A Clockwork Orange Book Cover - Previous Research From Dissertation

Reasoning

After reading this article about existentialism and Nietzsche in The Lego Movie I thought it'd probably be a good idea to look into Sartre and Existentialism given they were mentioned in an article that confirmed some of my thoughts. Camus came as extension to through this reading. I decided that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy would be a good place to read from, as it's well renowned for it's accuracy, and is where I started my initial readings on Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer to check they were suitable to triangulate with Nietzsche.

Existentialism

• Jean-Paul Sartre described himself as an existentialist.
• Some existentialists were unhappy as being labeled so, notably Camus and Heidegger.
• Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are seen as the precursors to existentialism.
• Accepting that understanding what it is to be human isn't enough to explain everything that science can tell us.
• Human beings can't be fully understood by science alone though, and adding a morality alongside the scientific understanding still doesn't truly explain humanity.
• Morality and ethics can't be crossed with science and is something that is more or less innate, as is the message behind the film A Clockwork Orange.
• In order to understand humanity fully we must understand natural things like intention, blame, responsibility etc etc.
• Philosophy can't be looked at as an objective science.

Jean-Paul Sartre

• Commonly considered the 'father' of existentialism.
• His initial critics were mainly communists or catholics.
• "The basis of Sartrean freedom is ontological: we are free because we are not a self (an in-itself) but a presence-to-self (the transcendence or “nihilation” of our self). This implies that we are “other” to our selves, that whatever we are or whatever others may ascribe to us, we are “in the manner of not being it,” that is, in the manner of being able to assume a perspective in its regard." (Flynn, 2013) 

What I Gained

Other than gaining a slightly more succinct understanding of existentialism as a whole, I've not really gained much from this, and I feel that this has brought the philosophical element of my research full circle to reach it's conclusion.

Next Steps

If I was to continue looking into Nietzsche's position in philosophy, I'd have to look deeper into, Existentialism and Sartre, and seemingly into Heidegger, Camus, and probably even Marxism, which seems like it could lead to confusion, as well as the general direction of the research heading increasingly away from the Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer core of what I've done so far.

In this sense I feel like now is an appropriate time so start compiling the current research I've done into some sort of presentable structure to base my essay on, picking out key quotes and references. Doing this will allow me to look for specific examples of graphic design that illustrate the points I'll want to make, rather than gather potentially useful examples as I was doing earlier.