Lecture Notes - Exam Revision

So, it's that time of year again - exam revision. Hopefully these notes can help you understand Chris' lecture a bit better, or just give you some additional information that you might not have picked up during the lecture.

Here goes.

The first topic discussed; whether or not Nietzsche was a Nazi. Due to the fact that Nietzsche was already dead when Hitler and the Nazi movements were active, you could not really say that he was a Nazi.

But why is it then said that he was a Nazi?

Even though the Nazi movements didn't start until 30 years after Nietzsche died, anti semitism was already widely spread over Europe - Germany, Poland, Russia - but not necessarily in the form of hatred of Jews. Nietzsche does not like any kinds of religion, it's a bad thing, and he says that people needs to eradicate religion from their lives to become free. Due to him being such an enemy towards religious people and religion itself, plus his famous statement 'God is dead', Christians tend to say that Nietzsche is a Nazi - they don't like him, and he doesn't like them.

Nietzsche's main philosophies contain all the elements of (extreme) individualism, which can be easily found in his book 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' (Humanity must be overcome!) where we find a Superman - some sort of übermensch and untermensch like in the German Nazi movements, which is thought to have been taken from Nietszche's philosophy, but not necessarily meant the same thing. Maybe Nietzsche was the total opposite to a Nazi by being a complete individual and not subsiding his own individual ideas... Maybe he is misunderstood by authoritarian organisations, the church and such as a Nazi?

Conclusion from Horrie was that there is no right or wrong, yes or no - judge for yourself. Was Nietzsche a Nazi?

Other famous people who Nietzsche referred to as super people/supermen were for example Da Vinci, Beethoven and Wagner.

More info about Nietzsche:

Mentally disorientated and unselfish

Zarathustra has once again spoken
God is dead - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Further on we discussed existentialism (1940s until early 1960s), especially from the point of view of Albert Camus and his novel 'the Stranger'. Existentialism is quite a tricky -ism to pin down. Existentialism kind of means that you live now, right now. Yesterday is history, and history is like fantasy, fiction. No one knows anything about the future and therefore it may not happen, it's not there. (Existence precedes essence - Jean Paul Sartre).

Like in the book, existentialists say there is no purpose of life, life is temporary, brief and it has no value cause you are going to die anyway. You might even take it one step further and consider suicide - but then it takes an effort to commit suicide and is it really worth that seeing as it doesn't mean anything whether you are alive or dead... cause everything is pointless. This is usually referred to as Existentialism Void.

In the book, our main character Meursault commits a crime, kills another person. Earlier on his mother has died. Even though both these actions should have affected Meursault's feelings, it didn't and because of this Meursault ended up in prison... (See previous blog)

From a journalistic point of view this book is written kind of in the way that we journalists are getting taught how to write news stories. Short, simple sentences where the subject is followed by the verb in a 'crunchy kind of bored observational way'.

More info about The Stranger and Albert Camus:

Emotionally Detached?

After this subject the discussion moved on to more contemporary, new journalism and focusing on how our history and past have come to shape today's style of journalism into something that is more comparable to a novel, a 'story' than a raw fact news piece. An article today, so called a story, is similar to a non-fiction novel. This intellectual trend seemed to move towards presenting news as fiction - even though the people in the stories are very much real. Tom Wolfe was one of the journalists that highlighted this so called new journalism more than many others, and in his work 'The New Journalism' he shows on different examples of new journalism, such as gonzo journalism, through an anthology of articles. Wolfe's big heroes that inspired him were among others Emile Zola and Charles Dickens, as he we can see traces of within the new journalism as Wolfe uses methods of 19th century literature.

New journalism focuses on being subjective whereas 'old' journalism smacks up the facts in a quite boring linear way of presenting the news - objective. With the movement from 'old' journalism, the storytelling went from being digetic (telling) to being mimetic (seeing). Gonzo and fly on the wall journalism is definitely related to the mimetic side of journalism, aka new journalism.

• Throughout this period existentialism (Camus) becomes the 'normal thing' in society and writing, the norm.


• Psychoanalysis (Freud, Century of the Self) becomes popular and its all about listening to people and analyse them. This is in clinical terms regarded as rubbish, but in literature - brilliant! With psychoanalysis you can get close to someone and make them open up to you by following them around (gonzo). News is news, the Freudian way of approaching news is the opposite.


• ME-generation! Everyone should be happy! This movement in New Journalism is a total individualism movement (Nietzsche). If it feels good - Do It! (Nike). All about self fulfilment, sexual freedom and pleasure - even if it leads to STDs or babies it doesn't matter, as long as it's a pleasure. Hippies, drugs...

Wilhelm Reich, extremist sexual freedom, mentions that you become physically ill if you don't have pleasure sex all the time.

More information on Wilhelm Reich:
Proper orgasms to the people!!

After this movement, something called the Vienna Circle followed and the followers of this listened to Moritz Schlick and they rejected all philosophy, such as metaphysics, nations, classes, abstractions and so on, and relied only on science. Their main point was, if you cannot verify a proposition individually - then you can't trust it, cause you cannot verify it. They would never say that something can not be true, instead they would say 'it could be true, but we can't verify it'. This is called the Verification Principle.

As for example in religion; Nietzsche said: 'God is dead'. The Verification Principle would not accept this cause they cannot verify what he is saying is true. Therefore, they stay open minded about God and decide not discuss it cause there is no answer- this statement cannot be tested and therefore not individually verified as right or wrong. The things that this movement discussed were only things that can be verified.

This sort of applies to journalism today as well. You need to be certain of something before you publish it for it to be a fact, you need to be able to verify every separate fact and make sure it is accurate. If not, that is if not able to verify that that certain something to be a fact, it is comment (bollocks) and therefore not mentionable for a journalist in a news piece as news is fact, not comment.

Verifiable = fact (such as spelling)
Non verifiable = comment (religion)

Religion, poetry, metaphysics and so on are all non verifiable propositions - therefore not discussed by the Vienna Circle. (Wittgenstein was heavily influenced by this group.)

Faults
Karl Popper died in the 1990s and was one of the biggest philosophers in the world. He was against this verification principle because he said that this verification principle cannot verify itself whether it is right or wrong - falsification principle. Popper destroyed the verificationists with this argument. He argued that things are only true if the opposite is also true. If you cannot do the opposite, the proposition cannot be true in itself.

According to this theory Freud, Marx and Hegel's philosophies were all destroyed due to not being able to verify their theories.

Last but not least we discussed John Maynard Keynes (1930s) and his approach on the economical climate. He rejects all economic theories of that time such as free market. Steinbeck claims that unemployment is impossible in a free market system. Today the situation is that the government gives benefit to unemployed people in society, therefore they won't go back to work - they will stay on benefits. Instead, get them working (even if it digging holes and then filling them back up) for them to get a salary and then being able to spend money and get a circle of economy flowing. "Capitalism produces nothing except destruction for themselves."

Cut wages + remove social spending = cures unemployment.

Even if your wages get cut you have to keep spending, cause when you keep spending the company will be able to keep their employers, and within time being able to emply even more people and eventually wages can go up again and things return to somewhat 'normal' - but if you start cutting your spendings the employees at that same company might have to go due to under spendings and not enough money in circulation. Therefore expand and spend your way out of trouble. (More information in Hayek's book Road to Serfdom.)

Emotionally detached?

As a human being you would normally feel sadness when your mum dies.

As a human being you would normally feel happiness and loved when someone is in love with you.

As a human being you would normally feel guilt when killing someone.

As a human being you would normally feel scared and depressed when in front of a court for a murder.

As a human being you would normally feel anger and unfairness when sentenced to death by decapitating in public.

Emotionally detached.

But Mersault does not feel these things. Mersault does not express any emotions. Mersault seems to have this protective layer surrounding him which keeps anything from harming him, or from pleasing him.

Even though the story, The Outsider; Albert Camus, is quite short, it took me quite some time to get through – mostly due to the depressive atmosphere that follows you page in and page out. Somehow I felt all these feelings that Mersault didn’t feel, and on and off I was filled with anger. I got so engrossed in the story that I even became angry with him for not feeling, for not expressing and for not being human.

Instead of describing his own feelings, Mersault tells us all about surroundings, details, people, basically everything that exists and happens around himself, but he never touches the subject himself. When he commits the murder – which is a revenge act – he does not regret it, because; “As an existentialist, he has no reason to regret what he does because it is done; regret is redundant.”

Existentialist’s, and Søren Kierkegaard (who is regarded the father of Existentialism), say that it’s up to each and everyone themselves to give a meaning to their own lives, and to live “that life passionately and sincerely” not being interrupted and wander astray even though many obstacles such as despair, alienation and boredom stands in its way. Mainly this way of thinking became in fashion after the Second World War when people wanted to stand for their own rights, claim that their opinions were the right ones and make sure that the human freedom and individuality would not get in the hands of a tyrant or similar kind of leader, as it did during this war when Hitler had the power. Nietzsche had similar thoughts and ideas before Kierkegaard but his concepts and theories were not really talked about until this period of time (after the wars), when he was already dead.

Existentialism is a very wide subject, lots of different theories within the concept as such. But this is all I'm gonna offer you today. Next - fascism.