienation is unfortunate well in terms
that's been tossed around so that if the word is used people will say oh that boring subject you see because
But it does happen. That'll s to be one of the deepest things in modern culture and and preoccupied
Hegel Marx, and I think has been their main item and contemporary literature
literature of the 20th century, I think is a point you say perfectly valid they the mere fact that we have
Civilization which has a great?
Deal of means of information and its disposal so people know what do you know what's out?
What's going?
so the word alienation is tossed around and
The mere fact that we make it into an empty banality in a sense promotes origination
It's one cause I mean one way of escaping anxiety is not to take it seriously. I make it frivolous or trendy or yes
it's so what but
but
See animation occurs for height against several levels one that one is this level which we may lose ourself in the impersonal
social self a man buries himself in his persona is social role and so I
know like Sasha took that from them and
develop them
The world is too much
Ladies get in spending with a waste our powers
It's a trap, but you see animation is really quite a real problem in this sense
I I must say I I have a feeling of
very acutely for the moment, I'm
Putting this slightly humorously, but I think you will understand this here, I descended from the skies into
London I haven't quite found myself, and it seems rather strange
the alienation feels slightly detached
And I said walk the streets these are strange people in certain ways
Yeah, a couple of more days, and I probably feel at home
Yeah, fundamentally the word alienation of course means something you all feel like that strange cities
Yeah, some people feel like that in the world
they inhabit their own skins as
Strangers
Now I want to move on we've been talking so far about the basic themes of being and time
And I think it will strike people listening to this discussion straight away that this is a book which deals with very
fundamental themes which to exercise
People at a very deep level and even if there are no answers
I think the fact that it illuminates the questions
Which it certainly does at least it certainly has for me is of it in itself something of enormous value
But like so many other philosophers having worked out a big philosophy
Young he then moved on and in some sense away doesn't he from his early concerns for example being on time is the first
Its presented as being the first volume of what is to be a two-volume work
But the second volume never came out so all we ever have is this first half of a book
Why didn't he finish that initial? Why did he then going to do?
unexpected unforeseen things
This is a subjective both
discussion and speculation it turns out from recent information
I've had just a month or so ago in United States that Heidegger has left the manuscript of the second part
Which he?
Does exist and it will be published? I don't know it'll be published as a kind of
Knock Lhasa as to something. He's left behind, but I don't think it was publishable I
Myself tend to think that I know what he was going to say and that he said it in this book on
Canton and fewer seasons, but then there cuz this thing which is the high daguerreian sky was called the care of a turd
He felt in some sense that in being in time
He had riveted his attention to exclusively a man and that
this this philosophy was a
powerful form of humanism, but there was no there was no systematic grasp of
What the human being is rooted in and though of course the world of nature?
Yes material the cosmos the common sense yes, you see in the sense Heidegger. I would say is a fellow of
Parmenides you see the
The this Greeks age who had this electrifying idea you see the all is one
for the first time in human history the notion of the the
Totality of being as one thing you see which to which we have to relate ourselves and our thinking
And I hide it was written bearpaw minutes, but now in in this sense
He feels that precisely what has happened with modern cultures
We've lost those cosmic roots in the way that we've been
Detached from this sense of a connection with the whole or the well
Why should this have happened specifically in modern culture isn't it part of the human condition as such
In it is part in the sense that man is a being who flies away from truth
Even as he pursues it
But I think one of the reasons it happens specifically modern colleges of course what we we build up a much more in
Technical society were more encased in the Shia human framework of things than people
Worry because we live in a much more complex complicated. We live in my acting this nightmare to borrow
But we live more and more in a
Man created environment if we consider it all down the line from my air conditioning to everything else and our urban
complexes
I mean I can't help but think coming to London that the London is a very different city from Shakespeare's London
Which existed that much closer to the countryside about ya know very sure they walk out. Yeah well
What are the main themes then of the later Heidegger as distinct from the earlier?
Yes, well you see the later how to get is is
not systematic or not even systematic in in the way in which
He attempts to be in being in time the later
heilige is primarily all not primarily, but very centrally concerned with the problem of poetry and art and
In some sense you see and and the problem of technology
Heidegger feels that were felt since he's dead now the
One of the tasks of philosophers in in this period is to try to think through what?
technology involves they felt
I think modern thinking is either too superficial to in inauthentic with regard to the subject of technology
You know in one hand you find people very flippant attitude there against machines
Or they for technology makes no sense
He said for man at this particular juncture of history too before against technology we obviously committed to technology
I mean if you removed it the whole thing would collapse
We are that's that's part of the stake of our existence is part of our gamble
On the other hand you see there is a point which I think the atomic bomb has
brought
forth for human consciousness generally that technology has drastic possibilities is
Hidden to people in protest against his local nuisances or causing unemployment
Sabotage and so on but the notion that suddenly
Mankind could self-destruct
Suddenly showed us the the fearful possibilities within the the technical complex
And now he hi to get was concerned with the thinking through
We're in the historical destiny of man the the roots of his technical being lie lies and where
It may possibly be carrying him
But how does how does his concern with poetry relate to his concern with technology unless he sees these two opposites
They are rising
because
The thing well as you well know from other branches of contemporary philosophy, there's a certain disposition
I'm part of some philosophers when they're examining language to treat it as a calculus
It's an instrument which can be manipulated and controlled. It's a form of calculus and so on
and in this sense this represents an extension of
Technical thinking you see even to the domain of language now the thing about a poem in Heidegger's view is that it lose
The demands of our will we cannot the poet cannot will to write a poem he cannot will and it comes and
actually
We as as readers can't we'll our response we have to submit to it and be passive do it you see a law and what?
Heidegger connects the
the
technological
The center of this civilization is with it's a Faustian wheel which becomes eventually the
Man's determination by master made right which is the basis of our whole modern culture modern technology modern science and so on
Which is in rebellion against?
And and if I if I I think we'll he quotation here would be Francis Bacon we must learn the overall ways
I'm really a prophet of the new size and this I
Always think I'm bacon in this respect is being a publicity man for the new science
But a publicity plan of genius. This is we must put nature to the rack to compel it to answer our questions
Which is a very?
dramatic way of
of endorsing the experimental method
But now you stop to think you know even if we put poor nature to the rack Port Orchard nature
We have to listen to responses we have in some sense to give ourselves that we receptive
There's a point at which our twisting you say has to submit to
To whatever is there to be this really does though our gender basic break with the tradition doesn't it because even as it were
Revolutionary philosophies within the tradition like Marxism for example take it for granted that the conquest of nature is
man's business
It's what human life is all about and what social line is all about I must say that speaking
Just purely personally for government that in
all the
Preparation that this television series has involved me in the preparation
I've done for this discussion and this program has taught me most because I found in Heidegger who I knew very little about
Before all kinds of illuminating insights in these very fundamental themes
We've been discussing and that being so this is leading me to the point. I want to put to you I
Can't help wondering why it is that other?
philosophers including very able and prestigious ones like AJ Aeron Karl Popper or
Rudolf Carnap all sorts of people pour scorn on
Heidegger and the kind of philosophy that he's trying to do they dismiss it they've dismissed it from their published writings as nonsense rubbish garbage
It's all a lot of rhetoric. It's all a lot of worms. It seems to me
You've only got to read the stuff for five minutes. See that it isn't just all a lot of words now
Why has it been so derisively dismissed by so many such able people?
Well I don't want to make an invidious remark about a philosophy in the state of flux, but there is a certain kind of
Professional deformation the man has a certain vision then he carries with this sort of blinders to somebody else's
Vision, and I think one of the things is that hidings
vocabulary
You see is
Initially rather
jarring
and
but if I think if you read him in German he writes a fairly straightforward German and
it was certainly if you compare that him as
His German prose with that
Let's say of a hand go this it seems to me how to give lucidity itself
But I I think what we do find in philosophy is that?
the same prejudice for certain chosen
vocabularies now you mentioned con if I was a student of Carnap for severally as you say I'm I didn't I
Got interested partly in how I could find out what the fuss was
Could it be as bad as they say what you came to hide ago through car naps attack somehow
And when you read Heidegger you discovered
Tell professor bad I in when I was introducing this program
I promised our viewers that we would say something about Sartre and I think that before we come to an end
I I really do want to
Ask you if you if we can move on to him just for a moment um
Although Sartre has become as it were the most famous
Existentialist his is the name that most people associate with existentialism he's not as original thinker as Heidi
There is he but nevertheless he has made a contribution. What would you?
Characterize as being such as main contribution
well of there a
number of ways which
Characterize that but I'd like to contrast them first. That's that mind that's point the direction which is
his
Contribution is Kevin
This is Santa's
Big book is mainly a philosophical work, and I'd personally think by the way some of his
Novels and plays are more important, but than any of his philosophical writing, but I think he's still a philosopher of considerable brilliance
But his major work is called Being and Nothingness
It's a gigantic misnomer
It's not about being and it's not about nothingness
As softer doesn't have much of a feeling for being whatever whatever one may object to in the hiding that one
Has to acknowledge the man is really saturated with the sense of being in some sense what sort this book is a rat is
Is really the kind of melodrama of to?
Cartesian
Consciousnesses and naturally they are Cartesian because he's French every Frenchman is a Cartesian. I think when he said he's pushed far enough
And these these two consciousness never understand each other that is there are two subjective mystic Minds
Who misinterpret each other I as subject?
Impose upon you and convert you into an object and so on and you reciprocate and so this
fiendish dialogue of misrepresentation goes on a misunderstanding and so forth in the end it becomes impossible for
us to
Communicate sin sincerely this big book of Sartre is really a book under this problem of sincerity
Which is the staple I think of French literature from?
Montag right through Moliere and Proust and so
Now the but to come to do you say soccers and then most famously positive doctrine is its notion of
Liberty and it's the doctrine which actually I think caught on most in public guard that as
As human beings we have an absolute and total freedom nothing prevents us at the second moment from
from doing
Is I'm very precipitous I am an interesting
I am in the literal sense free now to take all my clothes off and
Jump out of the window I can actually do these things and one thing Sartre keep stressing is that by pretending that I am not
Free to do them, I'm falsifying the reality of my own situation yes
so I stand on a precipice at any moment and I can hurl myself often and in this sense the
characteristic of this total freedom is that it's
It's very genus or dizzying and he carries through this metaphor of standing on a cliff and having this
Dizzy sense of being able to cash this out know if revenge isn't he right to?
Dramatize in this way the fact that the realities of choice
Which we have in earth and the realities of freedom that we have in life are in fact much greater than we ourselves
wish to face for most of the time
Except now here's where you see I think I think it has an insight which is beyond
Him in this respect because the individual hurls himself into this precipitous choice
May in tearing off in that sudden direction
Be remained utterly as blind as when he started you see
Then is a rather curious endure hiding his view of a freedom is a very quiet
and subtle and soft
our fundamental freedom is and freedom if we can manage it to become open to let truth happen and
Most of us in our lives so shut off and our personal lives in one way or another doesn't matter which from
Truth in our dealings with other people we have
Resistances which can't be breached?
One, but sometimes there is a fissure and this wall that shuts us off and we are able to let be we no longer seek
to compel
You see the whole of height the later high to get is really a
Prolonged attack and the will to power as
characterizing Western civilization this this urge we have to dominate Russia and the dominate time and even the
Dominate our own personal lives or dominate other people the view being that you only really?
understand reality when in some sense you submit yourself to write
Something up professor Barrett taking Heidegger and such and indeed the whole existentialist tradition together
If you were asked to say well now what?
Contribution has this made to human thought in our time. What would you stress?
What have we got from it all
Our stress an academic point first and then the more important human ployed fellows. I think and
From the point of view of the history of thought or the history of philosophy
Existentialism has brought forward a kind of
Revaluation of 19th century so for one thing it has exhumed Kierkegaard. It was virtually unknown and famous speaking
Countries, it's established him as a as a major thing. I don't know whether you'd call him a philosopher, but I
think of
considerable proportions and power in the 91 of the major thing is a bit of the
Century as a matter fact Vic instead of kid guard. He thought he was the greatest rat of the 19th century. It's rather interesting
kick Vic and Stein who discovered kick got quite early before existentialism
To the end of the World War one, but then
the second point I think that's made aware of
Many people where of like that
Modern society tends to be personalized to a certain extent that we it gets larger and larger more intricately
Organized and so on and that the problem of the person the individual as a unique
Being who cannot be completely assimilated into any framework whether it's
Bureaucratic or conceptual a systemic something of him is left out. I think this is this kind of emphasis is what?
Thank you very much professor Barrett
