“What is the Nothing?” Heidegger analyzes this metaphysical question in his literary works, as he attempts to grasp a sense of this branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. He sets out on this exploration of the human condition by first an analyzing this metaphysical question about Nothing. Heidegger asserts that the use of any traditional logic and/or reasoning in an answer to this question will undoubtedly always result in a failure. This results occurs due to the paradox that forms when one turns “Nothing” into something, they proceed to point out that even some emotions such as love or hate, will not succeed due to their nature to obscure the nothing. Nothing and its ambiguous nature make it difficult to comprehend, but Heidegger suggests …show more content…
Heidegger proposes this to us, and continues on by stating, “In the trepidation of this suspense where there is nothing to hold on to, pure Da-sein is all that remains” (Existentialism 249). In this quote, he highlights that in Angst, when everything slips away, one is left with Nothing. In Angst one may feel everything slip away, but true Angst, allows one contact directly with one’s individual existence. Ultimately this can be very beneficial in the understanding of one’s alignment in “what-is-in-totality,” through their personal experience with the true Nothing. “Only in the Nothingness of Da-sein can what-is-in-totality – and this in accordance with its peculiar possibilities, i.e. in a finite manner – come to itself” (256). Heidegger suggests that being (Dasein) must go beyond the what-is for our essence to be revealed to us, as it is something that is only reflected in projection into Nothing. All in all, the model of existentialism that Heidegger built and follows is heavily reliant upon his overt definition of Angst (dread) and its relation to Being and individual existence in the
In the film I Heart Huckabees the protagonist Albert Markovski find himself questioning the meaning of his life. Albert begins to wonder what “meaning” his life has, so he sets forth and hires two “existential detectives”, Bernard and Vivian Jaffe. During the film he meets Tommy who has also hired the detectives and when they find themselves dissatisfied with the “existential detectives”, they “go to the other side” and discuss their troubles with the “nihilist” philosopher Caterine Vauban. In the film you can witness two philosophies of these two groups that give some insight into the two pairs of opposed ideas. Throughout the progression of Albert and Tommy's characters in I Heart Huckabees, you can see the transition from the subject of desire to the subject of drive and the rejection of one's particular subjectivity in favor of universal subjectivity as necessary processes to creating the ideal political subject. I find that his film has relations and ideas from Philosophers such as Heidegger. I will explain how Heidegger’s philosophical ideas were relevant in the film.
...ould become unnecessary and meaningless "if only the darkness", like nothingness, "could be perfect and permanent" (116). Nothingness does preclude individual identity of any sort, however. Surrendering completely to nothingness would negate any possibility of authentic intimate human relations: the one source of meaning and happiness to Sylvie.
“Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form” can be understood as being empty of a separate and independent self. In addition, Thich Nhat Hanh puts a positive spin on emptiness...
At the end of Being and Nothingness,Jean-Paul Sartre concedes that he has not overcome one of the key objections to existentialism viz., an outline of ethics, and states that he will do so later. Although Sartre attempted the project of an existential ethics, it was never quite completed. Enter Simone De Beauvoir. In this book, De Beauvoir picks up where Sartre has left us, refusing to answer the question of ethics. For De Beauvoir, human nature involves and ontological ambiguity whose finitude is bound in a duality. This duality of body and consciousness is the ambiguity which remakes nature the way we want it to be as a facticity of transcendence. It is within this understanding that the project of ethics must begin in ambiguity. However,
Krauss, Lawrence Maxwell, and Richard Dawkins. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. New York, NY: Free, 2012. 7-8. Print.
Heideggers Conceptual Essences: Being and the Nothing, Humanism, and Technology Being and the Nothing are the same. The ancient philosopher Lao-tzu believed that the world entertains no separations and that opposites do not actually exist. His grounding for this seemingly preposterous proposition lies in the fact that because alleged opposites depend on one another and their definitions rely on their differences, they cannot possibly exist without each other. Therefore, they are not actually opposites. The simple and uncomplex natured reasoning behind this outrageous statement is useful when trying to understand and describe Martin Heideggers deeply leveled philosophy of Being and the nothing. Lao-tzus uncomplicated rationale used in stating that supposed opposites create each other, so cannot be opposite, is not unlike Heideggers description of the similarity between the opposites Being and the nothing. Unlike Lao-tzu, Heidegger does not claim that no opposites exist. He does however say that two obviously opposite concepts are the same, and in this way, the two philosophies are similar. He believes that the separation of beings from Being creates the nothing between them. Without the nothing, Being would cease to be. If there were not the nothing, there could not be anything, because this separation between beings and Being is necessary. Heidegger even goes so far as to say that Being itself actually becomes the nothing via its essential finity. This statement implies a synonymity between the relation of life to death and the relation of Being to nothingness. To Heidegger, the only end is death. It is completely absolute, so it is a gateway into the nothing. This proposition makes Being and the nothing the two halves of the whole. Both of their roles are equally important and necessary in the cycle of life and death. Each individual life inevitably ends in death, but without this death, Life would be allowed no progression: The nothing does not merely serve as the counterconcept of beings; rather, it originally belongs to their essential unfolding as such (104). Likewise, death cannot occur without finite life. In concordance with the statement that the nothing separates beings from Being, the idea that death leads to the nothing implies that death is just the loss of the theoretical sandwich's bread slices, leaving nothing for the rest of ever. The existence of death, therefore, is much more important in the whole because it magnifies the nothing into virtually everything.
Guignon, B. C. and Pereboom, D. (eds). (2001). Existentialism: Basic Writings. Indianapolis, IN: Hacket Publishing.
Kraus, Peter. "Heidegger on nothingness and the meaning of Being." Death and Philosophy. Ed. Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Existentialists mean that we can't rationalize, since we can't explain human fear, anguish, and pain. To rationalize is absurd, because in the final analysis, we will find nothing. Life is absurd. This leads to the term Nothingness. Thus, since we can't find a meaning of life more than what we attempt to create by ourselves, we anguish.
“There are no facts, only interpretations”, said famous French philologist Friedrich Nietzsche on the topic of deconstruction. It is this quote that we are opened into the world of deconstruction, a world where “language doesn’t reflect or convey our world but constitutes a world of its own”. Deconstructionists believe that language is the barrier that forces thoughts to lose their purpose. The moment you share an idea from the inner workings of your mind, whether it be written or spoken, is the moment the idea is lost in translation. In order to understand deconstruction, one mu...
One of the aims of Being and Nothingness is to describe consciousness, or human subjectivity. Sartre distinguishes two different modes of consciousness in order to accurately describe human subjectivity. These two modes are being-for-itself and being-for-others. Being-for-itself refers to a transcendent conscious being (Oaklander, 238). Transcendence is the antithesis of facticity. I will describe facticity first, in order to make the concept of transcendence more tractable. Facticity denotes the concrete details of the subject’s being including past decisions, plac...
The Existential Approach stands for respect for the person, for exploring new aspects of human behavior, and for divergent methods of understanding people (Corey, 2013). Existentialists do not focus on instinctive drives or internalized others but on the person's unavoidable confrontation with the givens of the human condition. Yalom (1980) described those givens as death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. (Bauman, & Waldo, 1998).
History of heideggerian commentaries confronts us with a series of parallel notions : "Metaphysics and Theology", "Onto-Theology and Christian Theology", "Theology and Faith" and finally "Being and God". I should also point out that these different dual concepts organise several strategies to interpret Heidegger.
During the late 19th and 20th centuries, several philosophers debated on the doctrine differences that all philosophical thinking begin with the human in terms of thinking, acting and feeling. The fundamental concepts of the externalist philosophers are that they believed that the existence of human conditions is the main problem to share similar ontology. Soren Kierkegaard is considered to be the father of existentialism. Although, he did not use the word ‘existentialism’, but initially the concept that no society or religion is the main cause that leads an individual to live a life with sincerity or passionately. It is perhaps his own beliefs and feeling that makes him to feel that way (Wartenberg). Similarly, Martin Buber (1878-1965) is well known for his philosophy of dialogues including I-Thou relationship and I-It relationship. Different philosophers have presented their explanations to describe the relationship of a man with the life such as Martin Buber, Steve Biko, axel Barnes, Karl Barth, William James, Soern Kierkegaard, John Macquarrie, etc. This paper aims to compare, contrast, and evaluate the philosophies of Soern Kierkegaard and Martin Buber.
Greiner, Rae. "The Art of Knowing Your Own Nothingness." ELA 77.44 (2010): 893-914. Project MUSE. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. .