Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Being and Time', 'Transcendence of the Ego' and 'The World'

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3 ideas

16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 4. Denial of the Self
Everyone is other, and no one is himself [Heidegger]
     Full Idea: Everyone is other, and no one is himself.
     From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.165), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 09
     A reaction: Safranski describes this as the idea of 'structural self-evasion'. He detects the same idea in Nietzsche's 'Daybreak'.
Maybe it is the act of reflection that brings 'me' into existence [Sartre]
     Full Idea: Might it not be precisely the reflective act that brings the me into being in reflected consciousness?
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B))
     A reaction: He admits some sort of self a second-order entity, but this is 'transcendental', and essentially an illusion. This elimination of the first-order self clears the way for the existential view, that we can create whatever self we want. I disagree.
The Ego only appears to reflection, so it is cut off from the World [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The Ego is an object that appears only to reflection, and is thereby radically cut off from the World.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D))
     A reaction: This is the culmination of Sartre's attack (in 1937) on the Ego, paving the way for the freedom of existentialism. Personally I don't accept this picture of the Ego as a second-order fiction. My Ego is part of my relationship with the World.