Heidegger
The Wall: Through the Eyes of Heidegger
Sartre's short story "The Wall" exemplifies the writers' philosophy regarding the meaning of life. He uses a true to life moment of individuals facing the inevitability of his own death to reveal the true nature of human life. In "The Wall" the reader is introduced to three primary characters: Juan Mirbal, a child who is the brother of an enemy of the State who has been arrested; Tom Steinbock, also arrested for undetermined crimes against Spain, and Pablo Ibbieta, the main character through whose eyes this short story is narrated. Sartre's philosophy, the accepting ourselves for who we are without exaggeration is exemplified in the final hours leading up to the primary character's reported demise.
Heidegger, in his famous work, "Being and Time" raises the issue of 'Being', in essence, to make sense of humans capacity to make sense of things. Moreover, Heidegger desired to rekindle the concept that although hard to understand, this issue was of paramount importance. Heidegger through the use of the expression Dasein, translated means 'being there" drew attention to the notion that human beings cannot be considered or taken into account except as being an "existent in the middle of a world amongst other things (Warnock 1970). To be human is to be immersed and embedded, or fixed in the literal and physical day-to-day world (Steiner 1978).
Inauthentic vs. Authentic being Towards Death
"Being is the most universal and the emptiest of concepts. As such it resists every attempt at definition" (Heidegger 1962, p. 2)"Time…as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being" (Heidegger 1962, p. intro.). For Heidegger, being is pre-scientific and pre-conceptual. Fundamentally, he posits an understanding and a way of knowing as reflective thought using logic and theory. Being is only important to the one raising the question. Being is relevant in terms of the question to that person in particular.
Pablo, throughout "The Wall" experiences his own truths and weaknesses when faced with death. When his captors offer him reprieve, another man's life for his own, Pablo makes the calculated decision to save the life of the other, as that man's life would mean more to the movement. He posits a fictitious story to save the others life, knowing that once his lie had been discovered, his own life would no longer be spared. Inadvertently, Pablo sends the authorities to the exact location of the man he had been trying to save, and now his life may actually be spared… at least for a while.
The consequences of human responsibility: abandonment in making it on one's own, anguish over a decision and despair are the truest characters of human life according to Sartre. For Heidegger, an authentic being towards death is one that represents a meaningful existence. To be in the world in an authentic way is the separation between the collective and the individual; the realization of no longer being able to be there, and looking at the lack of existence in the most honest way.
For example, in the story, "The Wall," the narrator makes a point of discussing the collective fate of those who have betrayed or been perceived to have betrayed Spain. The narrator describes the hundreds of people who have been brought together to face their individualized deaths through a collective process. The collective is summarily reduced when the three primary characters, Tom, Juan and Pablo, are locked in the
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Jung and auditory hallucinations Meyer (2003), in a discussion of Jungian symbolism in the movie, Spider-Man, notes that both masks and voices are essential to the movement of heroic characters through the plotline. Meyer is not, however, a psychologist, nor even an anthropologist; rather, she is a write about communications. Still, her work on Spider-Man tied several of the movie's themes to Jungian thought. Halifax's work goes farther in bringing Jungian thought
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Matrix or the Cave? The Matrix (1999) has singlehandedly brought the debate over the epistemology of the Real into popular dialogue. For the first time in centuries --if not in history-- a large section of the common crowd had a metaphor by which to question the very existence of objective reality. At bus-stops and street-corners, in fast-food restaurants and movie-houses, populations who would never have read Plato or Heidegger were discussing
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