DE Weekly: Phenomenology, Experience, & Seinfeld
Below is an archived email originally sent on January 20, 2025.
Phenomenology, Experience, & Seinfeld
Each week over the past few months, I’ve written about the “big questions” posed by the existentialists. These questions concern our existence, the essence of what makes us human, why our lives have meaning, and why these questions cause us a great deal of anxiety.
But, downstream of all these questions is what I consider “the big one”: How do we live each and every day in accordance with living a life of meaning?
Lucky for us, some very smart people have already thought a lot about this–and written a lot of it down, too.
Before existentialism developed into a full-blown philosophy, there was phenomenology.
Phenomenology was founded by Edmund Husserl–he was an Austrian-German philosopher who lived in the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century.
Phenomenology supposes that the source of all meaning in the world lies in the lived experience of human beings. Everything else–systems, theories, anything outside of the human experience–are simply abstractions from (and of) the lived world.
In his view of the world, Husserl asserted that there exists only one certainty beyond doubt: our consciousness.
Insofar as what constitutes consciousness–what it is–Husserl agreed with René Descartes’ cogito ergo sum–or his famous “I think, therefore I am.”
In other words, Husserl agreed that consciousness is unique to humans insofar as our ability to recognize our own existence by acknowledging it.
However, he expanded upon this statement and, born of his conclusions, another full-blown philosophy was developed decades later in existentialism.
Husserl wrote that if we examine consciousness, we’ll find that it can only always be consciousness of something–we can only be conscious if we are conscious about something in the world other than our own consciousness. In this way, he came to a different conclusion than Descartes.
One of his philosophical successors, Jean-Paul Sartre, suffered a great deal of distress trying to break down this view.
In his 1938 novel Nausea, Sartre’s protagonist writes, “I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!”
I think it’s safe to say the first time I was introduced to many of the writings of Husserl, Sartre, and the like, I felt just like that.
Miring ourselves down in the intricacies of such a philosophy will have that effect.
One of Husserl’s pupils, however, took a slightly different approach to the “problem” of consciousness and our being-in-the-world: Martin Heidegger.
Another predecessor of Sartre’s, Heidegger transformed the traditional ontology of exploring why the world exists, and asked instead “What does it mean for something to be?”
Instead of asking what consciousness–and human existence, altogether–was, Heidegger was more concerned with the why of it all.
Why do we exist? What does it mean that we exist? Most importantly, he asked: How can we make good use of our existence?
I’m going to pause here for a minute.
If this newsletter has been your introduction to phenomenology, and it’s your first time reading about Husserl, Heidegger, et al., first, I apologize (kidding).
But seriously–Husserl’s thought, Heidegger’s Dasein, and Sartre’s philosophy are all deserving of their own newsletters, if not bonafide essays.
So, to keep things on track, I’ll reel the conversation back in for a moment.
Thus far, I’ve introduced some key questions. Most have been answered with the help of our friends Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. But one question still hangs over us:
How do we live each and every day in accordance with living a life of meaning?
For an answer to that question, I’ll turn to another man: Jerry Seinfeld. Yes, seriously. Let me explain why.
You’re probably familiar with his show from the ‘90s, Seinfeld. You also might have heard this classic sitcom described as a “show about nothing”. What people mean when they say this is, there’s no central plot that advances with each season, or even each episode.
Most every episode stands on its own, and covers an A, B, C, and sometimes even D plot. Given this, I understand why some claim the show is about nothing.
However, I hold a completely different opinion. Seinfeld isn’t a show about nothing. It’s a show about everything.
Phenomenology explored the structures of consciousness and of conscious experience.
Existentialism studied consciousness further by turning the gaze inward and exploring the meaning of human existence.
In his show, Jerry Seinfeld explored the same thing Martin Heidegger did–what it means to be human on a day-to-day basis. He explored what it means to live as a being-in-the-world.
Seinfeld explored everyday activities. The little moments. It’s what made the show so relatable and so popular.
A big reason for this, I think, lies in Seinfeld’s view on time itself. It involves what Jerry calls “garbage time”.
Jerry Seinfeld said that he thinks too many people spend too much time in search of “quality time”. In doing so, he says, they miss out on the best time–“garbage time”.
Actually, in his view, there is no such thing as quality time. Time is time, and we ought to make the best of it all.
So, that’s why I think Seinfeld is a good example of what a truly human existence looks like.
We can’t all devote all our mental space and energy to exploring the psychology of consciousness. We can’t all uncover the most basic meaning of our existence. And we can’t all unfurl the secrets of why we exist in the first place.
What we can do, Seinfeld argues, is make good use of our existence.
“I’m a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about ‘quality time’ — I always find that a little sad when they say, ‘We have quality time.’ I don’t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That’s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o’clock at night when they’re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that’s what I love.” –– Jerry Seinfeld
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Here’s a fun challenge for you… go and watch these two episodes of Seinfeld: S3 E6 “The Parking Garage”, and S2 E11 “The Chinese Restaurant”. Let me know if you find any hints of existentialism in there.
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