#hiedegger

This blog briefly considers the attitudes of contributors discussing the notion of consciousness and our perception of what is ‘real’. The concept of existentialism, in accordance with my HCJ module follows on from Freud’s analysis of the mind – which I find very fitting.

Freud In Sigmund Freud’s ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ (1900), suggested that dreams are not merely neurotic symptoms, but were a coded expansion of repressed sexual desires. This proposition goes against the grain that Freud considered himself a scientist over a philosopher as this ideology possesses a distinct lack of empirical support. In relation to Freud’s Tri-Part theory this would assume dreams are influenced by experiences in early life.

The Golden Age of the city of Vienna embraced many forward-thinking minds such as Freud; and saw the release Freud’s, ‘The Ego and the Id’ (1923). A fundamental proposition within this discourse was the notion, that the greatest part of our mind was the unconscious. Freud constructed a tool which would help define his Tri-part Theory; a component of three segments including, the Id, the Ego and the Super-ego.

The Id is the share of the mind which reacts in accordance with our instinctual impulses of sex and aggression.  The ego - the superficial part of our mind within which we hold, we are able to make conscious decisions whilst being fully aware of them; Freud suggested the Ego was the weakest component of the mind. Then the Super-ego, this develops after birth, and develops with regards to our surroundings and various situations everyday life throws at us.

  Husserl Edmund Husserl studied in Vienna during the Golden Age similarly to Freud. Another common characteristic the pair shared was the fascination surrounding the human mind. Husserl’s initial studies aimed to record a ‘data of consciousness.’ Another common trait Freud and Husserl identify is an empirical nature in relation to their observations of the mind. This ‘Data of consciousness’ was presented in his work - ‘Psychology from an empirical standpoint’ and within this work, differentiated between mental and physical findings. All through Husserl’s studies he preserves a clear division between what is logic, and what’s considered philosophy. Generally speaking, a Platonic type standpoint is employed by Husserl in relation to philosophy. Alike to hundreds of others before him, Husserl took a platonic outlook into consideration when dealing with philosophy. As a measure of Husserl’s differentiation between logic and philosophy, was his new definition which saw a separation between epistemology and philosophy. This came about through the implementation and development phenomenology.

The objective behind Husserl’s phenomenology was to perceive the immediate data of consciousness, without making reference to anything his consciousness could inform him; or in terms of Cartesian dualism, influence or distract him. Husserl’s theory states, ‘It makes no difference to an object presented whether it exists, or is fictitious.’ The example being I can think of a song in my head without hearing it and it still has an effect on me, although I find this problematic as the interpretation will never be as accurate as sensory perception. Similarly as we can envisage an image of an animal, however the detail would not be as specific as it would be, looking at the real thing. Husserl’s proposition of ‘Phenomenological reduction’ outlines the distinction between looking at something, and imagining looking at something whilst being under the impression this something is ‘real’.

Husserl does not affirm in ‘Ideas’, however he postulates that there is a non-phenomenal (neumonal) world, however, these objects should be of no-one’s concerns as they grant us nothing. This proposition reinforces the Platonic thought in Husserl’s thinking, resembling Plato’s ‘realm of the forms’.  Further re-enforcement to the prior argument that only consciousness has ‘absolute being’ - all other forms of being are dependent upon consciousness in order to exist. Ultimately suggesting prior to consciousness, there is nothing; and if there is, we have no opportunity to know it as we would have no consciousness to experience it.

  Heidegger Martin Heidegger’s ‘Sien und Zeit’ or ‘Being and Time’, claims Edmund Husserl’s ‘Phenomenology’ wasn’t quite cutting the cloth as it were. Heidegger stresses that Husserl had adopted Descartes framework of two realms, consciousness and reality as two separate entities, but had only actually addressed consciousness and completely ignored reality. Expanding, Heidegger elaborates to comment on Phenomenology as a whole, saying that its first duty was to observe ‘Being’, this form of ‘being’ pre-dates any notions of consciousness, as inconveniently how can we experience something, if we ourselves don’t exist? Consequently we must predate all previous philosophical thinking and vocabulary that we have come to accept.

It is this notion which eludes to Heidegger’s agenda against philosophical vocabulary. With the use of the word Dasein, now commonly used to mean one’s thing for exemplification in a sentence. ‘This is my jam’, could be classed as someone’s Dasein. But Dasein for Heidegger was more like a sense of being, or more accurately ‘being-in-the-world’. This is just being, just doing, a completely natural, perhaps habitual process; ‘going with the flow’ as it were. It is not a thinking thing, but a caring thing. The large majority of professional footballers for example would suggest when they step onto the pitch, they step into their Dasein. Despite this being their place of work, it’s also where they thrive and feel most comfortable and assured.

Objects that we interact with within this natural state are called ‘ready-to-hand’. For example, in the case of our professional footballer, he uses the ball to express his skill. His skill is the use of the ball and to him it comes naturally to pass/shoot/control/tackle.

From birth we enter into physical, cultural and historical context. Heigegger describes this entrance as being thrown into something; this ‘throwness’ as Heidegger calls it, is the ‘facticity’ of Dasein. The context in which we a ‘thrown’ into allow us to facilitate our Dasein, this is because despite challenging situations, there is always your Dasien which is second nature.

The notion of time is a crucial aspect within Heidegger’s philosophy; life is easily divisible into past, present and future. Heidegger states the past brings about feelings of guilt, the present resembles boredom: although if we are participating in our Dasein, we are not bored but ‘in the zone’. Finally the future brings anxiety. These notions associated with our past, present and future are coined by Heidegger as Attunement, Dasein and Directedness. Heidegger becomes the ‘father’ of existentialism, championing the school of thought after Husserl and Kant.

When I speak of my ambition it is not to be a Doctor of Letters or to marry Friedrich Nietzsche, it turns out, or to think better. It is to give up this fashion for dressing. It is to drop my robe on the communal stairs and open the front door onto the commuter hour, my neighbour, his Labrador, and say nothing of what I know or do not know, except what my body says.

Sea Salt & Pepper Kettled Cooked Chips from Dominicks are delish, tell all your friends, and even your enemies!

Lately I have been thinking about the relationship between humor & tragedy, which is pretty basic binary that undercuts/overcuts (is that a slash or a cut) all fiction that is worth a god damn.  I don't want to limit fiction here to the written word, but also those words that we do hear, those words and stories told by our grandparents, parents, best friends, lovers, haters, and enemies.  Everybody they say has a story, which is true to a certain degree, but that doesn't mean I should have to listen to them, not all stories are worth hearing.  

If not every story is not worth hearing, then this implies that some are, and consequently one wonders how one distinguishes between the good stories and the bad.  Is there some trancendental yardstick that allows us to distinguish among all the shit.  This is similar to Harold Bloom's beef with the internet, he argues that the overabundance of information, fiction, and non-fiction on the internet gives readers too much to chose from, without setting limits for their choice.  He is the kinda prick who tells you want to read, fuck him, he might also be the guy in your english class you tells you how to read, fuck him too.

Maybe finding something interesting is alot like stumbling on it in tumblr, there is some kind of falling involved in tracing the trace of tags, through the debris and stuff on the dashboard.  Sometimes we find awesome, others just non-awesome, what is interesting is that I atleast always find something.

What does this all have to do with tragedy and humor?  Just as I wonder why people are funny or melancholic, I also wonder why people tumbl, what motivations are behind such a move.  When I look at myself, it was mainly to see something that I never gave a damn about, and honestly, not that I have a million followers, mainly which I think is my own fault, and most of the interesting stuff that I write doesn't end up "out there" in amongst the tags and tubes of the interweb, but then again there is always this urge to be seen and heard, which maybe is what tumblr is about, a voice seen and heard "out there" on a network of listeners.

What kind of listener am I?  Is a listener different than a follower?  A listener hears a call, and attends to it, while a follower hears a call, and not only attends, but obeys it, or is lead by it.  So fellow tumby bloggers we follow each other because we are led by each other, we are led by each other, because we hear each other. 

This hearing seems to manifest itself in various ways, most simply in just the everyday perusing of the dashboard, but also when we nay or yay a post by liking it or unliking it, or even when we extend the most thoughtful gesture of reblogging it.

Some might say that reblogging is in-authentic, that to really blog is to tell us something new each and every day that comes from the self.  Just as language is public and not private, neither can a blog be truly authentic, such a blog would be truly un-intelligible, and consequently, we would not be able to hear what is said, and understand what is seen.

and for the purpose of ostensible illustration i'll give a quote without attributing it to its author (i.e. plagiarizing) "good poets borrow, great poets steal" so too it seems with re-blogging, one never steals a post, one places a post in a new context.  If a card carrying nazi reblogs a dilbirt gif it means something different then when a single mother of four does it, this is because our pages themselves provide the totality of references and contexts which allow our posts to be placed into a meaningful whole.  This is why perhaps the first post is the hardest, because it is naked, it has no outside context, it stands alone.

"However, because truth is in essence freedom, historical man can, in letting beings be, also not let beings be the the beings which they are as they are"