So this week in the lecture we did a run through of 5 possible questions that mayyyyy or may not come up in the scary scary test next week. These are the notes I took in the hope that I can develop the ideal answer!
1. Outline the verification principle as part of the school of thought known as logical positivism, How might this principle be applied to the day-to-day work of a journalist?The verification Principle is based on the idea of truth claims, used frequently in philosophy as a way of categorising statements as to their validity. If they can be proven true or false then they can be used in a meaningful way, but if it cannot be verified either way than the claim or statement must be meaningless. This is an idea carried by the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers who agreed with the logical positivism set forth in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Philosophicus, however the verification principle was popularised by Freddie Ayer. Philosophers who follow this school of thought will argue that the truth of any statement is in its method of verification; if a truth claim cannot be verified, then it is meaningless, this is mirrored by the Falsification Principle which Popper put forward, and together this formed a new way to analyse statements popular among the Anglo-Saxon traditions of philosophy. In his Tractatus, Wittgenstein said that “of that which we cannot speak we must remain silent”, reiterating that if a statement is non-verifiable then it is not a pathway to finding the truth and therefore is of no importance and we should not waste time thinking about it. Logical positivism of this kind was rejected by religious people and ontological thinkers, especially those from the Cartesian point of view who believe that there is objective truth regardless of the verifiability. This principle is important to the work of journalists because we must be able to verify everything that we print, and we must check all of our sources for reliability. If we cannot prove whether it is true or a lie, we should not be writing about it.
2. What is phenomology? Can there be such a thing as subjective reality, or subjective truth? What sort of standards ought a journalist apply?Phenomology is a branch of philosophy established in the 1920s that deals with subjective experience (a person’s personal reactions to something and why they react this way). The origin of Phenomena comes from Emmanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason which says that all objects have a dual nature; when it is nuomenal, a thing in itself, it has a different form to when it is phenomenal, a creation of the mind. The idea is that an unperceived object will be in its perfect, or ‘ideal’ form, but when it is perceived and the mind acts on it, it will only be an approximation of its ‘ideal’ form. f This is the territory of ‘naïve realists’, such as Wittgenstein, who believe that the object is still there when it is not perceived. Similarly, the Empiricists such as Locke and Hume say that the object is still there, but is different from how it is perceived. These ideas have been confirmed by experimental science such as quantum mechanics, who found that the act of perceiving changes the physical nature of something that they were studying. Another key question that phenomology addresses is that of how does our perception of objects arise? The first person to tackle this question was Husserl who said that it is the intention behind perception that creates the image that you see; if you want to see something, you will. This has been demonstrated by optical illusions based on context such as the face in the cliff, and even in mythology which suggests that rock faces with unusual patterns of formation and vegetation are the product of a giant pushing the mountain (an example from the Philippines). Husserl said that we will the world into existence by intention, and that a picture of your self is a structure of your intentions and decisions. For example, when you walk into a room, you are creating that room by thinking that you are walking into it. Heidegger also backed this theory. In the 1940s and 50s, Existentialism was established as a moral code that deals with phenomenology. This looks at the intentions which we have that made the world and the consequences of these and our choices of what to believe. As Existentialist Albert Camus said, the future is unwritten, the past is beyond our control, so we only have the now which we can control and change. These schools of thought relate to Solipsism, supporters of which believe that the world is simply a projection of your own being and that the only existence you can be sure of is your own mind.
Phenomenology is important to Journalism in establishing the truth of a statement. It creates problems such as if truth can only be subjective then the reporting of public affairs cannot be objective. Therefore journalists must be careful to put forward a well-rounded view rather than just their own personal preference. However, there is a general cultural trend towards subjectivity and the private consciousness is very important in our culture, so as a journalist it is important to be aware that your readers will have their own viewpoint and you should not try to thrust your own view onto them.
3. Describe in broad terms J.M. Keynes’ ideas on monetary policy, with an indication of how the Keynesian Revolution came about. Does ‘Keynesianism’ inevitably lead to social regression, moral failure and serfdom, as Hayek asserts?In contrast to the first two questions, economics tries to approach the world in a non-phenomenological way, but rather many economists believe in naïve realism, that objects are as they appear to be. Adam Smith, a key influent in economics, was a naïve materialist and as such a ‘machine’ from the enlightenment way of thinking. The Keynesian Revolution started in the war but really took off in the 1950s and 60s. It came about because of the Great Depression, also known as the ‘hungry 30s’ when poverty, mass unemployment, malnutrition and political instability were rampant in the Western world where economies had been crushed by the strain of the second World War. Keynesian economics brought about a prosperous ‘great’ society. The basic idea was that the government would print lots of money so that things could still be bought and paid for throughout the war, however one down side of this strategy is that because of inflation, the money became worthless. Keynes, however, felt that this was a side-effect that was offset by the benefits of the system. He therefore accepted these problems in return for full employment. He created jobs which were not really needed, just so that people were employed, so that they could earn money and spend money and therefore the whole economy would benefit. This is known as the ‘multiplier’ effect and was only enabled because Keynes believed that the banks did not need to back all the money that they printed with gold reserves; he said go ahead and print more money, whether we have the gold in the banks or not. He argued that it was better to have useless jobs than unemployment. Hayek said that money is a transparent medium and has no effect on the world, which is the opposite view to Keynes.
Critiques of this approach include the inflation that it causes. Galbraith has also hammered the theory because it involves massive state intervention, as the whole process of creating jobs has to be regulated to ensure that it has the maximum effect on the economy. The intervention is so great that even the private sector gets a lot of its business from the public sector, which basically serves to keep the economy going. This therefore involves supply and demand regulation, going against Adam Smith’s theory of the ‘free hand in the market’. Also, to implement Keynesian economics, the government has to gather vast amounts of data, regulate wages and quantify everything. Therefore, in an ontological sense, it means nothing, but in a Keynesian sense everything; it is therefore often said to be completely meaningless (such as by Hayek). It has also been argued that it boils down to everyone working for the government, which equates to serfdom; a step back in history to a pre-capitalist world before the enlightenment. It has therefore also been associated with a loss of freedom, such as Arendt and Orwell discuss.
However, whether we disagree with this system or not, our world is now enmeshed in bureaucracy and Keynesianism, for example the labour party is based on Keynesian ideals, and the economy is based on this system of creating jobs for jobs sakes.
4. “Facts in logical space are the world” – Wittgenstein, Tractatus. Do you agree?This question is based on the first chapter of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Philosophicus which forms the premise for his picture theory of language, and the idea that language allows us to express the world and how we experience it. This question also needs to touch on Kant’s Phenomenology and the fact that naïve materialism and metaphysics are both rejected. Therefore, there are none of Plato’s ideal forms (that there is another universe made up of perfect forms, and everything that we see and experience is simply an approximation of these perfect forms), no nuomena and no concrete physical objects. Wittgenstein is therefore saying that the world is just facts within our minds that can be independently verified, for example by someone else agreeing that there is, in fact, a computer in front of me. This means that there is no such thing as private language as we need someone else to verify and so share language. Logic is therefore a precise way of describing the relation between one object and another, and truth is established in relation to the different parts of an argument. The world is therefore a network of propositions linked by logic.
5. Looking back at the HCJ course as a whole, choose one thinker we have discussed or one movement in thought that you believe to be particularly significant in terms of journalistic practice. Explain why.I will need some time to pinpoint what part of the course that I am going to base my answer for this one on, as there are so many possibilities that it is boggling my head right now!
Thursday, 12 May 2011
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Seminar 5 - Wittgenstein and Language
After giving my seminar paper and hearing Sammy’s (which was very useful for me as it explained about the 7 main statements of the book, which I couldn’t make out because of the confusing structure of the book), we discussed at length the relationship between language and reality. This was an idea key to Wittgenstein’s philosophy in that he was exploring this relationship in an attempt to distinguish the limits of science. He argued that philosophy arises from a lack of knowledge and people trying to fill this gap. Wittgenstein’s work was therefore a completely new approach to philosophy, which makes it especially interesting. He looked acutely at language, but the question that is more interesting to me, is what is this based on? How did language start?
He also emphasises that signs and symbols can also be used to build propositions, in fact, language is really just a set of symbols that we have assigned meanings to. As a group, we thought the nature of language very interesting in that it evolves and changes over time, and it is impossible to know the true beginnings of it, was it originally perfectly logical? If it was, then this was quickly changed and forgotten, most likely due to cultural idiosyncrasies in the way that language is learnt and passed on and affected by way of life and the way it is used.
There are many influences on language and the way that it develops. One theory is that the environment that we are brought up in determines our language; another approach is that of Chomsky who argued that all humans are born with the basics of language; that it is innate, and the slight variations come from our environment. He thought that this was the same across the world which suggests that all languages would have the same basis. However, Wittgenstein backed the approach that you environment creates your language and therefore your understanding of the world.
One thing that Stefano pointed out, which gave me an ‘oh yeah’ light bulb moment, is that most philosophical books seem to exist purely to pick holes in other philosophical work, and yet Wittgenstein can be seen to be somewhat inward- looking and annoyingly presumptuous. This can be seen in the way that he addresses the reader as if he is speaking absolute truth, in a way which makes you afraid to challenge his ideas because he has made them so definite and confident. The way that he develops his logical argument adds to this feeling.
Another discussion point was the way that language is used in the media and in advertising. It is used to evoke emotion and specific thoughts, with the aim of spurring action. This is therefore manipulating people through the use of language. This lead to a discussion of Orwell and mind control.
The final part of the seminar was spent debating the way that symbols and meaning can be taught by culture, the example we were using was that of pain. Do we actually feel pain, or is it simply a trained response to something that we think would cause pain? For example when a child gets an ‘owie’ do they actually feel pain or are they simply crying because they have been taught that this is the normal reaction? This brought up many stories, including one of Shira’s from visiting different tribes in Africa. There is one such tribe (at least) which relishes pain or things that you would think would inflict pain, even sees it as an honour. There are also tribes in which to be seen as a ‘man’, males must inflict pain upon themselves. The question that I ask is; are these people still experiencing pain and simply enjoying this fact, or are they actually feeling pleasure? The difficulty is that these kinds of things are totally subjective, and we can never really know what is going on inside people’s minds. Another difficulty is that everyone has different meanings for each word or symbol; this is also one of the main difficulties of language and meaning.
He also emphasises that signs and symbols can also be used to build propositions, in fact, language is really just a set of symbols that we have assigned meanings to. As a group, we thought the nature of language very interesting in that it evolves and changes over time, and it is impossible to know the true beginnings of it, was it originally perfectly logical? If it was, then this was quickly changed and forgotten, most likely due to cultural idiosyncrasies in the way that language is learnt and passed on and affected by way of life and the way it is used.
There are many influences on language and the way that it develops. One theory is that the environment that we are brought up in determines our language; another approach is that of Chomsky who argued that all humans are born with the basics of language; that it is innate, and the slight variations come from our environment. He thought that this was the same across the world which suggests that all languages would have the same basis. However, Wittgenstein backed the approach that you environment creates your language and therefore your understanding of the world.
One thing that Stefano pointed out, which gave me an ‘oh yeah’ light bulb moment, is that most philosophical books seem to exist purely to pick holes in other philosophical work, and yet Wittgenstein can be seen to be somewhat inward- looking and annoyingly presumptuous. This can be seen in the way that he addresses the reader as if he is speaking absolute truth, in a way which makes you afraid to challenge his ideas because he has made them so definite and confident. The way that he develops his logical argument adds to this feeling.
Another discussion point was the way that language is used in the media and in advertising. It is used to evoke emotion and specific thoughts, with the aim of spurring action. This is therefore manipulating people through the use of language. This lead to a discussion of Orwell and mind control.
The final part of the seminar was spent debating the way that symbols and meaning can be taught by culture, the example we were using was that of pain. Do we actually feel pain, or is it simply a trained response to something that we think would cause pain? For example when a child gets an ‘owie’ do they actually feel pain or are they simply crying because they have been taught that this is the normal reaction? This brought up many stories, including one of Shira’s from visiting different tribes in Africa. There is one such tribe (at least) which relishes pain or things that you would think would inflict pain, even sees it as an honour. There are also tribes in which to be seen as a ‘man’, males must inflict pain upon themselves. The question that I ask is; are these people still experiencing pain and simply enjoying this fact, or are they actually feeling pleasure? The difficulty is that these kinds of things are totally subjective, and we can never really know what is going on inside people’s minds. Another difficulty is that everyone has different meanings for each word or symbol; this is also one of the main difficulties of language and meaning.
Seminar Paper on Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ludwig Wittgenstein has been dubbed a ‘charismatic enigma’ because though he was largely respected and admired, he lived much of his life in seclusion. His life seems to have been dominated by striving for moral and philosophical perfection, as the detail of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in English in 1922 suggests. Wittgenstein is of Jewish descent, although he often would not admit the extent of this, and his family was large and wealthy. His father, Karl Wittgenstein, was a leader in the Austro-Hungarian iron and steel industries and was a very successful businessman. This meant that throughout his childhood, many people of culture visited the Wittgenstein’s house, including Johannes Brahms who instilled in Ludwig a love of music. The family was followed by tragedy though, as 3 of Ludwig’s 4 brothers committed suicide. He also had 3 sisters.
Ludwig began his career studying mechanical engineering in Berlin before moving to Manchester to research aeronautics in 1908. He soon became interested in mathematics and philosophical theories as to the foundations of mathematics, which then turned into work on philosophical logic when friend, philosopher and mathematician Frege recommended that Ludwig study in Cambridge with G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, who later helped Ludwig to publish the Tractatus in English. In 1913, Ludwig inherited his father’s fortune but soon gave it away and enlisted in the Austrian Army when war broke out in 1914. During his time serving, he was awarded several medals for bravery, before continuing his philosophical work and publishing the Tractatus. Having thus felt he had solved the problems of philosophy, he became a school teacher in Austria. In 1929 he realised that his work in philosophy was not done and went to Trinity College, Cambridge to teach and became professor of philosophy at Cambridge in 1939, before working as a hospital porter in London during World War 2 and then as a research technician in Newcastle. After the war he returned to Cambridge, although he resigned his professorship in 1947 so that he could concentrate on writing, which he did mostly in Ireland and by 1949 he had compiled what would be published posthumously as Philosophical Investigations. The last two years of his life he spent between Vienna, Cambridge and Oxford and worked on the material which would be published, again posthumously, as On Certainty. He died in 1951 in Cambridge of prostate cancer.
Considered by many to be his most profound work, and by some to be nonsense, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a pondering on the reasons that philosophers try to solve problems and propositions. Wittgenstein is arguing that instead of solving these problems, we should be trying to dissolve them through analysis. Instead of thinking “we don’t know this, we must work it out” we should be thinking “we don’t know this”. By doing this he can definitely be seen to rock the boat of philosophy, and much of his work angered philosophers; however it was important in developing Logical positivism and making language a focus for philosophical thought.
Wittgenstein’s logical positivism was based on the Verification Principle, that if a proposition cannot be verified, it is meaningless. This was therefore saying that instead of trying endless theories to solve a problem caused by an unverifiable proposition, we should just let it go. However, this created a logical problem of its own in that this proposition itself could not be verified, and therefore must be meaningless. This was supplemented by Karl Popper with the Falsification Principle, leading to today’s system where propositions must be analysed as to both the verification and falsification principles before it can be accepted as true.
Wittgenstein’s work also raises questions as to our use of language and the role that it plays in philosophical thought. The Tractatus illustrates the fact that detail must be paid to the language and meanings that we use, and that our world is created by the language available to us. We cannot think or describe without the use of language and therefore if the language available were to be reduced, the scope of our mental and verbal lives would be limited. You need to have language to express ideas, and therefore language is everything. The Tractatus also contains a picture theory of language that 1) the world consists of facts and 2) a fact is a picture of the state of affairs. We therefore create the world around us using language and facts. If a proposition does not depict a picture of a state of affairs, then it is devoid of meaning. However, given that the entire Tractatus is a series of propositions, Wittgenstein is pulling the framework of his own work apart.
This theory of language in particular has been picked up by many a philosopher as well as culturally significant writers. George Orwell is the best example of this, as his novel 1984 demonstrates Wittgenstein’s theory of language by creating a world in which one political party controls the minds of the country by limiting the language available to them. He demonstrates that if you can control the ‘facts’, you can control the world and manipulate, even manufacture, reality through the use of language and facts. This is perfectly illustrated in the ‘weeding out’ of articles that go against the current state of affairs to make it seem as if what was said before, for instance about being at war with Eurasia, was never true. In this way the party manipulates history and allegiances. They also control language by creating NewSpeak, the dictionary of shortened language which becomes smaller and smaller and eventually ends up consisting of “I love big brother”. This corruption of language to suit political means frightened both Orwell and Wittgenstein, which is why Ludwig felt it so important that we understand the meaning of what we say. The language that features in 1984 is formed of jargon, cliché, metaphor and slogan, all types of language that are designed to prevent thought and inhibit freedom of thought and expression, as can be seen in the creation of the Thought Police. Not only do these go against human rights, but, Ludwig argued, they create a society in which no-one, except the leader, can reach their full potential, which I find terrifying. Similar ideas of controlling language for political means have been used in the USSR when the communists began a programme of linguistic reform where certain words and letters were taken out of the dictionaries and alphabets and banned from use. In this way, they created a Utopian politically correct language, trying to remove social discrimination by removing the means to be discriminating. This reflects Wittgenstein’s idea that language is plastic and controls thought.
Back to the Tractatus; it is made up of a series of propositions and comments on these propositions. Wittgenstein emphasised that these were not ‘profound statements’ trying to impart wisdom in the reader, he is simply trying to show that what we think are important philosophical problems, are not really problems at all, just things that we have to live with. He is therefore not rejecting philosophy, just trying to untie some of the knots in it that cause confusion.
Another part of the Tractatus that I found particularly interesting is Wittgenstein’s comments in the preface. He says that the purpose of the book will be achieved “if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it”. This, to me, sums up the whole reason that we have books and that we read; to understand, learn from them and enjoy them. However, it seems to me that the way that we look at learning is not so much with eagerness or with pleasure, but with dread. What causes this dread, I cannot say, only that it may be to do with the fact that education is forced upon us from an early age, and the necessity to be able to master these skills has put so much pressure on us that we no longer look forward to it, because we know that our jobs and our lives are always going to be challenging. This takes away the pleasure that can be felt when you understand a new theory or learn something that you never knew before. Books have become just another part of our hum-drum lives, and this is a saddening thought.
Wittgenstein also says “If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that thoughts are expressed in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are expressed… the greater will be its value”. This seems to me to go without saying. Wittgenstein’s focus on language throughout the book is especially prominent here as he is pointing out the precise nature of his ponderings (because, really, that’s all this book is), and identifying the effect that this will have on his readers. He is therefore a very clever man, maybe even a genius, but he does not fit this bill in the simple fact that he thinks of the understanding of others, instead of talking down to them. This is extremely important in philosophy and makes a refreshing change from the dictator-like style of Karl Marx and more heavy-handed philosophers like Rousseau.
He describes philosophy as aiming at the “logical clarification of thoughts” and I think that this is very important. Too often, we take meanings and words for granted, without being careful or specific, and this emphasis on thinking through what we are saying is important, as my mother says ‘think before you speak’, so you should think before you preach in philosophy. This also makes the end of Wittgenstein’s preface particularly powerful; “the second thing in which the value of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved”.
Ludwig began his career studying mechanical engineering in Berlin before moving to Manchester to research aeronautics in 1908. He soon became interested in mathematics and philosophical theories as to the foundations of mathematics, which then turned into work on philosophical logic when friend, philosopher and mathematician Frege recommended that Ludwig study in Cambridge with G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, who later helped Ludwig to publish the Tractatus in English. In 1913, Ludwig inherited his father’s fortune but soon gave it away and enlisted in the Austrian Army when war broke out in 1914. During his time serving, he was awarded several medals for bravery, before continuing his philosophical work and publishing the Tractatus. Having thus felt he had solved the problems of philosophy, he became a school teacher in Austria. In 1929 he realised that his work in philosophy was not done and went to Trinity College, Cambridge to teach and became professor of philosophy at Cambridge in 1939, before working as a hospital porter in London during World War 2 and then as a research technician in Newcastle. After the war he returned to Cambridge, although he resigned his professorship in 1947 so that he could concentrate on writing, which he did mostly in Ireland and by 1949 he had compiled what would be published posthumously as Philosophical Investigations. The last two years of his life he spent between Vienna, Cambridge and Oxford and worked on the material which would be published, again posthumously, as On Certainty. He died in 1951 in Cambridge of prostate cancer.
Considered by many to be his most profound work, and by some to be nonsense, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a pondering on the reasons that philosophers try to solve problems and propositions. Wittgenstein is arguing that instead of solving these problems, we should be trying to dissolve them through analysis. Instead of thinking “we don’t know this, we must work it out” we should be thinking “we don’t know this”. By doing this he can definitely be seen to rock the boat of philosophy, and much of his work angered philosophers; however it was important in developing Logical positivism and making language a focus for philosophical thought.
Wittgenstein’s logical positivism was based on the Verification Principle, that if a proposition cannot be verified, it is meaningless. This was therefore saying that instead of trying endless theories to solve a problem caused by an unverifiable proposition, we should just let it go. However, this created a logical problem of its own in that this proposition itself could not be verified, and therefore must be meaningless. This was supplemented by Karl Popper with the Falsification Principle, leading to today’s system where propositions must be analysed as to both the verification and falsification principles before it can be accepted as true.
Wittgenstein’s work also raises questions as to our use of language and the role that it plays in philosophical thought. The Tractatus illustrates the fact that detail must be paid to the language and meanings that we use, and that our world is created by the language available to us. We cannot think or describe without the use of language and therefore if the language available were to be reduced, the scope of our mental and verbal lives would be limited. You need to have language to express ideas, and therefore language is everything. The Tractatus also contains a picture theory of language that 1) the world consists of facts and 2) a fact is a picture of the state of affairs. We therefore create the world around us using language and facts. If a proposition does not depict a picture of a state of affairs, then it is devoid of meaning. However, given that the entire Tractatus is a series of propositions, Wittgenstein is pulling the framework of his own work apart.
This theory of language in particular has been picked up by many a philosopher as well as culturally significant writers. George Orwell is the best example of this, as his novel 1984 demonstrates Wittgenstein’s theory of language by creating a world in which one political party controls the minds of the country by limiting the language available to them. He demonstrates that if you can control the ‘facts’, you can control the world and manipulate, even manufacture, reality through the use of language and facts. This is perfectly illustrated in the ‘weeding out’ of articles that go against the current state of affairs to make it seem as if what was said before, for instance about being at war with Eurasia, was never true. In this way the party manipulates history and allegiances. They also control language by creating NewSpeak, the dictionary of shortened language which becomes smaller and smaller and eventually ends up consisting of “I love big brother”. This corruption of language to suit political means frightened both Orwell and Wittgenstein, which is why Ludwig felt it so important that we understand the meaning of what we say. The language that features in 1984 is formed of jargon, cliché, metaphor and slogan, all types of language that are designed to prevent thought and inhibit freedom of thought and expression, as can be seen in the creation of the Thought Police. Not only do these go against human rights, but, Ludwig argued, they create a society in which no-one, except the leader, can reach their full potential, which I find terrifying. Similar ideas of controlling language for political means have been used in the USSR when the communists began a programme of linguistic reform where certain words and letters were taken out of the dictionaries and alphabets and banned from use. In this way, they created a Utopian politically correct language, trying to remove social discrimination by removing the means to be discriminating. This reflects Wittgenstein’s idea that language is plastic and controls thought.
Back to the Tractatus; it is made up of a series of propositions and comments on these propositions. Wittgenstein emphasised that these were not ‘profound statements’ trying to impart wisdom in the reader, he is simply trying to show that what we think are important philosophical problems, are not really problems at all, just things that we have to live with. He is therefore not rejecting philosophy, just trying to untie some of the knots in it that cause confusion.
Another part of the Tractatus that I found particularly interesting is Wittgenstein’s comments in the preface. He says that the purpose of the book will be achieved “if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it”. This, to me, sums up the whole reason that we have books and that we read; to understand, learn from them and enjoy them. However, it seems to me that the way that we look at learning is not so much with eagerness or with pleasure, but with dread. What causes this dread, I cannot say, only that it may be to do with the fact that education is forced upon us from an early age, and the necessity to be able to master these skills has put so much pressure on us that we no longer look forward to it, because we know that our jobs and our lives are always going to be challenging. This takes away the pleasure that can be felt when you understand a new theory or learn something that you never knew before. Books have become just another part of our hum-drum lives, and this is a saddening thought.
Wittgenstein also says “If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that thoughts are expressed in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are expressed… the greater will be its value”. This seems to me to go without saying. Wittgenstein’s focus on language throughout the book is especially prominent here as he is pointing out the precise nature of his ponderings (because, really, that’s all this book is), and identifying the effect that this will have on his readers. He is therefore a very clever man, maybe even a genius, but he does not fit this bill in the simple fact that he thinks of the understanding of others, instead of talking down to them. This is extremely important in philosophy and makes a refreshing change from the dictator-like style of Karl Marx and more heavy-handed philosophers like Rousseau.
He describes philosophy as aiming at the “logical clarification of thoughts” and I think that this is very important. Too often, we take meanings and words for granted, without being careful or specific, and this emphasis on thinking through what we are saying is important, as my mother says ‘think before you speak’, so you should think before you preach in philosophy. This also makes the end of Wittgenstein’s preface particularly powerful; “the second thing in which the value of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved”.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Lecture 5: Orwell - Politics and the English Language
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has been very influential on Logical Positivist thinking and the idea that every proposition must be either proven or disproven, using the verification principle (Wittgenstein) or the falsification principle (Popper), and if this cannot be achieved, the statement is meaningless. Therefore it was believed that for a statement to be meaningful, it must first be proven to be true. However, the logical problems of this (that you cannot prove or disprove the very statement of the verification principle) meant that Wittgenstein later declared his first book to be nonsense. This first book was, in fact, a very short book, but because of the way that every single word and phrase was put under the microscope, the footnotes gave lots of detail especially in analysing the meaning.
He later said “that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent” which brought into question what language is, ontologically. He was studying the intricacies of language and meaning, but in order to do this he had to use language in order to explain it. This links to the use of computer language, which is series of logical symbols and ‘propositions’ which are tested constantly in order to make the computer code work. This apparently Anglo-Saxon tradition of testing language is used by American universities who dismiss European (mainly German and French) traditions such as Cartesian philosophy as being meaningless. This is because these ideas and thought trains cannot be either proven or disproven.
Language therefore became the focus of philosophical thought; to Wittgenstein, language is everything as we need to have language to express ideas; without language we cannot facilitate ideas and therefore they cannot exist. The Tractatus, therefore, has a picture theory of language; 1) that the world consists of facts and 2) that a fact is a picture of a state of affairs. Therefore by controlling language, we can control the picture of the state of affairs and paint what we like.
George Orwell picked up on this idea and ran with it in 1984, showing that if you can control the ‘facts’, you can control the world and you can manufacture a ‘reality’ by manipulating the facts or language. He who controls the present controls the past, he who controls the past controls the future was a key theme and slogan in the book.
Orwell has had a far-reaching and continuing influence; 1984, Big Brother state, Room 101, thought crime, thought police and the adjective “Orwellian” have become synonymous amongst English and Philosophy students, not to mention the huge cultural heritage he has created. As journalist and broadcaster he was very successful, but he is most famous for his novels Homage to Catatonia, Animal Farm (a metaphor for the Russian Revolution), and 1984. His interesting CV does not stop there, as in the 1950s he worked for the CIA. Politically, he was a disillusioned socialist and became anti-communist, using his novels to speak out against it and the way that the ‘great idea’ that it was founded upon was corrupted by those that used it. He was, therefore, very much of the same mind as Hannah Arendt.
In the 1930s, Orwell was close to various communist intellectuals, however when he found out the truths that they were covering up, the truth of “The God that Failed” in particular, he was horrified but at the same time fascinated by their capacity for self delusion. This also brought to his attention the way that they manipulated language and the similar use of language by totalitarians. The Communist program for linguistic reform in the USSR, in particular, shocked Orwell. Certain words were banned, certain letters which had special religious significance were taken out of the alphabet and a Utopian politically correct language was created. New words were created such as politbureau and prolecult. The idea was to remove the facility to discriminate by taking the words away. This left a language made up of jargon, cliché, metaphor, ritual and slogan after slogan. It was a form of language designed to prevent thought and was very much based on Wittgenstein’s ideas that language is plastic and controls thought.
This was one of the basic premises of Orwell’s 1984 in which the state has created NewSpeak, a dictionary which they make smaller and smaller with every edition, in an attempt to control the words that people have available to them so that they can control their thoughts. The political party, Ingsoc (English Socialists) is true by definition and it is a ‘thought crime’ to go against what they say, punishable by death, a death so complete that all records of the life that preceded it are “abolished, annihilated: vaporised”. This is a ‘big brother state’ which began all talk of such things, in which everyone is punished by the expectation of being constantly monitored. Language is corrupted, as can be seen in party slogans such as “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Poverty is Plenty”; meanings are turned around and upside down until the language is no longer recognisable, as is acknowledged in the fact that “that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now.” There is constant world war, and every time allegiance changes, there are members of the party that go through all records and articles to delete anything that suggests that this wasn’t always the way that they thought. (This is now done in press and is referred to as ‘weeding out’ weaker articles that undermine later ones.) The NewSpeak dictionary is made smaller and smaller until it eventually will simply consist of “I love big brother” and by limiting language in this way, they are limiting thought.
Orwell has also created ‘Orwellian language’ which is a term for loaded language which manipulates the meaning by the use of words. For example, ‘Fair vote’ automatically makes you think that that would be the best policy because of the intrinsic idea of fairness. This is manipulating people and trying to stop people from thinking about the actual meaning that is behind that voting system (as it has been used in recent referendum campaigns). In this way, almost all advertising is Orwellian as they want you to like the product straight away and not even consider the negatives. This would be even worse if it weren’t for strong regulation. This use of language does render phrases meaningless, for example the Hovis slogan “It is as good for you now as it has always been” which could also be said of radiation or cancer. Similar nonsense slogans include “a PC is not a stereotype” and the New York Times’ “All the news that’s fit to print”.
Orwell also wrote a list of rules about Politics and the English Language, giving guidelines on how to write in a way that doesn’t manipulate thought or try to hide the truth;
1) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (which tabloid journalism breaks, all the time).
2) Never use a long word where a short one will do (which goes against what we have been taught all through school).
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, do it.
4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word or jargon where you can think of an English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.
Orwell also saw language as a kind of class, a social barrier. This is clearly demonstrated in the separation between Concrete Germanic Peasant Nouns and Frenchified Elite words (as Horrie showed us in a delightful table that doubled as a fun word game). The basic idea of this is that the Latin or French root words are seen as ‘better’ and more sophisticated, when really the Anglo-Saxon peasantry language is more truthful and does not try to confuse or hide meaning.
We then finished up the lecture by going through some uses of language which demonstrated how many words can be used, and yet nothing very much said. Much like this blog post.
He later said “that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent” which brought into question what language is, ontologically. He was studying the intricacies of language and meaning, but in order to do this he had to use language in order to explain it. This links to the use of computer language, which is series of logical symbols and ‘propositions’ which are tested constantly in order to make the computer code work. This apparently Anglo-Saxon tradition of testing language is used by American universities who dismiss European (mainly German and French) traditions such as Cartesian philosophy as being meaningless. This is because these ideas and thought trains cannot be either proven or disproven.
Language therefore became the focus of philosophical thought; to Wittgenstein, language is everything as we need to have language to express ideas; without language we cannot facilitate ideas and therefore they cannot exist. The Tractatus, therefore, has a picture theory of language; 1) that the world consists of facts and 2) that a fact is a picture of a state of affairs. Therefore by controlling language, we can control the picture of the state of affairs and paint what we like.
George Orwell picked up on this idea and ran with it in 1984, showing that if you can control the ‘facts’, you can control the world and you can manufacture a ‘reality’ by manipulating the facts or language. He who controls the present controls the past, he who controls the past controls the future was a key theme and slogan in the book.
Orwell has had a far-reaching and continuing influence; 1984, Big Brother state, Room 101, thought crime, thought police and the adjective “Orwellian” have become synonymous amongst English and Philosophy students, not to mention the huge cultural heritage he has created. As journalist and broadcaster he was very successful, but he is most famous for his novels Homage to Catatonia, Animal Farm (a metaphor for the Russian Revolution), and 1984. His interesting CV does not stop there, as in the 1950s he worked for the CIA. Politically, he was a disillusioned socialist and became anti-communist, using his novels to speak out against it and the way that the ‘great idea’ that it was founded upon was corrupted by those that used it. He was, therefore, very much of the same mind as Hannah Arendt.
In the 1930s, Orwell was close to various communist intellectuals, however when he found out the truths that they were covering up, the truth of “The God that Failed” in particular, he was horrified but at the same time fascinated by their capacity for self delusion. This also brought to his attention the way that they manipulated language and the similar use of language by totalitarians. The Communist program for linguistic reform in the USSR, in particular, shocked Orwell. Certain words were banned, certain letters which had special religious significance were taken out of the alphabet and a Utopian politically correct language was created. New words were created such as politbureau and prolecult. The idea was to remove the facility to discriminate by taking the words away. This left a language made up of jargon, cliché, metaphor, ritual and slogan after slogan. It was a form of language designed to prevent thought and was very much based on Wittgenstein’s ideas that language is plastic and controls thought.
This was one of the basic premises of Orwell’s 1984 in which the state has created NewSpeak, a dictionary which they make smaller and smaller with every edition, in an attempt to control the words that people have available to them so that they can control their thoughts. The political party, Ingsoc (English Socialists) is true by definition and it is a ‘thought crime’ to go against what they say, punishable by death, a death so complete that all records of the life that preceded it are “abolished, annihilated: vaporised”. This is a ‘big brother state’ which began all talk of such things, in which everyone is punished by the expectation of being constantly monitored. Language is corrupted, as can be seen in party slogans such as “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Poverty is Plenty”; meanings are turned around and upside down until the language is no longer recognisable, as is acknowledged in the fact that “that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now.” There is constant world war, and every time allegiance changes, there are members of the party that go through all records and articles to delete anything that suggests that this wasn’t always the way that they thought. (This is now done in press and is referred to as ‘weeding out’ weaker articles that undermine later ones.) The NewSpeak dictionary is made smaller and smaller until it eventually will simply consist of “I love big brother” and by limiting language in this way, they are limiting thought.
Orwell has also created ‘Orwellian language’ which is a term for loaded language which manipulates the meaning by the use of words. For example, ‘Fair vote’ automatically makes you think that that would be the best policy because of the intrinsic idea of fairness. This is manipulating people and trying to stop people from thinking about the actual meaning that is behind that voting system (as it has been used in recent referendum campaigns). In this way, almost all advertising is Orwellian as they want you to like the product straight away and not even consider the negatives. This would be even worse if it weren’t for strong regulation. This use of language does render phrases meaningless, for example the Hovis slogan “It is as good for you now as it has always been” which could also be said of radiation or cancer. Similar nonsense slogans include “a PC is not a stereotype” and the New York Times’ “All the news that’s fit to print”.
Orwell also wrote a list of rules about Politics and the English Language, giving guidelines on how to write in a way that doesn’t manipulate thought or try to hide the truth;
1) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (which tabloid journalism breaks, all the time).
2) Never use a long word where a short one will do (which goes against what we have been taught all through school).
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, do it.
4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word or jargon where you can think of an English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.
Orwell also saw language as a kind of class, a social barrier. This is clearly demonstrated in the separation between Concrete Germanic Peasant Nouns and Frenchified Elite words (as Horrie showed us in a delightful table that doubled as a fun word game). The basic idea of this is that the Latin or French root words are seen as ‘better’ and more sophisticated, when really the Anglo-Saxon peasantry language is more truthful and does not try to confuse or hide meaning.
We then finished up the lecture by going through some uses of language which demonstrated how many words can be used, and yet nothing very much said. Much like this blog post.
Lecture 4: Logical Positivism and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The lecture that never was... following the lecturer's strike in week 7, i have done some reading of my own into what it would have been on, and here will combine this reading with the brief overview that Chris has subsequently given on what he would have lectured. SO here goes...
Logical Positivism is a movement of philosophical thought concerned with the truth or falsivity of statements. Propositions such as 'i have a pen' must be tested and verified and therefore must be testable. If it cannot be proven, logical positivists would argue that it is meaningless. This is the verification principle. However, this in itself presents a logical problem because the verification principle itself cannot be verified if the statement it is measuring cannot be proven or disproven.
This idea was supplemented by Popper who came up with the falsification principle. All of these philosophical ideas have now resulted in the analysis of every proposition as to whether it passes both the verification principle and the falsification principle before it can be accepted as a true proposition.
This brought about the idea of 'speech acts' which are speeches or propositions that do not follow this logic, but instead have no real content or meaning, only ritual. Everyday speech is like this in that we do not think of the logic behind what we say, language has become less important as we use it so casually without thinking about the real meaning behind it. The idea of speech acts also means that thought takes place in purely linguistic terms, therefore once you control language, you can control people's thoughts and minds by manipulating the language that they can think in. This is an idea which Orwell explored in depth in 1984 which we will be looking at in the next lecture.
Wittgenstein, who worked closely with Bertrand Russel for much of his carreer, was mainly concerned with propositions and their relationship to the world, believing that by studying this, all philosophical problems could be solved. However, later on in his life, his first work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was brought into question and he declared it nonsense.
This was the only philosophical book that he published in his lifetime, however Philosophical Investigations was published after his death in which he explored the idea of language used in a metaphysical world and how this caused problems. He argued that by taking language, words and phrases out of their contexts and trying to analyse them independently, philosophers are causing their own philosophical problems which arise from the misguided attempts to analyse every single word.
I agree wholeheartedly with this and feel that often, when you become to rolled up in precise meanings, you lose the point that you are trying to make altogether. Therefore philosophers are basically rambling on but making no real difference to the world or how life is lived. In this way, it is a very inward-focus which excludes cultural meanings and the rest of society.
Logical Positivism is a movement of philosophical thought concerned with the truth or falsivity of statements. Propositions such as 'i have a pen' must be tested and verified and therefore must be testable. If it cannot be proven, logical positivists would argue that it is meaningless. This is the verification principle. However, this in itself presents a logical problem because the verification principle itself cannot be verified if the statement it is measuring cannot be proven or disproven.
This idea was supplemented by Popper who came up with the falsification principle. All of these philosophical ideas have now resulted in the analysis of every proposition as to whether it passes both the verification principle and the falsification principle before it can be accepted as a true proposition.
This brought about the idea of 'speech acts' which are speeches or propositions that do not follow this logic, but instead have no real content or meaning, only ritual. Everyday speech is like this in that we do not think of the logic behind what we say, language has become less important as we use it so casually without thinking about the real meaning behind it. The idea of speech acts also means that thought takes place in purely linguistic terms, therefore once you control language, you can control people's thoughts and minds by manipulating the language that they can think in. This is an idea which Orwell explored in depth in 1984 which we will be looking at in the next lecture.
Wittgenstein, who worked closely with Bertrand Russel for much of his carreer, was mainly concerned with propositions and their relationship to the world, believing that by studying this, all philosophical problems could be solved. However, later on in his life, his first work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was brought into question and he declared it nonsense.
This was the only philosophical book that he published in his lifetime, however Philosophical Investigations was published after his death in which he explored the idea of language used in a metaphysical world and how this caused problems. He argued that by taking language, words and phrases out of their contexts and trying to analyse them independently, philosophers are causing their own philosophical problems which arise from the misguided attempts to analyse every single word.
I agree wholeheartedly with this and feel that often, when you become to rolled up in precise meanings, you lose the point that you are trying to make altogether. Therefore philosophers are basically rambling on but making no real difference to the world or how life is lived. In this way, it is a very inward-focus which excludes cultural meanings and the rest of society.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Seminar 3: The New Journalism by Tom Wolf
The New Journalism is a collection of articles in the style of new journalism put alongside an explanation of how this form developed, what characterises it and how it is influential in today’s media. It is not the traditional news report style of journalism, but more like fiction, using characterisation, description and narrative devices such as scene-setting. It was very much influenced by authors of social realism and has characterised not only journalism, but also non-fiction novels, for the last 50 years.
Some key devices include scene-by-scene reconstruction, dialogue to establish character, establishing the scene and the context which surrounds it and expressing opinion. The surroundings, characters and events are all important and in this way it dramatically breaks from the conventions of traditional ‘dispassionate reporting’ of events which relies on objectivity and brevity to avoid all biases and confusion. It also encourages the writer to interact with the subject and become actively involved in reporting it, which has become a corner-stone of modern journalism.
The novel is seen as a psychological phenomenon, an ‘obsession’ even, which captures the imagination and attention of readers and is seen as works of literary art. Therefore, it sits at the top of the literature hierarchy, as Wolf points out, before critical essays and journalism. This means that it was inevitable that these enviable qualities would be integrated into journalism to try to boost it up the hierarchy and make people see it as a valid and innovative form of literature. The 1960s saw this change happen and the notion of an article that reads like a novel was born. The novel style and its popularity were used as a device to draw in the reader and capture their interest and imagination whilst still educating them about the state of the world. One interesting point that was made in the seminar by I can’t remember who was that, if journalism can change its style, it stands to reason that it can aspire to more than the ‘slob’ of yellow journalism. However, many critics at the time argued that journalists were having ideas above their station (note that this was mainly academics!).
Wolf said that part of the reason that this new style of feature writing was so successful was because the ultimate triumph for many a feature writer was to produce and publish a novel; by using novelistic techniques, they were getting one step closer to realising their dream (although in reality it was still a long way off).
Therefore the idea of New Journalism is based on the premise that the novel is the ‘highest form of literature’, and that by breaking from tabloidization and ’scoop’ reporting, feature writers were closer to reaching the top of this hierarchy. Some have even linked the uptake of New Journalism to a form of social revolution along Marxist lines. Marx can be related to this because he formed a sort of ‘religion’ of communism which set out guidelines and rules to follow in order to create a successful society. In the same way, New Journalism has established a whole new way to approach reporting and a way to fuse techniques from a number of approaches. It has almost created its own ‘manifesto’ of writing for the people rather than the government or businesses which have vested interests.
However, it can also be argued that it has gone the other way in that the feature writer now has a lot of power to persuade, for example by picking and choosing what information to put in, what to leave out (to only show one side of the argument) and how to interpret it. This is reflected in another novelistic technique which is integral to New Journalism; not having an external narrator to explain the scene.
Another popular technique is to use aspects of relationships and personalities to create atmosphere and trigger reader’s reactions. This can be seen as innovative and also as a tool for social manipulation. By establishing scene and character, feature writing has the ability to reach reader’s emotions. By encouraging the use of imagination and setting the scene in the mind’s eye, the reader is drawn in and will be more receptive to the social ideas which are portrayed. By using dialogue (which is a common, and effective, technique), the reader feels like they are involved in the conversation and it becomes much more personal to them.
It is also controversial in that these techniques encourage the writer to take a side and to put forward their own opinions; whereas traditional news bulletins are objective and made up only of the key facts, feature writers take advantage of the opportunity to expand on this and give subjective opinions and points of view. They often set out to write a feature with the intention of changing attitudes.
This is in strong contrast to traditional news articles which are very structured and objective. They are simplified, often dry, and made up of the bare facts. While this approach is still used in traditional newspapers, feature writing has taken the world of journalism by storm and allowed for massive expansion into documentaries, magazines and blogging. We now take New Journalism techniques for granted because we have grown up with them. This style is often referred to as ‘gonzo journalism’ and includes many different areas such as investigative journalism, informative journalism and entertainment journalism. Blogging is the ultimate example of free, new journalism at work. It gives everyone in society a chance to share their views, and is often used as a form of extended conversation, with people responding to other blog posts, commenting and expanding on issues brought up by others.
Wolf also talks about competition between feature writers and the changing nature of their role in the world. New Journalism has involved in such a way, in tandem with technological developments, that nowadays anyone can claim to be a feature writer; blogging has exploded and has changed the nature of feature reporting. The whole idea of New Journalism has become an integral part of society, and my generation has grown up knowing no different (which made it sort of difficult to understand the concept as I have nothing to compare it to).
New Journalism has contributed much to today’s society, especially in the way that it sparks interest and debate where dry news articles would not necessarily make you sit up and listen, let alone take action. It encourages many different opinions and ideas and many see it as a source or ‘breeding ground’ for revolution because it is in no way controlled by government and often goes against their beliefs or decisions.
New Journalism is, therefore, literary, subjective, persuasive, manipulative and provocative. It encourages, thought, debate and action where traditional news reporting merely puts across facts. In this way, I see it as far more useful, but at the same time very dangerous if used for the wrong reasons or in damaging ways. We therefore need to achieve a careful balance. At the same time as being dangerous, I think it is very useful in encouraging us to be critical readers and not simply accept being spoon fed information and opinions.
Some key devices include scene-by-scene reconstruction, dialogue to establish character, establishing the scene and the context which surrounds it and expressing opinion. The surroundings, characters and events are all important and in this way it dramatically breaks from the conventions of traditional ‘dispassionate reporting’ of events which relies on objectivity and brevity to avoid all biases and confusion. It also encourages the writer to interact with the subject and become actively involved in reporting it, which has become a corner-stone of modern journalism.
The novel is seen as a psychological phenomenon, an ‘obsession’ even, which captures the imagination and attention of readers and is seen as works of literary art. Therefore, it sits at the top of the literature hierarchy, as Wolf points out, before critical essays and journalism. This means that it was inevitable that these enviable qualities would be integrated into journalism to try to boost it up the hierarchy and make people see it as a valid and innovative form of literature. The 1960s saw this change happen and the notion of an article that reads like a novel was born. The novel style and its popularity were used as a device to draw in the reader and capture their interest and imagination whilst still educating them about the state of the world. One interesting point that was made in the seminar by I can’t remember who was that, if journalism can change its style, it stands to reason that it can aspire to more than the ‘slob’ of yellow journalism. However, many critics at the time argued that journalists were having ideas above their station (note that this was mainly academics!).
Wolf said that part of the reason that this new style of feature writing was so successful was because the ultimate triumph for many a feature writer was to produce and publish a novel; by using novelistic techniques, they were getting one step closer to realising their dream (although in reality it was still a long way off).
Therefore the idea of New Journalism is based on the premise that the novel is the ‘highest form of literature’, and that by breaking from tabloidization and ’scoop’ reporting, feature writers were closer to reaching the top of this hierarchy. Some have even linked the uptake of New Journalism to a form of social revolution along Marxist lines. Marx can be related to this because he formed a sort of ‘religion’ of communism which set out guidelines and rules to follow in order to create a successful society. In the same way, New Journalism has established a whole new way to approach reporting and a way to fuse techniques from a number of approaches. It has almost created its own ‘manifesto’ of writing for the people rather than the government or businesses which have vested interests.
However, it can also be argued that it has gone the other way in that the feature writer now has a lot of power to persuade, for example by picking and choosing what information to put in, what to leave out (to only show one side of the argument) and how to interpret it. This is reflected in another novelistic technique which is integral to New Journalism; not having an external narrator to explain the scene.
Another popular technique is to use aspects of relationships and personalities to create atmosphere and trigger reader’s reactions. This can be seen as innovative and also as a tool for social manipulation. By establishing scene and character, feature writing has the ability to reach reader’s emotions. By encouraging the use of imagination and setting the scene in the mind’s eye, the reader is drawn in and will be more receptive to the social ideas which are portrayed. By using dialogue (which is a common, and effective, technique), the reader feels like they are involved in the conversation and it becomes much more personal to them.
It is also controversial in that these techniques encourage the writer to take a side and to put forward their own opinions; whereas traditional news bulletins are objective and made up only of the key facts, feature writers take advantage of the opportunity to expand on this and give subjective opinions and points of view. They often set out to write a feature with the intention of changing attitudes.
This is in strong contrast to traditional news articles which are very structured and objective. They are simplified, often dry, and made up of the bare facts. While this approach is still used in traditional newspapers, feature writing has taken the world of journalism by storm and allowed for massive expansion into documentaries, magazines and blogging. We now take New Journalism techniques for granted because we have grown up with them. This style is often referred to as ‘gonzo journalism’ and includes many different areas such as investigative journalism, informative journalism and entertainment journalism. Blogging is the ultimate example of free, new journalism at work. It gives everyone in society a chance to share their views, and is often used as a form of extended conversation, with people responding to other blog posts, commenting and expanding on issues brought up by others.
Wolf also talks about competition between feature writers and the changing nature of their role in the world. New Journalism has involved in such a way, in tandem with technological developments, that nowadays anyone can claim to be a feature writer; blogging has exploded and has changed the nature of feature reporting. The whole idea of New Journalism has become an integral part of society, and my generation has grown up knowing no different (which made it sort of difficult to understand the concept as I have nothing to compare it to).
New Journalism has contributed much to today’s society, especially in the way that it sparks interest and debate where dry news articles would not necessarily make you sit up and listen, let alone take action. It encourages many different opinions and ideas and many see it as a source or ‘breeding ground’ for revolution because it is in no way controlled by government and often goes against their beliefs or decisions.
New Journalism is, therefore, literary, subjective, persuasive, manipulative and provocative. It encourages, thought, debate and action where traditional news reporting merely puts across facts. In this way, I see it as far more useful, but at the same time very dangerous if used for the wrong reasons or in damaging ways. We therefore need to achieve a careful balance. At the same time as being dangerous, I think it is very useful in encouraging us to be critical readers and not simply accept being spoon fed information and opinions.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Lecture 3: Existentialism and JP Sartre
This week’s lecture began with Chris playing “Heroine” by Velvet Underground and showing Edie Sedgwick (Twiggy) in “Screen Test” by Andy Warhol as examples of the Existentialist Movement’s influence in popular culture.
Horrie described Existentialism as “a movement in post-war arts and culture, especially in France and the USA” which mainly covered music, theatre and literature, although as with all cultural movements, it affected every part of popular culture and has had huge influence on today’s society. It is all about ‘abstract post-expressionism’, to do with phenomology, Freud and the development of psychology, and most importantly, drugs.
The term ‘heroin chic’ aptly describes the fact that it was ‘cool’ to be spaced out and the ‘in’ thing was the New York androgyny scene, of which Edie Sedgwick, Nico and Yoko Ono were poster girls. The drug scene seemed to go hand in hand with revolutionaries and protestors against the Vietnam War, with stunts such as spiking town water supplies with LSD and the Magic Bus that travelled across the US on this mission. This was in the midst of the Hippy movement, with icons such as Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen, Malcolm X, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters (on said LSD bus) and John Lennon. As Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism describes, popular culture is full of heroin users and references to drugs. Camus’ portrayal of state of mind and outlook in The Outsider is very similar to that of someone on a heroine trip.
J.P. Sartre’s Existentialism is Humanism was based on his doctrine that you can judge the freedom of a society by how free and well-regarded its journalists are, regardless of what the constitution says. Sartre was a follower of Heidegger and Husserl, believing that consciousness is an act of intention, not an object, and that the world is will representing itself. This follows the ideas of phenomology that mind is action. This is opposed to Locke’s views and similar to Kantean ways of thinking.
Sartre is also known for rehabilitating Marxist and Hegelian ideas (in Critique of Dialectical Reason) which had become steeped in dogma and buried in meaningless slogans. Sartre believed that followers of Marxism had perverted Marx’s original meanings, and so goes back to his early work to look at Marx as a neo-Kantean moralist. He argued that Marx’s main message was that the point was not to come up with endless interpretations of the world and why we are here, but to change the world and make our mark on it, which I wholly agree with (or at least so far as I understand it).
Existentialism and Literature put forward the idea that ‘you cannot write for slaves’ because writing is the act of human freedom. It is not given to you, but something that you must act upon. This brings to mind the idea that you do not have to settle for your ‘lot’ in the world, if you are unhappy with what you have, strive to change it. In this way we are all equal because we have been given the ability to change our situation and make the most of the opportunities that surround us.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre puts forward his Ontological system. First of all, he talks of ‘things in themselves’ which are objects that are indeterminate but completely bound by their ‘facticity’ and which change constantly and decay. This constant change and decay, Sartre argues, is depressing which makes you feel angst.
Sartre’s answer is to face up to this and not be bothered by it: easier said than done! This rotting and decay is a constant theme of existentialist art, as well as Buddhism, the New Left and the Hippie movement. Sartre also spoke of ‘things for themselves’ which are self-determining, self-creating things, such as free people, which can do something about ‘being’ and not just accept it as a constant state. Linked to this are ‘things for other’s which are slaves/carers/wives (because, of course it is the women that are subservient to men) who don’t live for themselves but to do things for others. These ‘things for others’ are hated and feared by existentialists because they are not trying to be their real ontological being but are living in ‘bad faith’. This is similar to Heidegger’s idea of the ‘inauthentic’ life.
Criticism of Sartre which Horrie spoke about seems to have been mainly from Conservatives, and say that his doctrines are really just a re-working of Marxism, with the categories of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat being re-interpreted as ‘the determined’ (people as objects) and those who determine others.
We also talked about Simone de Beauvoir, who had an ‘open marriage’ with Sartre and can therefore be expected to have picked up on some of his key ideas. Her book The Second Sex describes being female as a narrative and argues that everything that is female is determined by men. She challenged prejudicial thinking as a narrative that can be re-written and so, in my opinion, was quite optimistic about human nature and the nature of women in particular.
The New Left, as I understand from Chris, is all about prejudice and being. It promotes personal expression and freedom, and can be seen, especially in France, in the fight for human rights for homosexuals, different races, disabled people and women.
Heidegger (a proponent of the New Left?) saw ‘being’ as a structure of previous decisions. This is linked to the drug culture of the 1960s as Heroin’s chemical effects keep you in the now, with no particular significance on anything as it removes the pain and pleasure neurons, or at least masks them for a while. Therefore, people on heroin have no past or future in consciousness.
This made existentialists, and New Journalists, very interested in junkies and drug users. When on drugs, you can’t trust your senses as often they are chemically blocked or changed. Heroin, for example, turns off the amygdala part of the brain, while LSD turns off the short term memory and slows perception mechanism, affecting the cerebral cortex.
Examples of the effects of drugs in literature include; Tom Wolf’s book in which he writes about the hippie movement as a ‘gonzo journalist’, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and loathing in Las Vegas which greatly influenced feature writing, and the development o f the Non-Fiction Novel by writers such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolf and John Steinbeck.
I will now sum up the political orientation of a few Existentialists which Horrie talked about:
Sartre/Camus were Marxist, to an extreme level in that they approved of Maoism. They both saw Capitalism as cultural repression and thought that the purpose of life is to fight for liberty.
Simone De Beauvoir was socialist, democratic, feminist and Kantean, supporting equal rights. She has been said to have started feminism, arguing that women are only restrained by the facticity of their reproductive organs, but partly blames women by saying that women are self-repressed by guilt and fear.
Fanon was Marxist, Maoist and terrorist, believing that violence is the answer and inspiring Malcolm X to use violence in the Black Civil Rights Movement.
Kierkegaard was Christian, moralising (nihilist – life is without objective meaning or purpose), subjectivist and anti-rationalist. His work can be seen as the end of Christianity as an intellectual force, and many have referred to him as the ‘first existentialist’. He worshipped jesus as is rock in an existentialist world; this was his way to come with the problem of being. He was totally against organised religion.
Nietzsche was elitist, anti-democratic and hermeneutic (it is only possible to interpret something in relation to its context) and had a great influence on existentialism.
Heidegger was fascist, anti-technology and ‘green’ and believed in the idea of ‘authenticity’ – being yourself not what others want to mould you to be.
The basics of existentialist politics are the ideas that you should not let other people determine who you are or change other people to how you want them to be. An apt statement is ‘don’t sum me up’ just let people be instead of constantly trying to interpret and pass judgement. It also emphasises the centrality of choice which is endless. Heidegger emphasised self-creation through the structure of choices. A popular existentialist saying is ‘existence comes before essence’. It is basically a rejection of all forms of teleology, saying that the past doesn’t matter and the future hasn’t happened yet, emphasising the ‘eternal now’ which drug users love. This is similar to Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence. Existentialism is full of Eastern influences and often rejects Western, capitalist values.
It is all about personal liberation and the fact that we are all in the same boat, trying to deal with the same problem of ‘being’ and we are thus liberated to create ourselves and allow others to do the same. A key quote from Chris is that “a truly authentic person who lives in Good Faith will determine themselves and have no expectations of others, and make no attempt to make demands on them”.
One of my favourite points of the whole lecture is that existentialists see people as bundles of opportunity, saying that we need to ‘just do it’ and express ourselves, work for our own freedom and set yourself free; “You cannot be set free by others, you must liberate yourself by a means of passionate commitment to something (anything).” This is how I want to live my life, not worrying about how or why we are here etc, just living life to the full and enjoying our circumstances.
Horrie described Existentialism as “a movement in post-war arts and culture, especially in France and the USA” which mainly covered music, theatre and literature, although as with all cultural movements, it affected every part of popular culture and has had huge influence on today’s society. It is all about ‘abstract post-expressionism’, to do with phenomology, Freud and the development of psychology, and most importantly, drugs.
The term ‘heroin chic’ aptly describes the fact that it was ‘cool’ to be spaced out and the ‘in’ thing was the New York androgyny scene, of which Edie Sedgwick, Nico and Yoko Ono were poster girls. The drug scene seemed to go hand in hand with revolutionaries and protestors against the Vietnam War, with stunts such as spiking town water supplies with LSD and the Magic Bus that travelled across the US on this mission. This was in the midst of the Hippy movement, with icons such as Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen, Malcolm X, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters (on said LSD bus) and John Lennon. As Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism describes, popular culture is full of heroin users and references to drugs. Camus’ portrayal of state of mind and outlook in The Outsider is very similar to that of someone on a heroine trip.
J.P. Sartre’s Existentialism is Humanism was based on his doctrine that you can judge the freedom of a society by how free and well-regarded its journalists are, regardless of what the constitution says. Sartre was a follower of Heidegger and Husserl, believing that consciousness is an act of intention, not an object, and that the world is will representing itself. This follows the ideas of phenomology that mind is action. This is opposed to Locke’s views and similar to Kantean ways of thinking.
Sartre is also known for rehabilitating Marxist and Hegelian ideas (in Critique of Dialectical Reason) which had become steeped in dogma and buried in meaningless slogans. Sartre believed that followers of Marxism had perverted Marx’s original meanings, and so goes back to his early work to look at Marx as a neo-Kantean moralist. He argued that Marx’s main message was that the point was not to come up with endless interpretations of the world and why we are here, but to change the world and make our mark on it, which I wholly agree with (or at least so far as I understand it).
Existentialism and Literature put forward the idea that ‘you cannot write for slaves’ because writing is the act of human freedom. It is not given to you, but something that you must act upon. This brings to mind the idea that you do not have to settle for your ‘lot’ in the world, if you are unhappy with what you have, strive to change it. In this way we are all equal because we have been given the ability to change our situation and make the most of the opportunities that surround us.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre puts forward his Ontological system. First of all, he talks of ‘things in themselves’ which are objects that are indeterminate but completely bound by their ‘facticity’ and which change constantly and decay. This constant change and decay, Sartre argues, is depressing which makes you feel angst.
Sartre’s answer is to face up to this and not be bothered by it: easier said than done! This rotting and decay is a constant theme of existentialist art, as well as Buddhism, the New Left and the Hippie movement. Sartre also spoke of ‘things for themselves’ which are self-determining, self-creating things, such as free people, which can do something about ‘being’ and not just accept it as a constant state. Linked to this are ‘things for other’s which are slaves/carers/wives (because, of course it is the women that are subservient to men) who don’t live for themselves but to do things for others. These ‘things for others’ are hated and feared by existentialists because they are not trying to be their real ontological being but are living in ‘bad faith’. This is similar to Heidegger’s idea of the ‘inauthentic’ life.
Criticism of Sartre which Horrie spoke about seems to have been mainly from Conservatives, and say that his doctrines are really just a re-working of Marxism, with the categories of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat being re-interpreted as ‘the determined’ (people as objects) and those who determine others.
We also talked about Simone de Beauvoir, who had an ‘open marriage’ with Sartre and can therefore be expected to have picked up on some of his key ideas. Her book The Second Sex describes being female as a narrative and argues that everything that is female is determined by men. She challenged prejudicial thinking as a narrative that can be re-written and so, in my opinion, was quite optimistic about human nature and the nature of women in particular.
The New Left, as I understand from Chris, is all about prejudice and being. It promotes personal expression and freedom, and can be seen, especially in France, in the fight for human rights for homosexuals, different races, disabled people and women.
Heidegger (a proponent of the New Left?) saw ‘being’ as a structure of previous decisions. This is linked to the drug culture of the 1960s as Heroin’s chemical effects keep you in the now, with no particular significance on anything as it removes the pain and pleasure neurons, or at least masks them for a while. Therefore, people on heroin have no past or future in consciousness.
This made existentialists, and New Journalists, very interested in junkies and drug users. When on drugs, you can’t trust your senses as often they are chemically blocked or changed. Heroin, for example, turns off the amygdala part of the brain, while LSD turns off the short term memory and slows perception mechanism, affecting the cerebral cortex.
Examples of the effects of drugs in literature include; Tom Wolf’s book in which he writes about the hippie movement as a ‘gonzo journalist’, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and loathing in Las Vegas which greatly influenced feature writing, and the development o f the Non-Fiction Novel by writers such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolf and John Steinbeck.
I will now sum up the political orientation of a few Existentialists which Horrie talked about:
Sartre/Camus were Marxist, to an extreme level in that they approved of Maoism. They both saw Capitalism as cultural repression and thought that the purpose of life is to fight for liberty.
Simone De Beauvoir was socialist, democratic, feminist and Kantean, supporting equal rights. She has been said to have started feminism, arguing that women are only restrained by the facticity of their reproductive organs, but partly blames women by saying that women are self-repressed by guilt and fear.
Fanon was Marxist, Maoist and terrorist, believing that violence is the answer and inspiring Malcolm X to use violence in the Black Civil Rights Movement.
Kierkegaard was Christian, moralising (nihilist – life is without objective meaning or purpose), subjectivist and anti-rationalist. His work can be seen as the end of Christianity as an intellectual force, and many have referred to him as the ‘first existentialist’. He worshipped jesus as is rock in an existentialist world; this was his way to come with the problem of being. He was totally against organised religion.
Nietzsche was elitist, anti-democratic and hermeneutic (it is only possible to interpret something in relation to its context) and had a great influence on existentialism.
Heidegger was fascist, anti-technology and ‘green’ and believed in the idea of ‘authenticity’ – being yourself not what others want to mould you to be.
The basics of existentialist politics are the ideas that you should not let other people determine who you are or change other people to how you want them to be. An apt statement is ‘don’t sum me up’ just let people be instead of constantly trying to interpret and pass judgement. It also emphasises the centrality of choice which is endless. Heidegger emphasised self-creation through the structure of choices. A popular existentialist saying is ‘existence comes before essence’. It is basically a rejection of all forms of teleology, saying that the past doesn’t matter and the future hasn’t happened yet, emphasising the ‘eternal now’ which drug users love. This is similar to Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence. Existentialism is full of Eastern influences and often rejects Western, capitalist values.
It is all about personal liberation and the fact that we are all in the same boat, trying to deal with the same problem of ‘being’ and we are thus liberated to create ourselves and allow others to do the same. A key quote from Chris is that “a truly authentic person who lives in Good Faith will determine themselves and have no expectations of others, and make no attempt to make demands on them”.
One of my favourite points of the whole lecture is that existentialists see people as bundles of opportunity, saying that we need to ‘just do it’ and express ourselves, work for our own freedom and set yourself free; “You cannot be set free by others, you must liberate yourself by a means of passionate commitment to something (anything).” This is how I want to live my life, not worrying about how or why we are here etc, just living life to the full and enjoying our circumstances.
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