Totalitarianism

• A totalitarian government means a single governing entity that has absolute power over all the citizens of a nation. This government could vary from being only an individual ruling a nation to a committee or political party.
•  A totalitarian government and leader also has plans to take over multiple countries and even the world.They are able to take  control and oppress the people of a state through the ideology of terror. 
• Prime examples of a totalitarian ruled country, are Hitlers Germany, Starlin's Russia and Mussolini's Italy.
• The way in which Hitler's Germany was able to strike the ideology of terror into it's people was through the Jews. It was almost as if they were saying, if you are not with us then this is what will happen to you.
• Hannah Arendt was one of the leading critics on totalitarianism. In 1951 she published a book entitled The Origins of Totalitarianism. In this book she set out to give a detailed account as to why and how totalitarianism started. The idea that the ideology of  terror was at the centre of a totalitarian run government, came from Arendt. she claimed that a totalitarian government would crush human morality and eradicates ideas such as guilt and empathy. 
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• In a totalitarian run government everyone is the same because they have to do exactly what their leader tells them to do. there is a lack of individualism. Existentialists would say that people who are leaving in a totalitarian run government are inauthentic or leaving in bad faith, because they are not free, they are not able to do what they truly want to do. However saying that, I find it strange that Heidegger was an existentialists, yet he supported Hitler who ran a totalitarian government. 
• In recent years China and North Korea are considered to be totalitarian run Countries. China mainly because it is a communist state and also it controls the population of it's country. Also North Kora is a communist state and you could argue that they are under a dictatorship run by Kim Jong-un. Even though a dictatorship and a totalitarian run government are considered to be two different things, you could argue that in order to a totalitarian government, the leader is also normally seen as a dictator in one way or another.
• When talking about Arendt and her saying that totalitarian run government's use the ideology of terror to run a country, you could argue that in North Korea Kim Jong-un does the same thing through the might of his army and also with the constant threat of him suggesting that he will use his nuclear weapons if needs be. 
• The idea of a totalitarian government is similar to that of Hobbes's leviathan, in the sense that there is one Devinne ruler who rules everybody.
• Also you could argue that there are totalitarian run organisations such as al qaeda, who use the cause of religion and the terror of terrorism to try to rule. I'm sure that if al qaeda had the opportunity to rule Pakistan or Afghanistan they would and they would do it through the ideology of terror.

Heidegger on Existsentialism

• The Sein und Zeit of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) claimed that Phenomenology, up to this point, had been too half-hearted. 
• The first task of Phenomenology, Heidegger maintained, was to study the concept of being (Sein) which was prior to the cleavage between consciousness and reality. 
• The most important of Heidegger's coinages is Dasein. Dasein is the kind of being that is capable of asking philosophical questions.
• The primitive element of Dasein is 'being in the world'. 
• The activity of Dasein, for Heidegger, has three fundamental aspects. First, there is what he calls 'attunement': the situations into which we are thrown manifest themselves as attractive, or alarming, or boring, and so on, and respond to them with moods of various kinds. Second, Dasein is discursive: that is to say, it operates within a world of discourses, among entities that are articulated and interpreted for us by the language and culture that we share with others. Third, Dasein is 'understanding' in a special sense that is to say, its activities are directed towards some goal, some 'for-the-sake-of-it' which will make sense of a whole life within its cultural context. These three aspects of Dasein correspond to the past, present and future of time; the time that gives Sein und Zeit the second part of its title.
• The essence of Dasein, says Heidegger, is its existence. In saying this, he became the father of existentialism, the school of philosophy that emphasises that individuals are not mere members of a species and are not determined by universal laws. What I essentially am is what I freely take myself to be.
• The relationship between Heidegger and Husserl didn't end well, in 1929 Heidegger succeeded Husserl as Professor of Philosophy at Freiburg and in 1933 he became Rector of the University. In a notorious inaugural address in May of that year he welcomed Nazism as the vehicle through which German people would at last carry out its historic spiritual mission. One of his first acts as Rector was to exclude from the University Library all Jewish Faculty members, including Professor Husserl, who still had five years to live. After the war Heidegger had to do penance for the support of Hitler and was himself prevented from teaching in the University from 1945 to 1950. However, his thought remained influential up to and beyond his death in 1976.

Husserl on Phenomenology

• The life of Edmund Husserl resembles, at crucial points, that of Sigmund Freud. Husserl was three years younger than Freud. Like him he was born into a Jewish family in Moravia, and attended lectures in Vienna. Both men devoted the greater part of their lives to a personal project that was intended to be the first really scientific study of the human mind. At the end of their lives both men fell foul of Nazi anti-semitism, with Freud driven out of Austria to die in exile, and Husserl's books burnt by German troops marching into Prague in 1939.
• Husserl's professional life, however was quite different from Freud's. His initial studies were in mathematics and astronomy, not in medicine. He went on to pursue an orthodox academic career in philosophy, holding posts in a succession of university departments. 
• Husserl initially focused his attention on mathematics. His habilitation thesis at Halle was on the concept of number, and his first book published in1891, was The Philosophy of Arithmetic. This sought to explain our numerical concepts by identifying the mental acts that were their psychological origin.
• Because of his desire to find a basis for mathematics in empirical psychology, Husserl was forced into some unattractive conclusion. He denied, for instance, that zero and one were numbers. 
• Reviewers of Husserl's book, notably Frege, complained that it contained a confusion between imagination and thought. The mental events that were the subject matter of psychology, being private to the individual, must rest on thoughts that were the common property of the race. Husserl yielded to the criticism and abandoned his early psychologism.
• Two things are essential to a thought: that it should have a content and that it should have a possessor. Suppose that I think of a dragon. Two things make this the thought it is: first, that it is the thought of the dragon and not of an eagle or a duck; second, that it is my thought and not your thought or Napoleon's thought. Husserl would mark these features by saying that it was an act of mine with a particular matter. Other people, too, may think of dragons; in that case, for Husserl, we have several individual acts belonging to the same species. The concept dragon, in fact, is nothing other than the species to which all such acts belong.
• Phenomenology was developed during the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1900 Husserl was appointed to an associate professorship at the University of Gottingen. There he had as a colleague the renowned mathematician David Hilbert, but his most enthusiastic collaborators in his new venture were a group of philosophers at Munich, who coined the phrase 'Phenomenological movement'. By 1913 the movement was self-confident enough to publish a yearbook for Phenomenological research. In the first issue of this appeared a book-length text of Husserl's, which was planned as the first volume of a work to be entitled Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology.
• Husserl believed, when I see a table, the intentionality of my experience is just the same whether there is real table there or if I am hallucinating.
• Phenomenology is not the same as Phenomenalism. A phenominalist believes that nothing exists except phenomena, and that statements about such things as material objects have to be translated into statements about appearances. Berkeley and Mill held versions of Phenomenalism. Husserl, on the other hand, did not assert in Ideas that there are no realities other than phenomena; he deliberately left open the possibility that there is a world of non-phenomenal objects. Only, such objects are no concern, or at least no initial concern, of the philosopher. The reason for this is that according to Husserl, we have infallible immediate knowledge of the objects of our own consciousness while we have only inferential and conjectural information about the external world. Husserl made a distinction between immanent perception, which was self-evident, and transcendent perception. Which was fallible, immanent perception is my immediate acquaintance with my own current mental acts and states, of physical things and events, and of the contents of other peoples minds.
• At Freiburg his lectures attracted a wide international audience, and he had among them highly influential soon to be philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Edith Stein.

Apocolypse Now

Apocalypse now is about an army Colonal called Kurtz, who disappears from the US army, to become a priest-king of a tribe in Cambodia. the film is set in the time of the Vietnam war and Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a mission by the US army to go into Cambodia and assassinate Colonal Kurtz as he posses a threat to the US army.
However, when Captain Willard finally captures Colonal Kurtz, he kills him then takes over his reign as King. This film is based on the ideas from the book The Golden Bough, which was written in 1890 by the Scottish anthropologist JG Frazer. The Golden Bough is essetially a vast essay on comparative religion, it traced the roots of Christianity in folklore and of science in magic.
Here is a little clip from the last scene, where Martin Sheen finally kills Kurtz with what is basically the Golden Bough.

David Icke on This Morning

I know we didnt do it this semester but never the less I thought it would still be interesting.....

Notes On Existentialism

• Existentialism means the importance of personal experience and responsibility and the demands that they make on the individual, who is seen as a free agent in a deterministic and seemingly meaningless universe.
• Nietzsche- 'God is dead' means the end of certainty. He thought this was fantastic because it meant freedom. Therefore there would be no more pressure about going to heaven or hell, we are our own personal Jesus. 
• Heidegger- his most famous book was called Being and Time. However he claimed that he was not a existentialist. He is interested in what it means to exist. 'Dasein' is each of us. it is being in the world.
• In existentialism you are defined by your choices and your next decision is your most important.
• Your 'das man self' is your inauthentic self, the one that is scared to make true decisions because of social pressures.
• Facticity- for you to base your morality or the outcome of your life on things you have no control over is ridiculous. E.g. Because your parents died and you grew up in a bad area, that doesn't mean you are not going to amount to anything. If you think that your past is going to effect you now, this would mean that you are inauthentic. 
• They believe in the absurd, there is no teleological driving force. 
• As an existentialist you always have the possibility to re create yourself. You can do this by your next decision. 
• Abandonment- god is dead, god does not guide our actions. There is no Devin set of rules to follow.
• Anguish- humans are fundamentally free.
• In some respects you could argue that most top athletes have a existentialistic way of thinking. In terms of, when they are competing, their next game, match or even next move will/can define who they are or how their career turns out. Also they are able to put whatever happened in the past behind them and focus on their next decision which they know will be the most important one for them. But then on the other hand, in terms of their career, top athletes probably do believe that there is a teleological driving force. This would normally be there main goal or reaching the pinnacle of their sport, such as winning the World Cup or multiple Olympic gold medals.

Seminar Paper on Freud, Chapeter 3

My Seminar paper is on chapter 3 titled Freud to Derrida, but is focused on Freud.  Sigmund Freud was not considered to be a Philosopher at all, he saw himself as a Scientist and as inventor of a new Science. The opening couple of pages of the chapter basically give us a brief summary of Freud’s life. It tells us that In 1856 Freud was born in Moravia to an Austrian family of non-observant Jews. Four years later Freud and his family moved to Vienna, this is where Freud began to train as a doctor. He then joined the staff of the general hospital 1882, where initially he specialised in Brain anatomy. He also joined with neurologist Joseph Breuer, treating hysterical patients under hypnosis. In 1886 he married Martha Bernays whom he had 6 children with, three girls and three boys.

In conjunction with Breuer, in 1895, Freud published a work on hysteria which presented an original analysis on mental illness. Slowly over time, Freud began to stop using hypnosis as a method of treatment and began to use another method of treatment which he called psychoanalysis.  Freud said that psychoanalysis consists of nothing more than an exchange of words between patient and doctor.  The premises underlying Freud’s new method was that the hysterical symptoms that a patient may have were the result of memories of a psychological trauma that had been repressed by the patient, but could be recovered in the form of free association. Freud often encouraged his patients, lying on a couch, to speak about whatever it was that came to mind. Through these sessions Freud became convinced that these psychological traumas dated back to infancy and had a sexual content to them.

In isolation from his medical colleagues, Freud continued in practise in Vienna. In 1900 he published, what is considered to be the most important of his works. It was called The Interpretation of Dreams. In this book his main argument was that, similar to neurotic symptoms dreams were a coded expression of repressed sexual desires.

In 1902 Freud was appointed to an extraordinary chair of neuropathology at Vienna University. He began to obtain Pupils and colleagues, with the main two being Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, both of whom eventually went their separate ways from Freud and founded their own schools.  In 1923 Freud published a book called The Ego and The Id, in which he presented us with a new detailed anatomy of the unconscious mind. He then went on to publish a controversial book on the origin of religion called The Future of an Illusion. Freud himself was an Atheist but this did not stop him from identifying with the Jewish culture or from suffering the assaults of anti-Semitism. Psychoanalysis was banned by the Nazis and in 1938 when Germany annexed from Austria, Freud was forced to move to England. Finally on September 23^rd, 1939 due to suffering with Cancer of the Jaw for sixteen years Freud died of a lethal injection of morphine administered by his physician at his own request. His Psychoanalytic work was continued by his youngest daughter Anna.

The chapter then goes on to discuss Freud’s theories in more detail. The next part is taken directly from the chapter, as it describes Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in the best possible way for us to understand it. ‘In a set of introductory lectures delivered between 1915 and 1917 Freud summed up psychoanalytic theory in two fundamental theses. The first is that the greater part of our mental life, whether of feeling, thought, or volition, is unconscious. The second is that sexual impulses, broadly defined, are supremely important not only as potential causes of mental illness but also as the motor of artistic and cultural creation. If the sexual element in the work of art and culture remains to a great extent unconscious, this is because socialization demands the sacrifice of basic instincts. Such instincts become sublimated, that is to say diverted from their original goals and channelled towards socially acceptable activities. But sublimation is an unstable state, and untamed and unsatisfied instincts may take their revenge through illness or mental disorder’.

Kenny then goes on to say ‘the existence of the conscious, Freud believed, is manifested in three different ways: through everyday trivial mistakes, through reports of dreams, and through the symptoms of neurosis. Dreams and neurotic symptoms, it is true, do not on their face, or as interpreted by the unaided patient, reveal the beliefs, desires, and sentiments of which the unconscious is deemed by Freud to consist. But the exercise of free association in analysis, he believed, as interpreted by the analyst, reveals the underlying pattern of the unconscious mind’.  ‘It is sexual development that is the key to this pattern. Infantile sexuality, Freud explained, begins with an oral stage, in which pleasure is focused on the mouth. This is followed by an anal stage, between the ages of one and three, and a ‘phallic’ stag, in which the child focuses on its own penis or clitoris. At that time, Freud maintained, a boy is sexually attracted to his mother, and resents his father’s possession of her. But his hostility towards his father leads him to fear that his father will retaliate by castrating him. So the boy abandons his sexual designs for his mother, and gradually identifies with his father. This is the Oedipus complex, a crucial stage in the emotional development of every boy’.  

The main thing that concerns me with this theory is how has Freud managed to do sufficient research on this to come to this conclusion? He must of firstly, had to have watched children inappropriately touching themselves, which if he did then by today’s standards that would be considered as paedophilia. The only other way that he could have come to this conclusion is through his ‘free association’ talks with patients, but even through these, I highly doubt that the majority of his patients said that they resented their fathers because they were sexually attracted to their mothers as children. And even if they did I highly doubt it was because they just openly admitted it. I think he would have had to talk them into thinking about it and also manipulated the meaning of what he was discussing with them, for him to come to those conclusions.  What do you guys think? Also I wonder what he had the same thought about girls as children, did they resent their fathers to because they were sexually attracted to their mothers? Or was it the other way round where they resented their mothers because they were sexually attracted to their fathers? My opinions is that Freud’s theories, even though they are very interesting and for the most part seem to make sense on the surface, they have very little foundation to them that you can honestly say are believable. I think he has taken his theories from a little bit of what he actually found out through his patients and the rest from how he wishes things worked.  The following extract from page 76 in Kenny’s book sides with what I believe. ‘Most of his detailed theories, when they have been made precise enough to admit of experimental testing, have been shown to lack foundation. Medical professionals disagree how far psychoanalytic techniques are effective forms of therapy, and if they are, whence they derive their efficacy’.

Kenny moves on to talk briefly about the ego, superego and the id. Kenny explains that Freud says that the whole point of the ego is to insure reconciliation between all parts of the soul. He says that as long as the ego is in harmony with the id and the superego, all will be well. But if there is conflict between the id and the superego this will lead to melancholia and depression, or between the ego and the id, this will lead to neurosis. Also when the ego comes into conflict with the external world psychosis develops.

Lastly Kenny closes his section on Freud by saying ‘people who have never read a word of Freud can happily identify their own Freudian slips, no philosopher since Aristotle has made a greater contribution to the everyday vocabulary of psychology and morality.