TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

HUM - 2
Introduction to Philosophy & Logic

Symposium Research

Modern Philosophy
Philosophers and their Contribution
Philosophers and their Selected Philosophies
Phenomenological View of Man

Submitted by:

GROUP II
BSA-5B

To:

Prof. Marijane Carpio

Modern Philosophy
Modern philosophy refers to the philosophy that originated in Western Europe in
the 17th century and later spread to other parts of the world. Modern philosophy began
in the 17th century and ended in the 20th century. This period was marked with a lot of
philosophical writings and works from some of the greatest men of that era. The main
players in modern philosophy during its earlier years can be grouped in to two namely the
rationalists and the empiricists.

The rationalists were mainly from France and Germany and they argued that all
knowledge must start from certain innate ideas in the mind. The major names in this
school of thought included Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicholas Malebranche and
Gottfried Leibnitz. The Empiricists on the other hand believed that knowledge must start
with sensory experience and the major advocates of this thought included George
Berkeley, David Hume and John Locke. Philosopher Immanuel Kant came out with a
philosophical system which he claimed would unite the two schools of thought and align
their ideas but his effort never paid off as the two ideologies never got successfully
harmonized.

The bulk of philosophy in the early 17th century was dominated by scholasticism
and was basically written by theologians who based most of their work on writings by
great philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Some of the writings were also derived from
early church literature.

Types of Modern Philosophy

Modern philosophy is divided into various types with the major types being political
philosophy and religious philosophy. Modern philosophy can also be categorized
geographically into western and eastern philosophy.

1. Political Philosophy

This refers simply to the study of topics related to politics such as liberty, justice,
rights, law, property etc. It also defines what the above topics are concerned with, why
they are needed, what makes a governance system legitimate, the freedoms and rights
that should b protected by governments, the duties and responsibilities of citizens just to
mention a few. In simple terms, political philosophy is often used to refer to a general or
specific view about aspects related to politics. Some of the greatest political philosophers
include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacks Rousseau, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,
James Mill and Jeremy Bentham.
 2. Religious Philosophy

This refers to philosophy or thinking that is mainly inspired by religion. Each religion
has got its own philosophies for example there is Christian philosophy, Buddhist
philosophy, Hindu philosophy, Islamic and Jewish philosophies. Early religious writings
and literature form the base and source of material for most of the modern religious
philosophy. Religious philosophers basically came out with writings to guide their
followers and to control immorality in society by coming up with sort of a daily guide for
the believers of their various religions. Some of the prominent religious thinkers of that
era include Ireaneaus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine of Hippo just
to mention a few.

3. Western or European Philosophy

It refers to the philosophical work of the western world or Europe in particular. The
term western philosophy was invented to refer to the thinking of the western world starting
from Greek philosophy. Western philosophy covered such topics as mathematics, natural
sciences like biology, physics and astrology. The philosophy also targeted fields like
social life, law and order, governance etc. Western philosophers have been divided into
various categories depending on the topics that they cover like logic, Ethics, physics,
meteorology etc. Some of the greatest western philosophers included Aristotle,. Engels,
Marx etc.

4. Eastern Philosophy

Eastern philosophy covers the philosophical findings and writings of South and
East Asia. It includes Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, Korean philosophy,
Japanese philosophy and at times Persian/ Iranian philosophy. Eastern philosophy was
leaning more to religious sects with most of the philosophers trying to explain their beliefs
and relations between humans and their gods. Unlike Western philosophy which covers
a variety of topics, eastern philosophy concerns itself more with religious issues and was
more interested in explaining the differences between the natural world and the universal
patterns.

There are other small categorizations of philosophy or philosophical thinking and

these include idealism, phenomenology, pragmatism, Analytic philosophy etc. These
schools of thought all have their different beliefs and writings, all of them trying to explain
certain occurrences in the universe and the relationships between man and God, man
and fellow man, man and his surroundings etc. Modern philosophical writings have had
a great impact on our lives today as most of the ideas coming up at the moment are
derived from the period of renaissance.
Philosophers and their Contribution
17th Century Philosophers

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Sir Francis Bacon advocated the use of inductive reasoning (as
opposed to the deductive reasoning used by the rationalists of his day)
and is hence known as the father of empiricism. He was also very
influential in developing the modern scientific method.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is best known for his

political thought, and deservedly so. Hobbes is the Founding Father of
Modern Political Philosophy. His vision of the world is strikingly original
and still relevant to contemporary politics. His main concern is the
problem of social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and
avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict. He poses stark alternatives: we should give our
obedience to an unaccountable sovereign (a person or group empowered to decide every
social and political issue). He believed that humans are naturally anarchic and need a
sovereign to rule over. Otherwise what awaits us is a "state of nature" that closely
resembles civil war – a situation of universal insecurity, where all have reason to fear
violent death and where rewarding human cooperation is all but impossible.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Rene Descartes is often called the Father Of Modern
Philosophy. Together with Spinoza and Leibniz, he is considered one of
the three great continental rationalists. Descartes made many important
contributions to the field of mathematics but is perhaps most famous for
his saying “Cogito ergo sum” (Latin for “I think, therefore I am.“) —meaning that any
thinking being rather promptly asserts and proves its own existence, if only to itself.
Basically, he wanted to know whether or not there was anything in this world that we could
really know for sure. He started by doubting everything, even his own existence. However,
he came to the conclusion that if he was thinking about the question, “Do I exist?” then
he must exist, otherwise there wouldn’t be an “I” to ask the question.
 Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
He made significant contributions in virtually every area of
philosophy, and his writings reveal the influence of such divergent
sources as Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes,
Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of his day. For
this reason he is difficult to categorize, though he is usually counted, along with
Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the three major Rationalists. Spinoza rejected the
mind-body dualism of Descartes and is often considered to have held a more
pantheistic worldview, arguing that all things are ultimately one. He believed in an
impersonal God and took a critical approach to the Bible and this led to his writings being
strongly condemned by religious leaders.
Among philosophers, Spinoza is best known for his Ethics, a monumental work
that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics in which God and
Nature are identified. God is no longer the transcendent creator of the universe who rules
it via providence, but Nature itself, understood as an infinite, necessary, and fully
deterministic system of which humans are a part. Humans find happiness only through a
rational understanding of this system and their place within it. On account of this and the
many other provocative positions he advocates, Spinoza has remained an enormously
controversial figure. For many, he is the harbinger of enlightened modernity who calls us
to live by the guidance of reason. For others, he is the enemy of the traditions that sustain
us and the denier of what is noble within us.

John Locke (1632-1704)

John Locke was among the most famous philosophers and
political theorists of the 17th century. He was the first of three great
British empiricists (the other two being Berkeley and Hume), and he
made foundational contributions to modern theories of limited, liberal
government. He was also influential in the areas of theology, religious toleration, and
educational theory. He is most famous for his idea of the “tabula rasa” (Latin for “blank
slate”). Basically, he felt that we are all born with a mind that is like a blank sheet of paper.
As we go through life, we have experiences (all of which come by way of our five senses)
and that everything we know or think of is a product of these experiences. Known as the
father of liberalism, he also advanced social contract theory but disagreed with Hobbes’
support of the absolute monarchy.
On his treatise “Some Thoughts Concerning Education”, he emphasized that the
knowledge taught during younger years are more influential than those during maturity
because they will be the foundations of the human mind. Due to this process of
associations of ideas, he stressed out that punishments are unhealthy and educators
should teach by examples rather than rules. This theory on education puts him on a clash
with another widely accepted philosophy, backed by another brilliant mind.
 In his most important work, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke
set out to offer an analysis of the human mind and its acquisition of knowledge. He offered
an empiricist theory according to which we acquire ideas through our experience of the
world. The mind is then able to examine, compare, and combine these ideas in numerous
different ways. Knowledge consists of a special kind of relationship between different
ideas. Locke’s emphasis on the philosophical examination of the human mind as a
preliminary to the philosophical investigation of the world and its contents represented a
new approach to philosophy, one which quickly gained a number of converts, especially
in Great Britain. In addition to this broader project, the Essay contains a series of more
focused discussions on important, and widely divergent, philosophical themes. In politics,
Locke is best known as a proponent of limited government. He uses a theory of natural
rights to argue that governments have obligations to their citizens, have only limited
powers over their citizens, and can ultimately be overthrown by citizens under certain
circumstances. He also provided powerful arguments in favor of religious toleration.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)

The last of the three great continental rationalists, Gottfried Leibniz
believed that our world was the best possible world that God could have
created. He is also remembered for his contributions to mathematics. He
developed calculus independent of Newton and played a major role in the development
of the binary number system and mechanical calculator.
Together with several apparently self-evident principles (such as the principle of
sufficient reason, the law of contradiction, and the identity of indiscernible), Leibniz uses
his predicate-in-subject theory of truth to develop a remarkable philosophical system that
provides an intricate and thorough account of reality. According to Leibniz, a conception
of truth has important consequences for a conception of reality and how it is to be
understood at its most profound level. Intuitively, a proposition is true when its content is
adequate to the situation in the world to which it refers. Leibniz claims that a statement is
true for all time—that is, whenever the statement is made.

18th Century Philosophers

George Berkeley (1685-1753)

George Berkeley was an Anglican bishop and stands out because of his
extreme idealism. He believed that our thoughts and sense perceptions
are the only things that really exist. According to Berkeley, the material
world is not really real — “we” are all actually just thoughts existing inside the mind of
God.
 According to Berkeley, the world consists of nothing but minds and ideas. Ordinary
objects are collections of ideas. Already in his discussion of vision, he argued that one
learns to coordinate ideas of sight and touch to judge distance, magnitude, and figure,
properties which are immediately perceived only by touch. The ideas of one sense
become signs of ideas of the other senses. In his philosophical writings, this coordination
of regularly occurring ideas becomes the way the world is known and the way humans
construct real things. If there are only minds and ideas, there is no place for some
scientific constructs. Newtonian absolute space and time disappear. Time becomes
nothing but the succession of ideas in individual minds. Motion is entirely object-relative.
Science becomes nothing more than a system of natural signs. With the banishing of
abstraction, mathematics is reduced to a system of signs in which words or numerals
signify other words or numerals. Space is reduced to sensible extension, and since one
cannot actually divide a piece of extension into an infinite number of sensible parts,
various geometrical paradoxes dissolve. As Berkeley understands them, science and
Christian theology become compatible.

Voltaire (1694-1778)
Voltaire was the pen name for Francois-Marie Arouet, one of the
key figures of the Enlightenment era. His ideas on civil liberties and social
reform helped pave the way for the French and American revolutions. As
a deist, he focused more on understanding nature through the use of
reason as opposed to making appeals to authorities such as the church. Deism is a
movement or system of though advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in
the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe

David Hume (1711-1776)

David Hume’s empiricism was materialist (as opposed to idealist, like
Berkeley’s) in that he mostly focused on what can be directly observed
and experienced in the material world. He believed that every idea in our
mind can be traced to real things that we have experienced. For example,
we might have an idea of an “angel” (without having ever experienced one) but that is
simply a combination of the idea of a “man” and the idea of “wings”. Definitely a skeptic,
he is thought by some to also have been one of the earliest modern atheists. It is often
been pointed out that many of his ideas were similar to those of the Buddha.
Part of Hume’s fame and importance owes to his boldly skeptical approach to a
range of philosophical subjects.
In epistemology, he questioned common notions of personal identity, and argued
that there is no permanent “self” that continues over time. He dismissed standard
accounts of causality and argued that our conceptions of cause-effect relations are
grounded in habits of thinking, rather than in the perception of causal forces in the external
world itself. He defended the skeptical position that human reason is inherently
contradictory, and it is only through naturally-instilled beliefs that we can navigate our way
through common life.
In the philosophy of religion, he argued that it is unreasonable to believe
testimonies of alleged miraculous events, and he hints, accordingly, that we should reject
religions that are founded on miracle testimonies. Against the common belief of the time
that God’s existence could be proven through a design or causal argument, Hume offered
compelling criticisms of standard theistic proofs. He also advanced theories on the origin
of popular religious beliefs, grounding such notions in human psychology rather than in
rational argument or divine revelation. The larger aim of his critique was to disentangle
philosophy from religion and thus allow philosophy to pursue its own ends without rational
over-extension or psychological corruption.
In moral theory, against the common view that God plays an important role in the
creation and reinforcement of moral values, he offered one of the first purely secular moral
theories, which grounded morality in the pleasing and useful consequences that result
from our actions.
He is famous for the position that we cannot derive ought from is, the view that
statements of moral obligation cannot simply be deduced from statements of fact. Some
see Hume as an early proponent of the emotivist metaethical view that moral judgments
principally express our feelings. He also made important contributions to aesthetic theory
with his view that there is a uniform standard of taste within human nature, in political
theory with his critique of social contractarianism, and economic theory with his anti-
mercantilist views. As a philosophical historian, he defended the conservative view that
British governments are best run through a strong monarchy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an important figure in the Romantic
movement and made key contributions to educational and political theory.
He believed in the innate goodness of humans (contra Hobbes) and felt
that it was society that corrupts us.

Adam Smith (1723-1790)

Adam Smith is considered the Father Of Modern Economics. He
believes that the economic is only one component of the human
condition. And while, for Smith, a nation's economic "stage" helps define
its social and political structures, he is also clear that the moral character
of a people is the ultimate measure of their humanity. To investigate Smith's work,
 therefore, is to ask many of the great questions that we all struggle with
today, including those that emphasize the relationship of morality and
economics. Smith asks why individuals should be moral. He offers models
for how people should treat themselves and others. He argues that
scientific method can lead to moral discovery, and he presents a blueprint
for a just society that concerns itself with its least well-off members, not
just those with economic success.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant is often considered to be the Most Important Modern
Philosopher. This is because he built a bridge between rationalism and
empiricism. He believed that all knowledge comes from the senses but
is filtered through our rational minds. Therefore, there is a difference
between how things really are (the thing in itself) and how things are experienced by us
(the thing for me).
He was an advocate of public education and of learning by doing, a process we
call training. As he reasons that these are two vastly different things. He postulated
“Above all things, obedience is an essential feature in the character of a child.” As
opposed to Locke, he surmises that children should always obey and learn the virtue of
duty, because children’s inclination to earn or do something is something unreliable. And
transgressions should always be dealt with punishment, thus enforcing obedience. Also,
he theorized that man, naturally, has a radical evil in their nature. And learning and duty
can erase this.

19th Century Philosophers

G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831)
G.W.F. Hegel was an idealist but not in the extreme like Berkeley.
He is associated with the Hegelian dialectic — a method of dialogue that
involves presenting a thesis, followed by an anti-thesis, and finally a
synthesis. He was very influential both in terms of later thinkers who agreed with him (like
Marx) as well as thinkers who developed new ideas in opposition to him (like
Kierkegaard).

Auguste Comte(1798-1857)
 Auguste Comte is known as the Founder Of Sociology And Positivism, the latter
being the view that the only authentic knowledge is that which we can experience and
verify scientifically.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
John Stuart Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism (“the greatest
happiness to the greatest number of people”) and made important
contributions to liberal political philosophy and the philosophy of science.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Soren Kierkegaard is considered the Father Of Existentialism,
although his was a theistic existentialism as opposed to the more
common atheistic existentialism of Nietzsche and Sartre. Much of his
philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a “single
individual’, giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting
the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who
defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time. His theological work focuses
on Christian Ethics, the institution of the Church, the difference between purely objective
proofs of Christianity, the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, and the
individual’s subjective relationship to the God-Man-Jesus the Christ, which came through
faith. Much of his work deals with Christian love. He believed that individuals were
responsible for their own lives and espoused a passionate, irrational faith based on a leap
in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Henry David Thoreau was a key figure in American
transcendentalism (which focused on an intuitive spirituality over
traditional religious beliefs). He also became known for his beliefs in
Transcendentalism and civil disobedience, and was a dedicated
abolitionist. Thoreau held deeply felt political views, opposing slavery
and the Mexican-American War. He made a strong case for acting on one's individual
conscience and not blindly following laws and government policy.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

He published (with Friedrich Engels) The Communist
Manifesto(1848), the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the
socialist movement. He also was the author of the movement’s most
important book, Das Kapital. These writings and others by Marx and
Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism, a theory and
practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class
struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of classless society.
William James (1842-1910)
William James is best known for supporting Pragmatism (the belief that
ideas are meaningful only if they “work”), his work on the psychology of
religious experiences, and his will-to-believe doctrine (the idea that some
truths must be accepted without evidence). He believed that the value of
any truth was utterly dependent upon its use to the person who held it. He maintained
that the world is like a mosaic of different experiences that can only be interpreted through
what he calls as “Radical empiricism.” This means that no observation is completely
objective. As the mind of the observer and the act of observing will simply just affect the
outcome of the observation.
James lived his philosophy. It entered into the texture and rhythms of his rich and
vivid literary style. It determined his attitude toward scientifically unaccepted therapies,
such as Christian Science or mind cure, and repugnant ideals, such as militarism. It made
him an anti-imperialist, a defender of the small, the variant, the unprecedented, the weak,
wherever and whenever they appeared. His philosophy is too viable and subtle, too
hedged, experiential, and tentative to have become the dogma of a school. It has
functioned rather to implant the germs of new thought in others than to serve as a
standard old system for others to repeat.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Friedrich Nietzsche is most famous for the statement, “God is dead.”
which comes from a story he wrote about a madman who goes around
a village shouting, “Where is God?” Finally, the madman answers his
own question and says, “God is dead… and we have killed him.”
Nietzsche was referring to the great change that had happened in Europe during the
nineteenth century. Up to that point, the Christian God had been the foundation for
morality and people’s purpose in life. However, science and secularism had grown to a
point where many people felt God was no longer necessary. Nietzsche’s radical
questioning of objective truth had a profound influence on existentialism, nihilism (the idea
that life has no purpose or meaning), and postmodernism. His key ideas include the death
of God, perspectivism, the Ubermensch, amor fati, the eternal recurrence and the
will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation”, which involves
honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life’s energies, however socially prevalent
those views might be.
Nietzsche claimed the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through
self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending that life—such as God
or a soul. This way of living should be affirmed even were one to adopt, most
problematically, a radical vision of eternity, one suggesting the "eternal recurrence" of all
events.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839—1914)
Peirce was a scientist and philosopher best known as the earliest
proponent of pragmatism. An influential thinker and polymath, Peirce
is among the greatest of American minds. His thought was a seminal
influence upon William James, his life long friend, and upon John
Dewey, his one time student. James and Dewey went on to popularize
pragmatism thereby achieving what Peirce’s inability to gain lasting
academic employment prevented him from doing.
Pragmatism takes the meaning of a concept to depend upon its practical bearings.
The upshot of this maxim is that a concept is meaningless if it has no practical or
experiential effect on the way we conduct our lives or inquiries. Similarly, within Peirce’s
theory of inquiry, the scientific method is the only means through which to fix belief,
eradicate doubt and progress towards a final steady state of knowledge.

20th Century Philosophers

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher and social reformer,
and founder of Anthroposophy. His philosophy highlights a balanced development of
cognitive, artistic, and practical skills.
He divides education into three developmental stages. Early childhood, where
teachers offer practical activities and a healthy environment. Elementary, which is
primarily arts-based, centered on the teacher’s creative jurisdiction. And Secondary,
which seeks to develop the judgment, reasoning, and practical idealism.

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

Edmund Husserl founded the phenomenology movement, which
sought to systematically determine the essential properties of
consciousness by reflecting upon the subjective phenomena we
experience.
 Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Bertrand Russell was one of the founders of analytical
philosophy, a school of thought that uses scientific methods to solve
philosophical problems and which tends to dominate in the US and UK in
contrast to the existentialism and Marxism found in mainland Europe.
One of his best known popular works is Why I Am Not a Christian.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

A student of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein is sometimes referred
to as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. He believed
that the meanings of words reside in their ordinary uses and that
philosophers often distort their meanings and end up playing ‘language
games’.

Jean-Paul Sartre(1905-1980)
Jean-Paul Sartre is probably the most famous existentialist and is
known for the phrase “existence precedes essence“. Instead of starting
with the idea of purpose and then humans existing because of that
purpose, existentialists start with the existence of humans and emphasize
that human’s must create their own meaning and purpose. Sartre’s lover, Simone de
Beauvoir was also a famous philosopher and an important feminist.
Sartre sets out to develop an ontological account of what it is to be human. The main
features of this ontology are the groundlessness and radical freedom which characterize
the human condition. These are contrasted with the unproblematic being of the world of
things. Sartre’s substantial literary output adds dramatic expression to the always
unstable co-existence of facts and freedom in an indifferent world.

Mortimer J. Adler (1902- 2001)

Adler was an American philosopher and educator, and a proponent
of Educational Perennialism. He believed that one should teach the
things that one deems to be of perpetual importance. He proposed that
one should teach principles, not facts, since details of facts change
constantly. And since people are humans, one should teach them about humans also,
not about machines, or theories.
He argues that one should validate the reasoning with the primary descriptions of popular
experiments. This provides students with a human side to the scientific discipline, and
demonstrates the reasoning in deed.
John Dewey(1859-1952)
Dewey an American philosopher, psychologist and educational
reformer, was a proponent of Educational Progressivism.
He held that education is a “participation of the individual in the social
consciousness of the race”, and that it has two sides; the psychological,
which forms the basis of the child’s instincts, and the sociological, on which the instinct
will be used to form the basis of what is around him. He postulated that one cannot learn
without motivation.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Piaget, a Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher, was
recognized for his epistemological studies with children, and the
establishment of Genetic Epistemology. It aims to explain knowledge,
on the basis of its history, its sociogenesis, and particularly, the
psychological origins of the notions and operations upon which it is
based.
Piaget concluded he could test epistemological questions by studying the
development of thought and action in children. Because of this, he created Genetic
epistemology with its own approaches and questions.

Martin Heidegger (1889—1976)

Martin Heidegger is widely acknowledged to be one of the most
original and important philosophers of the 20th century, while remaining
one of the most controversial. Heidegger’s main interest was ontology or
the study of being. In his fundamental treatise, Being and Time, he
attempted to access being (Sein) by means of phenomenological
analysis of human existence (Dasein) in respect to its temporal and historical character.
After the change of his thinking (“the turn”), Heidegger placed an emphasis on language
as the vehicle through which the question of being can be unfolded. Instead of looking for
a full clarification of the meaning of being, he tried to pursue a kind of thinking which was
no longer “metaphysical.” He criticized the tradition of Western philosophy, which he
regarded as nihilistic, for, as he claimed, the question of being as such was obliterated in
it. He also stressed the nihilism of modern technological culture. By going to the
Presocratic beginning of Western thought, he wanted to repeat the early Greek
experience of being, so that the West could turn away from the dead end of nihilism and
begin anew.

Allan Bloom(1930-1992)
American philosopher, classicist, and academic Allan David Bloom is notable for
his criticism of contemporary American higher education in his bestselling 1987 book,
The Closing of the American Mind.
He stresses how “higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the
souls of today’s students.” For him, this failure of contemporary liberal education leads to
impotent social and sexual habits of today’s students and that commercial pursuits had
become more highly regarded than love, the philosophic quest for truth, or the civilized
pursuits of honor and glory.

Nel Noddings(1929-Present)
A notable American feminist, educationalist, and philosopher,
Noddings is best known in her work Ethics of Care.
The Ethics of Care establishes the obligation, and the sense, to
do something right when others address us. We do so because either
we love and respect those that address us or we have significant regard for them. In that
way, the recipients of care must respond in a way that authenticates their caring has been
received.
The same goes for education. As teachers respond to the needs of students, they
may design a differentiated curriculum because as teachers work closely with students,
they should respond to the students’ different needs and interests. This response should
not be based on a one-time virtuous decision but an ongoing interest in the student’s
welfare.

Philosophers and their Selected Philosophies

I. Idealism
Idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can
know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.
Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any
mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human
ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism
goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus
rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind.
a. Immanuel kant – morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make
ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness
- Live your life as though your every act were to become a
universal law.
b. Johann Gottllieb Fichte – only one man ever understood me, and he didn’t
understand me
- God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given
utterance, but he is in himself pure life
c. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – if you want to love you must serve, if you want
freedom you must die
- Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and
wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
d. Arthur Schopenhauer – treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first
- If your friend betrayed you either accept it or do not communicate
with him as he will betray you again-people do not change
e. Plato - father of idealism – the measure of man is what he does with power

II. Realism
Realism is the belief that some aspects of reality are ontologically independent of our
conceptual schemes, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Realism may be
spoken of with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical
entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, and thought.
Realism can also be promoted in an unqualified sense, in which case it asserts the mind-
independent existence of the world, as opposed to skepticism and solipsism.
Philosophers who profess realism often claim that truth consists in a correspondence
between cognitive representations and reality.
a) Aristotle – criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing
nothing, and being nothing.
- The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living
from the dead.
b) Thomas Reid – there is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge
than the ambiguity of words.
c) Adam Ferguson – in every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to
equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many.
- Love is an affection which carries the attention of the mind
beyond itself, and is the sense of a relation to some fellow
creature as to its object.
 d) John Locke – but there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious
commotion, and that is oppression.
- All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to
harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
e) George Berkeley – to be is to be perceived
f) David Hume – to hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to
perceive, what a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call
‘thought’
g) Thomas Reid – there is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge
than the ambiguity of words.

III. Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an
ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition
is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are
to be rejected. Pragmatism originated in the United States during the latter quarter of the
nineteenth century. Although it has significantly influenced non-philosophers—notably in
the fields of law, education, politics, sociology, psychology, and literary criticism—this
article deals with it only as a movement within philosophy.
A. William James – human being can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind
- Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the
fact
B. John Dewey – if we teach today’s student as we taught yesterday’s we rob them
of tomorrow
- Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself
- Example is notoriously more potent than precept
C. Charles Sanders Peirce - ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers

IV. Existentialism and Phenomenology

Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and
choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational
decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human
existence, and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence.
It holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter
this nothingness (and hence to find meaning in life) is by embracing existence.
 a) Jean Paul Sartre – life has no meaning a priori … it is up to you to give it a meaning,
and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.
b) Soren Kierkegaard - to dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to
lose oneself.
c) There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to
refuse to accept what is true
Phenomenology is a broad discipline and method of inquiry in philosophy, developed
largely by the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, which is
based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events ("phenomena") as they
are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything
independent of human consciousness.
a) Edmund Husserl – to begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology
is the science of pure consciousness
b) Martin Heidegger – thinking begins only when we have come to know that
reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.
c) Maurice Merleau-Ponty – the world is nothing but ‘world-as-meaning.

V. Neo-Marxism
Neo-Marxism is a loose term for various twentieth-century approaches that amend or
extend Marxism and Marxist theory, usually by incorporating elements from other
intellectual traditions, such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism (in the case
of Sartre).
A term loosely applied to any social theory or sociological analysis which draws on the
ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but amends or extends these, usually by
incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions—such as, for example,
psychoanalysis (as in the case of critical theory), Weberian sociology (as in Erik Olin
Wright's theory of contradictory class locations), or anarchism (as in the example of critical
criminology).
a. Max Horkheimer – philosophy is overwhelmingly complicated, its procedure
depressingly slow.
b. Theodor Adorno – love you will find only where you may show yourself weak
without provoking strength.
- He who has loved and who betrays love does harm not only to
the image of the past, but to the past itself.
c. Friedrich Pollock – judgements, value judgments concerning life, for or
against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as
symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves
such judgements are stupidities.
SUMMARY

PHILOSOPHER PHILOSOPHIES

IDEALISM

Immanuel Kant Idealism a. morality is not properly

the doctrine of how we
may make ourselves
happy, but how we may
make ourselves worthy
of happiness

b. Live your life as though

your every act were to
become a universal law.

Johann Gottllieb Fichte Idealism a. only one man ever

understood me, and he
didn’t understand me

b. God is not the mere

dead conception to
which we have thus
given utterance, but he
is in himself pure life

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Idealism a. if you want to love you

must serve, if you want
freedom you must die

b. Genuine tragedies in the

world are not conflicts
between right and
wrong. They are
conflicts between two
rights.
Arthur Schopenhauer Idealism a. treat a work of art like a
prince. Let it speak to
you first

b. If your friend betrayed

you either accept it or
do not communicate
with him as he will
betray you again-people
do not change
Plato Idealism a. the measure of man is
what he does with
power

REALISM

Aristotle Realism a) criticism is something

we can avoid easily by
saying nothing, doing
nothing, and being
nothing.

b) The educated differ

from the uneducated as
much as the living from
the dead.

Thomas Reid Realism a) there is no greater

impediment to the
advancement of
knowledge than the
ambiguity of words.

Adam Ferguson Realism a) in every commercial

state, notwithstanding
any pretension to equal
rights, the exaltation of
a few must depress the
many.

b) Love is an affection
which carries the
attention of the mind
beyond itself, and is the
sense of a relation to
 some fellow creature as
to its object.

John Locke Realism a) but there is only one

thing which gathers
people into seditious
commotion, and that is
oppression.

b) All mankind... being all

equal and independent,
no one ought to harm
another in his life,
health, liberty or
possessions.

George Berkeley Realism a) to be is to be perceived

David Hume Realism a) to hate, to love, to think,

to feel, to see; all this is
nothing but to perceive,
what a peculiar privilege
has this little agitation of
the brain which we call
‘thought’

PRAGMATISM

William James Pragmatism a) human being can alter

their lives by altering
their attitudes of mind
b) Believe that life is worth
living and your belief will
help create the fact
John Dewey Pragmatism a) if we teach today’s
student as we taught
yesterday’s we rob them
of tomorrow
b) Education is not
preparation for life;
education is life itself.
c) Example is notoriously
more potent than
precept

Charles Sanders Peirce Pragmatism a) ugly enough to be safe

from kidnappers

EXISTENTIALISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY

Jean Paul Sartre Existentialism a) life has no meaning a

priori … it is up to you to
give it a meaning, and
value is nothing but the
meaning that you
choose.

Soren Kierkegaard Existentialism a) to dare is to lose one’s

footing momentarily. To
 not dare is to lose
oneself.
b) There are two ways to
be fooled. One is to
believe what isn’t true;
the other is to refuse to
accept what is true

Edmund Husserl Phenomenology

a) to begin with, we put the
proposition: pure
phenomenology is the
science of pure
consciousness

Martin Heidegger Phenomenology

a) thinking begins only
when we have come to
know that reason,
glorified for centuries, is
the stiff-necked
adversary of thought.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology

a) the world is nothing but
‘world-as-meaning

NEO-MARXISM
Max Horkheimer Neo-Marxism
a) philosophy is
overwhelmingly
complicated, its
procedure depressingly
slow.

Theodor Adorno Neo-Marxism

a) love you will find only
where you may show
yourself weak without
provoking strength.

b) He who has loved and

who betrays love does
harm not only to the
image of the past, but to
the past itself.

Friedrich Pollock Neo-Marxism

a) judgements, value
judgments concerning
life, for or against, can in
the last resort never be
true: they possess value
only as symptoms, they
come into consideration
only as symptoms – in
themselves such
judgements are
stupidities.
H. Phenomenological View of Man
Phenomenology

from Greek phainómenon "that which appears" and lógos "study"

the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness.

1. Philosophy of Man
Man is defined by traditional scholastic philosophy as a rational animal, or as a
composite of body and soul.

Under the aspect of body, he is likely any other animal, a substance, mortal,
subject to the limitations of time and space.

Under the aspect of soul, he is gifted with the power of reason, free and immortal.
From the behavior of man to think and decide, it is concluded that he must be gifted with
a human soul.

The method to use in reflection on man will attempt to do something different from
the traditional approach. Instead of going first into logic (after all, reality is not always
logical), we shall begin with man himself in his totality. Isn’t it that our understanding of
the world, and even of God, is somehow based on what we understand of ourselves? We
shall not start too with definitions of man, definitions that may cut man into parts. Instead,
let us describe man from his within, from what is properly human, not from a point of view
that is external. Our method is called phenomenological.

HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The man behind the phenomenological movement was a mathematician turned

philosopher names Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). He has an aim very much similar to
Descartes: to arrive at “philosophy as a rigorous science”. But, unlike Descartes who was
impressed by the progress of the sciences of his time, Husserl came to this goal as a
result of a dissatisfaction with the sciences of his time. According to him, the natural
sciences start out with a lot of presuppositions. In particular, he was reacting against the
naturalistic psychology of his time which treats of the mental activity as causally
conditioned by events of nature, in terms of stimulus-reaction relationship. This kind of
psychology would presuppose therefore that man is a mechanistic animal.

As a result of his dissatisfaction with the sciences, Husserl turned to philosophy in

order to make it “the science of ultimate grounds”, in other words, “a rigorous science”.
By “rigorous science”, he meant a “presuppositionless philosophy”, a philosophy not
without any presupposition (for that would be impossible) but a philosophy containing the
least number of primary presuppositions, so basic and immediately evident that they need
not be clarified any further or reduced to other presuppositions.

How does one arrive at this kind of philosophy? According to Husserl, one has to
transcend the so-called “natural attitude”. What is the natural attitude?

The term “natural attitude” was used by Husserl to refer to the most predominant
attitude of his time, namely the scientific attitude. The scientific attitude when carried to
the extreme and used as the only way of looking at things, becomes “scientific”. Briefly,
the scientific attitude observes things, expresses their workings in singular judgements,
then in universal judgements, and by the process of induction and deduction arrives at
concrete results. This is the way science makes progress. But for Husserl, this attitude
contains a number of assumptions:

It assumes that there is no need to ask how we know.

It assumes that the world (the object) is out there, existing and explainable in
objective laws, while man the subject is a pure consciousness, transparent to itself and
facing the world to know it as it is.

It takes for granted the world- totality.

To put it in less technical terms, the natural attitude looks at reality as things. It’s
way of knowing things is fragmented, partial, fixed, clear, precise, and manipulative.
There is no room for mystery in the natural attitude. It is, in the words of Husserl, a “fact
world”.
 ANOTHER DEFINITION:

Philosophy of Man – a course that delves into the origin of human life, the nature
of human life, and the reality of human existence.

Philosophy of man is one’s desire to know who and what man is. Thus, Philosophy
of man, asks a crucial question about himself and gradually answers the question himself.

In general the Philosophy of Man is a course that deals with man, man is the
superstar in Philosophy of Man.

2. Concept of Man

Key concepts of man as person

1.) Autonomy

Man must be viewed in the light of

The unique vocation of each persons

2.) Self-realization

Through his free activity,

Man cannot be judged in abstraction

From the concrete state of the acting person

3.) Responsibility

Man develops his personality through

Inter-subjectivity
 3. Man-As-Being-In-The-World
What the existential analytic has given us so far is a phenomenological description
of Dasein's within-the-world encounters with entities. The next clarification concerns the
notion of world and the associated within-ness of Dasein. Famously, Heidegger writes of
Dasein as Being-in-the-world. In effect, then, the notion of Being-in-the-world provides us
with a reinterpretation of the activity of existing, where existence is given the narrow
reading. Understood as a unitary phenomenon (as opposed to a contingent, additive,
tripartite combination of Being, in-ness, and the world), Being-in-the-world is an essential
characteristic of Dasein. As Heidegger explains:

Being-in is not a ‘property’ which Dasein sometimes has and sometimes does not
have, and without which it could just be just as well as it could be with it. It is not the case
that man ‘is’ and then has, by way of an extra, a relationship-of-Being towards the
‘world’—a world with which he provides himself occasionally. Dasein is never ‘proximally’
an entity which is, so to speak, free from Being-in, but which sometimes has the inclination
to take up a ‘relationship’ towards the world. Taking up relationships towards the world is
possible only because Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is as it is. This state of Being does
not arise just because some entity is present-at-hand outside of Dasein and meets up
with it. Such an entity can ‘meet up with’ Dasein only in so far as it can, of its own accord,
show itself within a world.

As this passage makes clear, the Being-in dimension of Being-in-the-world cannot

be thought of as a merely spatial relation in some sense that might be determined by a
GPS device, since Dasein is never just present-at-hand within the world in the way
demanded by that sort of spatial in-ness. Heidegger sometimes uses the term dwelling to
capture the distinctive manner in which Dasein is in the world. To dwell in a house is not
merely to be inside it spatially in the sense just canvassed. Rather, it is to belong there,
to have a familiar place there. It is in this sense that Dasein is (essentially) in the world.
So now, what is the world such that Dasein (essentially) dwells in it? To answer this
question we need to spend some time unpacking the Heideggerian concept of an
‘involvement’ (Bewandtnis).

The German term Bewandtnis is extremely difficult to translate in a way that

captures all its native nuances. And things are made more complicated by the fact that,
during his exposition, Heidegger freely employs a number of closely related notions,
including ‘assignment’, ‘indication’ and ‘reference’. Nevertheless, what is clear is that
Heidegger introduces the term that Macquarrie and Robinson translate as ‘involvement’
to express the roles that equipmental entities play—the ways in which they are involved—
in Dasein's everyday patterns of activity. Crucially, for Heidegger, an involvement is not
a stand-alone structure, but rather a link in a network of intelligibility that he calls a totality
of involvements. Take the stock Heideggerian example: the hammer is involved in an act
of hammering; that hammering is involved in making something fast; and that making
something fast is involved in protecting the human agent against bad weather. Such
totalities of involvements are the contexts of everyday equipmental practice. As such,
they define equipmental entities, so the hammer is intelligible as what it is only with
respect to the shelter and, indeed, all the other items of equipment to which it meaningfully
relates in Dasein's everyday practices. This relational ontology generates what Brandom
calls Heidegger's ‘strong systematicity condition’, as given voice in Heidegger's striking
claim that “taken strictly, there ‘is’ no such thing as an equipment”. And this radical holism
spreads, because once one begins to trace a path through a network of involvements,
one will inevitably traverse vast regions of involvement-space. Thus links will be traced
not only from hammers to hammering to making fast to protection against the weather,
but also from hammers to pulling out nails to dismantling wardrobes to moving house.
This behaviour will refer back to many other behaviours (packing, van-driving) and thus
to many other items of equipment (large boxes, removal vans), and so on. The result is a
large-scale holistic network of interconnected relational significance. Such networks
constitute worlds, in one of Heidegger's key senses of the term—an ontical sense that he
describes as having a pre-ontological signification.

Before a second key sense of the Heideggerian notion of world is revealed, some
important detail can be added to the emerging picture. Heidegger points out that
involvements are not uniform structures. Thus I am currently working with a computer
(a with-which), in the practical context of my office (an in-which), in order to write this
encyclopedia entry (an in-order-to), which is aimed towards presenting an introduction to
Heidegger's philosophy (a towards-this), for the sake of my academic work, that is, for
the sake of my being an academic (a for-the-sake-of-which). The final involvement here,
the for-the-sake-of-which, is crucial, because according to Heidegger all totalities of
involvements have a link of this type at their base. This forges a connection between (i)
the idea that each moment in Dasein's existence constitutes a branch-point at which it
chooses a way to be, and (ii) the claim that Dasein's projects and possibilities are
essentially bound up with the ways in which other entities may become intelligible. This
is because every for-the-sake-of-which is the base structure of an equipment-defining
totality of involvements and reflects a possible way for Dasein to be (an academic, a
carpenter, a parent, or whatever). Moreover, given that entities are intelligible only within
contexts of activity that, so to speak, arrive with Dasein, this helps to explain Heidegger's
claim that, in encounters with entities, the world is something with which Dasein is always
already familiar. Finally, it puts further flesh on the phenomenological category of the un-
ready-to-hand. Thus when I am absorbed in trouble-free typing, the computer and the
role that it plays in my academic activity are transparent aspects of my experience. But if
the computer crashes, I become aware of it as an entity with which I was working in the
practical context of my office, in order to write an encyclopedia entry aimed towards
presenting an introduction to Heidegger's philosophy. And I become aware of the fact that
my behaviour is being organized for the sake of my being an academic. So disturbances
have the effect of exposing totalities of involvements and, therefore, worlds. (For a second
way in which worlds are phenomenologically ‘lit up’, see Heidegger's analysis of signs.

As already indicated, Heidegger sometimes uses the expression ‘world’ in a

different key sense, to designate what he calls the “ontologico-existential concept
of worldhood”. At this point in the existential analytic, worldhood is usefully identified as
the abstract network mode of organizational configuration that is shared by all concrete
totalities of involvements. We shall see, however, that as the hermeneutic spiral of the
text unfolds, the notion of worldhood is subject to a series of reinterpretations until, finally,
its deep structure gets played out in terms of temporality.

4. Man-As-Being-With-Others
Heidegger turns next to the question of “who it is that Dasein is in its
everydayness”. He rejects the idea of Dasein as a Cartesian ‘I-thing’ (the Cartesian
thinking thing conceived as a substance), since once again this would be to think of
Dasein as present-at-hand. In searching for an alternative answer, Heidegger observes
that equipment is often revealed to us as being for the sake of (the lives and projects of)
other Dasein.

The boat anchored at the shore is assigned in its Being-in-itself to an acquaintance

who undertakes voyages with it; but even if it is a ‘boat which is strange to us’, it still is
indicative of Others. The Others who are thus ‘encountered’ in a ready-to-hand,
environmental context of equipment, are not somehow added on in thought to some Thing
which is proximally just present-at-hand; such ‘Things’ are encountered from out of a
world in which they are ready-to-hand for Others—a world which is always mine too in
advance.

On the basis of such observations, Heidegger argues that to be Dasein at all

means to Be-with: “So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of
Being”. One's immediate response to this might be that it is just false. After all, ordinary
experience establishes that each of us is often alone. But of course Heidegger is thinking
in an ontologicalregister. Being-with (Mitsein) is thus the a priori transcendental condition
that makes it possible that Dasein can discover equipment in this Other-related fashion.
And it's because Dasein has Being-with as one of its essential modes of Being that
everyday Dasein can experience being alone. Being-with is thus the a priori
transcendental condition for loneliness.

It is important to understand what Heidegger means by ‘Others’, a term that he

uses interchangeably with the more evocative ‘the “they” ’ (das Man). He explains:

By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me—those over against whom the
‘I’ stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not
distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too… By reason of this with-like Being-
in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others.

A piece of data (cited by Dreyfus 1990) helps to illuminate this idea. Each society
seems to have its own sense of what counts as an appropriate distance to stand from
someone during verbal communication, and this varies depending on whether the other
person is a lover, a friend, a colleague, or a business acquaintance, and on whether
communication is taking place in noisy or quiet circumstances. Such standing-distance
practices are of course normative, in that they involve a sense of what one should and
shouldn't do. And the norms in question are culturally specific. So what this example
illustrates is that the phenomenon of the Others, the ‘who’ of everyday Dasein, the group
from whom for the most part I do not stand out, is my culture, understood not as the sum
of all its members, but as an ontological phenomenon in its own right. This explains the
following striking remark. “The ‘who’ is not this one, not that one, not oneself, not some
people, and not the sum of them all. The ‘who’ is the neuter, the ‘they’ ”. Another way to
capture this idea is to say that what I do is determined largely by ‘what one does’, and
‘what one does’ is something that I absorb in various ways from my culture. Thus Dreyfus
(1990) prefers to translate das Man not as ‘the “they” ’, but as ‘the one’.

This all throws important light on the phenomenon of world, since we can now see
that the crucial for-the-sake-of-which structure that stands at the base of each totality of
involvements is culturally and historically conditioned. The specific ways in which I behave
for the sake of being an academic are what one does if one wants to be considered a
good academic, at this particular time, in this particular historically embedded culture
(carrying out research, tutoring students, giving lectures, and so on). As Heidegger
himself puts the point: “Dasein is for the sake of the ‘they’ in an everyday manner, and
the ‘they’ itself articulates the referential context of significance. Worlds (the referential
context of significance, networks of involvements) are then culturally and historically
conditioned, from which several things seem to follow. First, Dasein's everyday world is,
in the first instance, and of its very essence, a shared world. Second, Being-with and
Being-in-the-world are, if not equivalent, deeply intertwined. And third, the sense in which
worlds are Dasein-dependent involves some sort of cultural relativism, although, as we
shall see later, this final issue is one that needs careful interpretative handling.

Critics of the manner in which Heidegger develops the notion of Being-with have
often focussed, albeit in different ways, on the thought that Heidegger either ignores or
misconceives the fundamental character of our social existence by passing over its
grounding in direct interpersonal interaction From this perspective, the equipmentally
mediated discovery of others that Heidegger sometimes describes is at best a secondary
process that reveals other people only to the extent that they are relevant to Dasein's
practical projects. Moreover, Olafson (1987) argues that although Heidegger's account
clearly involves the idea that Dasein discovers socially shared equipmental meaning
(which then presumably supports the discovery of other Dasein along with equipment),
that account fails to explain why this must be the case. Processes of direct interpersonal
contact (e.g., in learning the use of equipment from others) might plausibly fill this gap.
The obvious move for Heidegger to make here is to claim that the processes that the
critics find to be missing from his account, although genuine, are not a priori,
transcendental structures of Dasein. Rather, they are psychological factors that enable
(in a ‘merely’ developmental or causal way) human beings to realize the phenomenon of
Being-with (see e.g., Heidegger's response to the existentialist psychologist and therapist
Binswanger in the Zollikon seminars, and see Dreyfus 1990, chapter 8, for a response to
Olafson that exploits this point). However, one might wonder whether it is plausible to
relegate the social processes in question to the status of ‘mere’ enabling factors
(Gallagher and Jacobson forthcoming; Pöggeler 1989 might be read as making a similar
complaint). If not, then Heidegger's notion of Being-with is at best an incomplete account
of our social Being

5. Man-As-Being-Towards-Death
As the argument of Being and Time continues its ever-widening hermeneutic spiral
into Division 2 of the text, Heidegger announces a twofold transition in the analysis. He
argues that we should (i) pay proper heed to the thought that to understand Dasein we
need to understand Dasein's existenceas a whole, and (ii) shift the main focus of our
attention from the inauthentic self (the they-self) to the authentic self (the mine-self). Both
of these transitions figure in Heidegger's discussion of death.

So far, Dasein's existence has been understood as thrown projection plus falling.
The projective aspect of this phenomenon means that, at each moment of its life, Dasein
is Being-ahead-of-itself, oriented towards the realm of its possibilities, and is thus
incomplete. Death completes Dasein's existence. Therefore, an understanding of
Dasein's relation to death would make an essential contribution to our understanding of
Dasein as a whole. But now a problem immediately presents itself: since one cannot
experience one's own death, it seems that the kind of phenomenological analysis that has
hitherto driven the argument of Being and Time breaks down, right at the crucial moment.
One possible response to this worry, canvassed explicitly by Heidegger, is to suggest that
Dasein understands death through experiencing the death of others. However, the sense
in which we experience the death of others falls short of what is needed. We mourn
departed others and miss their presence in the world. But that is to experience Being-with
them as dead, which is a mode of our continued existence. As Heidegger explains:

The greater the phenomenal appropriateness with which we take the no-longer-
Dasein of the deceased, the more plainly is it shown that in such Being-with the dead, the
authentic Being-come-to-and-end of the deceased is precisely the sort of thing which we
do not experience. Death does indeed reveal itself as a loss, but a loss such as is
experienced by those who remain. In suffering this loss, however, we have no way of
access to the loss-of-Being as such which the dying man ‘suffers’. The dying of Others is
not something which we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just ‘there
alongside’.

What we don't have, then, is phenomenological access to the loss of Being that
the dead person has suffered. But that, it seems, is precisely what we would need in order
to carry through the favoured analysis. So another response is called for. Heidegger's
move is to suggest that although Dasein cannot experience its own death as actual, it can
relate towards its own death as a possibility that is always before it—always before it in
the sense that Dasein's own death is inevitable. Peculiarly among Dasein's possibilities,
the possibility of Dasein's own death must remain only a possibility, since once it becomes
actual, Dasein is no longer. Death is thus the “possibility of the impossibility of any
existence at all”. And it is this awareness of death as an omnipresent possibility that
cannot become actual that stops the phenomenological analysis from breaking down. The
detail here is crucial. What the failure of the ‘death of others’ strategy indicates is that in
each instance death is inextricably tied to some specific individual Dasein. My death is
mine in a radical sense; it is the moment at which all my relations to others disappear.
Heidegger captures this non-relationality by using the term ‘ownmost’. And it is the idea
of death “as that possibility which is one's ownmost” that engages the second transition
highlighted above. When I take on board the possibility of my own not-Being, my own
being-able-to-Be is brought into proper view. Hence my awareness of my own death as
an omnipresent possibility discloses the authentic self (a self that is mine). Moreover, the
very same awareness engages the first of the aforementioned transitions too: there is a
sense in which the possibility of my not existing encompasses the whole of my existence
(Hinman 1978, 201), and my awareness of that possibility illuminates me, qua Dasein, in
my totality. Indeed, my own death is revealed to me as inevitable, meaning that Dasein
is essentially finite. This explains why Heidegger says that death is disclosed to Dasein
as a possibility which is “not to be (outstripped”).

Heidegger's account of Dasein's relation towards the possibility of its own not-
Being forms the backbone of a reinterpretation of the phenomenon of care—the “formally
existential totality of Dasein's ontological structural whole”. Care is now interpreted in
terms of Being-towards-death, meaning that Dasein has an internal relation to the nothing
(i.e., to not-being; see Vallega-Neu 2003, 21, for an analysis that links this ‘not’ quality to
the point made earlier that sets of unactualized possibilities of Being are structural
components of Dasein's Being). As one might expect, Heidegger argues that Being-
towards-death not only has the three-dimensional character of care, but is realized in
authentic and inauthentic modes. Let's begin with the authentic mode. We can think of
the aforementioned individualizing effect of Dasein's awareness of the possibility of its
own not-Being (an awareness that illuminates its own being-able-to-Be) as an event in
which Dasein projects onto a possible way to be, in the technical sense of such
possibilities introduced earlier in Being and Time. It is thus an event in which Dasein
projects onto a for-the-sake-of-which, a possible way to be. More particularly, given the
authentic character of the phenomenon, it is an event in which Dasein projects onto a for-
the-sake-of-itself. Heidegger now coins the term anticipation to express the form of
projection in which one looks forward to a possible way to be. Given the analysis of death
as a possibility, the authentic form of projection in the case of death is anticipation. Indeed
Heidegger often uses the term anticipation in a narrow way, simply to mean being aware
of death as a possibility. But death is disclosed authentically not only in projection (the
first dimension of care) but also in thrownness (the second dimension). The key
phenomenon here is the mode of disposedness that Heidegger calls anxiety. Anxiety, at
least in the form in which Heidegger is interested, is not directed towards some specific
object, but rather opens up the world to me in a certain distinctive way. When I am anxious
I am no longer at home in the world. I fail to find the world intelligible. Thus there is an
ontological sense (one to do with intelligibility) in which I am not in the world, and the
possibility of a world without me (the possibility of my not-Being-in-the-world) is revealed
to me. “[The] state-of-mind [mode of disposedness] which can hold open the utter and
constant threat to itself arising from Dasein's ownmost individualized Being, is anxiety. In
this state-of-mind, Dasein finds itself face to face with the ‘nothing’ of the possible
impossibility of its existence”. Heidegger has now reinterpreted two of the three
dimensions of care, in the light of Dasein's essential finitude. But now what about the third
dimension, identified previously as fallen-ness? Since we are presently considering a
mode of authentic, i.e., not fallen, Dasein, it seems that fallen-ness cannot be a feature
of this realization of care, and indeed that a general reformulation of the care structure is
called for in order to allow for authentic Being. This is an issue that will be addressed in
the next section. First, though, the inauthentic form of Being-towards-death needs to be
brought into view.
 In everyday Being-towards-death, the self that figures in the for-the-sake-of-itself
structure is not the authentic mine-self, but rather the inauthentic they-self. In effect, the
‘they’ obscures our awareness of the meaning of our own deaths by de-
individualizing death. As Heidegger explains: in “Dasein's public way of interpreting, it is
said that ‘one dies’, because everyone else and oneself can talk himself into saying that
‘in no case is it I myself’, for this ‘one’ is the ‘nobody’ ”. In this way, everyday Dasein flees
from the meaning of its own death, in a manner determined by the ‘they’. It is in this
evasion in the face of death, interpreted as a further way in which Dasein covers up Being,
that everyday Dasein's fallen-ness now manifests itself. To be clear: evasion here does
not necessarily mean that I refuse outright to acknowledge that I will someday die. After
all, as I might say, ‘everyone dies’. However, the certainty of death achieved by idle talk
of this kind is of the wrong sort. One might think of it as established by the conclusion of
some sort of inductive inference from observations of many cases of death (the deaths of
many others). But “we cannot compute the certainty of death by ascertaining how many
cases of death we encounter”.

The certainty brought into view by such an inference is a sort of empirical certainty,
one which conceals the apodictic character of the inevitability with which my own death
is authentically revealed to me. In addition, as we have seen, according to Heidegger, my
own death can never be actual for me, so viewed from my perspective, any case of death,
i.e., any actual death, cannot be my death. Thus it must be a death that belongs to
someone else, or rather, to no one.

Inauthenticity in relation to death is also realized in thrownness, through fear, and

in projection, through expectation. Fear, as a mode of disposedness, can disclose only
particular oncoming events in the world. To fear my own death, then, is once again to
treat my death as a case of death. This contrasts with anxiety, the form of disposedness
which, as we have seen, discloses my death via the awareness of the possibility of a
world in which I am not. The projective analogue to the fear-anxiety distinction is
expectation-anticipation. A mundane example might help to illustrate the generic idea.
When I expect a beer to taste a certain way, I am waiting for an actual event—a case of
that distinctive taste in my mouth—to occur. By contrast, when I anticipate the taste of
that beer, one might say that, in a cognitive sense, I actively go out to meet the possibility
of that taste. In so doing, I make it mine. Expecting death is thus to wait for a case of
death, whereas to anticipate death is to own it.

In reinterpreting care in terms of Being-towards-death, Heidegger illuminates in a

new way the taking-as structure that, as we have seen, he takes to be the essence of
human existence. Human beings, as Dasein, are essentially finite. And it is this finitude
that explains why the phenomenon of taking-as is an essential characteristic of our
existence. An infinite Being would understand things directly, without the need for
interpretative intercession. We, however, are Dasein, and in our essential finitude we
must understand things in a hermeneutically mediated, indirect way, that is, by taking-as
(Sheehan 2001).

What are we to make of Heidegger's analysis of death? Perhaps the most

compelling reason for being sceptical can be found in Sartre, who argued that just as
death cannot be actual for me, it cannot be one of my possibilities either, at least if the
term ‘possibility’ is understood, as Heidegger surely intends it to be, as marking a way of
my Being, an intelligible way for me to be. Sartre argues that death is the end of such
possibilities. Thus:

The perpetual appearance of chance at the heart of my projects cannot be

apprehended as my possibility but, on the contrary, as the nihilation of all my possibilities.
A nihilation which itself is no longer a part of my possibilities. Thus death is not my
possibility of no longer realizing a presence in the world but rather an always possible
nihilation of my possibilities which is outside my possibilities. (Sartre 1956, 537)

If Sartre is right, there is a significant hole in Heidegger's project, since we would

be left without a way of completing the phenomenological analysis of Dasein.

For further debate over Heidegger's handling of death, see Edwards' (1975, 1976,
2004) unsympathetic broadsides alongside Hinman's (1978) robust response. Carel
(2006) develops an analysis that productively connects Heidegger's and Freud's accounts
of death, despite Heidegger's open antipathy towards Freud's theories in general.

6. Man and the Absolute Thou

The absolute thou: an answer to man, appealing and responding

If the new source of myself as value to be realize has to be a Thou, and if it has to
remain veiled in our present condition, are we at the end of any identification? It would
seem that something more can be said when we make use of the point of departure in
this entire matter. This was the subject, longing for more than his fellowmen can give
when he appeals to them, and desirous for more giving of himself than he can do when
his fellowmen appeal to him. When an answer comes to the person, while he is in the
former of these two phases of his dialogue with fellowmen, well this not indicate its source
as a Giving Thou? And correlated with that “being-given-to-myself” in intersubjectivity.