Existential Themes & Philosopher Martin Heidegger

Question 1–please explicate this piece of work by Eminem (Lose yourself song) in terms of the existential themes of authenticity, freedom, dread, and commitment.

Link to Song:

Question 2: Please comment on the following passages by philosopher, Martin Heidegger.

In the following passages Heidegger is maintaining that one of the basic ways we are, is as a member of what he calls the “they-self.” It is a way of being and getting around in the world whereby we live and act without much expending much effort in thinking—sort of on autopilot. One can go through one’s whole day and arrive at the end of the day without ever reflecting on what happened in a meaningful way.

The they-self has a strange character whereby it seemingly removes our agency from the picture, for in everydayness the agency through which most things come about is one of which we must say it was no one—it is an amorphous they!

For Heidegger, the group-speak that characterizes the they-self is a problem of social reality because it is deeply rooted in our very existence. There is an eerie quality to this, “What is decisive is just that inconspicuous domination by Others which has already been taken over unawares from Dasein as Being-with.”

Heidegger puts it as follows: “The ‘who’ is not this one, not that one, not oneself, not some people, and not the sum of them all. The ‘who’ is the neuter, the ‘they.’” “The ‘they’, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness” (Ibid). The they-self is a kind of infectious plague. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure, we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge” (Ibid).