The Third Force Movement

Question 1

Modern existentialism - ideas & people

Answer 1

The core of existential philosophy is the individual’s freedom to define their life through personal choice, but also to accept responsibility for the outcomes of those choices. This freedom thus becomes a source of anguish. Early philosophers who argued for a similar position were Socrates, Plato, Arstotle, and Aquinas. Modern existentialism can be found in the works of Dostoyevsky & Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, intermittently - Heidegger, and finally, when the term was first used - Satre, Camus, Marcel, Buber, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir…

Question 2

“Dialectics”

Answer 2

Georg Hegel’s rationalism held that intellectual progress proceeds through a sequence in which an idea, or thesis, gives rise to its opposite idea, or antithesis, and the two synthesize into a new unity that in turn becomes a thesis, repeating the cycle. This for of logical argumentation was termed ‘dialectics’ and later adopted by Marx & Engels to formulate their theory of socialism.

Question 3

Kiekegaard’s three levels of existence

Answer 3

Esthetic - characteristic of childhood, living for the moment, temporary pleasure and pain;
Ethics - courage to make choices regarding the values of life and to take responsibility for those choices.
Religion - a choice of god, an act of faith - the highest level of existence.

Question 4

‘The Essence of Philosophy’ (1907)

Answer 4

Wilhelm Dilthey - brought existential principles to psychological perspective - “a science of the spirit” - discovering what is individual and particular in each person.

Question 5

Who refused a Nobel Prize for literature so as not to ‘compromise their beliefs’?

Answer 5

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

Question 6

Sartre’s views:

Answer 6

• existence precedes essence;
• existence defines essence - we are what we do
• the only compulsion in life is to choose
• human subjectivity is an enormous privilege that provides great dignity, but also condemns us to the freedom of making choices

Question 7

The theme of courage in the face of life’s absurdities.

Answer 7

Albert Camus (1913-1960) - the individual at the mercy of external forces that render the life situation absurd. Attempted to identify individual resources that might allow a person to reorient life to more fulfilling directions by exerting the courage to take control and establish a sense of purpose.

Question 8

The three stages of being, according to Karl Jaspers

Answer 8

being-there - the individual in reference to the external, objective world of reality
being-oneself - a stage of self-awareness of choices and decisions
being-in-itself - the highest stage of existence, characterized by the attainment of the fullness of meaning

Question 9

‘I and Thou’ (1923)

Answer 9

Martin Buber (1878-1965) - rather than self-dialogue, Buber stresses dialogue between persons and between person and God.

Question 10

List four modern existentialists

Answer 10

Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber

Question 11

The founder of modern phenomenology

Answer 11

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

Question 12

Husserl’s three types of phenomenological reduction

Answer 12

1. The “bracketing” of being - finding the relations within an experience between the individual and the object of consciousness.
2. The relationship of the cultural world to an immediate experience.
3. Transcendental reduction: rising above present reality to an integrative level of unifying experience.

Question 13

“Being and Time” (1927)

Answer 13

Martin Heidegger’s work dedicated to Husserl. Heidegger emphasize philosophy as the study of being (as opposed to Husserl, who saw philosophy as the study of consciousness)

Question 14

What is phenomenology?

Answer 14

Phenomenology (from Greek: phainómenon “that which appears”; and lógos “study”) as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

Question 15

Heidegger’s three basic interacting traits of human existence:

Answer 15

1. Mood and feeling: people do not have moods, they are moods - we are joy, we are sadness.
2. Understanding: Instead of the accumulation of conceptual abstractions, human existence should be examined as the search for understanding our being.
3. Speech: Rooted in the internal silence of the person, speech as language provides the vehicle for our knowledge of ourselves as beings.

Question 16

Summarize the principles of existential-phenomenological psychology.

Answer 16

1. The person is an individual being-in-the-world. Each person’s existence is unique.
2. The individual must be treated as a product of personal development, not as an instance of generalized, human commonalities.
3. The person moves through life striving to counteract the depersonalization of existence by society, which has led to subjective alienation, loneliness, and anxiety.
4. Phenomenology as a method permits the examination of the experiencing individual.

Question 17

“The Phenomenology of Perception” (1944)

Answer 17

Maurice Merleau-Ponty - influenced by Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, he maintained that the person is not a consciousness as characterized by anatomy, zoology, or empirical psychology. Rather, the person is the absolute source of existence. The person moves toward the environment and sustains physical events by bringing those aspects of the environment into her or his existence. Psychology, then, is the study of individual intentionality.

Question 18

Who attempted to integrate the existential-phenomenological psychology movement with psychoanalysis?

Answer 18

Ludwig Binswanger

Question 19

Dasein-analyse

Answer 19

Binswanger’s therapeutic approach, using Heidegger’s notion of the individual’s being-in-the-world (Dasein).

Question 20

What is Humanistic Psychology?

Answer 20

An expression of the third force movement in America by an eclectic grouping of American psychologists who advocated various interpretations of human personality.

Question 21

List important humanistic psychologists.

Answer 21

Gordon Allport, Charlotte Buehler, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Carl Rogers.

Question 22

The most active center of existential-phenomenological psychology in America.

Answer 22

The Duquesne Group (Duquesne University, Pittsburg, Psychology Department)

Question 23

Director of a Duquesne institute designed to explore the development of spirituality.

Answer 23

Adrian van Kaam (b. 1920)