PSYC1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Determinism, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nomothetic
Lecture 5- Rollo Ma’s Eistential
Analsis
Reading: 574 modes of being in European existentialism
• Humanistic/phenomenological/existential approach to personality
• Individuals reporting of their experiences
• Existentialism began as a European philosophy
Phenomenology + Existentialism
Central thesis: the individual is a free and responsible self-determining agent
who constructs his or her own meaning in life
• Ludwig Binswanger – Swiss philosopher
• Medard Boss- psychoanalytic psychiatrist
• Rollo May (American)
Existentialist:
• Not enough to understand the truth of science and psychology even if we
understood everything about human psyche. This would not be enough. It
is limited as it doesn’t address the whole individual experiences existence
• Perspective of human agents and their experience of their existence
• Doesn’t prove explanatory concepts,
• Not concerned with our descriptions of what we have experienced
Existentialist Questions
• What is the meaning of human existence
• What does it mean to be a self
• What kinds of struggles does the self have to go through in order to be
• What meanings does the individual create so as to organize their
understanding of self and reality
Key concept in existential philosophy:
• Dasein: are being in the world, human existence
• Fluid and relational
• The existence of each on of us is characterize by 3 simultaneous
interrelated modes of the world
• The modes are set to condition each other, effect each other
• No one mode should be emphasized to the exclusion to any other
Modes of the World
1. Umwelt: the around world, means the natural physical biological world
including our body. The material world
2. Mitwelt: the with world, the world of being with others.
Interrelationships that we have other people, changed by encounters
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