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Can someone please explaine Existentialism and Phenomenology to me please, in laymans terms… this essay is doing my head in!
Thankyou!
@TurksMeister wrote:
Can someone please explaine Existentialism and Phenomenology to me please, in laymans terms… this essay is doing my head in!
Thankyou!
WIKI is your friend
@TurksMeister wrote:
Can someone please explaine Existentialism and Phenomenology to me please, in laymans terms… this essay is doing my head in!
Thankyou!
Thanks Phart for his 1st degree in Philosophy
” Existentialism concerns the freedom to choose. We are doomed to choose, however, we must accept the consequences of our choices”
Ectchewly, there is a lot more to it than that. There are many flavours of existentialism, for example that of Soren Kjerkegaard, based on religoius leaps of faith, versus the “doomed” view of Sartre.
It largely sucks anyway, things like Hermaneutics (Pharty’s major) are far more interesting (not), or you can get stuck into Heidigger and Hegal, about whom people still argue to this day (wot exactly woz they on about then).
Better still, go back to the ancients, far more intersting people then, Stoics, Nihilists, Sophists….
Now, Sophists makes me think of Saphists, yummy, a far more interesting subject. I would deffo be a lesbo if I were born a wench, I just love fanny that much. 😈
its all wank and ends up in splitting hairs and arguing semantics. save your breath – let me write your essay for you
“life sux… the end”
i wont charge you for this help
The only quote you’ll ever need when dealing with all matters of philosophy or the meaning of life:
“you can’t learn anything from life. It’s just a bunch of random stuff that happens” – Homer Simpson.
Absolutely 100% true.
Aha Mr Phart… glad I asked!
I am looking at humanistic geography and existentialism, as well as Phenomenology, idealism and pragmatism are the underlying philosophies which I have to go “define in some detail”.
Basically I have never even thought about philosophy before, and after writing about it for the last week, im still at a loss as to why people waste their life spouting all that shit.
Grrrrr
Turks, you are falling into the trap of being caught between two kinds of genres of philosophy. Philosophy as spouted by Academics who want to show how big their brains are (boring) and popular philosophy for the masses (tree falling in forest bullshit).
Google a bit of Sartre, Kjierkekaard etc and flip through some of the easier to read things. Then have a look on amazon etc for some introductory type books on philosophy. I cannot remember the name of my first Philosophy book at uni, but it was something like “An introduction to Western Philosophy” and it was exactly that. It gave an interesting overview of Western Philosophy (not political west) from the ancient Greeks through Descartes & Spinoza to Merleua-Ponty, Wittgenstein etc etc. And it was only about 200 pages long. I would lend it to you but it is in an army trunk somewhere in Africa with the bulk of the books from my youth.
Its an interesting intellectual excercise reading this stuff – so dont dismiss it. Ive dabbled in philosophy before…. but it is difficult once you get into the purely academic navel gazing that a lot of it ends up being.
My favourite book on philosopjhy ever is ‘Sophies World.’ Well worth a read.
Unfortunatly I only have 10 days left to write it… which is ample time, but nto enough to get any more books out… I do however have small library on my desk at the moment, including the delights og humanistic geographers Relph and Yi Fu Tuan, so life is good… ish!
Anyhoo, I have struggled over this paragraph for over an hour, and was wondering if it makes existential sence!
Existentialism is a philosophy associated with the French Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, which stresses the importance of individuals ‘being’ within the world; “Existence preceded essence†– in order for individuals to create meaning within the world, one must be alive. Richard Peet (1998) follows “Existence for existentialists is characterised by sheer ‘givenness’ (it is assumed) as compared with the abstract and universal concepts and life common to positivist thought.
Holloway et al (2001) informs us how positivism’s abstract values provide theoretical approaches from “above†characterised by “generalised†and “naturalistic†perspectives. In contrast, existentialism stresses the need for a more locally specific viewpoint (from below), exploring the “concrete and particular perspectives of individual people in specific placesâ€ÂÂÂ.
Emphasis is placed on the existence of human beings themselves who are gifted with individual moments in which to make choices. Contrary to positivist thought, life’s important questions, and the choices they provide, can not be answered within a rational, objective basis, and are therefore are made freely by the individual, subsequently shaping the course of their lives. Since no two people are alike, each and every human being experiences life in a unique way, based on the choices they make.
Whether its right or not, it needs to be edited a bit to flow more, and I realise there is alot more to it, I just needed to get something down!
Right, im off to get drunk, and then carry on tomorrow – have a good evening all.
Shame you dont have much time. A good book I pick up every now and again when Im on the bog is : the philosophy Gym by Stephen Law. It takes some of the fundementals and puts them in easy to understand scenarios that can be pretty entertaining and very much more in laymens terms:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philosophy-Gym-Short-Adventures-Thinking/dp/0747232717
stick to Homer tho as he’s 100% right 😉Had a look at that book spunks – says dispatch 4-6 weeks… little bit out of my time frame unfortunatly!
Just back to this existentialism lark… Ive got in my notes that it is existentialism which looks at things like the naming of objects – why is a chair called a chair and all that lark… is this right.. ie the naming of items is due to the experiences people have within the world…
Not sure I trust my notes…
No Turks, that sounds wrong to me. That stuff was covered by early philosophers, mmm Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Descartes. Thats all the stuff about apriori / priori sensing etc.
Existentialists say that our view of the world is subjective, therefore no one can really understand the way someone else sees something
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