Phenomenology

• The study or description of appearance.
• A priori- knowledge that is independent of experience.
• Things exist independently of human knowledge
• Study of consciousness.
• Leave the empirical world out of the equation.
• Objects and appearance, not observation and experience.

Hermeneutics

• Whereas existentialism and phenomenology focus on description, hermeneutics stresses interpretation.

Husserl

• His phenomenological view describes not things but our consciousness of things.
• “Science of essential structures of consciousness”- what is on our mind when we think of something.

Martin Heidegger

• Influenced by Husserl. He combined his Husserl's idea with that of hermeneutics.
• He changes the focus from study of consciousness to the experience of being there (dasein)
• Heidegger said that being and existence is continually changing.
• He aimed to understand the being and rejected dualism.
• The theory of a priori forms is Heidegger’s theory of existence.
• To understand the essence of existence human beings must deny themselves of any consideration of purpose and realize mortality and frailty.
• For Heidegger, the enlightened authentic people are self-determining, fulfill their ontological nature and experience the world in all its beauty and ugliness, while inauthentic masses who conform to social convention, babble, enjoy superficial things and ont know what is going on.

Qu’est-ce que la literature? (1948,What is Literature?)

The key chapter is “Pourquoi ecrire?” (“Why Write?”)

Intro

v Sartre argues that the experience of freedom is the experience of literature.

v While reading, freedom is demonstrated when a reader foresees, waits, hypothesizes, dreams, hopes, or is deceived by the text.

v Authors need the readers freedom for their work to exist authentically.

v Without giving readers that power of freedom, a work will not be read, and an author will not be an author, because they did not do their job right.

v In, “Why Write,” Sartre values prose more and in doing so, he discounts poetry and overlooks ways in which language determines consciousness (as Heidegger focused on).

MOVIE

v To be conscious is to relate to an item in the world, rather than relate it to an inner representation of it in the head.

v Who you are is what you do, there is no pre-determined character of who you are.

“Why Write?”

v “Each has his reasons: for one, art is a flight; for another a means of conquering. But one can flee into a hermitage, into madness, into death” (1199).

v Why do you write?

v Humans are revealers.

v Through the reality of humans, “‘there is’ being”

v For ex: We are the ones that point out the beauty of a sunset or the beauty of wild animals. We are the “consciousness” that reveals the nature around us.

v “One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.” (1200).

EXAMPLE: A novice painter asked his teacher:

“When should I consider my painting finished?”

And the teacher answered:

“When you can look at it in amazement and say to yourself ‘I’m the one who did that.’”

v “Now the writer cannot read what he writes, whereas the shoemaker can put on the shoes he has just made if they are his sixe, and the architect can live in the house he has built” (1201).

v A writer needs to wait for a reader. (Top of 1201) “Without waiting, without ignorance, there is no objectivity” (1201).

v A writer does not create for himself, he creates for others.

v The joint effort of author and reader is needed to bring about the work of the mind.

v There is a dialectic relationship between the object and subject. (top of 1202)

v Reader’s subjectivity is extremely important to give worth to the literary object.

v Ex: While Raskolnikov is waiting for the crime scene to unravel, so are we as the readers. Each word shapes our feelings. So does this mean the writer writes to make us feel the way he wants us to feel?

v What is the writer appealing to?

v The writer is appealing to the “Reader’s Freedom!”

v The work of art does not have an end. The absolute end is the value. “The work of art is a value because it is an appeal” (1205).

v “The writer should not seek to overwhelm; otherwise he is in contradiction with himself…” (1205).

v In order to make his work exist, the author must address to the freedom of readers…”the more we experience our freedom, the more we recognize that of the otherl the more he demands of us, the more we demand of him” (1206).

v “Writing is a certain way of wanting freedom; once you have begun, you are committed, willy-nilly” (1213).

v Committed to what, he says… (last paragraph in the book)

v The question left unanswered is…

v “For WHOM do we write?”

-"I think against myself."- Sartre

-If human beings are truly free, how are we to live our lives?

-Sartre critiqued accepted values because he wanted to find a philosophical justification for freedom. Does that make sense?

Additional Reading: Nausea by Sartre

Wikipedia:

"Over time, his disgust towards existence forces him into near-insanity, self-hatred; he embodies Sartre's theories of existential angst, and he searches anxiously for meaning in all the things that had filled and fulfilled his life up to that point. But finally he comes to a revelation into the nature of his being. Antoine faces the troublesomely provisional and limited nature of existence itself."

"In his resolution at the end of the book he accepts the indifference of the physical world to man's aspirations. He is able to see that realization not only as a regret but also as an opportunity. People are free to make their own meaning: a freedom that is also a responsibility, because without that commitment there will be no meaning"

*The unfamiliarity and hostility of physical objects

MERCY