DOCSLIB.ORG

Joy As Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Joy As Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2010 Joy as Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson Justin Albert Harrison Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Harrison, Justin Albert, "Joy as Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson" (2010). Dissertations. 203. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/203 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2010 Justin Albert Harrison LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO JOY AS ATTUNEMENT AND END IN THE PHILOSOPHIES OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND HENRI BERGSON A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY BY JUSTIN ALBERT HARRISON CHICAGO, IL MAY 2010 Copyright by Justin A. Harrison, 2009 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all of the people who made this dissertation possible, starting with my professors in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Andrew Cutrofello was an amazing dissertation committee chair. I am forever indebted to his critiques, analysis, support, and aid. I would also like to thank Loyola University Chicago for providing the funds with which I was able to complete my research and writing. An assistantship from the fall of 2005 to the spring of 2008, as well as a Fourth Year Fellowship during the 2008-2009 school year provided the funding and experience that I needed to complete this work. I am grateful to those who have contributed to Loyola and for Loyola’s generosity in providing this funding. Throughout this process I have had excellent teachers at Taylor University, the University of Toledo, and Loyola University. They are too numerous to name, but each has a special place in my heart and I am thankful to them all for their inspiration, care, and guidance. In addition to these professors, I am also thankful to my fellow students with whom I have developed deep bonds that I hope will last for life. I would also like to thank my parents Drs. Albert and Pamela Harrison. Their unfailing love and support throughout my life has made me who I am. Not only have they given me insight into the process of dissertating, but their care for one another has taught me much more about the beauty of a life lived well. iii Finally, I must thank my wife Carla Alegre. One can only write on something like joy if one has access to it. The name Alegre means joy. You have been my access to joy. You brought me back to life, and you opened the door to hidden joy. My heart is ever in your service. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT vi CHAPTER I: ATTUNEMENT IN THE THOUGHT OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER 1 Introduction 1 Heidegger’s conception of attunement 4 CHAPTER II: BERGSON’S CRITIQUE OF THE INTELLECT 35 Development and attributes of the intellect 42 The outcomes of the intellect: Bergson’s critique 63 The intellect and science 69 The intellect and desire 77 Conclusions 86 CHAPTER III: JOY AND BERGSONIAN PHILOSOPHY 92 Intuition 94 The foundations of reality and the goal of philosophical thought 112 The nothing 113 Change, movement, and creation 120 Life 134 Joy as the end of Bergsonian philosophy 139 CHAPTER IV: JOY AS FUNDAMENTAL ATTUNEMENT 164 Heideggerean joy 164 Conclusions about Heideggerean joy 190 The nothing and its place in the ontologies of Heidegger and Bergson 198 Creation and joy 221 The relationship between anxiety and joy 261 BIBLIOGRAPHY 291 VITA 298 v ABSTRACT Martin Heidegger claims that attunement is one of the primordial ways in which Dasein understands its world. He focuses on anxiety as the fundamental attunement in which Dasein can more authentically uncover its Being. However, it is necessary to ask if anxiety is the only attunement out of which one can most authentically appropriate Being. Heidegger seems to have an unexamined bias in favor of “negative” attunements (anxiety, boredom) and never undertakes an extended analysis of “positive” moods such as joy or happiness. This dissertation is an examination of joy as a fundamental attunement through the works of Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger. We will focus attention on the common theme of “the nothing” and its place in the ontologies of both philosophers. We will argue that Heidegger’s focus on anxiety is the result of the place of the nothing in his ontology. In contrast, we will see that Bergson’s rejection of the nothing leads to his focus on what he calls the Life of the real. This focus leads to his constant return to joy and its relationship to philosophy and harmony with the real. Heidegger claims that authentic attunement in anxiety is the space in which Dasein can come into nearness with Being. Dasein is able to more authentically experience Being in two modes: meditative thinking and waiting. In order to attain joy, Dasein must first traverse through anxiety and the horror of confronting the abyss of Being. In contrast, Bergson’s account of joy does not make joy a derivative experience of humanity, but the vi grounding attunement out of which humans act creatively and find themselves at home in the world. For Bergson, creation is the mode of being that allows humanity to coincide with that which pushes life forward against the natural forces of degradation and death on earth. Using Nietzsche’s ideas about joy, return, and creativity, we link Bergson’s ideas about creation and Heidegger’s ideas about waiting to the emergence of joy. We show that it is not necessary that one await the emergence of joy after traversing through anxiety. Instead, we ultimately argue that in authentic, creative activity, humans experience a joy that is the foundation from which they have the desire for happiness and the ability to experience happiness. vii CHAPTER I ATTUNEMENT IN THE THOUGHT OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER INTRODUCTION This dissertation is an examination of joy as attunement in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. The use of the word attunement points directly towards Martin Heidegger’s analysis of attunement [Befindlichkeit] in Being and Time. I believe that Bergson is implicitly committed to a thesis about joy as fundamental attunement in Heidegger's understanding of this aspect of human existence. In order to analyze joy in Bergson’s thought it is necessary that I first analyze Heidegger’s conception of attunement and its relationship to the manner in which humans1 find themselves in the world. Among the various primordial attunements, Heidegger lists anxiety, love, boredom, and joy. However, Heidegger dedicates his time to analyzing anxiety (Being and Time, Introduction to Metaphysics, and “What is Metaphysics?”) and boredom (The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics). In Heidegger’s thought, attunement is one of the structures of disclosure of the world that is part of the fundamental constitution of the existence of Dasein. It is therefore necessary that we examine attunement and how attunement provides the view of the world through which Dasein comes to find itself 1 Heidegger makes sure to distance himself from the idea of human being early in Being and Time. Rather than refer to humans as humans, he instead uses the term Dasein (literally being there) to refer to those beings that in their being are concerned about their being. We will explicate Heidegger’s conception of Dasein at the beginning of the next section. 1 2 located in the world. After explicating the role of attunement in Heidegger’s philosophy of existence, we will then focus on the ontic/ontological distinction that Heidegger elucidates in relation to fear and anxiety [Angst].1 Ultimately, Heidegger concludes that anxiety is the primordial attunement that founds the ability of humans to experience fear, and also founds the manner in which humans find themselves in a world as such. “Being anxious discloses, primordially and directly, the world as world.”2 Paying special attention to this distinction is important because Bergson proposes a similar distinction in relation to the manner in which humans perceive the world. Heidegger’s distinction between the ontic and the ontological provides a foundation from which we can adequately explicate Bergson’s distinction between the mode of the intellect and the mode of intuition. This Bergsonian distinction is parallel to that of Heidegger as humans are given primarily in an ontic world environment. That is, they find themselves in relation to an actual world that can be observed and verified using various techniques. However, at the same time, humans seek the ontological foundations of the ontic reality. That means that humans seek the underlying structures that are not immediately present in order to explain the ontic reality. Similarly with Bergson, humans begin from a state of immediate perception that involves examining the world through the intellect. The intellect presents a picture of the world in its actual existence and the intellect also carves out objects in the world. Intuition is different from intellect for Bergson in that he believes that it reveals a more adequate picture of the actual structure of the reality 1 Some such as Magda King (see note 12 below) have translated Angst as dread rather than anxiety. 2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambuagh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 187/175.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Ontological-Ontic Character of Mythology
    Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-25-2017 12:00 AM The Ontological-Ontic Character of Mythology Jeffrey M. Ray The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. John Verheide The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Jeffrey M. Ray 2017 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, and the Metaphysics Commons Recommended Citation Ray, Jeffrey M., "The Ontological-Ontic Character of Mythology" (2017). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4821. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4821 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This thesis submission interrogates the concept of mythology within the opposing philosophical frameworks of the world as either an abstract totality from which ‘truth’ is derived, or as a chaotic background to which the subject brings a synthetic unity. Chapter One compares the culturally dominant, classical philosophical picture of the world as a necessary, knowable totality, with the more recent conception of the ‘world’ as a series of ideational repetitions (sense) grafted on to material flows emanating from a chaotic background (non-sense). Drawing on Plato, Kant, and Heidegger, I situate mythology as a conception of the false—that which fails to correlate with the ‘world’ as a necessary whole.
    [Show full text]
  • Charisma, Medieval and Modern
    Charisma, Medieval and Modern Edited by Peter Iver Kaufman and Gary Dickson Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Peter Iver Kaufman and Gary Dickson (Eds.) Charisma, Medieval and Modern This book is a reprint of the special issue that appeared in the online open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) in 2012 (available at: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/charisma_medieval). Guest Editors Peter Iver Kaufman Jepson School, University of Richmond Richmond, VA, USA Gary Dickson School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, EH, Scotland, UK Editorial Office MDPI AG Klybeckstrasse 64 Basel, Switzerland Publisher Shu-Kun Lin Production Editor Jeremiah R. Zhang 1. Edition 2014 0'3,%DVHO%HLMLQJ ISBN 978-3-03842-007-1 © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. All articles in this volume are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. However, the dissemination and distribution of copies of this book as a whole is restricted to MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. III Table of Contents List of Contributors ............................................................................................................... V Preface
    [Show full text]
  • 55 Fateful Images ALPHONSO LINGIS the Pennsylvania State University
    Fateful Images ALPHONSO LINGIS The Pennsylvania State University Reality and its Appearances Phenomenology, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, reduced the reality of things to the totality of their appearances. It is because something appears that we can assert that it exists. It belongs to the essence of a real thing to generate appearances. And the appearances are appearances of things. Appearances do not flow by, a drifting fog of tones and hues; they separate into identifiable units, gestalten. To be outside our minds belongs to the things, and their appearances are outside. We do not see patterns suspended in the inner space of the mind, but the colors, sizes, shapes of outside things. The real thing itself-the chair or the building caught sight of in its fragmentary appearances- is not something invisible, or conceptual, not an identity-term posited by the mind; it is the totality as sketched out in any of its appear- ances. Any of its appearances implicate further appearances: we see how the surface exposed in front of us implicates and is continued by a back side, an underside. The chair or a building exists in a wave of duration across which it evolves perspectival profiles of itself. Yet not all the appearances a thing generates show it as it really is. Natural perception itself, Maurice Merleau-Ponty pointed out, distin- guishes between the real properties of things and their perspectival deformations, appearances distorted by the intervening medium or obscured by the distance, colors seen in dim or colored light, shapes 55 56 set askew. The real properties appear in the thing when the thing itself is within reach, set at the right distance and position, accessible to our multiple sensory and motor powers.
    [Show full text]
  • New Yorkers Had Been Anticipating His Visit for Months. at Columbia
    INTRODUCTION ew Yorkers had been anticipating his visit for months. At Columbia University, where French intellectual Henri Bergson (1859–1941) Nwas to give twelve lectures in February 1913, expectations were es- pecially high. When first approached by officials at Columbia, he had asked for a small seminar room where he could directly interact with students and faculty—something that fit both his personality and his speaking style. But Columbia sensed a potential spectacle. They instead put him in the three- hundred-plus-seat lecture theater in Havemeyer Hall. That much attention, Bergson insisted, would make him too nervous to speak in English without notes. Columbia persisted. So, because rhetorical presentation was as impor- tant to him as the words themselves, Bergson delivered his first American lec- ture entirely in French.1 Among the standing-room-only throng of professors and editors were New York journalists and “well-dressed” and “overdressed” women, all fumbling to make sense of Bergson’s “Spiritualité et Liberté” that slushy evening. Between their otherwise dry lines of copy, the reporters’ in- credulity was nearly audible as they recorded how hundreds of New Yorkers strained to hear this “frail, thin, small sized man with sunken cheeks” practi- cally whisper an entire lecture on metaphysics in French.2 That was only a prelude. Bergson’s “Free Will versus Determinism” lec- ture on Tuesday, February 4th—once again delivered in his barely audible French—caused the academic equivalent of a riot. Two thousand people attempted to cram themselves into Havemeyer. Hundreds of hopeful New Yorkers were denied access; long queues of the disappointed snaked around the building and lingered in the slush.
    [Show full text]
  • INTUITION .THE PHILOSOPHY of HENRI BERGSON By
    THE RHYTHM OF PHILOSOPHY: INTUITION ·ANI? PHILOSO~IDC METHOD IN .THE PHILOSOPHY OF HENRI BERGSON By CAROLE TABOR FlSHER Bachelor Of Arts Taylor University Upland, Indiana .. 1983 Submitted ~o the Faculty of the Graduate College of the · Oklahoma State University in partial fulfi11ment of the requirements for . the Degree of . Master of Arts May, 1990 Oklahoma State. Univ. Library THE RHY1HM OF PlllLOSOPHY: INTUITION ' AND PfnLoSOPlllC METHOD IN .THE PHILOSOPHY OF HENRI BERGSON Thesis Approved: vt4;;. e ·~lu .. ·~ests AdVIsor /l4.t--OZ. ·~ ,£__ '', 13~6350' ii · ,. PREFACE The writing of this thesis has bee~ a tiring, enjoyable, :Qustrating and challenging experience. M.,Bergson has introduced me to ·a whole new way of doing . philosophy which has put vitality into the process. I have caught a Bergson bug. His vision of a collaboration of philosophers using his intuitional m~thod to correct, each others' work and patiently compile a body of philosophic know: ledge is inspiring. I hope I have done him justice in my description of that vision. If I have succeeded and that vision catches your imagination I hope you Will make the effort to apply it. Please let me know of your effort, your successes and your failures. With the current challenges to rationalist epistemology, I believe the time has come to give Bergson's method a try. My discovery of Bergson is. the culmination of a development of my thought, one that started long before I began my work at Oklahoma State. However, there are some people there who deserv~. special thanks for awakening me from my ' "''' analytic slumber.
    [Show full text]
  • NYU Paris PHIL-UA 9026 C01, History of French Philosophy
    NYU Paris PHIL-UA 9026 C01, History of French philosophy Instructor Information ● Philippe Lusson ● office hours TBD ● [email protected] Course Information ● PHIL-UA 9026 C01 ● History of French Philosophy ● An overview of important developments in French philosophy from the 16th century to the 1960s. We will pay close attention this semester to the relationship between the self and others. We will look at the debates that followed the rediscovery of Ancient philosophy and the Copernican revolution with Descartes’ rationalist and individualistic philosophy, Condillac’s empiricist critique, whose role for language brings the self into a web of social relations, and the growing recognition of the problem of society with Rousseau. We will then look at Henri Bergson’s reaction to the rise of the empirical sciences in the 19th century and especially at his distinction between the deep self and the social self. We will deepen our appreciation of the issues Bergson highlights with readings from René Girard and Jean Baudrillard, and we will look for possible solutions in Alexandre Kojève’s reading of Hegel and in Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s distinctive development of existentialism. ● No prerequisites ● Lecture Tuesday 5 to 6:30pm, recitation sections Thursday 3-4:30pm and 5-6:30pm ● NYU Paris, room TBD Course Overview and Goals Upon Completion of this Course, students will be able to: ● get a sense of the historical evolution of philosophy since the 16th-century, ● see how French philosophers developed some of the key ideas and movements in that history ● identity and debate important issues philosophers still discuss today ● learn how to assess the strength and weaknesses of arguments, ● engage in constructive philosophical discussion, give reasons, and raise objections, Page 1 ● perfect their skills in argumentative writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty,The Visible and the Invisible
    Northwestern University s t u d i e s i n Phenomenology $ Existential Philosophy GENERAL EDITOR John Wild. ASSOCIATE EDITOR James M. Edie CONSULTING EDITORS Herbert Spiegelberg William Earle George A. Schrader Maurice Natanson Paul Ricoeur Aron Gurwitsch Calvin O. Schrag The Visible and the Invisible Maurice Merleau-Ponty Edited by Claude Lefort Translated by Alphonso Lingis The Visible and the Invisible FOLLOWED BY WORKING NOTES N orthwestern U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s 1968 EVANSTON Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Originally published in French under the title Le Visible et l'invisible. Copyright © 1964 by Editions Gallimard, Paris. English translation copyright © 1968 by Northwestern University Press. First printing 1968. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 ISBN-13: 978-0-8101-0457-0 isbn-io: 0-8101-0457-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available from the Library of Congress Permission has been granted to quote from Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1956). @ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence o f Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1992. Contents Editor’s Foreword / xi Editorial Note / xxxiv T ranslatofs Preface / xl T h e Visib l e a n d t h e In v is ib l e : Philosophical Interrogation i Reflection and Interrogation / 3 a Interrogation and Dialectic / 50 3 Interrogation and Intuition / 105 4 The Intertwining—The Chiasm / 130 5 [a ppen d ix ] Preobjective Being: The Solipsist World / 156 W orking N otes / 165 Index / 377 Chronological Index to Working Notes / 279 Editor's Foreword How eve r e x p e c t e d it may sometimes be, the death of a relative or a friend opens an abyss before us.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation
    Chapter 2 The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation Carl F. Craver Abstract According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation. In C. G. Hempel (Ed.), Aspects of scientific explanation (pp. 331– 496). New York: Free Press; Kitcher (1989); Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25). My concern is with the minimal suggestion that an adequate philosophical theory of scientific explanation can limit its attention to the format or structure with which theories are represented. The representational subsumption view is a plausible hypothesis about the psychology of understanding. It is also a plausible claim about how scientists present their knowledge to the world. However, one cannot address the central questions for a philosophical theory of scientific explanation without turning one’s attention from the structure of representations to the basic commitments about the worldly structures that plausibly count as explanatory. A philosophical theory of scientific explanation should achieve two goals. The first is explanatory demarcation. It should show how explanation relates with other scientific achievements, such as control, description, measurement, prediction, and taxonomy. The second is explanatory normativity.
    [Show full text]
  • Bergsoniana, 1
    Bergsoniana 1 | 2021 Reassessing Bergson The Duration of History in Bergson Caterina Zanfi Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/435 DOI: 10.4000/bergsoniana.435 ISSN: 2800-874X Publisher Société des amis de Bergson Electronic reference Caterina Zanfi, “The Duration of History in Bergson ”, Bergsoniana [Online], 1 | 2021, Online since 01 July 2021, connection on 14 September 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/435 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/bergsoniana.435 Les contenus de la revue sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. THE DURATION OF HISTORY IN BERGSON Caterina ZANFI I. Is There a Philosophy of History in Bergson? Bergson has often been criticised for not thinking history. Although he developed one of the most relevant philosophies of time of the last century, his rare statements on history are said to betray an impoverished sense of properly historical issues. Moreover, this criticism is made concerning both his consideration of history as the becoming of human reality and his consideration of historical knowledge and narrative — of both history and historiography. It was first articulated in the 1930s by Marxist intellectuals like Paul Nizan (who was to perish in the fight against Nazism in 1940). In 1932, Nizan published a polemic entitled The Watchdogs against the so called “Philosophers of the Established Order.” There he includes Bergson among the philosophers who are “against history” (Nizan 1965, 29),1 considering him incapable of understanding the time and space in which philosophical ideas arise and therefore lacking in sensitivity for the material and embodied aspects of the historical becoming of philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Divine Illusions Alphonso Lingis Pennsylvania State University - State College, [email protected]
    Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Philosophies Research Resources of Science 2005 Divine Illusions Alphonso Lingis Pennsylvania State University - State College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_research Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Lingis, Alphonso, "Divine Illusions" (2005). Research Resources. 29. https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_research/29 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Philosophies of Science at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Resources by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DIVINE ILLUSIONS ALPHONSO LINGIS David Allison says to his readers that Nietzsche writes for you — you and him and me. In his book he tells of what of Nietzsche’s thoughts he has, with long years of research and penetrating and generous reflection, made his own. The lucidity of this book enables us to see if these thoughts can also become ours. Nietzsche’s thoughts are not only extremely complex but hard thoughts which we cannot make our own without a struggle. The finest virtue of a philosophical book on Nietzsche is that it provokes this struggle. Here I am only going to recount a little of my struggle with a couple of those thoughts, in the expectation that David Allison will shed more light on them. Nietzsche’s insists on the illusory nature of art. Apollonian art — plastic art, poetry, sculpture, and architecture — is the art of forms, perfect, self- contained, radiant forms.
    [Show full text]
  • C. Aesthetics of Existence Nietzsche and Heidegger
    C. AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE NIETZSCHE AND HEIDEGGER CI) LIFE AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE NIETZSCHE Introduction Nietzsche revalues the question of freedom in response to what he considers the repressive, life-denying moral laws underwritten by an over-bearing conceptual ratio since the time of Socrates and Plato. What has become the culturally instilled dualism of body and mind, an exclusion of somatic drives from any determining influence in the process of so-called rational thought, Nietzsche argues, continues to distort the modern questions of freedom and moral truth. Critical of the transcendental a priori character of Kant's categorical imperative and the dialectical rationality governing Hegel's secular metaphysics of Spirit, Nietzsche severs any necessary link between freedom and the conceptual ratio. Freedom now finds expression in the existential poiesis of an inner, self-reflexive pathos of aesthetic sensibility. This means that freedom is no longer tied to normative social relations with others nor to a metaphysical telos altogether beyond reach, but rather to values which best suit an individual's particular existential goals. No longer governed by any conceptually determinate, legislative moral judgement, these goals and the values supporting them are determined through a process of aesthetic evaluation. The actions resulting from this self-reflexive, aesthetic evaluation resemble those of an artist when producing a work of art. Indeed Nietzsche considers the actualisation of freedom to be indistinguishable from the actualisation of life as a work of art. Nietzsche thereby revalues the will to freedom as a self-styled evaluative aesthetics. What sustains this specifically aesthetic revaluation of freedom, Nietzsche indicates_ is a faith in the fateful principle of eternal recurrence.
    [Show full text]
  • UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, IRVINE the Impact of a Two-Week
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE The Impact of a Two-week Daily Intervention on Increased and Sustained Experiences of Awe THESIS submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in Social Ecology by Sean Patrick Goldy Master’s Committee: Assistant Professor Paul K. Piff, Chair Professor Roxane Cohen Silver Professor Peter Ditto 2020 © 2020 Sean Patrick Goldy TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES iii LIST OF TABLES iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Literature Review 1 Awe and Longitudinal Work 4 CHAPTER 2: The Present Study 7 CHAPTER 3: Method 7 Sample and Procedures 7 Measures 9 Analytic Strategy 11 CHAPTER 5: Results 12 Exploratory Analyses 14 CHAPTER 6: Discussion 16 Limitations and Future Directions 18 REFERENCES 21 APPENDIX A: Figures and Tables 26 ii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 26 Figure 2 26 Figure 3 27 Figure 4 27 Figure 5 28 Figure 6 28 Figure 7 29 Figure 8 29 Figure 9 29 Figure 10 30 iii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1 Mean scores for daily reported emotions over the intervention period 31 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to all who have been with me along each step of this process. v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The Impact of a Two-week Daily Intervention on Increased and Sustained Experiences of Awe by Sean Patrick Goldy Master of Arts in Social Ecology University of California, Irvine, 2020 Associate Professor Paul K. Piff, Chair The emotion awe is associated with numerous individual and social benefits, including increased physical and mental health, prosocial behavior, and humility (Stellar et al., 2017).
    [Show full text]