Existentialism Continued

Nietzsche. He was famous for his line, “God is dead”. He essentially meant that the end of certainty, we need something new to sustain us. The end of certainty brings with it a crisis that is fantastic. It gives us the freedom to find value for ourselves. According to him, human nature differs from person to person, and therefore morality differs from person to person. This opposes Locke’s ideology of natural rights. It also creates room for Fanon’s violence. The ubermensch (superman/overman) overcomes what has defined us as human. He does this by defining himself by the choices he makes. His will to power.

Freedom of choice is crucial to existentialism.

Heidegger. His “being and time” is about what it means to exist and the problems that arise out of being human. However, in order to investigate the nature of being, we must question the nature of the being which causes the question to be asked. This being is called “Dasein”; it is in each one of us. According to Heidegger, the Cartesian idea that the world is split into mind and body makes philosophy and understanding ourselves near impossible. When the world is divided merely into mind and body, we find ourselves stuck in our own minds. How can we possibly overcome our minds and know the world in its actuality? According to Hume, Berkeley, we cannot. Replacing these ideas, Heidegger focuses simply on Dasein and its essential structure. Being in the world. For Dasein to exist, it must exist in the world. If the world does not exist, Dasein does not exist. Dualism does not exist.

Existence is not merely about being in the world, but to do with possibilities and choices. This contrasts with “facticity”. Facticity is the parts of ourselves that we throw into the world- the things we don’t have a choice about (birth/parents/etc.) We therefore are the creatures of the future/of the possible, of the parts we are not thrown into.

Sartre. His key idea was that existence precedes essence. Good and bad things happen in life without reason, and therefore life itself is fairly absurd. It is not determined by God or morality, or indeed in advance. Life is in fact a number of choices, and this need to choose is escapable. We must take responsibility for our actions and be defined by our choices. Humanity according to Sartre is includes

-Abandonment. Nothing guides us. We are alone to make our choices. “God is dead”.

-Anguish. We are free and therefore responsible for everything we are/do.

-Despair. The realisation that the world may prevent us from getting what we want, but we choose to react to the setback. We are what we do.

Bad Faith:

Most people believe that being somebody (student/soldier/teacher) puts certain obligations on you. However, this is not true and the fact that you’re in denial of your radical freedom makes you guilty of bad faith. Sartre believes that such people are making a metaphysical mistake- turning themselves from free beings to inert objects.

“Colonialism is violence in its natural state and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”

Fanon. He had a dream. A dream of transforming individuals through violence. He was angered by the racism in the army when he fought for France in WW2. He studied psychiatry and went to work in a psychiatric hospital in Algeria. When the Algerian War of Independence began, he treated torture victims, joint the National Liberation Front. He was fairly swept up by the whole ordeal.

He advocated direct violence against the oppressors. The mission is the absolute overthrow of the colonial system by any force necessary

“National liberation is always violent.” (The book was used by leaders like Malcolm X, Steve Biko, Bobby Sands.)

The only way for people to break free of the total control the West exercised is through violence, and terrorism. It is the extreme expression of choice with instant impact. Non-violence is acquiescence, acceptance of the oppressor’s rules.

Modern Logic

Frege devoted much of his career to trying to show how mathematics can be reduced down to logic. Natural numbers are words used to count things. To count things is to create an abstract category or group. To create words and abstract symbols for more than one category requires a system of a number of words. It also requires a logical syntax in order to combine these number-words to imply or further establish number words.

-They are natural and can be empirically observed. This was a view held by Mill, and the average person.

-They are intuitions of harmonic perfect other world. This view was held by Descartes, and Pythagoras.

-They are abstract objects, constructed mostly by syntax. View held by Frege and Russell.

Numerical Naturalism follows the idea that there is 0, 1 or more than 1. These simple pluralities are fairly primitive and therefore are used by apes and tribes. Apparently, the highest natural number is 7 (this obviously varies from person to person) but a human being can walk into a room and instantly recognise that there are 7 people in there without counting.

Prime numbers according this view are “pre-existing, eternal, supernatural forms”. They also show necessary preconditions for consciousness. All numbers are combinations of prime numbers. Prime numbers often have religious or magical significance. These includes the holy trinity, “three is the magic number”, the fact that symphonies are performed in three movements.
According to Nietzsche, Russell and Frazer, this is all Orphism. Christians worship the number 3, Muslims worship the number 1.
Babylonians- 12 (12 months, 12 signs of zodiac)
This is all Orphism (according to Nietzsche, Russell and Frazer) e.g. Christianity's trinity of Father, Son and Holy spirit. The Greeks (including Pythagoras) regarded only plurals as natural numbers and started the counting system with 2. There could never be a zero, because there could never be “nothing.”

The concept of 0 came from India, and much later from Sufi-Islam. The fact that zero meant nothing but then nothing meant something was a pretty big problem. Since then, modern philosophers of mathematics have asserted zero as a natural number (logically derived as 1-1=0) this problem remained unsolved until Frege came along. He regarded arithmetic as a language. He rejected Mill’s numerical empiricism as you cannot find 0 in nature.

Frege's Method
Axiom - all things which are identical are equal to themselves.

All things which are pairs are identical to all other pairs, regardless of what they are pairs of. The class of pairs can therefore be given a nominal value (2). Larger numbers can be built as logical constructs. “The class of all things which are pairs of pairs” (4) 1= the class of all things not associated with other things. 0= Class of all possible objects that are not equal to themselves. No such objects.