Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life

Introduction

Introduction Contemporary European Philosophy has revolutionized the way in which we think about ourselves. Over the last two hundred years, such thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Jean-Paul Sartre have challenged all of our most cherished and traditional views about what a person is and about what the world is. They have introduced powerful and compelling alternatives that have for the first time allowed us to resolve some of our longest-standing philosophical debates and have given us rich resources for solving the personal and social problems that plague our daily lives. These insights, however, are still only beginning to transform our ways of thinking and acting, are still only beginning to have a place in the shaping of our social institutions. It is my intention to contribute to this gradual process of transformation with this attempt at articulating the understanding of the human situation that has emerged from this two-hundred-year ferment. Much of the progress of Contemporary European Philosophy has come from a focus on four specific themes: interpretation, embodiment, time, and the experience of others. It is this last theme, the theme of our relations with others, that affords the most exciting and immediately relevant insights into the human situation. The philosophical investigation into the nature of intersubjectivity has allowed us to understand the origins , structures and significance of the intimate relations between individuals , family life, the forms of political development, the deployment of power in society, and so on. It has been especially helpful in allowing us to understand and to deal with the problems we face in these contexts. My intention is to articulate and defend what I understand to be the central thread of this view of the human situation, and to use it to bring into focus the psychological problems individuals face in trying to sort out their personal lives. It has often been claimed that philosophy is not relevant. I want to show instead how philosophy touches us precisely at those points in our lives where we face the greatest personal difficulty and where we are most in need of help. My goal is to show how the notion of the temporal, embodied, intersubjective self can allow us to 1 understand the phenomena typically referred to as “mental illness.” Specifically, I want to understand what neurosis is, I want to show why neurosis is a pervasive phenomenon in human life, and I want to develop the principles for dealing with (“treating”) neurosis. What I intend to show is that mental health and the practice of philosophy are ultimately one and the same. This is a book of philosophy as practiced in contemporary Europe, rather than a book about Contemporary European Philosophy. Its aim is the philosophical comprehension of the human situation according to the principles and teachings of the greatest thinkers of the past two hundred years. Consequently the reader will not find discussions of these thinkers in the following pages, but instead the use of their insights and investigations. Nonetheless, I want to say some orienting words about my position for the benefit of those readers who are already students of philosophy. My study has primarily been guided by the insights of G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945). It is with the work of these thinkers that I am primarily trying to establish a dialogue in this book. It is my view that these thinkers are more compatible with each other than incompatible, and my writing this work is in part an expression of my view that the study of Contemporary European Philosophy can sometimes be better served by synthetic attempts to think with the great philosophers than by intricate studies that seek to establish the finest points of difference. From Hegel I have taken the idea that forms of experience inherently involve standards for their own evaluation, and that experiences transform themselves in light of these values. Throughout the book, I have tried to be guided by this notion of the inherent tension and dynamism within the different forms of human experience, and I have especially tried to connect it with a central notion that I take from Merleau-Ponty, namely, the way the body by its nature reaches beyond itself. I have tried to unite these two thoughts in my description of what I have called the “self-transcending” character...