PHI 121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Molecular Machine, Martin Heidegger, Existentialism
Feurbach
God is the name we give to all things we wish we were
Godliness is an idealized form of humanity and unrealistic
Human beings have many fears, but most of all we fear death.
Christianity, in promising eternal life, offers to take this fear away from us.
If we are willing to buy into religion, then we can escape from our fear, and live in
blissful ignorance of our mortality.
This accounts for the attractiveness of religion, the strength of its grip on human minds.
Nietzche
God is dead, we have killed him
Enables justification of good and evil, excuse for being irresponsible
We have no idea what it means to be human
We think we are better than animals
We have invented a list of properties that we think are unique to us
We are just complex biological machines
We are constantly creating “tables of good and evil” absolute
Kierkegaard
The cornerstone of criticism and organized religion in Existentialism
“Rejection, not renunciation”
“I reject what I’ve been told was true.”
Essence of rebellion
Many of Kierkegaard's earlier writings were written pseudonymously
Kant
Transcendental Idealism
O Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive
objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or
relations among them.
O How do we know the world? Objects exist in SPACE and TIME
O Space : Relationship to each other
O Time : Relationship to me, how I emotionally engage things around me
O “I am an I that thinks.”
O “Go back to nature without technology.”
O “I know this is true because the structure in my mind matches the physical
object.”
Heidegger
Document Summary
God is the name we give to all things we wish we were. Godliness is an idealized form of humanity and unrealistic. Human beings have many fears, but most of all we fear death. Christianity, in promising eternal life, offers to take this fear away from us. If we are willing to buy into religion, then we can escape from our fear, and live in blissful ignorance of our mortality. This accounts for the attractiveness of religion, the strength of its grip on human minds. Enables justification of good and evil, excuse for being irresponsible. We have no idea what it means to be human. We have invented a list of properties that we think are unique to us. We are constantly creating tables of good and evil absolute. The cornerstone of criticism and organized religion in existentialism. I reject what i"ve been told was true. Many of kierkegaard"s earlier writings were written pseudonymously.
