Mind and experience: Husserl, Freud, Heidegger
Edmund Husserl (1859 to 1938) founded phenomenology. His call was "back to the things themselves": describe experience as it appears, and for a while put in brackets (epoché) our assumptions about whether things outside are real. He noted that consciousness is always about something (intentionality).
Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) founded psychoanalysis. He said much of the mind is unconscious and still shapes our feelings, dreams and slips of the tongue. He described three parts: the id (urges), the ego (the planner) and the superego (inner rules). Many of his claims are debated, but the idea of an unconscious changed how people think about themselves.
Martin Heidegger (1889 to 1976), in Being and Time (1927), asked what it means "to be". He said we first live among tools and tasks, not as cool observers: a hammer is not noticed until it breaks. He took ideas from phenomenology and linked them with existentialism, the view that we are thrown into a world and must make meaning through our choices.
Language and knowing: Wittgenstein, language, epistemology, hermeneutics
Analytic philosophy grew from logic and language (Frege, Russell). Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 to 1951) first wrote the Tractatus (1921), where language pictures facts. Later, in Philosophical Investigations (1953), he changed his mind: the meaning of a word is its use, in activities he called language games.
Philosophy of language asks how words refer, how sentences carry meaning, and how we do things with words (J. L. Austin's speech acts: promising, naming, warning).
Epistemology asks what knowledge is and how it is justified. Twentieth-century debates include Popper on falsification, Kuhn on paradigms, and Gettier's cases showing that "true belief with a reason" may still not be knowledge.
Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation. Gadamer (Truth and Method, 1960) said understanding a text is a conversation between the reader's world and the text's world; we never start from nowhere.
Life and action: vitalism, pragmatism, Italian neo-idealism
Vitalism (for example Henri Bergson) said life has a creative drive (élan vital) and lived time (duration) that clocks and numbers cannot fully catch.
Pragmatism (Peirce, William James, John Dewey) said the meaning and truth of an idea lie in its effects in practice. If it works when tested, we keep it; if it fails, we change it. Dewey applied this to schools: learn by doing.
Italian neo-idealism was led by Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. They saw reality as the activity of spirit in history, a modern continuation of idealism. Croce stressed history and art; Gentile stressed the act of thinking, and he also became linked to the Fascist regime, a part of his story that students study critically.
Society and faith: Marxism, political and Christian philosophy
Marxism developed in the 1900s in many forms. Antonio Gramsci (Italy) wrote about cultural hegemony: ruling groups also lead through ideas and habits. The Frankfurt School studied mass culture and power.
Political philosophy asked about justice, power and freedom. Hannah Arendt studied totalitarianism and the "banality of evil". John Rawls (A Theory of Justice, 1971) asked what rules we would choose if we did not know our own place in society (the "veil of ignorance"). Karl Popper defended the open society.
Christian philosophy joined faith and reason. Neo-Thomists such as Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson revived Aquinas; personalism (Emmanuel Mounier) put the dignity of the person at the centre of social life.
Try it
In the 3D: in step 4 move the slider to change the game for the word "bank" and write both meanings. In step 6 pick three schools and say which one you would use to study (a) a dream, (b) a rule, (c) a new study plan.
At home: choose one everyday word (for example "cool", "light", "match") and write three sentences where it means different things. That is a language-game test.
Key formulas and definitions
- Husserl: bracket assumptions (epoché); consciousness is about something (intentionality)
- Freud: id + ego + superego; most of the mind is unconscious
- Heidegger: Being and Time (1927); we first live among tools and tasks
- Wittgenstein: meaning = use in a language game
- Pragmatism: truth and meaning are tested by practical effects
Worked examples
1. A friend says "I'll be there in five minutes" but is late. Which Wittgenstein idea helps explain why the words may not mean exactly five minutes?
Meaning is use in a language game: in everyday talk "five minutes" often means "soon", not an exact measure.
2. You always forget one person's name and feel uneasy near them. Which school gives a possible reason?
Freud's psychoanalysis: an unconscious feeling may shape forgetting and unease, even though you do not notice it.
3. You try a new study method for two weeks and keep it only because your marks rose. Which school is this?
Pragmatism: the idea is judged by its effects in practice.
4. Which school would you use to ask "what does it feel like to see red?" while ignoring whether red exists outside?
Husserl's phenomenology, which brackets outside assumptions and describes experience as it appears.
Common mistakes
- Saying Freud proved the unconscious as hard science. His ideas are influential but many parts are debated.
- Thinking pragmatism means "believe anything useful". It means test ideas by real results, which can show we are wrong.
- Treating all twelve schools as one line of thought. They disagree with each other; the lesson is a map, not a single story.
- Mixing early and late Wittgenstein. The Tractatus pictures facts; the Investigations says meaning is use.