Phenomenology, Existentialism and Hermeneutics

v    16/3/2012

F    Course Outline

F    Phenomenology (Science of Essences)

1.                  Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology

2.                  Two stages of Husserl’s phenomenology

3.                  Husserl’s influence on Martin Heidegger and Jean Paul Sartre

4.                  Intentionality of consciousness

F    Existentialism (Philosophy of Existence)

1.                  Introduction to Existentialism

2.                  Kierkegaard

3.                   Nietzsche

4.                   Albert Camus

5.                  Jean Paul Sartre

6.                  Martin Heidegger

7.                  Martin Bauber

8.                  Karl Jasper

F    Hermeneutics (Science of Interpretation)

1.                  Introduction to Hermeneutics

2.                  Forebears of Hermeneutics: -

3.                  Harns Gadamer on language and tradition

4.                  Jugging  Herbamas on the notion of constitutive interest and praxis

5.                  Application of hermeneutics to traditional cultures

F    Assignments, Reviews papers, Term papers

F    Recommended books: Stumpf, Omoregbe J. Husserl, A guide for the perplexed.

·                     Assignment: Review the book:  Reconciling the self with the other: An existentialist perspective on the management of ethnic conflict in Africa.

·                     Pages – 5-8

·                     Submission – 29/3/2012

F    Phenomenology

In the history of philosophy, the word phenomenology is said to have been used for the first time by Johann Heinrich Lambert in his work Neues Organon in 1764.  The word also occurred in the works of Kant and Hegel. Kant talks about noumena and phenomena – noumena is the thing-in-itself, while phenomena refer to things as they appear to us. However, none of these philosophers used it to denote a method of thought. It was Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) who eventually developed and applied the phenomenological method of philosophy.

We should recall that one of the major role of existentialism is “back to the things themselves”, the word “things”, in this context, refers to the given. Therefore, the phenomenological method consists essentially in an intellectual observation of the given object. In other words, the method is based on intuition and this intuition refers to the given. To observe the given, a three-fold reduction is required:

1.                  One must adopt a purely objective standpoint focusing attention single-mindedly on the object

2.                  All theoretical knowledge derived from other sources must be avoided so that only the given object would be admitted

3.                  Tradition has to be down-played in terms of what others have thought about the object.

This is basically why the phenomenological method is said to be a presuppositionless method because it allows the bare facts of one’s primary experience to speak for themselves. In this light, attention is concentrated mainly on what the given object called phenomenon is, that is, on the “whatness” of the phenomenon. The aim is that it is only the essence of the object that has to be analysed. We can then deduce from the foregoing that the phenomenological method seeks to give a purely neutral description of one’s awareness of the world before one ever begins to think about it reflectively. In other words, phenomenology attempts to be a descriptive and objective analysis about one’s experience of the world.

v    22/3/2012

F    Husserl’s phenomenology

1.                  General description of phenomenology – science of essences involving detachment of self from object of knowledge.

2.                  Edmund Husserl – 1889 – 1938: General description mainly from Rene Descartes, and Frantz Brentano – a descriptive psychology (Descartes: Cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am Husserl: Cogito ergo cogitatum; I think I think, therefore I think something)

3.                  Movement of Husserl from Math to philosophy – to make philosophy a rigorous science

4.                  Philosophy and the crisis of European man

5.                  The naturalised attitude

ü    Phenomenological attitude

ü    Eidetic reduction/ transcendental reductioning.

6.                  Consciousness as an intentional act

7.                  Problems with Husserl’s two stages of phenomenology

ü    Descriptive and transcendental stages

F    Issues arising

1.                  Is it possible to have pure/ biased-free knowledge?

2.                  Is it possible to bracket our natural attitude and even the self in knowledge?

3.                  Can we get to the essence of things?

v    29/3/2012

F    Mind as Intentional? Facts of Consciousness as Intentional

In the German speaking countries, neo-realism stem largely from the empirical psychologist Franz Brentano – 1838 – 1917, who exerted a strong influence on Alexis Meinong – 1853 – 1921, Edmund Husserl – 1889 – 1939, and Nicolai Hartman 1882 – 1950. Brentano’s theory of the mind was developed under Aristotelian, scholastic and Cartesian influences and it centred on the scholastic concept of intentionality. According to this view, the mind is differentiated from physical reality by its ability to intend or refer to something beyond itself.

The strength and vitality of experience goes into any tentacle which simply must attach itself to an object of some sort, real or imaginary. The awareness of being aware of an object, reflection and self-consciousness are pale and secondly in comparison with the primary consciousness of things. According to Brentano, we can define psychical phenomenon by saying that they are phenomena which intentionally contain an object in themselves. Going back to Meinong, his philosophy is referred to as theory of objects.

According to him, the independent objects upon which the ‘of-ness’ of consciousness lays hold are by no means limited to physical existence. They include things like Platonic ideas, things such as mathematical entities, essences like blueness or goodness, logical propositions and self-contradictions like Round Square. In other words, everything that can be thought about or mentioned is equally independent of being thought or talked about. To distinguish abstract, logical objects, from concrete physical objects, Meinong uses the term “Subsist”. According to him, concrete things exist and logical essences subsist. Logical absurdities are neither existence nor subsistent. Nevertheless, they are in a sense there and have being.

It should be noted that none of these subjects would destroyed if consciousness were destroyed. In other words, physical things would still be there, essences would remain intact, some propositions would still be true and others would be absurd ready and waiting for a newly born consciousness to come along and perceive them, and conceive them and recgonise their valid or self-contradictory character.

The relation of objects to minds is in a way equivocal. This is because the object is both in the mind and outside it. Whatever the nature of the object may be, whether it is a round square which can neither exist nor subsist in itself or a proposition that subsist or a physical fact that exist or a future or past event, it is present and existent in the mind of which at the time it is the object. In other words, it is part of the content of that mind’s consciousness. However, it owes neither its subsistent nor existent to being in the consciousness in question. Still even its independent being can never be out of the reach of the mind. Even when it is unperceived, it must be perceivable and when it is not entertained, it must be entertainable. An entity that was essentially such that it can never become an object of sense or thought or reference would be none-existent and none-subsistent. In fact, it would be worse of square circle since it will have no self contradiction. Therefore, objective reality must be congruent with the mind and before it is an object of possible entertainment, even when it is not in it.

v    19/4/2012

F    Existentialism

The concern of existentialism is existence. It is not the only subject concerned with existence but it is concerned with existence in a unique way. Existentialism tries to put the human person at the centre. It lays emphasis on the subjectivity of the human person. Existentialism believes that truth and reality is personal. Existentialism following Frederick Nietzsche opines that man should uphold his own values and do away with other people’s values. From this perspective, existentialism deals with individuals, that is, the subjectivity of the individual person.

F    Features of existentialism

F    Soren Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard is a Danish philosopher. His philosophical enquires centered on the individuality of the human person. He believes that the crowd is a faceless entity and untruth. For him, the individual must be an active and not passive participant in life – the individual person takes the center stage in life. It is only in this way that life could be meaningful. According to him, there are three stages in life, namely, the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage and the religious stage.

1.                  The aesthetic stage: at this stage, the individual lives a life of pleasure. Here the individual no matter how much he enjoys himself still faces unsatisfaction in life. In other words, at a particular stage in life, we occupy ourselves with pleasures of all sorts. At another point in life also, we get bored or dissatisfied with these pleasure. As a consequence, we need to move or transcend to the nest level or stage in life which is the ethical stage.

2.                  Ethical stage: At this stage, the individual tries to determine the good and the bad. He tries to distinguish between right and wrong actions in his or her life. To be a moral person however, is not an easy thing. And so at this stage too, there is discontentment. Moving from this stage therefore, one embraces the religious stage.

3.                  The religious stage: At this stage, one embraces the transcendental realm, which is religious in nature. According to Kierkegaard however, even at this stage, man is still not fully satisfied.

F    Frederick Nietzsche

Frederick Nietzsche is a German philosopher. The outline of his philosophy includes:

1.                  Cultural history of mankind

2.                  Master-slave morality

3.                  Antipathy towards Christian religion – the Death of God

4.                  The will to power

5.                  The superman projection

6.                  Nihilism

7.                  Transvaluation of values

In all, the individual is glorified and not God. He also emphasises the centrality of the individual and not that of the crowd

F    Albert Camus

Albert Camus is an Algerian born philosopher who moved to France and as such claimed French nationalism. He emphasises on the fact that struggle and trouble for man is a continuous reality. He portrays this fact using the “Myth of Cisipus.” Cisipus was a man punished for some inconsistencies he committed and his punishment was to roll a stone upward a mountain. During the exercise of this punishment, at the point when he managed to roll up the stone up the mountain, the stone rolls back to the beginning and as such the man has to start all over again.

The lesson is that problems will always be there and that life is a perpetual struggle. Consequently man should expect the worst and as such adjust to the worst situations in life. His philosophy is therefore a philosophy of optimism, a philosophy that calls man to action.

F    Jean-Paul Sartre.

Jean Paul Sartre is a French philosopher. He died in 1980 having lived for 95 years. Central to his thought is the concept of freedom of the individual to choose and subjectivity of the individual. He distinguished between being –in – itself and being for itself. According to him, existentialism is humanism. He also talks about the distinction between bad faith and good faith. Bad faith has to do with when a person pretends to be what he is not. Prominent among his works is “Being and Nothingness.”

Note: What are the implications of Sartre’s notion of freedom?

F    Term Paper – 6 to 10 pages: Submission, 10/5/2012

1.                  State the features that make Gabriel Marcel, Martin Buber and Karl Jaspers existentialist philosophers.

2.                  Examine the meeting-point between atheistic and theistic existentialist philosophers.

v    26/4/2012

F    Existentialism

ü    Martin Heidegger – Desin (Being there) authenticity

ü    Martin Buber – I and Thou; I and It (God the Eternal Thou)

ü    Karl Jasper – Philosophy of existentialism: Studies Being not as a scientific object. Various sciences cannot capture the being of man. The transcendent term like Kierkegaard’s faith

ü    What does it mean to exist?

F    Martin Heidegger

Heidegger’s main work is “Being and Time.” He believes that we are all thrown into the world without our choosing to be in the world. Consequently, we meet so many absurdities on the world. We are therefore compelled to make decisions which we must stand by so as to live an authentic lives. For man to make progress in life, he must make decision – authentic and inauthentic being.

F    Martin Buber

Buber is a Jewish existentialist philosopher. He tries to see how the existentialist standpoint can make room for interpersonal relationship. According to him, we need to treat the other as an end in itself and not as an object – I and Thou. In his thought, God is the Eternal Thou.

·                     Background

·                     Why the idea of I and Thou?

·                     Influences (Kant)

F    Karl Jasper – 1883 - 1969

Jasper’s major work is philosophy of existence. His main argument is that there are so many forms of knowing. However, all these forms of knowing cannot unravel Being. They give us partial truth. The only way of knowing reality is by philosophy of existence. According to him, it is difficult to study man scientifically. This is because by nature, man is prone to change. Man is unpredictive. He behaves and acts differently in different situations. For him, philosophy of existence enables us to go beyond the transitory things of this world.

v    3/5/2012

F    Hermeneutics – Concerned with underlying Meaning

ü    F. W. Schleiermacher – scriptures

ü    Paul Ricoeur

ü    Hans Gadamer – language and tradition in interpreting meaning

ü    Jurgen Hadermas – Praxis

ü    Theohilus Okere

F    Historical Background

It has been said that Hermeneutics as a discipline cuts across the arts, social sciences and the sciences. It is the process of deciphering which goes from manifest content and meaning to latent or hidden meaning. Hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation, of bringing forth significance, conveying meaning, restoring symbols to life and eventually letting new symbols emerge. Hermeneutics is the method of overcoming the distance between a knowing subject and an object to be known, especially when the two has been estranged. Hermeneutics is primarily concerned with the elucidation of role for the interpretation of texts. The text in our study can be the symbols in a dream or even the myths and symbols of a given society. Hermeneutics is both an art and a science. It is the art of understanding and interpretation. As the art of interpretation, it is the counterpart of rhetoric which is the art of convincing and persuading in situations where practical questions are brought to decision.

According to the father of general hermeneutics, Schleiermacher, hermeneutics and rhetoric are intimately related in that every act of understanding is the reverse side of an act of speaking. Hermeneutics is considered a science because of its systematic and coherent nature. in this sense, it is a discipline which describes the conditions for understanding in all dialogues. It is in this sense that Schleiermacher talks of a general hermeneutics.

As a science, hermeneutics brings to consciousness in a reflective attitude experiences which we have of language, in the exercise of our communicative competence and thus in the course of social interaction with others through language.

Etymologically, hermeneutics is derived from the Greek verb, hermeneuein, generally translated as “to express”, “to say”, “to explain”, as in explaining a text and to translate. All these meanings are often expressed by the English verb “to interpret.” Thus, in its broadest, most general sense, hermeneutics means interpretation. The noun ‘hermeneis’, points back to the wing-footed messenger god, Hermes. Hermes is associated with the function of announcing, promulgating and interpreting the mind of the gods. In ancient mythology, Hermes is supposed to translate what is originally beyond human understanding into a form that is humanly understandable. The Greeks believe him to be the inventor of language and writing.

Hence, in its various ramifications, hermeneutics suggests the process of bringing a thing or situation or text from unintelligibility to intelligibility. Thus in Greek antiquity, Hermeneutics dealt with the problem of interpretation of the meaning of the ancient mythology and Homeric poems.

Note:  Hermeneutics derives from the Greek word, Hermeneuein. It simply means the interpretations of the underlying meaning. Meaning does not exist independently of the subject who uses it, attributes and responds to it. It does not also exist separately from other meanings. Meaning is always interconnected.

v    10/5/2012

F    Hans Gadamer and the Authority of Tradition

F    Jurgen Habermas on Praxis and depth Hermeneutics

ü    Hans Gadamer in most of his hermeneutic works advocates for a return to the problem of understanding in general. According to him, hermeneutics as a philosophical method should be distinguished from hermeneutics as a feature of human existence. His interest is mainly in hermeneutics as a feature of human existence. For him, hermeneutics is concerned with the breeches of subjectivity, that is, those structures where we encounter meaning; that we cannot grasp, on which we required a considerable effort to understand.

It should be noted that hermeneutical understanding both as philosophical method and in ordinary life has to bridge the gap between the familiar and taken-for-granted world we are all immersed on and the strange and unfamiliar meanings that resists easy assimilation and understanding. Therefore, interpretation not only encourages that which we strive to understand but also that which we already do understand.

Gadamer’s own conception of interpretative understanding is not that of reconstructing the past in the present but that of mediating the past for the present. According to him, all hermeneutics is tradition bound and therefore historical. Hence, knowing a language means knowing how to make oneself understood in it. As a matter of fact, language has a disclosive power. This is in the sense that language is a universal medium of understanding. We should also not that while Gadamer stresses the importance of language and tradition, he also emphasies the importance of prejudice in understanding. Prejudices, according to him, enable us to experience and understand other societies, through their texts, artifacts and so on. In essence, our historical position can never be entirely held at a distance and left out of account. It is the ‘given’, which shapes our experience.

ü     Habermas

Hebamas takes his inspiration from Herbert Marcuse. In analysing Macus’ interpretation of alienated consciousness the critical theory of Hebamas attacked contemporary philosophy for failing to recognise and confront the possibility of alienated consciousness. This is precisely the charge which Habermas lays against Gadamer. In other words, Habermas accused Gadamer that he did not give consideration to the problem of alienated consciousness. In stressing the committee of language and tradition, Gadamer fails to point out that language can be deceiving and distorting as well as disclosing. The tradition which we take over from the past can be ideological in form; thereby masking the oppression and exploitation that determine our being-in-the-world.

Hermeneutics as a philosophy, according to Habermas, cannot ignore this possibility; it must confront it and so becomes critical of the conditions which give rise to the problem of alienated consciousness. What Habermas is bringing into hermeneutic is the theory of praxis and with it, a rejection of abstract reason. According to him, all knowledge is gained in pursuit of cognitive interest. This interest can be hermeneutic, technical or emancipator.

The hermeneutic discipline seek to further understanding of inter-subjective rational beings through the interpretations of the purposes, motives and intentions of actors as these are displayed in action. Furthermore, cognitive interest is concerned with securing of freedom from constraint, especially which imposed by and distorted communication of ideology. In this way, Habermas hopes to give hermeneutics a critical edge by introducing into it the concerns of Hegelian Marxism. It is aimed at a critique of ideology which would uncover the power of relationship embodied in the communicative process and tradition.

According to Habermas, what Gadamer had failed to take cognizance of was Marx’s discovery that forms of communication and tradition both shape and are shaped by the material conditions of life. Gadamer’s philosophy therefore, succumbs to the idealism of linguisticality whereas for Habermas, the framework for understanding social action is that provided by language, labour and domination. In elevating the hermeneutic process to constitute the character of our-being-in-the –world, Gadamer ignored the economic and political factors which limits our horizons.

According to Habermas, Gadamer’s hermeneutics did not go for enough, for it does not penetrate beneath the historically contested traditions to the real determinations of our knowledge and understanding those socio-cultural processes which restricts the ways that our needs and wants are satisfied and the means we have for satisfying them. Although, according to Habermas, human history does not express our subjectivity, it is still constrained by objective character of domination, repression and ideology. Emancipation from domination, repression and ideology can only occur when the spiral interpretative understanding that Gadamer describes is linked to a critical evaluation of the constraints on knowledge and all cognitive processes; that is, when hermeneutics is revitalized by praxis. Such a revitailisation will be known as depth-hermeneutics.