Nietzsche
Nietzsche's most notable idea is that "God is dead", and this marks the start of freedom and the end of certainty. The idea that we are our own God, we have no authority telling us what is right and what is wrong, allowing us to have the freedom to find value for ourselves. As a child, you seek certainty, you want guidance and security, the assurance that someone is there to hold your hand, but as an adult we become confused, and discover that there is no absolute or certainty in the world. Because there is no value, we can choose what's good and bad and make our own decisions; this is known as the transvaluation of values.For Nietzsche human nature is not universal. He believes that we are not all the same, we all have different points of view and different moralities. Everyone has their own internal morality, we don't have a God, there is no one to give us guidelines, we make our decisions based on our own inner morals. Different people find and follow different conceptions of excellence.
The Ubermensch overcomes what has so far defined us as a human and these are the choices we make based on our individual internal values. The superman or the overman ignores this and find his place in the world according to his own will. - The will to power.
Heidegger
Heidegger's most famous book 'Being and Time' is a book about existence. Heidegger's interest lies in what it means to exist, and the problems of human life. He states that we must question the nature of the being before we can investigate it: What is it that exists? What is it like to be human? This is the creature he calls Dasien, which is in each and everyone of us.
Heidegger attacks Descarte's theory of Cartesian dualism, the idea that the world is made up of two things: mind and body, essentially spirit and physicality. Heidegger thinks this is a complete disaster! He questions: How do we control our body if mind is one thing and body is another? If we are stuck in our minds then how can we interact with the world? David Hume just says you can't, the future is unknowable, and Berkeley says: "all that we see is a dream".
In place of consciousness and subjectivity Heidegger talks about Dasein, this means 'being in the world', it denotes an engagement with the world. For instance as a journalist you may say "I'm in Journalism" denoting that you are involved within the journalism industry, our existence is our interaction with the world, and our engagement with the world relates to the choices that we make. I chose to study journalism, therefore that is a large part of my engagement in the world. If the world was not there then there would be no existence, Heidegger disagrees with mind and body, there is no Dasein without the world.
The decisions we make, define us. If we were to enter a scanner all our decisions that we have made up until this point would show up, and it is these choices which we have the power to choose. In contrast, Slave morality is following rules, it is an inauthentic life, a life where we are worrying about other people and not making our own decisions; known as the Das man self. It is the social self not one owns self. The decisions you make are because you are conscious of what others may think e.g "I cannot be seen wearing this" it is not you making the decisions, you are a das man because you are worried about what others may think, and you want to fit in. If we want to become an ubermensch we must ignore slave morality and overcome it.
Facticity is the parts of one self which are simply given to us, everything that has happened up until this point in life is our facticity. A das man attitude believes you are defined by your past, "I had a tough up-bringing" - this is you being defined by your past, your facticity. But "We are thrown into the world", we cannot base our lives on our facticity because we don't have a choice of where we are born or who are our parents are for example. We are born with a blank slate, tabula rasa, there is no purpose or reasoning to why we are thrown into the world, it is simply moral luck. Your facticity is not you, it is purely blind luck. To live an authentic life you have to over come it, and be defined by your engagement in the world.
Sartre
"Existence proceeds essence" - We create our own purpose.
Simone de Beauvoir - "One is not born a woman, but becomes one", the way in which you act and present yourself is your own choice.
The argument with existentialism is that the world becomes absurd, there is not guiding spirit and no teleological driving force. Things happen that are good and bad without reason and so life is in some ways ridiculous. Heidegger's existentialism was right wing (Nazi) whereas Sartre's was left wing.
Sartre says the life of a person is not determined in advance by God or moral laws. He says that the only thing you cannot escape is the need to choose, you have to make your own choices, without guidance. The possibility of re-creating oneself is frightening, at any available opportunity people will try to avoid this freedom. This is 'bad faith'.
We have no obligations in life, just because we are in a certain role, e.g a student, this does not mean you have to attend lectures or take exams, you always have the choice. People objectify themselves in a moment of choice. Take the scenario of a man and a woman, if a man tries to flirt with a woman, and puts his hand on her hand, if she keeps her hand their it suggests she likes him, but if she moves it away it suggests she is not interested. But, if the woman is not interested but keeps her hand there, she has chosen to ignore his advances, and therefore has objectified her hand. This is known as bad faith because she has chosen to avoid the choice.
The universe is made up of things that are defined and things that are not defined. For example, a chair is a being in itself, it is an object that is defined. However, humans cannot be defined, we are changeable, whereas a chair will only ever be a chair. Human beings are undefined we can change ourselves from one day to the next, simply by the next decision we make, and this is the process of re-creating oneself. Another example is a homosexual man, he shouldn't define himself as a gay man as this can change, simply on the next decision he makes, he may fall in love with a woman. The alternative is to take responsibility for your actions and be defined by our choices.
Humanity for Sartre is:
Abandonment - There is no one to guide us on how we act: God is dead, God does not guide our actions, there is no divine set of rule to follow, we are on our own.
Anguish - Humans are fundamentally free, but the responsibility of freedom is enormous, we have no excuse we are responsible for everything we are, we cannot choose our past but we can choose how we feel and act to every situation.
Despair - the realisation that the world may prevent us from getting what we want, but we choose how we react to the set back.
"You are free therefore choose."
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