Martin Heidegger and Outward Focus

Martin Heidegger positioned his philosophy on a German word called Dasein. Translated, it means, ‘to exist’. What Heidegger attempted to capture was the distinctive situation the human being rests in, in its existence. To exist was to be in a complex and personal human dimension. This dimension is tethered to a social situation that creates a very visceral experience. To exist is to experience emotions, moods, and social roles, within a society that pushes its impressions onto an individual.

Heidegger called the tethering of human existence to a social situation, being-in-the-world. He also noticed that an individual's most basic method to gain self-understanding involved being caught up in broad totalities of tasks, projects, roles, titles, social impressions, etc.

Individuals seek to know themselves according to the way they relate to the totality of relations and things around them; individuals define themselves according to their position in the environment in which they find themselves. Heidegger arrived at this comprehension of how a human being interacts within the world by his understanding of what an individual cognitively does when they turn a doorknob to open a door: ‘when I open the door, for instance, I use the latch’ (Heidegger Reference Heidegger2008: 96).

This is a simple statement that may seem detached from philosophical epiphany, particularly any epiphany to the question of being. Heidegger explained that the position of a doorknob on a door, its nomenclature, the way the door relates to the wall, and the hinges which attach the wall to the door identify the purpose of the doorknob for others; the mind captures the totality of the doorknob in its environment to determine what a doorknob is – its function and purpose.

An individual knows how to reach for the doorknob in order to open the door, only in accordance to how it is related and interacts to its environment. Likewise, if the same doorknob lay in the middle of a road, an individual would not expect it to open a door when turned; the totality of its environment dictates a different purpose. The human being comprehends what something is by grasping its totality; the human being attempts to grasp what it is in relation to other entities to which it is related in various ways.

A human being is a being that likewise builds personal definition, purpose, and self-understanding through its entanglement and intersection with the world and other entities. It is by being-in-the-world, immersed and absorbed, that the human being is inclined to make sense of itself. The inclination to seek self-understanding through being-in-the-world, however, can lead to the illusion that purpose is determined by others; an individual is merely the intersection of socially defined roles. This illusion has proven volatile towards a sense of well-being in the life of the human being.

If an individual is consumed in the illusion of a sort of determinism through relatedness, a feeling of being trapped or suffocated by daily life may emerge; an inner desire or pressure to escape from the intersection of one's socially defined roles builds within the emotions. Heidegger calls this experience anxiety. Anxiety is designed to pull the individual out of the immersion of everyday life, out from the illusion that they are defined by social roles, and turn inward instead (Heidegger Reference Heidegger2008: 231).

This inward turn is for the purpose of a confrontation with one's self; the individual asks the question of who they really are juxtaposed to the intersection of the social roles which they are absorbed in and defined by (Heidegger Reference Heidegger2008: 230). Suddenly, Heidegger has used a doorknob to reveal a complex reality of being and simultaneously build upon philosopher Edmund Husserl's phenomenological concept of perceived others.

In the same breath, the concepts of existentialism's ethical tradition are called forth with a drive towards inwardness and authenticity spoken of by existential forefathers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Innate Freedom

Overall, the human being has a tendency to try to find purpose and meaning by looking outward; however, the purpose of the human cannot be found the same way a doorknob's can. Rather, the human being is a sort of creative force, as observed by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Reflecting upon Sartre's observations of the externally perceived world in relation to human consciousness (the singular point of view or reference), existence offers an environment that enables a persistent universal self-realization of human nature.

Sartre's book Being and Nothingness describes a sort of framework of life wherein consciousness cannot seem to identify itself fully with anything it perceives outside of it. An individual can never seem to fully merge, to be at one with, anything or anyone else (Sartre Reference Sartre1956: 67). Each person knows very well that they are distinctly individual. They exist apart from other human beings, apart from their own body, and apart from the stuff or things that surround them in their environment.

An example of this subtle knowing that can be related to is when an individual looks at another person. Generally, they do not tend to become confused suddenly about whether the other person in view is themselves or another. Individuals also tend not to look at their own body and think, this body is me. Rather, they have a body. They do not look at their hand and think, I am hand. Rather, they have a hand. There is a natural knowing that people participate in with a body, but they are not the body. There is a natural knowing that individuals participate in with other people, but they are not the other people. They are not able to find a sort of one-ness with their body, or with any person they perceive. Everything that is perceivable is an other, something different from themselves.

Human beings are doomed to the experience of difference in their life. Difference is necessary for qualities of the human being's own nature to stand out to it. Qualities of individual being become illuminated when surrounded by differences. In this regard, differences are not dooming, but a beautiful blessing.

To expand on the idea of difference as necessary to illuminate unique characteristics, qualities, and nature, consider a person in relation to a rock. Surrounded by objects, such as a rock, the individual notices they can make choices, infinite choices, but the rock cannot. Put a rock and human in the same spot in the desert, leave for a week, and when the individual returns to that same spot, he or she will have certainty that the rock can be found in the same place.

As for the human, however, there is no certainty as to where they may be found. The human being stands out as a choice maker, a creator of meaning that leads it to an infinite set of actions to take. It isn't defined by its situation, but defines for itself what the situation will mean for it. This difference is palpable when contrasted to the rock. The rock stands out as having no choice for itself, and it is not a creator of meaning that will lend it to an infinite set of potential actions it can execute.

Another way in which the nature of the human being is illuminated by its outside environment is through roles, titles, and labels that are applied upon it. The human being gets labelled with different titles and roles that hold fixed definitions about them in their society. The human being finds it transcends all of them in its lifetime. People experience that they are not literally the definition applied to them because they frequently experience a change of label, proving themselves to be something undefinable at its core.

Today someone might be a teacher and in five years they might choose to be a chef instead. Today someone might be a religious catholic, but in two years may call themselves an atheist. Someone can be straight, then be gay. They may be married, then single. People have transcended every title and label, showing themselves to be something other than a fixed object that has a script beyond which it cannot move.

This is expressed by the stages of a human's bodily development. Individuals begin as being what is called a ‘baby’. Then the baby seems to evolve into something else. It becomes an adult body. Yet, the individual's consciousness didn't die as the body changed. It did not cease once the baby was no more because the core of an individual is not a fixed definition; its nature is not an object. People will transcend because, at their origin, they are undefined. As Sartre says, the only way a human being can have these qualities, be undefined, transcendent, and ceaselessly make new choices and meanings for itself, is if its origin is ultimately nothing. Because it is nothing, it is then free to be anything.

The human being, according to Sartre, is at its core, free (Sartre Reference Sartre1956: 462). That innate freedom gives it a sort of design wherein it relentlessly, naturally, can't help but develop its own meaning, judgements, and preferences each moment. It is free to develop any sort of meaning it desires. Those judgements form stepping stones that usher an individual into new life experiences that express the unique meaning, judgements, and preferences the individual has chosen (Earnshaw Reference Earnshaw2007: 75).

Without recognition that an individual is not confined to the intersection of external definitions, the individual cannot create their own unique experience. They may contradict their own desires by accepting limiting beliefs given by the external world's definition of who they are. With that said, the importance of hearing the internal voice that speaks organic desires and preferences unique to the individual becomes paramount. When the individual navigates a path opposite to the direction of organic desires and preferences, on behalf of restricting oneself to the intersection of roles and duties, the sense of suffocation Heidegger had mentioned is triggered.

Carl Rogers and Innate Worth

Psychologist Carl Rogers would call the visceral sense of suffocation a natural response to incongruence. Rogers’ clinical observations of persons who displayed violent and destructive behaviour showed correlation with what he called ‘incongruence’. Incongruence is when someone rejects what they actually experience as uniquely meaningful and valuable to them in order to live according to what is said to be meaningful and valuable by someone outside them (Rogers Reference Rogers1951: 489).

This type of self-rejection is done to meet external conditions of worth from other people, as they place little worth in their own experience of value and meaning. The more an individual has rejected their own meaning and value, the greater the incongruence they experience within themselves; thus, a display of violence and destructive behaviour, even neurosis, emerges.

A sort of visceral response comes with incongruency. Rogers found that where an individual rejected personal meaning on account of low self-worth, and where the individual adopted the meaning of others to earn self-worth, a negative visceral response, a gut sort of distress, a disharmony, was felt within the body itself.

Rogers found this to be an unbiased innate signalling system for the benefit of the individual. Its purpose is to make the individual aware of incongruence and correct it; the unpleasantry of inner disharmony is an attention-getter, and that's kind of nifty, because the individual doesn't even have to be cognitively aware that they are rejecting themselves. The innate signalling system knows what the individual doesn't know, just yet.

The negative visceral responses put the individual in a position to know their unique self as having innate worth because their own organism protests viscerally when they do not (Rogers Reference Rogers1951: 148). The only relief is to live in self-worth; to use your power of choice to live out what is uniquely meaningful and valuable to you, rather than to use your power of choice to wear a mask that resembles the meaning and value of others.

This type of authenticity looks like having actions line up with what is actually experienced as meaningful and valuable. A decrease in violent and destructive behaviour was observed by Rogers as his clients would seemingly, on their own, realize the ways they had been rejecting themselves, and in doing so, flexed their freedom to live out a life that was truly meaningful to them instead.

There was a natural tendency for clients to lean into self-responsibility and autonomy when individuals were able to realize they are free from and not bound to particular conditions of worth. They are not defined or fixed by what others say or do. Rogers found that as individuals recognized the worth of their unique differences, they began to see the unique differences in others as having worth as well. Difference was no longer interpreted as a threat to their own worth.

The inner environment of the individual, equipped with subjective reality, a single point of reference that is all its own, will create its own unique meaning and value that will be different from everyone else's. This makes existence a place where people are made to swim in a sea of difference. And in this sea, people are positioned to question the worthiness of their own perspectives and experiences.

Humans are placed in a position where they will be unable to find themselves perfectly reflected back from anyone they encounter. Humans will seek validation of their unique experience and perspectives from everyone and will not find it. It is made impossible by way of each human being owning a single reference that looks out into world and makes meaning for itself.

Yet, amid the unavailability, the inner environment has an innate visceral signalling system, which will drive the individual back to the worthiness of its unique perspectives in the midst of differences and lack of validation. A human won't be happy unless it gives in to its uniqueness, accepting its worth, and living it out. Congruency, for Rogers, is authenticity; and authenticity is the root of well-being (Rogers Reference Rogers1951: 150).

Understanding Well-Being Existentially

Well-being, then, very much hangs on the ability to separate organic preferences from the array of external influences within the world. The problem, as Heidegger illuminates, is that the human being's focus is not inward, but is bent on defining itself from the outer environment.

The key, indicated by Heidegger, is to unravel focus from defining the self at the intersection of duties, roles, titles, expectations, etc. If the individual can unravel their focus from the external, and arrive at a clearing within the landscape of the mind, organic preferences will present themselves. Such preferences are unaltered and uninfluenced by the demands and narratives of the external world.

Expression of subjective meaning and value is demanded within each person for the purpose of individual growth. Carl Rogers concluded that subjective meaning and value exist within each human being and when acted upon, well-being is produced. Likewise, when rejected, inner disharmony occurs (Rogers 1959: 207).

This type of subject meaning and value is made possible by the innate freedom that Jean-Paul Sartre concluded the human being is. Subjective meaning is not just made possible, but is made mandatory by innate freedom relentlessly to create unique meaning and value.

Two characteristics are illuminated from the observations of Sartre and Rogers. The human being has: (1) innate freedom – enabling it to create its own meaning and value and (2) innate worth – its organic creations are worthy of being externally expressed.

Of these, two vital concepts emerge concerning well-being: (1) Individual subjectivity is the vehicle for the human to express innate worth and freedom, which is necessary to well-being. (2) The individual rejects its freedom and worth, hence its well-being, when its creative drive is replaced by the meaning and value of the external world.

In understanding the existential observations of innate freedom, worth, and a hyper-focus towards the external world as the anti-thesis to well-being, a discussion of the salutogenic effects of awe can take place.

Understanding Awe Through the Existential Concept of Well-Being

Awe is understood as the experience of perceived vastness and a need for accommodation (Keltner and Haidt Reference Keltner and Haidt2003). The vastness causes a diminished sense of self that challenges self-concepts in relation to the world (Piff et al. Reference Piff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancato and Keltner2015).

The experience of awe and well-being is a new field of study and lacks empirical evidence of the benefits of awe as such (Keltner and Haidt Reference Keltner and Haidt2003). However, a series of studies provided three interesting outcomes. Those with dispositional tendencies to experience awe predicted greater generosity, increased ethical decision-making, enhanced prosocial behaviour, and decreased attitude of entitlement.

Researchers have found the experience of awe effects decision-making. Decisions tend to be motivated intrinsically rather than extrinsically (Rudd et al. Reference Rudd, Vohs and Aaker2012). Others have found that awe in an individual's emotional life presents itself as reflection, slowing down, savouring the moment, a focus on what one loves, capacity to see the big picture, ability to trust in the unknowable (Schneider Reference Schneider2009: 20). All of these characteristics and qualities generate a sense of well-being within an individual.

When the articulation of awe is paired with altruistic qualities resultant of awe, a conceptualization of how awe creates well-being makes it sound as if the human being suffers from self-absorption. The self-absorption is interrupted by something so vast in comparison to itself that it is jarred out of its selfish state by recognizing it is one piece of a larger whole. The experience makes the human humble, and therefore altruistic.

However, in reflecting upon Heidegger's observations, self-absorption is not the issue. The human being suffers because it is overly absorbed by the world around it. This hyper-focus away from self and towards the external generates lack of well-being.

Rather than the experience of awe shifting focus away from the self, existential observation would propose that the medicine awe provides is its power to shut out an individual from the world. To cut off the endless supply of opinions that define and influence an individual; to take time out from a society that pushes its impressions on you. Awe does not allow for the individual to construct itself at the intersection of roles, titles, and duties. As the individual attempts to focus outside itself to calculate who it is and its purpose from the environment, it comes up empty handed. Awe redirects the individual's focus back to the self, insisting it find meaning and purpose within.

The experience of awe is the experience of total freedom from external opinions of worth. Such absence of opinion leads to a place of clearing within the mental landscape. Within this landscape, organic preferences begin to rise, uninterrupted or modified, by external conditions of worth influencing a change.

The individual can sense their own desires apart from the voices of the external world. With this orientation towards self, not away from self, an individual then exhibits the qualities of well-being correlated to awe.

As a point of comparison, the emotional presentation of awe described by Schneider runs parallel to the emotional presentation of congruency described by Rogers. Schneider states that an individual shows reflection, slowing down, savouring the moment, a focus on what one loves, capacity to see the big picture, and ability to trust in the unknowable. Rogers states that a congruent individual shows openness to experience that creates trust in rather than fear of the unknown. The congruent person is fully present within each moment. The experience of life is a force within which they emerge, allowing what they love to express itself, rather than a force by which they become conformed.