HCJ -Lecture 5

American Journalism; A brief history.

During the 19th century penny press papers were cheap, tabloid style newspapers produced in America, these papers were famous for costing one cent (one penny) compared to other papers.  The penny papers were revolutionary, it was an awakening of writing news for people who were not highly educated. It tapped into the regular public as it made the news accessible to the working class and middle class citizens for a reasonable price rather than the expensive newspapers and articles that were written by the elite for the upper class. 

During the mid 19^th century objectivity became a factor in journalism because of the creation of wire services. The associated press – 'the AP' needed objectivity to be profitable.

The first (new) journalism known as the Yellow Press came about in the late 19^th century. The Yellow Press began to shake up the newspapers, making them more interesting, as well as sensationalising the articles written for them. It was a way of provoking a reaction from their audiences to what they were reading. 

Competition soon arose in New York- The world of William Randolph Hearst of the New York journal and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. They tried every dirty trick in the book to beat one other in the circulation war throughout the city.

Randolph focused on human interest stories, he wanted you not to think but to care about the stories, these stories were dramatic,romantic,shocking and emotive, he wanted to create a reaction. Randolph engaged his writing with t the working class, as America was becoming extremely wealthy.

Sensationalisation was the new writing tool, it involved huge, emotive headlines with BIG striking pictures similar to what we now read in the Sun on Sunday. It was exclusive, giving audiences dramatic stories, romantic stories, shocking stories and crime stories.

However not everyone was so taken with this new aspect of journalism. Many called yellow journalism the 'new journalism without a soul'. They believed that all the stories were about sin, sex and violence.

America in the 1960s and 70s was similar to the time of Hearst and the Yellow Press. There was a  great deal of political and social upheaval – America was fighting foreign wars, with even more serious military threats building overseas.

Journalists recorded the events of the day, normally in a formulaic way.

This included the five 'w’s' (who,what,when,where,why) this was the structure of the news pyramid giving audiences everything they needed to know about the story in the fist few lines of the article. The New Journalism was an attempt to record events mirroring the language and the style of events. It was an attempt to reflect what was happening at the time in a more accurate and truer sense. The idea was to let the words 'bleed into the copy'

Political and cultural sense;

The 1960's was particularly turbulent, there was great hope for John F Kennedy. A new role model for America, he was young, attractive and embracing his presidential duties, he embodied the American dream however this was all destroyed with his assignation in 1963, it became a moment of soul searching for America. 

America then got involved with the Vietnam war – it was a disastrous event as  they started to draft in and conscript people into the army so they would go to Vietnam to support their country. The wealthy people of America could avoid this as they had more power and status, an example of this being Muhammed Ali who refused to be conscripted ‘I aint got no quarrel with them Viet Cong’

For demographic reasons the baby boom created a powerful youth culture. This was a spike in the population, when we got to the mid sixties, a lot of the baby boomer's, who were born after the war left America with a huge amount of teens, these teens then went to uni and became very powerful and very vocal. The youth culture became a phenomenon that the political elite had to deal with. In the 60’s and 70's the youth turned away from Vietnam and marched for civil rights. It was the voice of change, as young people dominated the radical politics in America. 

There was also a sexual revolution. In the mid sixties it became legally acceptable in America for women to use contraceptive methods such as pills and condoms etc. It was the beginning of sexual freedom. During the mid 1960's it was the beginning moment when women could take control of their reproductive system for the first time ever. This was a big deal as it divulges into existentialism, it looks into freedom and a choice, they could have a choice as they could have casual sex, they did not have to marry the first person they had sex with.

Reichian believed in free love, he was incredibly influential around this time. He was however a  follower of Freud but fell out with him as he believed that Freud had it wrong, he thought everyone should just ‘let it all hang out’ and that the way to happiness was through fantastic orgasms.

The sexual revolution tied in with feminism, civil rights, pacifism, and the student movement – each was radical and held some really good issues for people to hold onto and march for. Universities became the centre of radical politics, however the police waded in using methods of shocking and baton charging to re-enforce their position amongst the students. It was a terrible political time as women marched for equal rights as were black people. 

The use of drugs soon materialised as LSD began making its way through the student scene. It was first introduced by the CIA as they believed they could use it to control the mind, experimenting with mind controlling techniques, it was a means of access altered thinking of counter culture.

As more and more LSD sneaked into the campus life, it was used as a way to escape from the normal, controlling hierarchy and to have true and real experiences.

The prohibition of drugs, and the sheer hypocrisy of the government was to ban LSD and to come down very hard on users, this pushed all drug culture underground and created very influential sub cultures, what we now see as hippies. It also established in the minds of the older generation that the youth culture was deviant and all bad things came from young people. The CIA basically created the need for LSD and a drug culture, the government stamped it out and forced it underground, which gave young people the idea that they were not part of society, that they were detached and that they were different; they believed in the motto “turn on, tune in, drop out”.

Music was central. For Satre jazz was authentic, you were not living in bad faith, you were living a true and authentic life. The music of the 1960's was an attack on the normal, drug fuelled lyrics. They instead began to write anti-establishment songs, as well as protest songs which soon became  popular as the aim was to be subvert and to be political.

 An example of this was Gill Scot Heron – the revolution will not be televised;

 ‘The revolution will be live- the revolution will put you in the driving seat’

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwI9kw

'The real world is happening outside on the streets, put two fingers up to everything, the world is happening out there, get involved'.

The Influence of extentialism;

Ideas informed by extentialism – Heideggers authenticity, Satres bad faith

The Key ideas – freedom and choice, for example Fanon's view of a path to feedom via accelerated choice (violence).  As we have, for Fanon the act of violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice. it is a choice with real, immediate impact. He took Satre's idea of choice one step further, to get to the point of freedom we have to push and use violence to get to that point of freedom, it gets us to that point much quicker.

Malcom X – the black power movement formed by extentialism. He wanted to cut away everything from his past, and did not want to be defined by his past – he is arguing with Fanon that violence is the way to freedom.

There is no God, there is no meaning to life. You do not come into the world with inherent meaning, There are great expanses for you to fill with meaning. You then create meaning through your choices and your actions.

The attack that people make on extentialism is that if everybody has their own internal meaning, if we decide what's good and bad, what's moral and immoral surely that could create anarchy. There is nobody to say what is evil. The argument against is that extentialism is about freedom and if you limit somebody else's freedom that is bad faith.

The Anti-establishment feeling; ‘there is a policeman inside your head – he must be destroyed’  began to seep into journalism.

Journalists question whether basing stories on press releases, press conferences and official statements made by the establishment are really objective – and more important a true reflection of events? (this could be seen as bad faith)

Is this a true reflection of what is happening in society – are we being inauthentic?

Journalists began to focus on setting, plot, sounds, feelings, direct quotes and images, whilst still being as careful as before with facts. Trueman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer are examples of this new breed.

 This alternative journalism was personal and expressed an individual point of view. It was also unconventional  disagreeable, disruptive, unfriendly and against the power structure. 

There wasn't any great moral super-structure, the individuals subjective view was just as valid. A good sign for journalists to be a bit awkward, and to be more difficult.

 There soon came a shift in form of narration from diagetic to mimetic – ‘telling to seeing’

Telling: http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/video/newscast/

 Seeing: Mad men http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItI0EQ9O7Gg

Marshall McLuhan's Hot and Cool media;

Hot media – very explicit about what it is trying to tell you, its not giving you a freedom of choice about interpreting the information yourself.

Cool media – the seeing, this is where it is ambiguous, you have to interpret the media yourself, you can see what is happening, however you are not entirely sure what is happening but you conclude an interpretation yourself.

In new journalism ‘objectivity’ (authority’s message) is junked in favour of subjective experience. Most Famous example is Thomas Wolfe.

Wolfe was a huge fan of Emile Zola whom was one of the greatest writers of natural realism.

‘Zola crowned himself as the first scientific novelist, a “naturalist”, to use his term, studying the human fauna’ according to Wolfe.

Wolfe enters journalism and the first thing he notices is the status competition within the roles.

‘The competition varies through – the reporters are in the “scoop competition” – SKY are “first for breaking news” and the BBC “updated every minute of every day”.

Ambulance chasers – stories about “power” and “catastrophe”

The other is the feature game – “a story that fell outside the category of hard news” The game was to hold your own in the competition until you got busy writing a novel.

The features game was changing; there were new articles with real, intimate dialogue.

A reporter needs to be there to see it, to collect the data first hand. Once there it is only a small step to becoming involved – another character in the scene – Gonzo journalism. Think HST “The Kentucky derby”

 To get this sort of material, you need to invest a lot of time in the subjects – days, weeks, months, years. “Use the whole scene, extended dialogue, point of view and interior monologue”

New Journalism – pages 46 and 47

The two most important pages about features you will ever read. Read them.

The journalists embraced social realism. They learned the techniques of realism from Balzac, Zola and Dickens.

The power derived from four devices;

1.      Scene by Scene construction – telling the story in scenes and not in sheer “historical narrative” Journalists needed to be at the event to witness it.

2.      Realistic dialogue involves the readers more completely than any other single device – it also defines character more quickly and effectively than any other single device.

3.      Third person point of view “giving the reader the feeling of being inside the characters mind” Need to interview the subject about his/hers thoughts and emotions, along with everything else.

4.      The fourth device is the recording of everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs, styles of furniture, modes of behaviour towards children, superiors, inferiors and other symbolic details that might exist within a scene. Symbolic of peoples status life.

Ultimate New journalism piece is FEAR and LOATHING… “Gonzo journalism” a fly on the wall, shaky, authentic type of footage.

“Performance journalism” - e.g.‘Supersize me’ – Michael Moore. You're putting yourself in the story – you are central to that story.

America and 'The New Industrial State' - Seminar Paper

The 1950’s first saw America achieve a level of prosperity they had never known before, as other parts of the world struggled to rebuild from the devastation of WWII, citizens of the United States saw their standard of living surpass what previous generations had only dreamed about. 
Max Weber, a German sociologist was the first to look at bureaucracy, according to him bureaucracy was the most efficient form of an organisation. The organisation had to have a well-defined line of authority, clear rules and regulations which had to be strictly followed.  The largest growth of the bureaucracy in American history began in 1933; Roosevelt’s New Deal meant a bigger government, since agencies were needed to administer his many programmes. When America entered into the Second World War in 1941, the needs of the war elevated the number of federal agencies and employees even more.
Weber laid down certain features that he felt the most efficient bureaucratic organisations should possess, including precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge and strict subordination as well as talking about charisma as a source of bureaucratic power, traits seen in modern day president Barack Obama. The main source of power is a legal action which provides authority and a constant reference to other lawyer’s that implement the system of rules in the bureaucracy. America is a bureaucratic country, dominated by lawyers who are the ones dividing and sorting out the rules and regulations; they are at the top of the hierarchy.  
Before America prospered, it was hit hard with the Great Depression during the late 1930’s. A severe economic depression effected countries world-wide, originating in the U.S after the fall in stock prices that began around September 4th, 1929. The situation soon deteriorated when the stock market crashed in October, leaving devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices all dropped, whilst international trades plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S rose to 25%, and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities were hit hard, especially those that relied on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted, farming and rural areas suffered a 60% decrease in crop prices and areas dependent on primary sector industries such as cash cropping, mining and logging suffered the most.
The great depression ended American Capitalism. For more than a decade, America’s free market economy failed to operate at a level that allowed most Americans to attain economic success. The fact that the economic collapse had been caused not by want but by material abundance with the problem being that there was too much of everything, there was too much supply and not enough demand.
According to Karl Marx, the crisis of Capitalism will inevitably lead to the fall of Western Civilisation. There is a constant struggle for humans to survive as we use up our resources to their maximum limit; we as individuals are constantly competing with one another due to economic production. The 60’s and 70’s are a prime example, whereby the economic boom led to high levels of inflation, causing mass unemployment. Marx believed that money became the state intervention of mans “true” nature, forcing him to become alienated as the rise in monetary value reduced the right of human freedom. 
Marx’s theory describes two elements that led to the exploitation of the working class; Forces (raw materials, technology, and labour) and Relations of Production (ownership). Similar to David Ricardo he believed a products value was dependent on the amount of labour power invested in it, as the value increased, the workers wage decreased. Marx called for the abolition of the financial system for fair labour and stated that a Proletarian Revolution was inevitable in order to achieve a Communist State. 
The U.S’s entry into the war in 1941 finally eliminated the last effects from the depression and brought the U.S unemployment rate down below 10%.  As the depression wore on, President Roosevelt tried public works, farm subsidies and other devices to restart the U.S economy, but never completely gave up trying to balance the budget. According to the Keynesians, this improved the economy, but they believed Roosevelt never spent enough to bring the economy out of recession until the start of WWII.  In the U.S massive war spending doubled economic growth rates, either masking the effects or essentially ending the depression. Many economists believe that the government spending on the war caused or at least accelerated recovery from the depression as it helped in reducing unemployment, the war provided jobs for men whom went into the army which allowed women to take over and work back at home in the jobs that were left. 
British economist John Keynes argued that lower aggregate expenditures in the economy contributed to a massive decline in income and to employment that was well below average. In such a situation, the economy reached equilibrium at low levels of economic activity and high unemployment. His basic idea was simple; to keep people fully employed, the government would have to run deficits when the economy started to slow, as the private sector would not invest enough to keep production at the normal level and bring the economy out of recession. Keynesian economist’s called on governments during times of economic crisis to pick up the slack by increasing government spending and/or cutting taxes. 
Keynes was writing during the 1930’s when America was going through a “deflationary gap”, of which there were more goods than money. Resources appeared to be limitless which led to advancements in mechanised agriculture. With new invention came new investment, he believed that money had the power to affect human behaviour. Keynes believed in a problem free society. He believed that every need should be satisfied and problems such as war, famine and disease dealt with. The new industrial state machine or system satisfies anything that can be seen as a human need, making us richer than anyone from previous years due to the way we live in modern day times.
Individual families used to own factories and coal mines instead of large factories that are attached to bureaucracies and controlled by the government. There is mass unemployment as everything nowadays is made cheaply and it is hard to gain a mass profit. Everything used to be made my hand whereas today it is produced by machines or for extremely low wages by citizens in third world countries.  Karl Marx’s views in economy failed as he didn’t cover much political philosophy, he wrote classically, influenced by Adam Smith about the free market and efficiency, he analysed the declining rate of profit due to an increased source of efficiency, lower wages  and how to make them more efficient which is the stage factories are at now. 
Wages have now been pushed down by competition as people working for a low wage know that people from other countries will come in and do the job for even less. Eventually everyone will become so poor producing and making the clothing that they will not be able to afford to buy their own products and the system will crash. In modern day times, systems are in place for more efficiency; minimum wages are now being fought over by immigrants, the British will work for £3, the Polish for £2 and the Viennese for £1 and so on. 
Keynes believes the answer to this problem is to go to these places, Poland and Vietnam and keep the money there and not allow their citizens to come to where the money is. This will stop the crisis by allowing people to have credit or to use government spending to buy the things needed which will defer the problem.  This will solve problems of over population and the fight for jobs. The government spending can defer the problem but it doesn’t ultimately solve the problem, Keynes says to forever defer the problem just print more money however he didn’t take into account the problem of inflation which can still be controlled. 
The Keynesian consensus was attacked from both the left and the right; the far left consisted of Heidegger and Sartre who saw American civilisation as bureaucratic, technological, militaristic and nihilistic. They saw America as a country ruled by lawyers, ever advancing with machines replacing people in manufacturing products, as well as militaristic, spending vast amounts of money on the military, for example the whole of California could not function without military funding as it is made up of communication, computers and extremely technical military programming paid for by the U.S deficit. Heidegger and Satre also saw how prevalent nihilism is in Western civilisation. The most obvious form being religion as nobody really believes in the scriptures anymore yet they say they believe in it because it’s convenient for them. They both believe American civilisation is bound for disintegration, most probably violent. 
Heidegger claims that western civilisation is doomed. It is a death machine with no vision or future, no project or genuine culture. America cannot produce any symphonic music nor beautiful art, only trash; literal trash such as waste material and cultural trash such as pop music and Hollywood movies. 
Some conspiricists believe that America is run by people from the elites, they are all the same sharing the same outlook, education, training and with the same answer to the economic crisis, to increase public spending and infrastructure work but tell the public that they’re reducing it. They believe the public will not be able to work out what’s going on and will carry on with their normal everyday lives. The last thing the elites want is a democracy. 
The prevalence of conspiracy theories have a grain of truth in terms of their being interlocking bureaucracies with interlocking complex relationships with newspapers and the television, a ‘false reality’ with a ‘false consciousness’. 
The legacy of George Orwell, who wrote 1984 which conveyed the concepts of mind control  as well as the actuality of attempted mind control by Goebbels (Poland and Germany) and the reality of systematic false consciousness by Stalin who became ‘dizzy with success’. Hence studies of the media who interpret hermeneutic (secret meanings) readings of media, with Freudian aspects of mind control, mass manipulation of emotion and “id” – the desire. Television is seen to be the drug of the nation. 
The right hand side, consisting of Hayek was the first to critique the orthodox of Keynesian methods; he believed that things start to go wrong with Kant and after Nietzsche it’s a disaster, he claims that we need to go back to the American Revolution and the 18th century. 
The nationalist right is subsumed into militarism and becomes scarcely credible in the modern bureaucratic civilization. Spengler, Hitler etc. are now very pessimistic, the west now completely domed and beyond redemption. Spengler claimed that he believed Hitler was the last chance to bring back the enlightenment. They lost this opportunity because of America. 
The economy overall grew by 37% during the 1950s and at the end of the 1950’s the median American family had 30% more purchasing power than at the beginning. Inflation which had wreaked havoc on the economy immediately after WWII, was minimal, in part because of Eisenhower’s persistent efforts to balance the federal budget. 
Dwight David ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, the 34th president of America  founded the right combination of low taxes, balanced budgets and public spending that allowed the economy to tick along at a steady pace. He benefitted from steady growth in spending on new homes and consumer goods as citizens turned away from older notions of thrift and began to buy on credit. Eisenhower pursued his goal of achieving a balanced federal budget; he used his credentials as an experienced military leader to reassure the nation that the defence budget did not need to be increased as much as some Democrats were clamouring for in order to counter the Soviet threat. Even though Eisenhower was favourable of low taxes, he dug in his heels and fought against tax cuts whenever they threated to plunge the government into debt. 
Many factors came together to produce the Fifties boom. One being, The G.I Bill which gave military veterans affordable access to a college education. This added a productive pool of high-educated employees to the work force at a time American businesses were willing to pay handsomely for engineering and management skills. Cheap oil from domestic wells helped keep the engines of the industry running, alongside advances in science and technology which spurred productivity. At the same time, competitors in Europe and Asia were still recovering from being bombed during WWII. 
Keynes during the 1950s was a God, in the early stages of the Keynesian revolution it saw the neoclassical understanding of employment replaced with Keynes view that demand, and not supply, is the driving factor determining the levels of employment. This provided Keynes and his supporters with a theoretical basis to argue that governments should intervene to alleviate severe unemployment. His Economic philosophy was that “money matters”. The economy should remain in a stable state of ‘equilibrium’ whereby the amount of money should match the amount of goods. A products value increase as the money supply pumped into the economy decreases; however this leads to a negative economic growth. 
“The New Industrial State” was first published in 1967, written by American economist John Kenneth Galbraith he redefined America's perception of itself in one of his most successful and identified works. His work examines and explores from the 1950’s onwards the economics of production and the effects on the development of the state, how the United States is no longer a free-enterprise society, but a structured state controlled by the largest companies. Galbraith also discusses other themes surrounding the issues of product, capitalist societies and of businesses and corporations. 
Advertising is the means by which these companies manage demand and create consumer "need" where none previously existed. Multinational corporations are the continuation of this power system on an international level. The goal of these companies is not the betterment of society, but immortality through an uninterrupted stream of earnings. The New Industrial State's purpose was not to catalyse a political movement but to describe the economy as it was, to deflate faith in the omnipotent and benevolent market and to foster understanding of a world dominated by large industrial firms, by the planning system and the "technostructure". 
Galbraith writes about how the use of risks within traditional small businesses become less relevant compared to the rise and continuous growth of large corporations in the industrial region. He goes on to state that the advantages of the large associations have in securing longer contracts with labourers and suppliers reduce the relevance of risk taken by smaller businesses becomes practically ineffective in their way of gaining supply and demand. He also writes that the influence of politics is another key factor in securing stable situations and conditions which are ideal for the continuous growth and planning in the markets of production. 
Despite some sectors of the economy still dominated by small firms, Galbraith argues that long-term planning needed for produce involves advanced technology which includes the theory of risk. One result of this is that competition is no longer a relevant explanation of the industrial sector because the overwhelming power of advertising from larger corporations is more significant and appealing to the produce of the smaller businesses. 
He goes on to argue throughout the book that the industrial system is controlled by the structure of the industry rather than the actual share- holders of the respective companies. The structure itself is not there to create or increase the profit made but rather to maintain the stability and life of the corporations, and to a further extent to gradually increase its stature over a larger scale, expanding where they see fit. 
A central theory of the book is the revised sequence. The main idea of the economy is that markets that are in competitions which one another are, at the end of the day, controlled by their customers and the will of their customers. This is referred to as the ‘Accepted Sequence’ whereas the revised sequence is the opposite in contrast, where companies use advertising to gain control over their customers. 
The “Accepted Sequence” that the customers have control and gain control over the company by requesting what they want to see done. 
“The mature corporation has readily at hand the means for controlling the prices at which it sells as well as those at which it buys. Similarly, it has a means for managing what the consumer buys at the prices which it controls.” – Galbraith goes on further to talk about the planning and that the use of technology is the main reason for the planning process. He also states that the time committed to the planning and technology, as well as the decreased effectiveness of the market for products and skills contributes to the long-term planning of the techno structure of the company. 
Markets within the system compete to attract the most amounts of consumers; however consumers compete to get the best from their chosen or designated market. The companies fight for the economy and use advertising to obtain the most economic profit from their consumers in what we call the Revised Sequence. However, the Accepted sequence is different and responds significantly to the requests and desires of their consumers. Consumers control firms in the accepted sequence, but due to the backlog and power of their economic state, maybe it is the larger companies who have a stronger techno structure to progress and expand.

HCJ - Lecture Three

“The rebels weapon is the proof of his humanity. This irrepressible violence is man re-creating himself” (wretched of the earth)

Existentialism as an agent for political change – via existentialism principles established by Nietzsche, Heidegger – a call to arms from Satre and the explicit embracing of violence by Franz Fanon.

Key figures in development of existentialism;

Nietzsche;

God is dead – the end of certainty – and we are faced with a crisis – we need something new to sustain us.

This crisis is fantastic according to Nietzsche – It means freedom. It gives us the freedom to find value for ourselves (transvaluation of all values):

“At last, the horizon seems open once more, our ships can at last put out to sea in face of every danger; every hazard is again permitted to the discerner; the sea, our sea, again lies open before us; perhaps never before did such an “open sea” exist” (Gay Science)

For Nietzsche human nature is not universal – our natures are different and it therefore follows that different people can find and follow different conceptions of excellence and of different moralities. (Opposing position of natural rights (Locke) and creates space for Fanon's violence).

The Ubermensch – overcomes what has so far defined us as human. The Overman renounces all of this, carving out his place in the world according to his own will. Will to power – defining himself by the choices he makes.

Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view.

Heidegger;

Being and Time – highly influential (Satres Being and Nothingness) book is about existence. He is interested in what it means to exist and consequently the problems of human life.

 Existentialism is about whom we are and our existence. Locke and Newton and Hume wanted us to know the universe where as the existentialists are concerned about our existence, about what it is to be us. (Very contrasting point of view)

But before we can investigate the nature of being as such we must first question the nature of being which causes the questions to be asked.

The first question to ask is “what is human” – what is the basic beginning of existence. And that is a creature he called Dasein – Dasein is in each of us.

He thought that human beings were Dasien but also other forms such as aliens could also be Dasein.

Heidegger is largely an attack on Descartes, he had no time for the Cartesians. Descartes came up with Cartesian dualism - he argued that there were two things in the universe, the mind and body, spirit and physicality. He believed that these things were completely different and that the world is made up of these two things. Heidegger disagrees, he believes this theory to be an utter disaster. He believed that the biggest problem with Cartesian dualism is if these two things are completely different then how do they interact?

But if we are stuck in our minds and there’s a very real question which plagued Descartes and virtually all philosophers after him – how do we get out of our minds to know the world in itself?

Sceptics like David Hume doubted that we could ever know the world as it is. 

In place of consciousness and subjectivity Heidegger simply talks about Dasein – he is looking for the essential structure of Dasein.

Being in the world – but not to be understood as a spatial relationship – it denotes a certain type of engagement. “I’m journalism – one defines me in terms of my engagement with journalism”

Heidegger believed that dualism is absurd – for Dasein to exist it must exist in the world – there is no Dasein without the world- Socrates and Christian philosopher are mistaken.

It is simply us and our interaction with the world.

Imagine that you had a complicated machine, and if you had three settings, one empiricism, the second idealism and the third existentialism. If you were to put someone in the machine and look at the different outputs each setting would have it would result with empiricism showing you the being of that person, all the details of that human, weight, height, features etc. If you were to look at the second setting of idealism it would show you the soul  of that person and finally the third setting, existentialism would show you all the decisions made by that person – the one thing to define this person would be his/hers next decision, the choice that they make. 

We are defined by our decisions and our choices.

Heidegger states that when we normally speak of ourselves we don’t speak about our authentic selves at all – true self – being ones own person. The influence by Nietzsche has a long argument against slave morality (bad faith).

Das man self – the inauthentic self – what he has in mind is a sort of social construal of the self. The Das Man self is inauthentic because it is simply a social self, it is not one owns self at all.

Existence – this dosent just mean taking a place in the world, it has to do with possibilities and choices. This is to be contrasted with what Heidegger calls Facticity (which Satre will borrow)

Facticity are those parts of ourselves which are simply given – we are thrown into the world. We are born at a certain time at a certain place of certain parents and we don’t have much choice about any of this. It is just blind luck. Consider the madness of nationality; we could have been born anywhere, grown up anywhere, it is not our choice.

Our Dasien is very much wedded to where we happen to be thrown in life.

Facticity – “throwness”- we are born with a blank slate but already have a past. (Moral luck) For the existentialist the future is the most important dimension. We are creatures of the “possible”.

Transcendence – is my reaction to facticity – our possibility, which may not be realised. I am defined by my choices – I re-create myself – I am not defined by my past. (Crucial to Fanon – path to escape the role of victim).

We are defined by our engagement with the world. There is no rightness or wrongness, it is your reaction to your facticity, and if you are dominated by your facticity then you are living an inauthentic life.

Aristotle believed that some people were naturally slaves, they were inferior, lesser, they were defining their classes by their past. Heidegger says this is irrelevant, whether it’s your gender, age, race or class – we do not need to be victims of the past.

Satre;

Key idea: existence precedes essence – we create our own purpose.

E.g., Simone de Beauvoir – “one is not born a woman, but one becomes one”

The absurd – there is no guiding spirit, no teleological driving force – stuff happens, good and bad without reason and so life is in some way ridiculous and absurd.

Existentialists argue that we bring purpose; we transform ourselves and the world by bringing in purpose. We create our own universe.

Heidegger’s existentialism was right wing (Nazi) – Satre’s was left wing.

The life of a person is not determined in advance, by God or moral laws says Satre; the only thing I cannot escape is the need to choose. You might not like the choices you have to make but you cannot escape them, you must make a choice. But the possibility of recreating oneself is frightening – people will try to avoid this freedom. This is “bad faith”.

Being-in-itself, being-for-itself.

Satre is clearly influenced by Heidegger.

The alternative is to take responsibility for your actions and be defined by your choices “all the barriers, all the railings, collapse, annihilated by the consciousness of my liberty. It is I who maintain values in being” (Think of Nietzsche’s open sea)

Humanity for Satre is:

Abandonment – God is dead (Nietzsche), God does not guide our actions, there is no divine set of rules to follow –we are alone and there is no one/nothing to guide us on how to act.

Anguish – Humans are fundamentally free “condemned to be free” the responsibility of being free is enormous and we have no excuses, we are responsible for everything that we are. We cannot choose our past but we choose how we feel and act to every situation.

Despair – This is the realisation of that the world may prevent us from getting what we want, but we still choose how we react to the setback, we are the totality of what we actually do.

 Example; Satres pupil;

-Choice between his mother and joining the Free French.

-Abandonment, Anguish, Despair.

-The choice? “You are free, therefore choose.”

Bad faith;

Most people think that being a soldier, police officer, student, engineer, confers certain obligations on you, for example, students are expected to attend lectures, pass exams, etc. But Satre might accuse you of bad faith – the denial that you are radically free, when they think their past determines their future.

Sartre thinks such people are making a metaphysical mistake – turning themselves into inert objects, rather than free beings, beings condemned to making free choices.

Example;

Café waiter – the waiter is acting out a role, in doing that he is denying that he is free to otherwise, in that way he is like a mechanical robot. The waiter is trying to represent himself as determined in his actions.

Gay man – whether we can say that the man is gay in the same way as we can say that the wall is white or the grass is green, Do we define ourselves as our past or not? – Sartre thinks there’s a paradox – his central metaphysical claim the human subject is not self-identical, which leads him to accept these contradictions that one is a homosexual but is also not a homosexual because he thinks this is the nature of us as human beings and that this is how we contrast with tables, walls and stones, which are fully self-identical.

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

I am large, I contain multitudes” Walt Whitman. 

HCJ - Lecture Two

Frege, Russell, Whitehead- logic and mathematics.

Solecistic logic;

Natural numbers, these words used to count for things. Natural logic from the mathematical field of logic.  

Three fundamental attitudes towards languages, including syntactical number systems such as arithmetic, but especially numbers

1. They are natural and can be empirically observed. 
2. They are intuitions of a harmonic, perfect platonic other word. Numbers are platonic. Bert Russell started as a platonist- numbers came from a different world. You would never know the noumena of a number it can never be a thing in itself. 
3. They are abstract logical objects, constructed purely from syntax. (Frege)

Syntax a set of rules of modifying a meaning of one logical object and another. Adjectives and nouns have syntactic forms. Syntactically altered, Large house- Blue house. 

Frege;

Numbers are created using syntax

Numerical naturalism/evolutionary psychology 

Apes and stone age tribes appear to be able to judge simple empirical plurality, typically:

If you are a monkey.

0: absence of a thing ( eg a banana.) 

1= one banana/enough bananas 

2= maybe a lot of bananas/unlimited. 

1 thing, more than one thing and plenty of things. 

Plurality; 

Zero, One and Two are strong natural numbers. 

Even for people from advanced cultures small number words are functionally different to large number words. 

If you come into a room and there is one person, you don’t count the one person even with three you can categorize that as a simple plurality. Most people will go up to maybe six or seven objects in a group before counting, using logic relations to the empirical pluralities. 

You can say in a footage ground, it could appear to be empty. You could say there are a few people or a “crowd of people” This is known as simple pluralities. 

Predicate (In logic and grammar) is the result of a process of a calculation.Subject Verb- Predicate. The result of the action of a verb. 

Verbs are operators in Frege logic. 

Syntax- is it learnt or innate? Its complicated it would be impossible for a child to learn it, it must be innate. Against John Locke who thought nothing is innate we learn things. 

Human syntax is subtle compared to syntax on a computer. On a computer it used predicate logic. PC programming was a Very slow progress to begin with. 

PYTHAGOREANISM

Beans- Fetus, strange cult like ideas. But they worships maths, by chanting geonometrity.

Prime numbers are pre existing, external supernatural forms. Numbers are an unknown Kantian world. They are not in nature simple plurality. Prime numbers are “Logos’ evidence there must be god, language of God. Prime numbers are invisible. if you divide them you do not get a whole.  Similar to Plato’s cave, things for the domain of perfection and eternity. 

Orphic religion, in ancient Greece- Nietzsche’s appolonian religion, pace the birth of tragedy. God of music, the harmony of the spheres. The eternal ratio of thirds on strings and harp. 

All other numbers are just rational represent geometrical ratio’s. 

The special religious significance of the prime number three. Three is the magic number. People behave abnormally to numbers. You wouldn’t say you have a magic word, but with numbers people do. 

The numbers three- you have the rule of thirds. Three quad triads in music. A beginning, middle, end. Three stages. 

In Christianity three is massive. Father, son, holy spirit. Rises on the third day. Coincidence? 

Greek’s feared no.1 and zero. Greek counting began with two. zero would not be something they entertain. It is naturally impossible to have nothing, nothingness cannot be an object. 

Islam love the no.1. There is only one substance, Allah. 

No. 5 and no.7 are important pentagrams. 

Arisitotle physics was a matter of sold geometrical fundamental objects. 

This is all ophism and also the codified religion of pythagoreanism. 

Pythagoras regarded only plurals as natural numbers so they began counting with two. “one” and “Not One” were different logical categories. The odyssey- the cylops, “my name is no one” “No one is there” Frege cites the same problems in logic. There is no one on the road, does not mean the same thing as the road is empty and anyway the road is not empty because it contains at least the road. 

SPECIAL PROBLEM OF NOTHING AND ZERO.

Zero as a operator came from India. Arabic letters are where numbers came from. 

It was avery difficult concept because zero+nothing BUT nothing is something. This is contra to and breaks Aristotle's law of contradiction, the foundational axiom of all logic. Problem of the law of contradiction solved by Leibniz monads, that an object can “contain” its own negation. Modern philosophers of mathematics have thus asset that zero is a natural number, logically derived as 1-1=0 

“Nothing” is a philosophic absurdity like somebody like Heidegger would asset Also the qualitative differnteraly gap between 0=nothing and 1= something as big as the universe. 

 Aristotle huge step on the way. Yes we know things but here is a way to know how you knew these things. Why do you know the swan is white? 

All swans are white- proposition

This bird is a swan therefore it is white. 

knew these things. Why do you know the swan is white. 

BUT The australian black swan cleared that out. 

Zero is nothing and nothing is something. The first rule of Aristotle's logic was not to contradict the moon is the moon the sun is the sun. therefore the sun isn't the moon. 

The problem here is the consistently. 

0+1=0 but 0x1=0 so what does +1 mean? 0+1=1 1+1=2

plus 1 is doing different things all the time. it is not a stable syntactical object. Frege solves that. Numbers are platonic entireties, not known as things in itself. 

Attitude today; 

Numbers are logical objects- Frege Revolutionary thought. ‘The Grundlagen.’ this is a third approach of numbers- LOGICAL OBJECTS

Book ‘the foundations of arithmetic.’ 

Arithmetic is just a language according to Frege  

Adapted by Russell and Whitehead as an attempt to demonstrate the logical basis for numbers arithmetic and mathematics thus refuting platonism and numerological mysticism. 

Rejected Mill’s numerological empiricism. you cannot find zero in nature. and then there is the + 1 increment. Not coming from a platonic therefore numbers must be derived from logic. in his book ‘equations’ 

Frege's Method;

All things that are identical are equal to themselves. ( This is apriori, deductive.) 

It follows all things which are pairs are identical to all other pairs regardless of what they are pairs of.

The class of all pairs contains all pairs and this can be given a purely nominal symbol eg two a word or numeral, it does no matter.

Larger numbers can be built as logical constructs along the lines of the class of all things which are pairs of pairs we can attach any symbol we like to this the conventional one would be ‘four’ 

One is the class of all things which are not associated with other things

Zero as a class of all possible objects which are NOT equal to themselves. There are no such objects by definition. 

Bertrand Russell 1872-1970

Posthaste

The philosophy for language- Wittgenstein 

Frege moved logic to syllogistic logic. 

-It’s possible for a sentence to make sense but have no reference. It makes sense but there is no point of reference. This conversation would make sense but there are no reference points 

Frege solves that with a new form of language the Beriffsschrift. 

HCJ - Lecture One

Just to begin and not lose you completely:

Dasein is a German word which literally means being here (German: da - here; sein - being) often translated in English with the word "existence".

Existentialism;

“it’s existence precedes essence” You’re existence is not the result of anything. It is a rejection of old fashion beliefs. You’re here but your existence doesn't matter. (Jean Paul Stare book Being and Nothingness.)

Existentialism is the rejection of Descartes: “I Think therefore I am” 

The phrase would more rather become ‘I am therefore I exist”- there is no need to prove it. This is a Cartesian dualism rejection. 

Existentialists are prepared to say “there are thoughts’- But that is it, nothing more. 

They see everybody as a composite. Illusion- Wittgenstein. (The sea of language)

Isolation tanks would make you go insane- verification principle. 

Where does thinking come from? We do not know and IT DOES'NT MATTER. 

This journey begins with Kant, “Critique of pure reason.” Existence is not a predicate. It is not a conclusion or result of something else. 

We must exist before we can think. 

Consciousness does not prove existence. Existentialists are against Descartes and Plato thoughts. Contra Descartes. 

How does consciousness arise? It is a metaphysical, religious or poetical question. How could there not be consciousness? You cannot stand outside consciousness. 

Just examine consciousness as a phenomena. There is no ‘I’

The Cartesian ego cannot be found anywhere. Freud tried to find the ego through cycle analysis. But existentialists said there is no "I".

In Cartesian terms it could  mean that all life is, is actually a “dream”- a dream is a sub category of consciousness. Dreams are simply a difference mode of consciousness. It is superstitious to see the various levels of consciousness in sleep. There are many states of consciousness. its superstitious to say being awake is a different level of consciousness. 

HUSSERL;

Husserl is the the founder of modern phenomenology, with his main book- “psychology from an empirical Standpoint." The book de-mystify s psychology which has its origins in Hegelian pseudo science such as phrenology. 

Psychoanalysis is to find the essence within the person. 

By trying to examine phenomena just as they are presented in consciousness. By trying to see objects as they are without any reference to context to the essence of the person. Without any essence of meaning. 

For Husserl there is no difference whether the ideas I am having represent the real world or whether they are fiction or hallucinations. There is a phenomenon of a table- it doesn't matter if it is real. Its irrelevant. 

Heidegger

The text itself, Being and Time 1927- Sein und Zeit. 

Heidegger proclaims end of the metaphysical age from Plato to Husserl, though the change began in the 1790’s with Kant and the French revolution. The Logical Positivists in Vienna and Cambridge at the same time were saying the same things. 

He is obsessed with Kant and wife. They see in Kant the start of the person that destroyed metaphysics. 

The French revolution was used in democracy. It was known as the aristocratical ideal. We need to get back to ancient Greece, as they liked living on farms. 

They hated mass civilization, cities and transport. 

If anything they thought Hitler didn't go far enough. 

In the metaphysical age objects exist independently of mind, they ‘subsist’ and the role of the mind is to understand the structure of reality as a kind of mirror. The mission of philosophy was to establish the ‘reality’ of the existence of the ego as an object within an external world and to describe the nature of this reality (science) 

Objects are only in the mind, whether it is hallucination or not.

Before Husserl people believed objects were really there and they found the nature of an object. 

The primary idea of the metaphysical age was to make thoughts correspond with an underlying or hidden substraction of independently subsisting reality such as Descartes ‘god’ or Schopenhauer’s ‘will’ or even Wittgenstein's facticity. He rejected himself from all of these. This is unlike Nietzsche’s rejection, he just didn’t quite get there. 

Thoughts which correspond with reality are ‘truth statements’ even subjects aesthetic intuitions. The poet truth is beauty beauty is truth. Beethoven the noumena of the universe. The will Schopenhauer. 

Heidegger was bitterly against the romantics. 

There is correspondence theory of truth whereby truth is a matter of matching the mind with independent reality. 

Truth is the agreement of knowledge with objects. Objects are eternal and prior to mind (Aristotle) or can be mind dependent (Kant) but they exist either way according to the metaphysicians, even Kant. Kant’s project was not the rejection of metaphysics but its a re-foundation on the basics of active mind by the use of the noumena and phenomena. 

Husserl and Heidegger dispense with the noumena and keep the phenomena, hence phenomenology. I suppose you might call religion and art ‘noumenology.’ Kant was refuted and Schopenhauer’s theory was also disapproved by Heidegger. 

There is no will noumena of the universe as a thing in itself there is only a representation- For example the subjective appearance of things, “the data of consciousness.” 

There is no ‘will’ there is only representation.... which is ‘the idea of an object... which is phenomena! 

After Heidegger there is no absolute or highest truth, existence as a thing in itself objectively. There is only subjective ‘weak truths’ and practical truths or convenient truths. which are necessary to being and being is always concrete and specific for Heidegger, “always being in the world” or “being there”- the problem with truths. The truth is grounded in verifiable facts “so called facts.”

Where is Dasein? It is in ‘mood.’ Your mood is you- according to Heidegger. 

God knows i am miserable now. At that moment your mood is you. 

Emotion by metaphysics is seen by an imperfection, to emote is bad its non-verifiable. 

Heidegger says emotion is important it is known now as emotional intelligence. But it used to be called stupidity. 

Truth is therefore no longer a matter of matching thought to reality. But of making reality which is seen as true post-hoc. There is no idea of a correct truth to which one teacher or one culture has access. There are many truths specific to the desires and moods of each individual.

Mood is not a trivial matter for Heidegger but the concrete aspect of being.

Heidegger’s project: 

To clear away all philosophical terminology and throw away all the philosophical concepts and systems since Socrates. He wrote in plain non technical language. In tune with George Orwell and Wittgenstein. We needed to invent a new language. Thinkers and writers in the tradition of Heidegga was completely new. 

To liberate himself from constraints of objectivation and Metaphysics - he doesn't care if you do this though. 

Live an ‘authentic life’ in practical terms to live a simple life in the forest. As a Nazi he had a rousseau-esque loathing of industrial civilization, of cities and sought 

“You are what you eat’- a good Heidegger quote. Ecology is Heidegger. Organic is authentic. New ageism. ‘I'm doing my thing’ vegetarianism- anti modern. He wants to live in a ‘wooden hood.’ Folk music, lots of music, wife at home- this is very Dasein.

Like Nietzsche, Heidegga believes Socrates corrupted Western civilization. We wasted thousands of years thinking about things rather than enjoying things.

Dasein- Being there. like Husserl, Heidegger is not interested in consciousness.

Being is not an abstract idea being at a particular time and place and being engages in practical task, This is our Dasein. ‘The river keeps moving’ We never stop. This is unsettling to Heidegger. We are just thrown into things. Thrown into lectures etc. Constantly thrown into things, like a roller coaster ride. Freedom for Heidegger is complete absorption in a task such absorption in a task makes existence go away. Like the function of music for Schopenhauer but actually makes your existence go away. When you are fully engages in  a task you no longer exist. His advise would be to find you’re dasein.

Existence boredom. Boredom is the problem of being. The opposite of boredom is Dasein. Lack of boredom (engagement in Darien) is non existence. 

Existence requires time. Without the time there would be no boredom. With the infinite time there would be infinite boredom. The perception of lack of time creates a sense of urgency and forces a choice of Dasein. Whatever your Dasein is whether is it a hobby it saves you from boredom. 

Dasein is not thinking it is ‘caring’. Anti thinking. 

Judgments, choices and decisions and formulation of concepts are ways of caring and coping.

PART ONE OF THE BOOK (Being and Time)- Dasein. 

“time is the boundary for the problem of being’ time is boundary of Dasein. 

time is not a thing in itself. Kant discovered the problem of non linear time, and Einstein confided the mutability of time as ‘space time’. So “Space time is the horizon/boundary of being.”

The preparatory analysis of Dasein (“being there”) 

The difference between the hammer and the carpenter is that the hammer has ‘being for’ They have bad faith, they are just used. People that are just being for others is terrible according to Heidegger, un social philosophy.

There are three aspects of time, this Heidegger shares from Kant ( 12 types of time) and the mutability of time obviously references Einstein relative and modernity generally: 

Three aspects of time:

1: Attunement- What causes your mood. The reflection of the time. “Don’t look back” Reflection on the past produces mood. If you think about the past it will usually give you ‘guilt’ He would say Get over it! 

2: Being for itself or ‘Being there”- caring about the task in hand. The is the present mode of the Dasein.

3: Directedness- reflection on the Future. the mood created is ‘dread’ eg- death. do not think about it. This is the ‘Fear of the future.’ Ignore death. 

BLOG

Rector of Freiburg University in the 1930’s, was a dedicated member of the Nazi party- sanctioned book burning, and the removed of all the Jews from the university including Husserl who had been his teacher. 

Post war never recanted his Nazi’sim and was banned from teaching. Thus he was not read until the 1960’s when he was popularised by his French follower Jean Paul Sartre

Sartre- Being and Nothingness’ attempts to remove the boundary of space and time from being. It takes the same structure as Heidegger. 

Past=Guilt

Present=Boredom unless obliterated by Dasein

Future= Fear

Albert Camus’ novel ‘The Outsider’- we’ll look at this in more detail in the future. 

Existentia  (being for/by yourself) vs Existence (objective,objetified being for others)