Tale of two Wars: Children of Gaza, Satre, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger

Let me talk to you about series ordinary incidents that together composed an unprecedented event.

Event 1: A week ago, a friend of mine posted this video (I have put a 10 minute segment down here from youtube, but see the whole thing if you have the time)

on her page, recommending "Take 47 minutes of your life and WATCH this documentary...It is painful, but essential viewing." The video was hard to watch as she had hinted, but it wasn't your typical documentary. It was very informative, and though it was extremely emotional and one-sided due to the nature of the matter it was discussing, the conversations captured were very thought provoking too. The video depicts children, born in Gaza, who have to bear part a war that has been raging that region more than half a century... a war that not only them, but their parents too were born into as well. Further into the documentary, it seems to depict a picture that explains how these kids are easily recruited by terrorist fighters...and how wounds grow deeper and deeper so that they are finally deep enough to allow the hatred jump over from one generation to the other. The question that came to me was do these kids have any other choice that seems more 'right'? As for my friend who posted this, I sent her a quick response that I did not put a lot of thought into, but thought it is a good idea to share:

"It is intresting...cuz I was listening to Sartres ideas on responsibility today, and he talks about how you have no choice but to be free and make the right choices...he takes on Heidegger rather passive notion of self with this, because in Heidegger the self is just kind of thrown at the world within a fabric of whta Heidegger calls community... with no choices to make...it's sad...to think that a philosophy that comes out of world war II with all it's horrors to give hope and direction in the post-war era sort of fails when faced with realities of a war like the conflict in Gaza...when generations just get thrown at the stress, and fail to develope that's sense of responsibility in a quite plausibly justifiable way."

Event 2: With the coming of the new Persian year, the first day of Spring on March 21, I started wondering as usual about different questions like change, choice and new year resolutions among other things. I had started to revisit some of Heidegger's ideas on how we are all sort of born into our existence. A birth that is with no control over our cultural, social 'community' that we are born into. Heidegger's philosophy has a high degree of passivity...you are born into something...and when objects sort of show themselves to you in an 'open-ness' if you 'care' enough. At the end of the day...it is very much like a very passive, hermit Buddhist philosophy...and Heidegger himself admits that. Though countless philosophers criticized his theories for fascist connotations, while others adopted or modified his work to extract respect toward's others (Levinas) or responsibility (Satre) Heidegger always stated firmly that his work did not involve any moral implications and that ethics had no place in his philosophy.

Even 3: Listening to lectures on Existentialism and Satre by the one and only Robert C Solomon (RIP) who is so well-known in the field. To summarize in a nutshell Satre seems to believe in 'no-excuse' existentialism where humans are 'condemned to be free' no matter what condition inflicts them, or what veil of ignorance covers their eyes. He makes an extreme example, that even a prisoner deep in a dungeon, with hands and feet chained to the wall still has countless choices to make. Satre looks down at his French countrymen who comes up with excuses at the time of German occupation, excuses that almost all the time boil down to phrases like: "well, I had no choice." It seems to me that Satre takes the concept that Nietzsche refers to as 'laziness' and turns it into a 'responsibility' while using the help of phenomenology to justify an understanding of 'intentionality' that suits his needs. He uses the horrors of WWII to exemplify how morality, social activeness and commitment to freedom and responsibility are key elements of human nature. Unlike Heidegger, his philosophy is a very active one. In Satre the political issues is front and center, let alone moral ones, whereas in Heidegger you have this stubborn denial that ridicules even the existence of morality. During the days when my head was simmering with all these thoughts the next event happened...

Event 4: Ran into my Heidegger professor who works at Bay Street! Yes, it is true. He is also a financial guy. He is now also teaching Existentialism at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, which is too far for me to go after work. Any how, we used to discuss all sort of questions that we had on existentialism and Heidegger after class with what he called a glass of liquid 'ereignes' (referring to the Heideggerian German word which is translated 'event' [of happening] but really just referred to Beer.) As such I recalled some of the highlights that are key if you want to distinguish between Heidegger and Satre...things like intentionality, and consciousness, and their differences in interpreting Husserl on these two philosophical concepts...on that weekend the final event happened that brought everything together.

Event 5: Camping barely off season. As I sensed the sun and breathe the pure oxygen of wilderness I began to really understand my own response to my friend...Satre's theory doesn't make a lot of sense, because maybe, and just maybe, he is without knowing, inducing a morality into it; and a rather extreme one too. Heidegger on the other hand keeps a safe distant from morality...because he believes the only 'ethos' that makes sense is the 'ethos' that helps in preservation of your open-ness to understanding your surroundings. Why would a child not be justified to take a gun or strap himself with a bomb if that is the condition in which he/she is born into...in the grand scheme of things, there are no right and wrongs, there are only do's and dont's...for that child in that documentary our don't becomes a do...and that is the paradox of morality.