PHENOMENOLOGY & EXISTENTIALISM

(Compiled by M.E.M)

CONTENTS
1. Introduction to the Concept of Existentialism & Phenomenology
2. Heidegger: Phenomenology & Existentialism
3. J.P Satre: Phenomenology & Existentialism
4. Phenomenology of Husserl
5. Is an authentic life worth living?
6. Why being instead of Nothing.

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS EXISTENTIALISM?
The concept, “existentialism” is derived from the verb to ‘exist.’ It connotes the idea of relating
to, or affirming that which exists. To exist simply points to that fact that something is; “the
concreteness and particularity of a thing”. Etymologically, it is traceable to the Latin word
exsistere which means to stand out or to emerge. In this sense therefore, ‘to exist’ means “to
stand out from the background as something that is there in reality”. In its philosophical sense,
to exist implies standing out from nothing; it particularly denotes the human being as a distinct
being different from other things. While other things are considered as mere physical objects, the
human being is conceived as a being-in-existence.

As a term, existentialism was coined by Jean-Paul Sartre even though the expression, ‘existence
philosophy’ was already in use by philosophers like Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger in the
same sense in which we use existentialism today.

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Existentialism evolved as a reaction to a trend in contemporary Western philosophy that stressed
the essence of things over their existence. For instance, the idea that the essences of things are
what makes their instantiation possible. Essence refers to the primary element in the being of a
thing. Contrary to this idea, existentialism emphasizes existence as taking precedence over
essence; insisting that the fact of human existence comes before his essence. Existence refers to
that which is in being. To argue that existence comes before the essence of a being—human
being, implies that we exist first before we become whatever we want to become.

As a philosophical movement, existentialism takes human existence as the point of departure for
philosophy. For an existentialist, human existence encompasses the totality of the individual such
that what the individual does, feels, his basic inclinations, associations, etc., are all part and
parcel of his existence.

The fundamental theme of existentialism is the idea that existence precedes essence. By this, it
means that the most important consideration for the individual is the fact that he or she is an
individual. Freedom, choice and responsibility constitute another main theme in existentialism.
Freedom is part of the structure of the being of man; therefore, it is a basic condition of his
existence. By virtue of his very existence, man is condemned to be free.

The relationship between man and the world is another theme in existentialism. For
existentialists, man and the world are inseparable. This is because man being a conscious being
does not exist in a vacuum; he is a part of the world and cannot exist without the world. Yet
another important theme in existentialism is the individual (self) versus society or man and the
others. Existentialism maintains that the existence of the individual necessarily implies the
existence of others, for the individual cannot exist without the others. This means that man is not
only a being-in-the-world but also a being-with-others.

PHENOMENOLOGY
Phenomenology as a method of philosophy is generally associated with Edmund Husserl, the
father of phenomenology. Although before Husserl, the term itself had been used by a number of

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philosophers, it was Husserl who developed it as a philosophical method. Other prominent
figures associated with this method and movement include Martin Heidegger, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl attempts to provide a direct
description of our experiences just as we have them. In other words, he tries to separate our
experiences from their origins and development; (From the causal explanations that historians,
sociologists or psychologists give them). Husserl rejected the Kantian distinction between the
phenomenon (what appears) and the noumenon (what is true or real). He agreed with Kant on the
noumenon by arguing that the phenomenon exists. According to him, philosophers should
concern themselves with what appears immediately to our consciousness; they should try to give
an exact and careful description of what appears immediately to consciousness since the truth
lies in what appears and not what is behind what appears.

For Hegel, phenomenon is the self-manifestation of universal reason; therefore, phenomenology

will be, for him, the science of the self-actualisation of the spirit as it moves from self-rejection
to self-reconciliation.

In the opinion of phenomenologists, phenomena as things and events are capable of being known
just as they are. It means that things and events do not appear to us different from what they truly
are; neither do they hide aspects of themselves when they manifest themselves. Therefore, they
are capable of being known as they are. If we do not know them as they are, it is because of our
predispositions and preconceptions that we cannot grasp their essences. According to
Phenomenologists, things and events can be known exactly as they are since objects of
experience show themselves as they are.

MARTIN HEIDEGER
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose contributions to philosophy
spans across existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics. He originally trained to be a
Jesuit but he switched in 1911 to study mathematics and philosophy. He was influenced by the
works of Franz Brentano and Aristotle. “Aristotle’s demand in the Metaphysics to know what it

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is that unites all possible modes of Being (or ‘is-ness’) is, in many ways, the question that ignites
and drives Heidegger’s philosophy”

Heidegger was primarily concerned with clarifying our understanding of our own being; he tried
to explain the meaning of being itself. He “transformed the concept of being from a highly
abstract and remote concept into a subject of intense concern to every human being”. In doing
this, he evolved a new vocabulary and gave new meanings to old words in order to pass across
his philosophical thought. He had a fresh interpretation of the concept of being and evolved a
new conception and understanding of man.

Heidegger rejected the dualistic division between the subject and object in Cartesian philosophy
and the notion that there is an external world. He avers that instead of philosophy to focus on
these dualisms that characterize the history of philosophy, it should rather focus on “What is
Being?” The question “What is Being?” would direct our attention to what it means for
something to ‘be’ before we can begin to examine the properties that objects are made up of.
According to him the question, what is being? arises from the most basic philosophical puzzles,
like; why is there something instead of nothing? What is being? generally narrows down what
type of being one is. Thus, he centers his inquiry on this question.

Heidegger sought to correct the error of thinking about man in the same way we think about
things. He argued that there is a fundamental difference between man and things. Only man, for
him, can raise the question about his being or about being itself, things cannot do that. Generally,
we think about things by defining them; defining them consists in listing their attributes and
characteristics. He argued that the essence of man cannot be accounted for in this way. This is
because the being of man includes his awareness of his being, which is not the same with the
being of things.

According to Heidegger, the word ‘man’ can be deceptive because the history of philosophy has
defined man the way things are defined. For instance, Descartes thinks of man as mind and body
placing emphasis on man as a combination of two substances – mind and body. This
understanding of man sets him off as a knowing subject that faces a world as a known or

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knowable object. Heidegger avers that this is a distortion of the view of man and the world.
Against this view, he seeks to avoid a definition of man in terms of properties or attributes that
will divide man from the world. To achieve his aim, he coined a new word—Dasein which he
argues more accurately describes the experience of human existence.

Dasein is a German word which literally means ‘being there’ and as used technically by
Heidegger, it means ‘human existence.’ Man as Dasein is a continuous being who thinks about
the meaning of everything that is. He is not seeking any particular result in his thought, he just
thinks because he is a thinking or musing being. Dasein “connotes that man is a being who is
present to the world but whose presence is not just like that of a spatial object like the stone or
hammer with a fixed nature but in the sense of a meaning-making-being-in-the-world”.
Therefore, for Heidegger, the essence of man is not in attributes or properties but in how he
exists. Dasein expresses a mode of understanding; it is like saying ‘she is in love’, which does
not refer to the location of the ‘she’ but her mode of being, in the same way, man as ‘dasein’, that
is, ‘man as being-in-the-world’ is a description of the structure of his existence. This structure of
his existence makes it possible for him to think meaningfully about the world. The term Dasein
conveys a dynamic view of personality against the fixed nature or essence that the traditional
conception of man has ascribed to man. “Dasein is not an object with properties, but is rather the
‘happening’ of a life course stretched out between birth and death”. Man as being is a possibility
to become what he is not yet. So, man can be described as a being who is ‘not yet what he is’ and
who is more than he actually is at any given moment. This implies that man is not a finished
product but a product in the process of being made. Man is therefore, essentially a free being
who decides for himself his mode of being. Dasein is a temporality that is concretised through
the individual’s involvement in the world; it is the unitary phenomenon of being-in-the-world.

In the first part of his very influential work; Being and Time, Heidegger made an analysis of
human existential traits. Here he discussed the existence of Dasein in three fundamental parts.
According to him, man is characterized by three basic features; namely: (i) Facticity, (ii)
Existentiality, and (iii) Fallenness.

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Facticity reveals the limitations of man. These limitations consist in the fact that man is thrown
into a world without his consent, which means that he is not responsible for his
being-in-the-world. He just finds himself in existence and in circumstances that are not his own
making. However, even though he is not responsible for his being-in-the-world and the
circumstances surrounding his existence, he must freely put or install order in the world.

Existentiality describes man’s possibility. This is the possibility of making himself what he wants
to be. It includes also the possibility of changing the world by projecting himself into the future
and committing himself to live in view of his self-project.

Fallenness describes man’s tendency to alienate himself from his true or authentic self and
thereby live an inauthentic life. As the world is the instrument for the formation of man, it is also
the instrument for his alienation or fallenness; it can be responsible for his despair and sense of
loss. This happens when man forgets his being and replaces it with beings, that is, the crowd; he
becomes lost in the world.

Another basic characteristic of human existence is anxiety. Anxiety arises from man's finitude
and the nothingness feels within him. Man feels abandoned and lost in the world and this gives
rise to anxiety and restlessness. Thus it is not any particular object in the world that causes this,
the general predicament of human existence in the world. This is what distinguishes anxiety
from fear. The latter is always related to some definite objects for fear is always the fear of
something. It is always caused by something definite whereas anxiety is not caused by any such
thing.

Heidegger also distinguishes between two kinds of time, namely, objective quantitative time and
subjective existential time. The former is the clock time, consisting as it does of irreversibly
passing moments. The moments that have passed in clock time are gone forever and can never be
repeated. Hence, strictly speaking they no longer exist. Other moments are to come but not yet in
existence, it is only the present moment that really exists in objective quantitative time.
Existential time is however different. In it the past, present and future are inseparable, for these
constitute the structure of human existence. In existential time the past is not gone for good, for it

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is still a reality, since there are in it certain possibilities which can be repeated in the present or in
the future.

JEAN PAUL SATRE

Jean Paul Sartre is one, if not, the best known philosopher of the 20th century. He was born June
21, 1905 and died April 15, 1980. His philosophical career spans through existentialism and
phenomenology and his works have influenced other fields of inquiry like: sociology and literary
studies. In 1964, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, even though he attempted to decline the
prize. Sartre was drafted into the French army in 1939. He was captured by the German troops in
1940 and was a prisoner of war for nine months. While in confinement, he read Martin
Heidegger’s Being and Time which influenced him in a major way as he wrote his
Phenomenological Ontology. He had certificates in psychology, history of philosophy, logic,
general philosophy, ethics and sociology, and physics.

Sartre’s version of existentialism is a mix of three modes of thought that are associated with Karl
Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger. Common to these three modes of thought is the concern about
man’s active role in molding his own destiny. Marx had argued that philosophers have
understood the world but the important point is to change it. Husserl argued that philosophy
should seek its foundation in man; in the essence of man’s concrete existence, and Heidegger had
argued that our basic understanding of being is best achieved through the existential analysis of
man. Sartre formulated his existential thought in his Being and Nothingness (1956) around the
mix of these thoughts.

For Sartre, human nature cannot be defined in advance because it is not completely thought out
in advance. Man exists first of all before his essence is evolved as he confronts himself, he
emerges in the world and then defines himself afterwards. He argued that if man were an artifact
his essence would have come before his existence and therefore, determines his nature.
Unfortunately, man is not an artifact, he was created without a purpose; no fixed nature. His
nature is determined by his own choice; the way he exists and acts expresses his essence. That is,
what we mean by man is that his essence is in his existence. The implication of Sartre’s argument

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is that man has a greater dignity than stone or other beings. This greater dignity is a result of the
fact that he consciously moves himself towards a future. In his contrast of man with other beings,
he talks of two modes of being; being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Being-in-itself is the mode in
which you find other beings, while man as a conscious subject exists as being-for-itself.

Concerning human freedom, Sartre conceives of human freedom in terms of negation,

annihilation and nothingness. Freedom for him is the capacity for negation and nihilation, which
characterizes the being-for-itself. Freedom built on the foundation of nothingness and negation
provides the grounds for the possibility of questions. This implies that we can only ask questions
because of the possibility of negation. The same possibility of negation makes imagination,
especially that of a situation different from the existing one possible. In the opinion of Sartre,
since man can ask questions, it means he is not subject to the universal causal order, for to be
able to question something implies the ability to negate the thing.

The power to negate is identical with freedom and it is rooted in the nothingness within man.
This nothingness which man carries within himself is the foundation of his freedom. It is this
same nothingness that makes man the kind of being that he is, namely, a being without support, a
being impossible to identify with anything in a fixed or permanent way, a being that is not what
he is and is what he is not. By implication therefore, freedom is not just a quality of man, but
man is freedom, for freedom is identical with his being. Man may not be responsible for a
situation beyond his control that he finds himself; he is nonetheless responsible for the way he
reacts to that situation. Freedom and responsibility go together; to be free is to be responsible.

Along with freedom too is the inevitability of choice since to be free is to be compelled to
choose. A free being cannot but choose; refusal to choose is actually a choice not to choose.
Sartre argues that man’s awareness of the nature of his freedom and the responsibility that goes
with the freedom grips him with anguish. He thus, realizes the full implications of his freedom in
his anguish. Man, on realization of the anguish and immerse responsibility of his freedom,
attempts to escape from the same freedom. In his attempt to escape, he enters into self-deception.
This is “bad faith.” This bad faith or self-deception according to Sartre is expressed in different
forms. Namely:

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(i) Belief in determinism: This is a denial of human freedom which some people take to because
of the fear of the reality of human freedom; they invent a theory of determinism. They start
talking about human nature as the way in which they have been made by God and attribute what
they do to human nature. Belief in human nature is a form of determinism.
(ii) Spirit of Seriousness: This is another attitude of self-deception according to Sartre which says
that absolute values, rights and wrongs, are inscribed in nature and given to man a priori. In the
view of Sartre, those who uphold this are cowards who think they have been freed from the
anguish and responsibility of making personal choices and decisions.
(iii) Conformity to Social Moulds: This is the attitude of keeping to certain behavioral patterns so
as to conform to social moulds. It is an impersonal way of life which Heidegger refers to as the
“inauthentic life” and Sartre calls “bad faith.”
(iv) Avoiding or Postponing Decisions: This attitude plays itself out when in the face of serious
situations that demands immediate decisions we postpone or avoid making decisions because we
are afraid or uncomfortable with the unpleasant consequences of our decision. We pretend that
things are not what we think they are. According to Sartre, it is self-deception. We live under the
illusion that by postponing the decision, we have avoided making a decision, but the fact is
postponing the decision is itself a decision that we have already made.

A striking aspect of Sartre’s existentialism is his atheism. He argues that man is created without
essence or nature and thrown out there in the world without purpose. Therefore, he has to work
out his essence and create a purpose for himself.

EDMUND HUSSERL
Husserl begins his philosophy from the natural standpoint of our everyday world as we
experience it. He adopted the method that is now called ‘phenomenological reduction’ in which
we “ignore all previously held personal, philosophical, and even scientific assumptions
associated with a thing and then examine what remains”. The idea of this reduction is to unravel
how the mind works. Husserl believed that this reduction can be extended to consciousness itself
in order to attain knowledge beyond the disputation of skepticism.

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According to Husserl, philosophy had abandoned the task of becoming a strict science which
means that it has lost its sense of direction. Philosophy should go beneath the constructions of
science and common-sense and investigate the foundations of these constructions in experience.

In an attempt to deconstruct modern Western philosophy, Husserl argued in his Philosophy and
the Crisis of European Man (1936) that Western culture lost its true direction and purpose when
philosophy departed from its original goal. Since in his opinion, rationalism has collapsed,
Husserl set himself the task of saving human reason. That which human reason is to be saved
from provides the background for his phenomenology. He therefore, attempts to develop a proper
method through which we can grasp the essential nature of things in order to overcome the
naturalistic objectivism of the natural sciences that is eroding rationalism. His attempt led to the
formulation of the two parts of his phenomenology, namely, (i) descriptive phenomenology and
(ii) transcendental phenomenology.

Descriptive Phenomenology
This aspect of Husserl’s phenomenological concerns itself with the descriptive analysis of human
experience just as it occurs. Meaning that it leaves out from this analysis any prejudices and prior
assumptions or presuppositions. This is aimed at achieving an objective, unbiased knowledge.

Phenomenology at this stage is not concerned with the existential aspects of things. It is rather
interested in the essence of things. For Husserl, we arrive at the essence of things through his
method of epoche, which is the same as ‘eidetic reduction’ or ‘science of essences.’ The method
of epoche consists in bracketing the existential aspects of things so as to intuit their essences. It is
a detachment from any form of biases, emotions, prejudices, presuppositions, and preconceptions
so as to contemplate the essence of phenomena. Phenomenology, for Husserl, is a 20th century
Cartesianism. Therefore, he credits Descartes as the genuine patriarch of phenomenology
because it was Descartes who prompted his quest for the foundation of knowledge starting from
the same point as Descartes, namely, the thinking self.

For both Descartes and Husserl, experience revolves around the self (the ego), and the ego is the
source of all knowledge. While for Descartes, the ego is the first axiom in a logical sequence that

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eventually leads him to knowledge of reality, Husserl sees the ego as simply the matrix of
experience and therefore, puts the primary emphasis on experience rather than logic. His primary
concern is to discover and describe that which is given in experience, just as it is presented in its
pure form.

Husserl criticized Descartes for going beyond the ego to the notion of extended substance
(body), which ties the subject to an objective reality and thereby produces the mind-body
dualism. For Husserl, the actual facts of experience are more accurately described by pure
subjectivity. Rather than the ego cogito (I think) of Descartes, Husserl argues that the ego cogito
cogitatum (I think something) more accurately describes experience as it is the typical human
experience.

Transcendental Phenomenology
The purely descriptive phenomenology of Husserl gradually developed into transcendental
idealism. According to Husserl, the ego discovers its true self and it is in the being of the ego that
the world consists. The argument is that, “as the ego increases its subjectivity, it becomes
removed from the empirical realm and subsequently becomes a transcendental ego”. This is
possible as a result of the double bracketing of the empirical world and the natural self of the
subject. The bracketing of the natural self which Husserl describes as ‘transcendental reduction’
gives way to the transcendental self.

Transcendental reduction is a process by which the subject reduces his natural self as well as his
psychological life to the transcendental and phenomenological experience. By psychological life,
we mean the domain of our internal psychological experience. The objective world, in its past,
present and future, is drawn from the self, therefore, all the existential meaning and value of the
objective world is drawn from the transcendental self. The point Husserl makes here is that the
transcendental ego is no longer part of the empirical world and in fact, the transcendental ego is
responsible for the creation of the world. At this point, the transcendental ego is above the world
and it can look back at itself as an ego that was previously immersed in the world.

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 IS AN AUTHENTIC LIFE WORTH LIVING?
Authenticity is a philosophical concept that denotes the genuine, original, true state of human
existence. The concept arises from the insights that human beings generally live or exist in an
inauthentic way and that the genuine sense of self and its relationship with others (including God
and/or other people), have been lost. The authentic life is often described as a life of freedom,
joy, meaning, value, and happiness.

Many existentialists agree that owning up to one’s own existence requires a defining
commitment that gives one’s life a focus and sense of direction. For Heidegger, authenticity
requires ‘resoluteness’, a commitment to some specific range of possibilities opened up by one’s
historical ‘heritage’. The fact that the ideal of commitment or engagement appears in such
widely different existentialist works raises a question about the distinction, first made by Sartre,
between ‘religious’ and ‘atheist’ existentialists. Kierkegaard, Marcel and Jaspers are often
grouped together as religious existentialists, yet there are profound differences in their views of
the nature of religious commitment. Where Kierkegaard emphasizes the importance of relating
oneself to a concrete particular, Marcel and Jaspers speak of a relation to the ‘mystery’ or to
‘transcendence’ (respectively). At the same time, so-called ‘atheist’ existentialists like Heidegger
and Sartre tend to agree with Kierkegaard’s view that being ‘engaged’ or having a ‘fundamental
project’ is necessary to achieving a focused, intense, coherent life. The distinction between
atheist and religious existentialists becomes harder to maintain when we realize that what is
important for religious thinkers is not so much the factual properties of the object of commitment
as the inner condition of faith of the committed individual.

The idea that intensity and commitment are central to being authentic is shared by all types of
existentialists. Another characteristic attributed to an authentic life by most existentialists is a
lucid awareness of one’s own responsibility for one’s choices in shaping one’s life. For Sartre,
authenticity involves the awareness that, because we are always free to transform our lives
through our decisions, if we maintain a particular identity through time, this is because we are
choosing that identity at each moment. Similarly, Kierkegaard and Heidegger talk about the need
to sustain our identity at each moment through a ‘repetition’ of our choice of who we are. In

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recognizing our freedom to determine our own lives, we also come to accept our responsibility
for who we are.

The notion of authenticity is supposed to give us a picture of the most fulfilling life possible for
us after the ‘death of God’. It calls on us to assume our own identities by embracing our lives and
making something of them in our own way. It presupposes lucidity, honesty, courage, intensity,
openness to the realities of one’s situation and a firm awareness of one’s own responsibility for
one’s life. But it would be wrong to think of authenticity as an ethical ideal as this is normally
interpreted. First, becoming authentic does not imply that one adopts any particular moral code
or follows any particular path: an authentic individual might be a liberal or a conservative, a
duty-bound citizen or a wild-eyed revolutionary. In this respect, authenticity pertains not to what
specific kinds of things you do, but how you live – it is a matter of the style of your life rather
than of its concrete content. Second, in formulating their different conceptions of authenticity,
many existentialists describe the ideal of authenticity in terms that suggest that it can be opposed
to ethics as ordinarily understood. Kierkegaard, for example, says that it is possible that the
knight of faith might have to ‘transcend the ethical’, and Nietzsche holds that authentic
individuals will live ‘beyond good and evil’. Thus, authenticity seems to have more to do with
what is called the ‘art of self-cultivation’ than it does with ethics as traditionally understood.

BEING INSTEAD OF NOTHING

Sartre explains that as a conscious being, the for-itself recognizes what it is not: it is not a
being-in-itself. Through the awareness of what it is not, the for-itself becomes what it is: a
nothingness, wholly free in the world, with a blank canvas on which to create its being. He
concludes that the for-itself is the being through which nothingness and lack enter the world, and
consequently, the for-itself is itself a lack. The absence it signifies is the absence of the
unattainable synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself. The being-for-itself is defined by its
knowledge of being not in-itself. Knowing is its own form of being, even if this knowledge is
only of what one is not and cannot be, rather than what one is. The human can never know being
as it truly is, for to do that, one would have to be the thing itself. To know a rock, we have to be
the rock (and of course, the rock, as a being-in-itself, lacks consciousness). Yet the

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being-for-itself sees and intuits the world through what is not present. In this way, the
being-for-itself, already wholly free, also possesses the power of imagination. Even if absolute
beauty (to Sartre, the absolute union of being and consciousness) cannot be apprehended,
knowing it through its absence, as in the way one feels the emptiness left by a departed loved
one, is its own truth.

Although Heidegger described this as the fundamental question of metaphysics, the answer is
quite straightforward at its base, if we are strictly examining a comparison between something
and nothing. There is something because there is literally no such thing as nothing (at all), and
there possibly never was. Spinoza and Einstein, among many other great thinkers, subscribed to
this view that it is impossible for there to be nothing. Nothing is only ever the absence of
something in particular, but it is never truly no-thing, since the very label ‘nothing’ implies
‘something’.

What we think of as empty space in our universe is not actually nothing; it contains energy,
radiation and particles that flit in and out of existence. It has properties: it can expand and
contract, warp and bend. Even attempting to picture nothingness is impossible for the human
mind.

*How man perceives his existence is more understood in Heidegger Dasein

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