Every now and again a serious philosophy sweeps belatedly into intellectual fashion Usually as a result of some particular set of circumstances Between the two world wars this happened to Marxism mainly as a result of the Russian Revolution after the Second World War it happened to existentialism the fashion for which began on the continent of Europe in response largely to the experience of Nazi occupation When I talk of a philosophy being fashionable and speaking of it's catching on not only with a lot of academics but with writers of all kinds novelists playwrights Poets journalists so that it begins to pervade the whole cultural atmosphere of the time in post-war France there seemed to be existentialist novels films plays and even conversation on all sides The most famous name associated with that development both then and now is that of jean-paul Sartre but the existentialism of this century really began not in France but in Germany and in the period following the first world war and In serious terms the most significant figure of the movement is not Sartre But Heidegger that's to say there's virtual unanimity among students of modern existentialism That Heidegger as well as preceding Sartre in time is the more profound and more original thinker so In this program we're going to approach modern existentialism Chiefly through the work of Heidegger though later on we shall have a bit to say about Sartre and how he fits into the picture Martin Heidegger was born in southern Germany in 1889 and lived in the same small area of Europe for virtually the whole of his life He studied under the famous philosopher Husserl before himself becoming a professional teacher of philosophy in 1927 at the age of 38 he published his most important book called being and time He was to live for getting on for another half century after that and he wrote a great deal more some of it very interesting But nothing else of his was ever to be as big or as good or as influential as being on time It's not an easy book to read But we have here to talk about it the author of what I think is the best of all introductions to existentialism for the reader William Barret professor of philosophy at New York University and author of that excellent book irrational man professor Barrett if you can imagine for the moment that I'm somebody who knows absolutely nothing at all about the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger and you were going to start setting about giving me some basic idea. How would you begin? I? I think I would try to locate the man in this historical context to begin with It would be a little bigger context than the one you indicate namely. It wouldn't be measured in terms of decades, but centuries and I've tried to locate him first in relation to the What say the whole epic of modern philosophy which begins with Descartes? It was rather interesting to place him in in in that context because it relates him and differentiates them from other philosophers in the 20th century now as you know the Descartes was one of the founders of the new science that is of modern physics and part of his scheme for launching the science dependent upon like the same kind of split between consciousness and the external world the mind schematized nature for quantitative measures for calculation For the purpose of manipulating nature and at the same time the human subject the consciousness doing that was set off Against it so you What came out of it was a second kind of dualism between mind and the external world? Now most philosophy nearly all philosophy in the subsequent two centuries Accommodated itself to the Cartesian framework At the beginning of this century a number of philosophers began to feel that in some sense it was uncomfortable And we find that the a kind of revolt or rebellion against the cartesianism takes place among different schools Both in England and on the continent as a matter of fact with the American pragmatist ill Now Heidegger is one of those rebels against a car, and if you stop to think of it In this rebellion against a car I think We would get the key idea of hiding this philosophy with which I would would want to start educating somebody in the philosophy Let me make sure that that yes. They're together up to this yes, right what you're saying in effect is this that With the development of certain science, which really began in the 16th century We get this the development of the assumption that there is somehow a split in reality between subject and object There are humans observing the world and there is the world which they are observing and this dualism this Assumption that there is a division in reality between subject and object Goes all the way through our science and all the way through our philosophy though in fact Contrary to what probably most Western men and women suppose It's really a view of reality which is peculiar to the West and peculiar to the last Four or five century right right now now. It's an uncomfortable view because there is in some sense We don't live with this view. I don't I don't consider you as a mind attached to a body or I don't consider them I'm conscious of you there, but I infer your existence your existence is is doubtful in Ordinary life. We move back and forth between mind and body is perfectly recognizable fashion without proposing to ourselves any particular philosophical puzzles In these transactions so that it becomes somehow contrary to our ordinary feel of things to proceed in this way as if The mind and the external world was set off against each other in this way and this revolt against dualism I think is one of the features of 20th century philosophy Heidegger has his own mode of dealing with it I think You and I are together in the same world I mean you're not a mind attached to a body and I'm not a mind attached to a body Primarily we're two human beings within the same So you me how would you start introducing somebody someone to heidegger's philosophy? I mean I would say you start with this Fundamental concept of being in the world that we are beings of of course now the word being makes us Recoil because it sounds very far-fetched in highfalutin But in the primary cases in this case we have to understand that the most mundane Factual ordinary everyday sense the way in which average ordinary or extraordinary? Human beings are concretely in the world That's where we start from and that's where we begin to philosophize But may I say that I find this a very congenial starting point because the notion that reality is split between Observer and observed or subject and object isn't something that ever presented itself naturally to me. It was something I have to learn so to speak in school, or as a student and at first I thought it a very strange idea. I think that the experience of the individual accords much more with what you are now saying that is to say we we emerge from the Unconsciousness of early baby hoods let's be to find ourselves As beings in a world, which is the phrase you just know if we just find ourselves here in this world and this split That's where we start Well the split between Subject and object doesn't appear in philosophy until you get really at formulating they kinda said known to the Greeks and the medieval philosophers No having having established the difference between Heidegger and the tradition mmm-hmm how does Heidegger then proceed what does he how does he proceed to formulate his problem? Well you see the once you're planted in In the world we are being to the world then the task of philosophy becomes primarily one of description you are The philosopher then aims to describe the various modes of ways in which we exist within this world now in In this respect to see highly this approach is a little different from some of the anti Cartesian rebels in British philosophy, let's say more Vic and Stan who start with very definite problems of knowledge and perception how do we know the external world? now What I would like to say is that you see that in in this respect when you propose an epistemological Question you are already in the world to propose it Your ticket of admission to the ordinary world is not contingent upon your solving that puzzle When you say epistemological do you mean anything to do with the cereal aisle? I can't believe the reception and so yes, so that knowledge is is simply one other mode of our being in the world And the various modes in which we are in the world. I mean some of them are a Much more urgent and less theoretical knowledge. We're in the world in various fashions. We're anxiety-ridden sometimes worse Essentialism imply that the existentialist philosophers see existence as a problem It's a problem since we have to cope with it, but it's it's the given in any case I mean it's not inferred but the the problem is then to Characterize it descriptively. I think it's quite important to to emphasize that both Heidegger Then his his aim is descriptive. He is not a speculative meta physician. He's not he's not erecting any abstract speculative theory about what ultimate reality is if his if his ideas stand or for they stand a fall in terms of whether they're Adequately then they adequately describe you see our actual interfere What would you agree with this formulation that throughout the history of Western philosophy? The central problem really of our whole philosophical tradition has been the problem of knowledge. What is it to know? What do we know how do we know that we know how can we be sure etc that is the the key? problem all the way through but Heidegger isn't concerned with that problem centrally he's concerned with the problem of what it is to be Right what it is to exist how is it that anything exists at all what is this existence that we find ourselves in and? That's a quite different kind of problem isn't it which is there fascinate some people? But I think it's hard for other people to get hold off because it's unusual in my say There's a you know a tradition but I'd like to point out that the the pre-empting of the central Role in philosophy the problem of knowledge is really something which is characterized philosophy more or less since Descartes I mean it was discussed by earlier philosophers, but it didn't have quite that That absolutely central place that it had after they caught so in some sense It's a returner Heidegger thinks of himself in some senses a follower of the Greeks You say that what Heidegger is trying to do is to give a description of the reality in which we find ourselves to do the Description of being of existence of what there is human existence human existence, but I mean a layman might ask well What's the point of this I mean we have this existence here. We are we are living it It's it's it's in a sense all we have what is the point of describing? That which we are already having all that with which we already uh turley familiar What could can a description of this give us that we haven't already got? Well, it's the familiar. That usually eludes us in life. I mean what before I knows is what we see last It's true that the features of human existence, which he describes up in Many ways commonplace when you get through with his analysis? but you haven't seen them quite in this way before and I I think it's the case that people don't see what's before them they look past that or look through it and in one way or another and Adequate description of of experience with in some sense enlighten our eyes to what what there is and Which is not a easy easy to see in all cases? But uh does this mean that that there is throughout Heidegger an emphasis only Everyday on the ordinary beginning familiar Yes, and it's for many things, but there's also an emphasis on the extraordinary the unusual You see if I compare hiding in this respect with another philosopher of the everyday use in general sense. Let's say the later victims died the The comparison is rather interesting in one respect because Vic and Stein envisages the task of philosophy to be Unraveling the snores of our ordinary language so that then we can continue functioning on the same plane Let's say that sort of level plane of fishin communication within the world now and in this sense we almost envisage with Vic and sound possibility if we Unraveled or with snails and language philosophy would disappear so are the problems or questions, which set us into philosophy would disappear But now you see in heidegger's case We move along that plane of ordinary reality and there suddenly or extraordinary gaps Kinds of experiences which are very? Well now I think we are getting Heidegger in our sight so yeah But I think people watching this discussion will be beginning to ask themselves well. Yes, but what does he actually say? What does he talk about what are his doctrines now? What are some of the central themes with which he is concerned and let's start going into what he has to say Well for example the one characteristic of human existence in them we've talked a little bit about you and I this notion of what he calls the thoroughness of human existence The word in German looks very imposing give orphan height literally throwing us, but it's a simple notion we're thrown into the world and This is a case of where what is most ordinary man, how? It is nevertheless a quite extraordinary fact about our individual human destiny What do we simply find ourselves? Yeah, without as it were a by-your-leave or anybody does we didn't pick our parents We are born of those parents. We are born at this particular time We are born with whatever genetic structures given to us And this is the load we take upon us in order to fashion a life in this sense We are thrown or projected into a world so that human life starts at birth Very beginning is a cast of the dice Its contingency is rooted in the very fact of the inescapable facts of your individual birth and parentage Your individual time in history we're born in the 20th century and not in some other and what is right I don't have to say about that Well we begin our existence as a task in the sense is something we take upon ourselves because you see existence is not a neutral fact when you Concern with human existence existence is ongoing it has to be We are always involved thus in the task of as a were creating ourselves Always from this contingent moving back into an open future right all the time the future is the predominant tense and hide again He sees what he sees man is essentially a so to speak an ongoing right creature Yes, and as a matter of fact is is a count of we Construct the notion of clock time we make watches and other chronometer Because we're planning to use that time, so we're projecting ourselves into the future and on that basis We can calculate time so then again with the the dimension of time That is is most compelling for him as the future In the sense that the present has meaning only insofar as it opens toward a possible future He was saying just now that Heidegger in his attempts to give an illuminating description of our Actual everyday experience of life is aware. You said of the sudden holes in it yes What will you think I mean were you thinking of death? Yeah this would be one case Yeah, what would the others well now in death anxiety? He gives an analysis of conscience, but if we stop for a moment them and death I think that's because you asked me How does this description give us something which we don't already know It's very interesting that the description of death it gives us is something which rather turns over Our usual notions because our usual notions Try very much to escape from the fact of death now. This is something very peculiar about deaths We usually think of death is a fact in the world we read about people dying We read obituaries, and so um it happens to other people To be sure it'll happen to me, but not yet, so it's something out there in the world as yet external to me But the curious thing is if I start to think of it as my death Now my death is will never be a fact in the world for me. I will never read my obituary Which is I think very significant little fact, so it can never be a public event in the world for me Well as Vidkun stein says Death is not an experience right in life. That's because we don't live to experience death It's not live yeah, and therefore not an experience we have yes. It is. It's not in lesson. My death is as An assent has essentially mine is something which Cannot be invented an event in the world for me, but it's a compelling possibility for me now I mean the meaning of death is that it is a present possibility I may not be at anytime that the meaning of death is that it's the Possibility of not being or as he puts it. It's the possibility which cancels all my possibilities Now in this sense is the most extreme of possibilities, but his point is once you realize that this particular Possibility inhabits your existence. It's sort of the Walker dwarf of it in some way that then you can either collapse and Scurry away from it and fear Or you can face up to it And then you ask yourself the question there is that possibility in the face of that possibility what meaning does my life have Yeah, I think for hiding yeah He would agree with Tolstoy that the fundamental or at least At this stage of how to just think you would agree with Tolstoy that the fundamental question that philosopher as well as every man Has to put is this? Since there is death what meaning does my life have And I'm and that I think is is where suddenly if you think of it death is this interior possibility it takes on a new dimension from what and Oertel ordinarily carries you see when we refer to someone so died and and so I Must say again. This is something that I find deeply congenial although. I was trained in philosophy and in an entirely different tradition from this Watch everything you're saying makes very much sense to me I have I'm very strongly this feeling and I suppose large numbers of people must have it that our everyday life is at one in the same time sort of banal over familiar and Platitudinous and yet at the same time mysterious and extraordinary I have that double feeling about life And I certainly have very strongly the feeling that in the face of death one wants to see some meaning in my existence now Having reached this point does Heidegger call in aid a traditional Religious explanation of existence so what does he do no he has no no and said all he's pointing out is The structure of human existence or the framework within which one has to pose these questions he's showing them. This is a Dimension of human existence which has to be faced what answer you give to the question what meaning do I have? Will depend upon the particular individual. I mean Heidegger has no ethics in the sense one feature of human life Which he does draw a great deal of attention to in addition to this what you called give often highly effect But we are flung into it and find ourselves in the middle of it is the fine it to dove it Isn't it? I mean not only do we just kind of wake up in the world and find ourselves here, but the whole situation Lasts a very short time. I mean we've scarcely got used to finding ourselves here, then it all stops again And the fact that it all stops again is for most human beings as you were just saying very frightening and very alarming What how does he recommend that we Proceed from there no recipes the point is he points out that whatever whatever decision you take To give your life meaning or to encounter death it is the human condition that must be faced in one form or another And I've said I mean he doesn't say this, but there's suggesting Tolstoy and others perhaps all philosophy is a response to this question of death There's Socrates remark that all philosophy is a meditation on death which we might interpret liberally in this fashion that man wouldn't Philosophize if he didn't have it to have to face the fact of death - if we all had him living Eternally in the Garden of Eden. We just saunter along and death Ruminate about this or that but not any serious philosophical issue. One thing that Heidegger and the existentialists face Which I think previous philosophers didn't face is the fact that our knowledge of death Induces anxiety it's terrifying. We are frightened right when we try to look in the eye the fact that we are gonna die and so Anxiety in the face of our own finitude or mortality becomes one of the central themes of existentialist philosophy - yes and I think it's important to see that this place is a What I consider a fundamentally a sound and healthy Assessment and the fact of of anxiety anxiety is sort of led a checkered career in modern culture I Mean it became fashionable of a few decades ago remember when or denote his book the age of anxiety Well it seemed to be the thing that was fashionable it was the in thing people went around Cultivating their anxieties and so on which is rather silly because if we've followed our previous Description of deaths we realize that anxiety is there anyway as my fact anxiety is is simply our human existence in its contingency Coming to the level of consciousness it is the sheer contingency of human existence sort of vibrating there through it On the other hand you see the other modern attitude which is partly the result of our being technical society, which commands certain instruments we have a Command of drugs or remedies of various kinds we imagine that there should be some instrument or means by which we can simply Press a button and get rid of our anxieties that they're not something which Which have to be faced and live through and I think either extreme is rather Unfortunately it is simply a part of the condition of being human and in the certain sense at one point Heidegger says well there are all sorts of modes of anxiety and Then in some forms it has the kind of peacefulness of a creative yearning if we weren't anxious we would never create anything But man's men's Attempt to evade to said speak run away from his own anxiety to evade the reality of his own mortality Leads doesn't it to the next Existentialist the namely alienation that we we avert our eyes from the from the stark reality of our own Existence and in a sense cease to participate in the realities of our own existence now. This is something that Existentialist philosophers had a great deal say about too and another term like act like the term Anxiety which has become much misused by sort of fashionable and trendy writers, would you agree with that? Yes as a matter of fact alienation is unfortunate well in terms that's been tossed around so that if the word is used people will say oh that boring subject you see because But it does happen. That'll s to be one of the deepest things in modern culture and and preoccupied Hegel Marx, and I think has been their main item and contemporary literature literature of the 20th century, I think is a point you say perfectly valid they the mere fact that we have Civilization which has a great? Deal of means of information and its disposal so people know what do you know what's out? What's going? so the word alienation is tossed around and The mere fact that we make it into an empty banality in a sense promotes origination It's one cause I mean one way of escaping anxiety is not to take it seriously. I make it frivolous or trendy or yes it's so what but but See animation occurs for height against several levels one that one is this level which we may lose ourself in the impersonal social self a man buries himself in his persona is social role and so I know like Sasha took that from them and develop them The world is too much Ladies get in spending with a waste our powers It's a trap, but you see animation is really quite a real problem in this sense I I must say I I have a feeling of very acutely for the moment, I'm Putting this slightly humorously, but I think you will understand this here, I descended from the skies into London I haven't quite found myself, and it seems rather strange the alienation feels slightly detached And I said walk the streets these are strange people in certain ways Yeah, a couple of more days, and I probably feel at home Yeah, fundamentally the word alienation of course means something you all feel like that strange cities Yeah, some people feel like that in the world they inhabit their own skins as Strangers Now I want to move on we've been talking so far about the basic themes of being and time And I think it will strike people listening to this discussion straight away that this is a book which deals with very fundamental themes which to exercise People at a very deep level and even if there are no answers I think the fact that it illuminates the questions Which it certainly does at least it certainly has for me is of it in itself something of enormous value But like so many other philosophers having worked out a big philosophy Young he then moved on and in some sense away doesn't he from his early concerns for example being on time is the first Its presented as being the first volume of what is to be a two-volume work But the second volume never came out so all we ever have is this first half of a book Why didn't he finish that initial? Why did he then going to do? unexpected unforeseen things This is a subjective both discussion and speculation it turns out from recent information I've had just a month or so ago in United States that Heidegger has left the manuscript of the second part Which he? Does exist and it will be published? I don't know it'll be published as a kind of Knock Lhasa as to something. He's left behind, but I don't think it was publishable I Myself tend to think that I know what he was going to say and that he said it in this book on Canton and fewer seasons, but then there cuz this thing which is the high daguerreian sky was called the care of a turd He felt in some sense that in being in time He had riveted his attention to exclusively a man and that this this philosophy was a powerful form of humanism, but there was no there was no systematic grasp of What the human being is rooted in and though of course the world of nature? Yes material the cosmos the common sense yes, you see in the sense Heidegger. I would say is a fellow of Parmenides you see the The this Greeks age who had this electrifying idea you see the all is one for the first time in human history the notion of the the Totality of being as one thing you see which to which we have to relate ourselves and our thinking And I hide it was written bearpaw minutes, but now in in this sense He feels that precisely what has happened with modern cultures We've lost those cosmic roots in the way that we've been Detached from this sense of a connection with the whole or the well Why should this have happened specifically in modern culture isn't it part of the human condition as such In it is part in the sense that man is a being who flies away from truth Even as he pursues it But I think one of the reasons it happens specifically modern colleges of course what we we build up a much more in Technical society were more encased in the Shia human framework of things than people Worry because we live in a much more complex complicated. We live in my acting this nightmare to borrow But we live more and more in a Man created environment if we consider it all down the line from my air conditioning to everything else and our urban complexes I mean I can't help but think coming to London that the London is a very different city from Shakespeare's London Which existed that much closer to the countryside about ya know very sure they walk out. Yeah well What are the main themes then of the later Heidegger as distinct from the earlier? Yes, well you see the later how to get is is not systematic or not even systematic in in the way in which He attempts to be in being in time the later heilige is primarily all not primarily, but very centrally concerned with the problem of poetry and art and In some sense you see and and the problem of technology Heidegger feels that were felt since he's dead now the One of the tasks of philosophers in in this period is to try to think through what? technology involves they felt I think modern thinking is either too superficial to in inauthentic with regard to the subject of technology You know in one hand you find people very flippant attitude there against machines Or they for technology makes no sense He said for man at this particular juncture of history too before against technology we obviously committed to technology I mean if you removed it the whole thing would collapse We are that's that's part of the stake of our existence is part of our gamble On the other hand you see there is a point which I think the atomic bomb has brought forth for human consciousness generally that technology has drastic possibilities is Hidden to people in protest against his local nuisances or causing unemployment Sabotage and so on but the notion that suddenly Mankind could self-destruct Suddenly showed us the the fearful possibilities within the the technical complex And now he hi to get was concerned with the thinking through We're in the historical destiny of man the the roots of his technical being lie lies and where It may possibly be carrying him But how does how does his concern with poetry relate to his concern with technology unless he sees these two opposites They are rising because The thing well as you well know from other branches of contemporary philosophy, there's a certain disposition I'm part of some philosophers when they're examining language to treat it as a calculus It's an instrument which can be manipulated and controlled. It's a form of calculus and so on and in this sense this represents an extension of Technical thinking you see even to the domain of language now the thing about a poem in Heidegger's view is that it lose The demands of our will we cannot the poet cannot will to write a poem he cannot will and it comes and actually We as as readers can't we'll our response we have to submit to it and be passive do it you see a law and what? Heidegger connects the the technological The center of this civilization is with it's a Faustian wheel which becomes eventually the Man's determination by master made right which is the basis of our whole modern culture modern technology modern science and so on Which is in rebellion against? And and if I if I I think we'll he quotation here would be Francis Bacon we must learn the overall ways I'm really a prophet of the new size and this I Always think I'm bacon in this respect is being a publicity man for the new science But a publicity plan of genius. This is we must put nature to the rack to compel it to answer our questions Which is a very? dramatic way of of endorsing the experimental method But now you stop to think you know even if we put poor nature to the rack Port Orchard nature We have to listen to responses we have in some sense to give ourselves that we receptive There's a point at which our twisting you say has to submit to To whatever is there to be this really does though our gender basic break with the tradition doesn't it because even as it were Revolutionary philosophies within the tradition like Marxism for example take it for granted that the conquest of nature is man's business It's what human life is all about and what social line is all about I must say that speaking Just purely personally for government that in all the Preparation that this television series has involved me in the preparation I've done for this discussion and this program has taught me most because I found in Heidegger who I knew very little about Before all kinds of illuminating insights in these very fundamental themes We've been discussing and that being so this is leading me to the point. I want to put to you I Can't help wondering why it is that other? philosophers including very able and prestigious ones like AJ Aeron Karl Popper or Rudolf Carnap all sorts of people pour scorn on Heidegger and the kind of philosophy that he's trying to do they dismiss it they've dismissed it from their published writings as nonsense rubbish garbage It's all a lot of rhetoric. It's all a lot of worms. It seems to me You've only got to read the stuff for five minutes. See that it isn't just all a lot of words now Why has it been so derisively dismissed by so many such able people? Well I don't want to make an invidious remark about a philosophy in the state of flux, but there is a certain kind of Professional deformation the man has a certain vision then he carries with this sort of blinders to somebody else's Vision, and I think one of the things is that hidings vocabulary You see is Initially rather jarring and but if I think if you read him in German he writes a fairly straightforward German and it was certainly if you compare that him as His German prose with that Let's say of a hand go this it seems to me how to give lucidity itself But I I think what we do find in philosophy is that? the same prejudice for certain chosen vocabularies now you mentioned con if I was a student of Carnap for severally as you say I'm I didn't I Got interested partly in how I could find out what the fuss was Could it be as bad as they say what you came to hide ago through car naps attack somehow And when you read Heidegger you discovered Tell professor bad I in when I was introducing this program I promised our viewers that we would say something about Sartre and I think that before we come to an end I I really do want to Ask you if you if we can move on to him just for a moment um Although Sartre has become as it were the most famous Existentialist his is the name that most people associate with existentialism he's not as original thinker as Heidi There is he but nevertheless he has made a contribution. What would you? Characterize as being such as main contribution well of there a number of ways which Characterize that but I'd like to contrast them first. That's that mind that's point the direction which is his Contribution is Kevin This is Santa's Big book is mainly a philosophical work, and I'd personally think by the way some of his Novels and plays are more important, but than any of his philosophical writing, but I think he's still a philosopher of considerable brilliance But his major work is called Being and Nothingness It's a gigantic misnomer It's not about being and it's not about nothingness As softer doesn't have much of a feeling for being whatever whatever one may object to in the hiding that one Has to acknowledge the man is really saturated with the sense of being in some sense what sort this book is a rat is Is really the kind of melodrama of to? Cartesian Consciousnesses and naturally they are Cartesian because he's French every Frenchman is a Cartesian. I think when he said he's pushed far enough And these these two consciousness never understand each other that is there are two subjective mystic Minds Who misinterpret each other I as subject? Impose upon you and convert you into an object and so on and you reciprocate and so this fiendish dialogue of misrepresentation goes on a misunderstanding and so forth in the end it becomes impossible for us to Communicate sin sincerely this big book of Sartre is really a book under this problem of sincerity Which is the staple I think of French literature from? Montag right through Moliere and Proust and so Now the but to come to do you say soccers and then most famously positive doctrine is its notion of Liberty and it's the doctrine which actually I think caught on most in public guard that as As human beings we have an absolute and total freedom nothing prevents us at the second moment from from doing Is I'm very precipitous I am an interesting I am in the literal sense free now to take all my clothes off and Jump out of the window I can actually do these things and one thing Sartre keep stressing is that by pretending that I am not Free to do them, I'm falsifying the reality of my own situation yes so I stand on a precipice at any moment and I can hurl myself often and in this sense the characteristic of this total freedom is that it's It's very genus or dizzying and he carries through this metaphor of standing on a cliff and having this Dizzy sense of being able to cash this out know if revenge isn't he right to? Dramatize in this way the fact that the realities of choice Which we have in earth and the realities of freedom that we have in life are in fact much greater than we ourselves wish to face for most of the time Except now here's where you see I think I think it has an insight which is beyond Him in this respect because the individual hurls himself into this precipitous choice May in tearing off in that sudden direction Be remained utterly as blind as when he started you see Then is a rather curious endure hiding his view of a freedom is a very quiet and subtle and soft our fundamental freedom is and freedom if we can manage it to become open to let truth happen and Most of us in our lives so shut off and our personal lives in one way or another doesn't matter which from Truth in our dealings with other people we have Resistances which can't be breached? One, but sometimes there is a fissure and this wall that shuts us off and we are able to let be we no longer seek to compel You see the whole of height the later high to get is really a Prolonged attack and the will to power as characterizing Western civilization this this urge we have to dominate Russia and the dominate time and even the Dominate our own personal lives or dominate other people the view being that you only really? understand reality when in some sense you submit yourself to write Something up professor Barrett taking Heidegger and such and indeed the whole existentialist tradition together If you were asked to say well now what? Contribution has this made to human thought in our time. What would you stress? What have we got from it all Our stress an academic point first and then the more important human ployed fellows. I think and From the point of view of the history of thought or the history of philosophy Existentialism has brought forward a kind of Revaluation of 19th century so for one thing it has exhumed Kierkegaard. It was virtually unknown and famous speaking Countries, it's established him as a as a major thing. I don't know whether you'd call him a philosopher, but I think of considerable proportions and power in the 91 of the major thing is a bit of the Century as a matter fact Vic instead of kid guard. He thought he was the greatest rat of the 19th century. It's rather interesting kick Vic and Stein who discovered kick got quite early before existentialism To the end of the World War one, but then the second point I think that's made aware of Many people where of like that Modern society tends to be personalized to a certain extent that we it gets larger and larger more intricately Organized and so on and that the problem of the person the individual as a unique Being who cannot be completely assimilated into any framework whether it's Bureaucratic or conceptual a systemic something of him is left out. I think this is this kind of emphasis is what? Thank you very much professor Barrett
