Literature & Philosophy: An Exploration of Ideas and Expression

Literature & Philosophy: An Exploration of Ideas and Expression

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Identity of Being

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Inquiries into Being

How to Act

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Jean Paul-Sartre (1905-1980)

Published his essay "Existentialism is a Humanism" in 1946. Being exists in physical world. Since there is only one human realm, Sartre prioritizes the needs of human rather than God.

"Existence precedes essence"

We are thrown into the world. Emphasizes responsibility--rejects determinism and the "I" as a thinking substance. "I" comes from awareness of others and the world.

Key Terms: Bad faith, being in-itself, being for-itself, facticity, phenomenology.

René Descartes (1596-1650)

Cogito ergo sum

“I am a thing that thinks. that is to say, a thing that doubts, affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, wills, refrains from willing, and also imagines and senses”

Published Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641.

The idea that God is the most true and distinct thought.
God is infinite thought while one's own knowledge is finite.

Three steps to Argument:

Sensory illusion-Casts all senses and reason into doubt.
Dream argument-Distinction between the dream-world and the real world
Evil demon-A deceiver that compromises senses.

Since existence is perfection, a supreme being exists.

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W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)

Publishes The Souls of Black Folk in 1903.

"The problem of the 20th-century is the problem of the color line."

Double-consciousness (two-ness is a manifestation of how black people identify in a hegemonic white world. Encourages a real democracy of material world to enact a reality of the transcendent world. Consciousness of other's gaze of us in an implement. The "will" not only effects the black individual, but also the community. White people can't be understood without black people.

The Gaze of the Other:

DuBois, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Charles Mills, Butler

Du Bois wrote of the black experience in America during Reconstruction. His concept of a double-consciousness illustrates the experience of how black people view themselves in two identities as an African-America living in an oppressive white society.

Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" gives recognition to man's being-in-the-world and how their being is recognized by themselves and others.

de Beauvoir devises her own scholarship of Existentialism to show how women's social position is placed second to men.

Mills demonstrates how race is a social construction and how race is perceived through objective intersubjectivity.

Butler argues that gender is a social construction as well, but her contention is that gender is performed. Gender norms are identified through repeated acts of gender.

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Simone de Beauvoir (1909-1986)

Published The Second Sex in 1949, which explores the category of femininity and how the ideal is posited in society. Question of being is a question of specificity.

"One is not born a woman, but becomes one."
Woman is constructed.
"Man thinks himself without women. Woman does not think herself without man"

Man is the autonomous subject while woman is the other dependent relative to man. Woman's experience is the ultimate alterity. We need the recognition of other's freedom in order to be free. There is no "before" period from which women were subordinate to men. The notion of self comes from recognition of others. Man is the absolute, while woman is the Other.

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Publishes essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" in 1988. Examines "acts" and "performance" of gender. "Acts" are socially shared--constituted through recognition of Others, anti-substance theory of gender, gender is recognized through its repeated acts, acts constitute gender identity. "Gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time--an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts"

John Locke (1632-1703)

Tabula rasa

Published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689

Tabula rasa or "blank slate" is the notion that ideas and concepts are not
"built in" or exists prior to our experience with them.

Ideas are the basic building blocks to how we acquire knowledge.

Three Kinds of ideas:

Substance-Self-subsisting things or a
collection of self-subsisting things
Modes-A complex idea all of whose component parts are variations or combinations of a single simple idea
Relations-Comparing relational concepts without combining them together to make a new concept

The Soul is inefficient to identify a person.
Identity is a relation between two things that are determined to remain the same. Person is different from man

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Published his essay "The Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals" in 1785. Argued deontological ethics. Rational faculty decides morality and reason. A priori knowledge. Reason comes with experience. We act freely and choose duty. Kant's emphasis of duty gives responsibility to moral agents and how they act in relation to their duty. actions are based on maxims that must follow the categorical imperative. Reason and morality go hand-in-hand. Optimistic thinker. Reason will rise above for everyone as along as they follow their reasoning. The command to duty is an imperative.

Categorical imperative:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.
Thus the third practical principle follow [from the first two] as the ultimate condition of their harmony with practical reason: the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will

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J.S. Mills (1806-1873)

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

Published Utilitarianism in 1861. Consequentialist approach to ethics, which is an immediate approach and doesn't desire logical inquiry. Promoting happiness determines the promotion of the general happiness. Actions are "right" when they intend to promote happiness. Competent judges discern who has experienced feelings of pain and pleasure and is able to distinguish between the two. Our notions of justice derives from the idea of social utility. The feeling of justice is a desire for punishment when we feel that a crime has been committed. This is where the conception punishment is established.

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"In the end one has to do everything one-self in order to know a few things oneself: that is, one has a lot to do"

Published Beyond Good and Evil in 1886. Reconstructs morality and ideas to establish a new way of thinking. Truth isn't absolute. Overcoming the realm of ideas that Christianity influenced. Thinking is a type of instinct. Instinct and Reason are opposed--Reason is just another type of appetite, falsely disguised as something else. Prioritizes elevated imagery using metaphors. "Free will" is merely a fueling of delight in the act of commanding. Anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian thinker. Hierarchical philosophy. Skepticism can be a tool to dismantle religious thought. Rather than one morality among many, we should desire morality of the self. Philosophy can allow us to get out of this thinking and become an area of strength. Makes philosophy into a type of art/artifice. Takes us away form the dichotomy between fact and truth

Conflicts of Morality between the State/Collective vs. Self/Divine

Oppenheimer, Arendt, Sophocles, Nietzsche

Oppenheimer explores the killers involved in the Indonesian massacre and how they justify their actions against international laws.

Sophocles portrays the dispute between authority of the State vs. the Individual through Creon and Antigone.

Arendt analyzes Adolph Eichmann's trial and concludes that he exploited Kant's concept of duty to justify his "thoughtless" actions in the Holocaust.

Nietzsche endorses new philosophers to overcome conventional methods of morality and Christianity.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Banality of evil.

"Bureaucracy is the rule of nobody and that is what makes it hard to judge because bureaucracy doesn't embody one person and that is what makes it hard to judge."

Published Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963. Covered trial of Adolph Eichmann who was accused of being involved in the Holocaust. Although Arendt believes Eichmann's actions were reprehensible, she objects to his reasoning of acting on Kant's "duty." Argued that Eichmann's sense of duty didn't come from reasoning, but came from the Fuhrer. Charges Eichmann with thoughtlessness. We are compelled to judge the actions of others. Judging allows for questioning of immoral acts.

Comment: Analysis of Kant's categorical imperative from Eichmann.

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Jordan Peele's directorial debut which premiered in 2017. The film explores white liberals during the Obama era and their fetishization of black culture.Chris is the main protagonist who visits his girlfriend's (Rose) parents house to find out that his body is being up for auction by other white liberals. Invokes Du Bois' concept of double-consciousness in showing how Chris and other African-Americans in the film are seen under the white gaze and fetishized for their social status in American during the Obama era.

Black is in fashion

Charles W. Mills (1951-Present)

Publishes essay "But What Are You Really? The Metaphysics of Race" in 2000. Metaphysical approach to race. Social ontology. Race is a social construct. Although race is constructed, it has objective ontological status which arises from intersubjectivity.

Comment: Derives his question "What are you really?" to position his argument of race being a social construction from Locke's question "Who are you really?"

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Emphasis on Mind/Body Dualism

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*Franz Kafka The Metamorphoses*

Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphoses was published in 1915. The novella's plot tells the events of Gregor Samsa's transformation into a bug. Dualism of mind/body, consciousness determines personal identity, incorporates free-indirect discourse, allegory against capitalism, relationship of son/father, Gregor's mind is the only thing he has control over, mind has control over the body, turns into a bug, fails to fulfill his role as a son and provider for his family.

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Swann's Way is part of a seven-volume work called In Search of Lost Time, published in 1913. The novel portrays a narrator who is amazingly aware of his surroundings. Although this may be so, he is suspicious in the certainty of his senses. Proust incorporates the bildungsroman genre, which portrays the narrator as a child and his progression into adulthood. Retrospect/recollection. Skepticism, evidence of soul, omit, nature of dreams, memory is essential to person identity, man v. person, social identity (Swann), time dissolves. Bodily memory unknown to the mind.

Ursula le Guin "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"

le Guin's short story was published in 1973. The plot reveals a utopian island named Omelas, whose population's happiness is dependent on the torture of a small child. Upon seeing the cruelty that is placed upon the child, some walk away from Omelas. The story can be an interpretation of Utilitarianism's moral philosophy and how acts towards happiness is the motivating moral value. The story can be analyzed as being a contention against Mills' philosophy through the people who walked from omelas.

Sophocles "Antigone"

"Death longs for the same right for all"

"Antigone" was first performed in 442 B.C.E. Focuses on state/collective vs. individual though the portrayal of Creon and Antigone. Antigone was to bury her deceased brother Polynices, and give him a religious burial to honor the gods, but Creon prevents her because Polynices opposed his government. Demonstrate the dichotomy between human law vs. Divine law. The topic of acting on self-preservation is pitted again acting on principle. Begs the question to if law of the State predicates an ethical value? Antigone acts out against Creon as a form of civil disobedience.

Comment: Although Nietzsche would be against Antigone's belief in the gods, he would commend her actions of defying the laws of the State.

Joshua Oppenheimer The Act of Killing

"'War crimes' are defined by the winners. I'm a winner, so I can make my own definition."

Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer. Covered Indonesian genocide and the killers involved. Historical memory--How the world sees us and how we see ourselves. How do we live with the things we have done? Paradox between reality and fiction. Connection to Arendt and her idea of thoughtlessness in Anwar and Adi. The role of fantasy in everyday life--performance and fictionalization that exposes a truth of self-deception.

Deviation From Old Methods of Morality:

J.S. Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche.

J.S. Mill along with Jeremy Bentham contributed scholarship to their moral philosophy, utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism sought to replace the good and evil by attributing good as "pleasure" and evil as "pain."

Friedrich Nietzsche sets out to overcome all past philosophies that distinguished the binary between good and evil.

Foundationalist

René Descartes, John Locke

Descartes: Mind/Body Dualist, doubts everything, rationalist.

Locke: Empiricist, ideas are acquired over time, person is a legal term, there can be humans that are not persons and vice versa.

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"Being" in the Modern World:

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul-Sartre were both Existentialists.
Both philosophers influenced each other and wrote on similar ideas and concepts.

Both philosophers benefited from each other's ideas and built a scholarship around existentialism and phenomenology.

Although Sartre's Being and Nothingness established a philosophy around existentialism and phenomenology, de Beauvoir's The Second Sex became one the most influential texts in the 20th-century.

Matters of the Colored Line

Race as a Social Construction

Woman's Being-in-the-World

Gender as Social Construction

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Emphasis of Memory and Contemplation

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Moral of Duty

Morality of Happiness

Emphasis on the Contention between Mills and le Guin

Morality of the Self

Emphasis of Antigone and Morality of the Self

Emphasis of Individual Moral Value vs. Universal Moral Value

Emphasis of the Expunge of Morality

Report on the Banality of Evil

Being-in-the-World

Empiricist

Rationalist

Existentialist

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Emphasis of Establishing Universal Maxims: Antigone and Creon

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Emphasis between Kant and Arendt

Emphasis of Being-in-the-World

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Emphasis of two-ness

Emphasis on the arbitrariness of race

Emphasis on Substantiating Past Self

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