Group 17 Started off with a skit on Beings which I didn’t quite understand. It was a funny Frankenstein parody which I think was explaining what makes a person truly a person. Martin Heidegger is the existentialist covered this week, and his major influence was from being a part of the Nazi party. The course material was definitely tough to digest this week; one of the toughest readings which I could tell the class had hard time understanding the ideas. Group 17 did an good job at trying to make sense of the madness.
Martin Heidegger’s main idea is understanding what it means to be a being. A main concept that shaped his idea was the new idea of phenomenology. Phenomenology is the philosophical study of consciousness. Group 17 presented the idea that, “Being is to be understood phenomenologically through experience”. Heidegger’s first step in defining being came with redefining what is human consciousness. Heidegger came up with the term Dasein which in German means “Being there”. Separating Dasein from consciousness was a great way for Heidegger to introduce the key concept of what consciousness is without all the baggage that is carries. I think this is something that Group 17 could have improved in their presentation. Right off the bat, Group 17 says that Dasein is basically consciousness which Heidegger deliberately went out of his way to avoid using the word.
The other main idea was that of authenticity and individuality. The class had a good discussion, and the big debate was whether more interactions with people made a person more of an individual or less individual. One side argued that the more interactions the person had the more they copied ideas already in the world. The other side argued that that more interactions made a person more diverse and different. I was on the side that more interactions make a person more unique because the more interactions the more choices a person has to make that defines them.
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