20th-Century Phenomenology and Existentialism: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre

20th-Century Phenomenology and Existentialism: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre (epoché, noema/noesis, Zuhandenheit/Vorhandenheit, Geworfenheit, mauvaise foi)

Ninth Lecture

by

Tanmoy Bhattacharyya

The twentieth century does not continue the great metaphysical systems; it suspends, destructs, and re-originates them. Phenomenology and existentialism are not two separate movements but two phases of the same earthquake that begins with the slogan “Zu den Sachen selbst!” and ends with the pronouncement that “Die Sprache spricht” and “Der Mensch ist ein Nichts.”

This lecture is a full-scale, technically merciless descent into the three decisive figures:

• Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology (Wesensschau, epoché, Reduktion, noesis/noema, horizon, Lebenswelt, intersubjective constitution, the paradox of transcendental subjectivity)
• Heidegger’s fundamental ontology (Dasein, Sein zum Tode, Geworfenheit, Entwurf, Sorge, das Man, Ereignis, das Gestell, die Kehre, the end of philosophy and the other beginning)
• Sartre’s existential phenomenology (néant, pour-soi / en-soi, mauvaise foi, liberté absolue, situation, the ontological proof of freedom via angoisse, the reef of solipsism and the failed dialectic of the regard)

Every rare and exact term is used in its original language and strict sense: epoché, Reduktion (transzendental-phänomenologische, eidetic, primordial), noesis/noema, hýlē/morphē, intentionaler Akt, Horizontintentionalität, Lebenswelt, Fremderfahrung, Ur-Ich, monadologische Intersubjektivität, Seinkönnen, Verfallenheit, Uneigentlichkeit, das ontisch-ontologische Differenz, das Da des Seins, die Lichtung, das Geviert, das Gestell, pour-soi / en-soi, néantisation, facticité / transcendance, projet originel, le regard, le trou d’être, etc.

1. Edmund Husserl (1859–1938): The Transcendental Turn of Phenomenology

1.1 The Breakthrough: Logische Untersuchungen (1900–1901)

• Rejection of psychologism: logical laws are ideal species (Wesen), not psychological facts.
• Intentionality recovered as the universal medium of consciousness: every act is consciousness-of.
• Distinction between real (reell) content (the psychological act) and ideal content (the meaning).

1.2 Ideen I (1913): The Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction

The three great operations:

1. Epoché: suspension of the natural thesis of the world (the world is placed in brackets).
2. Phänomenologische Reduktion: leading back from the existent to the pure phenomenon (how it is given).
3. Eidetic Reduction: from factual to essential seeing (Wesensschau).

Key structural discovery: every act has a noetic moment (the experiencing) and a noematic moment (the experienced-as-such). The noema is not a second object but the identical Sinn in which the object is intended across different acts.

1.3 The Paradox of Transcendental Subjectivity

After the reduction, the phenomenologist discovers a residual “transzendentales Ich” that is not part of the world yet constitutes all worldly sense. This Ich is absolute in the sense of being the condition of possibility of all manifestation, yet it is not a Kantian “I think” but a concrete, lived monad.

1.4 Crisis of European Sciences (1936) and the Lebenswelt

Late Husserl discovers that the entire edifice of mathematical natural science is a technicized abstraction from the pre-scientific Lebenswelt—the horizon of lived, practical, intersubjective meaning. The crisis of the sciences is the forgetting of this origin; the task of phenomenology is to reawaken the forgotten question of sense-origin.

2. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976): Being and Time and the Turn

2.1 Sein und Zeit (1927): Fundamental Ontology

The question of the meaning of Being is forgotten; only the being for whom Being is a question (Dasein) can reopen it.

Key existentialia of Dasein:

• Befindlichkeit (state-of-mind): discloses thrownness (Geworfenheit)
• Verstehen (understanding): discloses projection (Entwurf) upon possibilities
• Rede (discourse): the articulation of intelligibility
• Sorge (care): the unitary structure of Dasein as being-ahead-of-itself-already-in-the-world-as-being-together-with-entities

Authenticity vs Inauthenticity:

• Das Man: the anonymous “they” that levels all possibilities into the average and public
• Uneigentlichkeit: flight from one’s ownmost possibility
• Eigentlichkeit: resolute anticipation of death (Sein zum Tode) that individualizes Dasein to its Jemeinigkeit

Death is the eigenste, unbezügliche, unüberholbare Möglichkeit: the possibility that makes all other possibilities possible by ending them.

2.2 The Ontological Difference and the History of Being

• Ontisch: concern with beings
• Ontologisch: concern with Being The difference between them (die ontologisch-ontische Differenz) is the condition of all metaphysics, yet metaphysics always forgets it.

2.3 The Turn (Kehre) after 1930

Being is no longer approached through Dasein; Dasein is approached through Being. Key later concepts:

• Ereignis: the event of appropriation in which Being and man belong together in mutual giving
• Lichtung: the clearing/opening in which beings appear
• Das Gestell: the technological enframing that reduces everything (nature, man, God) to standing-reserve (Bestand)
• Das Geviert: earth–sky–divinities–mortals as the mirroring-play of the world
• The end of philosophy: completion of metaphysics in planetary technology; task of thinking is gelassenheit and the other beginning

3. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980): Existentialism as Radical Freedom

3.1 L’Être et le Néant (1943): The Dualism of En-soi and Pour-soi

• L’en-soi: being-in-itself; opaque, massive, contingent, identical with itself
• Le pour-soi: being-for-itself; consciousness as néantisation (nihilation) of the en-soi
• Consciousness is not a thing; it is a nothingness that arises by separating itself from being.

3.2 Transcendence and Facticité

Every situation is a synthesis of facticité (what is given) and transcendance (the surpassing toward possibilities). Freedom is not a property; it is the very being of the pour-soi: I am condemned to be free.

3.3 Mauvaise Foi (Bad Faith)

The lie to oneself by which one tries to flee freedom:

• Treating oneself as en-soi (the waiter who “plays” at being a waiter)
• Treating oneself as pure pour-soi (the woman who denies the sexual meaning of the caress)

3.4 The Look (le regard) and Intersubjectivity

The Other appears not through an argument but through the immediate experience of being-seen. My transcendence is transcended by the Other; I become an object for another freedom. Hell is other people because the look steals my world and makes me an object in it.

3.5 The Ontological Proof of Freedom

Angoisse (anguish) reveals freedom: in vertigo I am anguished not because I might fall, but because I might throw myself. Freedom is proven by the very experience of anguish; there is no theoretical refutation possible.

Key Technical Vocabulary (original languages)

Husserl

• Epoché · phänomenologische / transzendentale / eidetiche Reduktion
• Noesis / Noema · Hýlē / Morphē
• Horizontintentionalität · Auffassungssinn / idealer Sinn
• Lebenswelt · Ur-Ich · monadologische Intersubjektivität
• Wesensschau · Evidenz · transzendentale Konstitution

Heidegger

• Dasein · Sein zum Tode · Geworfenheit · Entwurf · Sorge
• Das Man · Verfallenheit · Eigentlichkeit / Uneigentlichkeit
• Ontisch-ontologische Differenz · Das Da des Seins
• Lichtung · Ereignis · Gestell · Geviert · Kehre
• Gelassenheit · das Andere Denken

Sartre

• En-soi / Pour-soi · Néantisation
• Facticité / Transcendance · Projet originel
• Mauvaise foi · Le sérieux
• Le regard · Conflit des libertés
• Angoisse · Liberté comme condamnation

Study Questions (doctoral-level)

1. Explain precisely why Husserl claims that the noema is neither a real part of the act nor a second object, and why this avoids both psychologism and Platonism.
2. Reconstruct Heidegger’s argument that anxiety (Angst) individualizes Dasein more primordially than the call of conscience.
3. Why does Heidegger say that death is not an event but a possibility, and how does this make it the condition of authenticity?
4. Using only Part III, Chapter 1 of Being and Nothingness, show why Sartre claims that freedom is not a property but the very being of consciousness.
5. How does Sartre’s account of the look solve (or fail to solve) the problem of solipsism that Husserl never adequately resolved?

In our last and tenth lecture, we will conclude the entire series with the linguistic turn of the analytic tradition: Frege’s Sinn/Bedeutung, Russell’s definite descriptions, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and private-language argument, Quine’s indeterminacy of translation, Kripke’s rigid designators, and the quiet death of metaphysics in ordinary language and causal theories of reference.