Karl Jaspers

Phenomenology is a philosophical tradition that deals with fundamental
philosophical problems, but also has relevance for clinical psychology. Husserl defined phenomenological method in terms of an investigation of consciousness and intentionality. His non-causal notion of motivation, which portrays the person as a being intentionally related to her surrounding world and striving towards the realization of meaning, can serve as a premise for psychology as a human science. Later thinkers, like Heidegger and Sartre, developed an existential phenomenology. Others, like Merleau-Ponty, shifted the focus to embodied experience and set the stage for more contemporary encounters with cognitive science. Throughout this history psychologists and psychiatrists, like Jaspers and Binswanger, found useful phenomenological insights and distinctions that inform clinical practice.

The present thesis is an exploration of the relation between atheistic and religious existential philosophy with a focus on the concept of subjectivity. What are the implications of the two positions in relation to understanding subjectivity? This exploration will lead to a discussion about how existential philosophy can play a role in the field of social work, which includes homelessness, addiction and psychiatry. More specifically, I discuss the concepts of subjectivity connected to the atheistic and religious existential philosophy respectively in relation to social work.

The thesis consists of four main chapters. I start by introducing the historical background of the emergence of existential philosophy. I show the relation between the transition from modernity to late modernity – which is characterized by the dissolution of the great universal narratives -, and the emergence of the movement of existential philosophy. Furthermore, I show how this relates to the transition from transcendental to existential phenomenology. Included is an interpretation of the paradox of Meno, which provides the basis for the exploration of the subject’s access to knowledge. Following this, I put forth Pierre Hadot’s existential interpretation of the figure of Socrates in order to illustrate certain insights that are widely drawn upon in existential philosophy. This is further elaborated on through a reading of Hannah Arendt and Pico.

The second chapter Religious and atheistic existential philosophy consists of an analysis of relevant parts of primarily two works of Søren Kierkegaard, a more general presentation of Heidegger’s Being and Time along with an account of Sartre’s explicit atheistic position. Finally, I draw upon Ricoeur to provide a critique of the aetheistic position aimed at illustrating the ontological axioms and concepts of subjectivity of the religious and aetheistic positions respectively.

In the third chapter Two concepts of subjectivity – Self-realization and self-transcendence, I draw on the accounts of the aetheistic and religious position outlined in the previous chapter. I elaborate on the two concepts of subjectivity connected to these two positions: the concept of the subject as self-realization and the concept of the subject as self-transcendent. I return to Pierre Hadot and relate the perspectives of both Hadot and Michel Foucault to the religious and aetheistic position. The aim is to expand the understanding of the two positions in relation to the two concepts of subjectivity and spirituality. And finally, I draw upon Karl Jaspers to further elaborate on the relation between the two concepts of subjectivity and the religious position more specifically.

In the last chapter of the thesis Discussion relating to praxis, I turn to the field of social work. I provide a brief historical sketch of some of the latest changes within the field of social work and relate this to a discussion of relation between individualizing and structural approaches. I illustrate how social work plays out in a paradoxical field of tension between autonomy and control, between subjectification and objectification, which relates to the contradicting individualizing and structural understandings. This is connected to the two central concepts of subjectivity, the concept of the subject as self-realizing and the subject as self-transcendent, outlined earlier in the thesis, in order to show how the existing framework of social work can be said to encourage reductive objectification of the lives of the homeless and the problems connected to homelessness. Furthermore, these frameworks are discussed in relation to the existential perspectives presented in the thesis and to the two concepts of subjectivity. I close the chapter with an account of Ronald D. Laing’s critique of biomedical psychiatry, and illustrate how the same critique can be applied to social work in general.

The explorations of the four main chapters all lead to a problematization of existing professional approaches within the field of social work rather than a final conclusion. By relating the existential philosophical perspectives addressed throughout the thesis to the field of social work, I show how the theoretic understandings employed in praxis can lead to a reduction of the homeless and their life problems. This is not due to the theories themselves, but to the fact that these are ascribed more power of explanation than what they actually possess, which results in both professionals and homeless being misled to equate their own self-understanding with the theoretical constructions they are reduced to in the meeting with one another. Like Hadot criticizes Foucault and Ricoeur criticizes Sarte, I argue that the concept of the subject as self-realization places too much weight on the self. Hereby, the spiritual dimension of being is reduced into an object of a technology that in principle enables the subject to an arbitrary negation of being. This not only supports an individualizing discourse, but actually results in an absolute individualizing discourse.

However, I show that no matter where you stand on a spectrum of a pure structural or pure individualized theoretical understanding, this dualism will entail a reduction of real life human problems. On this background, I conclude that to the extent that the existential conditions are not considered in social work, this will lead to a reduction of human beings to dysfunctional objects that may be healed by means of themselves or by others, medicated, or must be declared totally or partly useless/incompetent. Likewise, I argue, social workers are reduced from fellow human beings to mere functions, who are supposed to possess specific professional knowledge and skills to enable such a healing or to declare efforts to do so totally of partly fruitless.

Following this, I argue that in the field of social work, we must include a dimension of non-knowledge if we are to avoid reducing both professionals to functions and homeless to dysfunctional objects. When reflecting on how you should position yourself as a professional, this inadequacy of theoretic professionalism must be considered.

We are left with the question about whether we may in any way overcome the inadequacy of professionalism by adding to it a sort of professionalism of inadequacy. If we hereby mean that it is possible to overcome the distance between professionalism and its object, we have already stepped into a professional self-adequacy, which reduces a person to an object. Thus, the emphasis must be placed on the inadequacy, not on professionalism, if we wish to contain, meet and understand another person in an existential sense.