The most significant problem with this misinterpretation is that it then causes people to mistakenly presume that the primary subject matter of Being and Time is the meaning of being.

It is not.

Instead, the primary subject matter of Being and Time is an explication of Dasein in its average everydayness. — Arne

But always in the context of the question of the meaning of being, which Heidegger repeats over and over again.

The explication of dasein, even in what's published, is oriented towards the goal of eventually re-interpreting dasein as temporality (hence Being and Time). The move will ultimately be: our perspective for interpreting the meaning of being is based in time -- because that's what we are, and we're the one's asking the question about the meaning of being. He'll argue that since the Greeks, being has been interpreted in terms of the present (presence, ousia).

That's the entire thesis.

Yeah well H promotes "misunderstanding" both with the obscurant sophistry of his texts and rare, explicit statements such as
Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by ‘facts,’ i.e., by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.
— Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), Notes 1936-1938
Note N's prescient criticism sixty-something years before:
Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.
— The Gay Science, 173 — 180 Proof

We're all well aware of this criticism. Heidegger in fact addresses it immediately and explicitly in Being and Time. For something so incomprehensible, how is it that I can explain it? If you think I can't explain it, then point out the contradictions or murkiness.

I think Heidegger did indeed strive for clarity. What was being discussed was so mired in traditional words and concepts that it requires more effort to understand his language, but that's not the same as obscurantism.

Heidegger does not equate average everydayness with inauthentic existence. Average everydayness is the context that allows Heidegger to explicate the structure of Dasein. A Dasein living inauthentically has the same structure as a Dasein living authentically. And even the authentically living Dasein lives most of its life in average everydayness. They wake up, fall out of bed, run a comb across their head. . . — Arne

Average everydayness is what Heidegger calls Das Man, which is a comportment toward beings which is inauthentic. Inauthentic simply means that Dasein falls prey to beings rather than understanding its own being directly.

“But the average everydayness of Da-sein must not be understood as a mere "aspect. " In it, too, and even in the mode of inauthenticity, the structure of existentiality lies a priori. In it, too, Da-sein is con­cerned with a particular mode of its being to which it is related in the way of average everydayness, if only in the way of fleeing from it and of forgetting it.”(BT Sec.9)

Having an understanding of the average everydayness of being human and an understanding of what it means to live authentically does not get us to the goal described in what is mistakenly treated as an introduction to Being and Time, the meaning of being. — Arne

I read Time and Being, Heidegger’s final statement of the meaning of Being in 1962, 35 years after the publication of Being and Time. Being and time ends with the following questions:

“The existential and ontological constitution of the totality of Da-sein is grounded in temporality. Accordingly, a primordial mode of temporalizing of ecstatic temporality itself must make the ecstatic project of being in general possible. How is this mode of temporalizing of temporality to be interpreted? Is there a way leading from primordial time to the meaning of being? Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?”

On Time and Being , he answers this question in the affirmative, with an addtional feature.

“Time, which is addressed as the meaning of Being in Being and Time, is itself not an answer, not a last prop for questioning, but rather itself the naming of a question. The name "time" is a preliminary word for what was later called "the truth of Being." “ Being and Time is on the way toward finding a concept of time, toward that which belongs most of all to time, in terms of which "Being" gives itself as presencing. This is accomplished on the path of the temporality of Dasein in the interpretation of Being as temporality.”

His 1962 work doesn’t add much to what he tentatively pointed to in Being and Time. “The ontological condition of the possibility of the understanding of being is temporality itself.”

It's my guess (I'm not sure) that Heidegger puts us aside of animals in that our Dasein has a Dasein about itself — Raymond

We can know how we are and we can recognize a description of how we are. Heidegger also maintains that we are the being who questions being and we have no basis whatsoever for claiming that any other types of beings question being.

In addition, each Dasein has an "ultimate for the sake of which" and that different Daseins can have a different "ultimate for the sake of which." And we have no basis to conclude that other types of beings of any "ultimate for the sake of which."

Certainly other animals appear to have an understanding, be in a mood, and act with purpose. But we have no basis for presuming animals have their own individualized "ultimate for the sake of which" or that they are beings that question being.

Heidegger makes no claim that Dasein is unique to human beings and his views do not depend upon any such uniqueness. If it turned out that every Dolphin had their own "ultimate for the sake of which" or that Dolphins spent a lot of time questioning being, Heidegger wouldn't care.

Heidegger never considered consciousness or consciousness of consciousness to be particularly interesting topics. Ultimately, the only recollection I have of any fundamental Heideggerian position on consciousness is that it is derivative of being-in-the-world. If anything, I suspect Heidegger would be a bit perplexed by the all the attention it receives in contemporary philosophy.

Average everydayness is what Heidegger calls Das Man — Joshs

That is incorrect.

Certainly other animals appear to have an understanding, be in a mood, and act with purpose. But we have no basis for presuming animals have their own individualized "ultimate for the sake of which" or that they are beings that question being.

Heidegger makes no claim that Dasein is unique to human beings and his views do not depend upon any such uniqueness. If it turned out that every Dolphin had their own "ultimate for the sake of which" or that Dolphins spent a lot of time questioning being, Heidegger wouldn't care. — Arne

Heidegger differentiates ‘life’ and ‘animals’ from
Dasein in the following way. Animals are poor in world.
They do not experience beings in the world , have no ‘understanding’ because not comportment toward things, only stimuli which trigger their instinctive drives. Thus animals have no Dasein. They ‘are’ but do not exist as being in the world.

Is anything inherently obscure? Language is always for a mind. If the mind of the writer knows what he means then how is it inherently obscure?

Average everydayness is what Heidegger calls Das Man
— Joshs

That is incorrect. — Arne

To be more precise Das Man is the subject of average everydayness.

“Initially and for the most part, Da-sein is taken in by its world. This mode of being, being absorbed in the world, [average everydayness] and thus being-in which underlies it, essen­tially determine the phenomenon which we shall now pursue with the question: Who is it who is in the everydayness of Da-sein? …
In this kind of being, the mode of everyday being a self is grounded whose explication makes vis­ible what we might call the "subject" of everydayness, the they[Das Man].

“But the average everydayness of Da-sein must not be understood as a mere "aspect. " In it, too, and even in the mode of inauthenticity, the structure of existentiality lies a priori. In it, too, Da-sein is con­cerned with a particular mode of its being to which it is related in the way of average everydayness, if only in the way of fleeing from it and of forgetting it.”(BT Sec.9) — Joshs

As true as that may be, it is true for all Daseins regardless of their state of "authenticity." "Even in the mode of inauthenticity" is not the same as "only in the mode of inauthenticity." Surly you must see that.

I think Heidegger did indeed strive for clarity. What was being discussed was so mired in traditional words and concepts that it requires more effort to understand his language, but that's not the same as obscurantism. — Xtrix

:100:

To be more precise Das Man is the subject of average everydayness. — Joshs

and therefore?

When it comes to Das Man, Heidegger is getting at the forces that create the ego in its average everydayness. And those forces work powerfully upon all Daseins regardless of their state of authenticity. The most authentic person in the world may still mow their lawn or send Christmas cards for no reason other than "that's what one does." There are no Daseins immune to the forces of Das Man. There are simply some who are better able to work the shackles than others.

For reasons I do not understand, you are trying very hard to draw non-existent distinctions between the basic structure of authentic living Daseins and inauthentic living Daseins. You could be the most authentic person in the world and I could be the most inauthentic person in the world and we would both wake up each day with an attunement to a world of which we have an understanding and project ourselves forward through that world based upon our own ultimate for the sake of which. Every Dasien is in and attunement to world of which they have an understanding and proceeds therefrom. That is the basic structure of Dasein. We all have it.

As true as that may be, it is true for all Daseins regardless of their state of "authenticity." "Even in the mode of inauthenticity" is not the same as "only in the mode of inauthenticity." Surly you must see that. — Arne

Average everydayness is not a mere , generic reference to what we do day to day , it’s a description of a particular mode of interpreting ourselves in our relations to others in the world. His use of the word ‘average’ refers to the way that we think of our selves in generic , normative terms in this mode of inauthenticity. In the mode of average everydayness, as Das Man , we are closed off to what particularizes our own experience.

“Idle talk conceals simply because of its characteristic failure to address things in an originary way [urspriinglichen Ansprechens]. It obscures the true appearance of the world and the events in it by instituting a dominant view [herrschende Ansicht].”“Usually and for the most part the ontic mode of being-in (discoverture) is concealment [Verdeckung]. Interpretedness, which is speech encrusted by idle talk, draws any given Dasein into 'one's' way of being. But existence in the 'one' now entails the concealment and marginalization of the genuine self [eigentlichen Selbst]. Not only has each particular given itself over to 'one', 'one' blocks Dasein's access to the state it finds itself in [Befindlichkeit].”(Heidegger 2011)

I agree.

As I clearly stated earlier, "average everydayness" is the context Heidegger uses to explicate the basic structure of Dasein, i.e., the structure common to all Daseins regardless of any particular state of authenticity.

Average everydayness is not a mere , generic reference — Joshs

I agree.

As I clearly stated earlier, "average everydayness" is the context Heidegger uses to explicate the basic structure of Dasein, i.e., the structure common to all Daseins regardless of any particular state of authenticity.

Heidegger does not use the context of average everydayness to explain our behavior in any situation, let alone particular situations. Instead, he uses the context of average everydayness to explain the elements common to every situation in which we find our self, i.e., we proceed based upon our attunement, our understanding, and our projected outcome. That is true all Daseins whether they be good, bad, short, tall, authentic, inauthentic. . .

As I clearly stated earlier, "average everydayness" is the context Heidegger uses to explicate the basic structure of Dasein, i.e., the structure common to all Daseins regardless of any particular state of authenticity. — Arne

Average everydayness cannot be independent of any particular state of authenticity. On the contrary, it manifests precisely as a particular state of authenticity, the inauthentic mode of average everydayness. Authentic Dasein cannot comport itself toward beings in this mode , since it is the very nature of authentic interpretiveness that beings become irrelevant and insignificant to the mode of authentic Dasein. There is no longer an ‘average’ or an ‘everyday’ in the mode of interpretiveness of authentic Dasein.

But always in the context of the question of the meaning of being, which Heidegger repeats over and over again — Xtrix

But that is of little help.

If I am confident I can reveal to you the meaning of baseball if I can explain to you hitting, pitching, fielding, and baserunning and I explain hitting and nothing more, then neither you nor I can claim I have revealed the meaning of baseball notwithstanding the number of times I refer to the meaning of baseball. In fact, Heidegger's continual reference to it makes it even more likely that people will mistakenly expect Being and Time to reveal the meaning of being.

Heidegger did explicate the structure of the being who questions being (the goal of Being and Time), but we cannot understand the meaning of baseball simply because we understand hitting.

Reason alone tells us that it is better than not to understand that what is referred to as the introduction to Being and Time is intended to be an introduction to a 6 part work of which Being and Time is the first 2 parts.

And the greatest fatality to not understanding this point is the endless number of people who cannot tell you the goal of Being and Time.

he uses the context of average everydayness to explain the elements common to every situation in which we find our self, i.e., we proceed based upon our attunement, our understanding, and our projected outcome. That is true all Daseins whether they be good, bad, short, tall, authentic, inauthentic. . . — Arne

But there is authentic and inauthentic attunement and understanding. Average everydayness is a mode of inauthentic attunement and understanding. It is not a categorizing of elements common to every situation, but a way of interpreting these ‘elements’ that is peculiar to average everydayness.

I certainly think he falls short — Arne

Being and time. How's Dasein connected to time?
— Agent Smith

I have no answer to that question. I am generally confused by Division II of Being and Time — Arne

If I am confident I can reveal to you the meaning of baseball if I can explain to you hitting, pitching, fielding, and baserunning and I explain hitting and nothing more, then neither you nor I can claim to I have revealed the meaning of baseball — Arne

It sounds like the limitation resides as much with your comprehension as it does with Heidegger’s explanation.

I strongly encourage you to try and make your way through Division II successfully before you render judgement on how successful Heidegger was in dealing with the question of the meaning of Being in Being and Time, given the fact that his concept of temporality is central to the question of Being in general.

“Idle talk conceals simply because of its characteristic failure to address things in an originary way [urspriinglichen Ansprechens]. It obscures the true appearance of the world and the events in it by instituting a dominant view [herrschende Ansicht].”“Usually and for the most part the ontic mode of being-in (discoverture) is concealment [Verdeckung]. Interpretedness, which is speech encrusted by idle talk, draws any given Dasein into 'one's' way of being. But existence in the 'one' now entails the concealment and marginalization of the genuine self [eigentlichen Selbst]. Not only has each particular given itself over to 'one', 'one' blocks Dasein's access to the state it finds itself in [Befindlichkeit].”(Heidegger 2011) — Joshs

Seems like H expresses the same as science does. There is everyday experience. Conceiled (verdeckte) and hidden Daseins (the things that are there). The true Daseins (scientific reality) is clouded by idle talk. What is needed is an originary language talk, "ursprunglichen Ansprechens", the language of science. Idle talk obscures the true appearance of the world by imposing "herschende Ansichte" (non-scientific ones). Usually one is in the world by disregarding the true nature of Dasein and concealing it with idle talk ("wir verdecken das Dasein mit Kwatsj") and sually one doesn't see the reality science sees. Every particular aspect of the Daseins not only presents itself to us, it can be blocked by the silly idle stuff we say or think about it. Which involves the ego and not our genuine self, which is involved in the "Befindlichkeit" (perceptiveness) of the true Dasein, the scientific reality

Old wine in new bottles.

I strongly encourage you to try and make your way through Division II successfully — Joshs

I have read it dozens of times. I have been reading ten pages a day of Being and Time every day for almost twenty years. I find Mulholland's study guide to be extremely useful for understanding Division II. But thanks for caring.

But be careful, Heidegger is a slippery fellow. He actually wrote what is referred to as the introduction to Being and Time after he wrote Being and Time. So it is somewhat specious to later claim that the two parts you have written completes the 6 part project you set forth in what is referred to as the introduction to the two parts you have written. Yeah, that's the ticket. . .

And if you haven't done so already, I strongly recommend Heidegger's History of the Concept of Time and Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Both are essentially lectures converted to books. The former was from a class he gave prior to Being and Time and the latter is from a class he gave after Being and Time. And the classes are essentially Being and Time as taught in the classroom.

And now that I think about it, Mulholland does suggest that the body of Heidegger's work is sufficient to meet the objectives set out in what is referred to as the introduction to Being and Time. But he certainly does not suggest that Being and Time alone is sufficient. I am quite certain he made his way through Division II successfully.

Seems like H expresses the same as science does. There is everyday experience. Conceiled (verdeckte) and hidden Daseins (the things that are there). The true Daseins (scientific reality) is clouded by idle talk. What is needed is an originary language talk, "ursprunglichen Ansprechens", the language of science. Idle talk obscures the true appearance of the world by imposing "herschende Ansichte" (non-scientific ones). — Raymond

Heidegger argues that the scientific language of logic-mathematical reasoning belongs to average everydayness as its theoretical expression. The ‘ real’ that empirical science reveals conceals as much as everyday comportment.
He would not claim that everydayness and idle
talk are untrue , only that they cut themselves off from the wider contexts of pragmatic engagement and relevance which make them fully intelligible.

Why don't we compile an anthology consisting of how various philosophies/philosophers are/can be misunderstood. — Agent Smith

That will be a good thread. I'd like to collaborate, if you don't mind.

:cool:

Cheers, Proof!

I find it useful from time to time to remind myself that Dasein is the term Heidegger attaches to that being whose mode of being is existence.

It saves many (including myself) from arcane arguments about Dasein this and Dasein that.

He would not claim that everydayness and idle talk are untrue , only that they cut themselves off from the wider contexts of pragmatic engagement and relevance which make them fully intelligible. — Joshs

So only pragmatic engagement is relevant and make idle talk fully comprehensible? Action speaks louder than words? If only the members of his party hadn't followed his advice! If only the idle talk of the Nazis had remained just that. Idle talk...

So only pragmatic engagement is relevant and make idle talk fully comprehensible? — Raymond

Pragmatic engagement isn’t something above and beyond idle talk as some sort of physical activity, it is the condition of possibility of idle talk and all other forms of language and experience in general. All experiences of perception and thought emerge out of contexts of relevance.

If only the members of his party hadn't followed his advice! If only the idle talk of the Nazis had remained just that. Idle talk... — Raymond

You may or may not find the following interesting:

“Gandhi, Marx, Dilthey, Buber, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, McKeon, and many others taught me deeply. But so did three writers whose politics were highly objectionable to me: Jung, Dostoevsky, and Heidegger.

Jung offers deep and indispensable insights. I did not like knowing that Jung had said: "Hitler is the embodiment of the German spirit." The Nazis knew his views. Records show that they considered sending for Jung to help Rudolph Hess with his mental trouble.

Similarly, I had not wanted to know that Dostoevsky hated Jews, Germans, and Poles. He gave influential speeches in favor of the Panslavic movement. That movement was a direct cause of the Russian-French alliance and the World Wars.

What I heard of Heidegger's Nazi views made me decide not to read him at all. I read him when I was almost 40 years old. Then I realized that Heidegger's thought was already in mine, from my reading of so many others who had learned from him.

With these three we are forced to wonder: Must we not mistrust their seemingly deep insights? How could we want these insights for ourselves, if they came out of experience so insensitive to moral ugliness? Perhaps it might not matter if the insights were less deep. But they open into what is most precious in human nature and life. The depth is beyond question. The insights are genuine.

So one attempts to break out of the dilemma on the other side: Is there a way Nazism or hatred of other peoples might be not so bad? Could it have seemed different at the time? No chance of that, either. I am a Jewish refugee from Vienna, a lucky one to whom nothing very bad happened. I remember what 1938 looked like, not only to a Jew, but to others. I remember the conflicts it made in people. They could not help knowing which instincts were which. Many writers and ordinary people had no difficulty seeing the events for what they were, at the time.

So we return to question the insights again. But by now they are among our own deepest insights. We go back and forth: Nothing gives way on either side. Did these men simply make mistakes? We can forgive mistakes. A human individual can develop far beyond others, but surely only on one or two dimensions. No one can be great in more than a few ways. And silently to myself, when other Americans discuss and share Heidegger's view that to be human is to dwell historically as a people on a soil. How do my fellow Americans manage to dwell with Heidegger on German soil?

My colleagues read this in a universalized way. For us, in the Heidegger Circle, the human is the same everywhere in this respect, and equally valuable. Humans are culturally particularized, certainly, but this particularization is itself universal. Humans are one species. They are all culturally particular. This universal assertion holds across us all, and we see no problem.

Indeed, after 1945 Heidegger writes of the dangers of technological reason on a "planetary" level. But it is reason, which is thus planetary---the same universal reason he says he had always attacked. (Spiegel Interview.) Heidegger's planetary view differs from our more recent understanding of human universality. The difference has not been much written about, so there are no familiar phrases for it. For Heidegger there is no common human nature which is then also particularized and altered in history. There is no human nature that lasts through change by history. There is only the historical particular, no human nature.

Humans eat and sleep differently in different cultures. They arrange different sexual rituals, build different "nests," and raise their young differently. In an animal species the members do all this in the same way. Humans are not even a species. So, at least, it seemed to those thinkers who entered into what is most deeply human. To them, the deepest and most prized aspect of humans was the cultural and historical particular.

In our generation we easily and conveniently universalize the particularization. Not Heidegger. For him, what is most valuable is the necessarily particular indwelling in one people's history and language, on its land, and not another's. We change it without noticing, to read: any indwelling in any people's history is this most highly valued aspect.

it was Heidegger who pioneered a thinking beyond logical universals, beyond the thin, abstracted commonality categories. He pioneered the thinking which consists of situatedness (Befindlichkeit). He said that situational living is already an understanding. He said that understanding is always befindlich. "Understanding always has greater reach than the cognitive can follow." He called it "dwelling" (see Gendlin, Conference Proceedings, 1983). He also called it "indwelling" (einwohnen). He thought its more-than-logical creativity limited within historical soil and nation. To him non-rational meant non-universal.

But with his own books, and through Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and many others, it was he who opened the way to our kind of thinking---the kind that now dwells universally beyond the rational common---although it is only beginning to say how. To work on that is our problem. He contributed enough for one human.

Heidegger must be credited for a great share in that very development because of which we no longer feel the old either/or: either the deeply human historical particular with its political savagery and sadism, or the merely rational commmon.

It is partly the influence of his work in us, which now makes us unable to grasp how he could have failed to sense the nonrational universality of humans. Today, in Chicago, when we look at Louis Sullivan's buildings, the ones that created modern architecture, we wonder why he used so much granite. Why didn't he use just steel and windows?

To understand may be to forgive, but it is certainly not to excuse. Without pretending to lighten the horror, we need to understand why that tradition of thought also brought horror. Only so can we think through what we draw from our immediate past. Only then can we recover the other past, right behind that one. We need both, to articulate our own, non-rational universalization of human depth.” Eugene Gendlin

Pragmatic engagement isn’t something above and beyond idle talk as some sort of physical activity, it is the condition of possibility of idle talk and all other forms of language and experience in general. All experiences of perception and thought emerge out of contexts of relevance. — Joshs

I don't think pragmatic engagement is the condition for idle talk or other forms of language. On the contrary. Idle talk and language can even be the condition for pragmatic engagement, especially in the field of poetry, literature, mathematics, theoretical physics, religion, etc. Pragmatic engagement can be of importance, but it fulfills an auxiliary role only.

Contexts of relevance emerge from thought and shape perception. The relevant context of one can be the the irrelevant or absurd context of others. Who is to say which context is relevant. They are relevant, but relevance is a subjective notion. You can set relevance of pragmatic context apart, and give it an objective importance, but then you cut it off from the real context appearing in practice. But it offers good fother for an abstract philosophical approach. The relevance of pragmatic engagement can be doubted though.

I don't condemn the ideas of the Nazis or deny their right to live a life as they see as fit. They should be given their part of the pie. I don't like their way though, and any attempt on their behalf to impose their way on others by force should be acted against.

If the mind of the writer knows what he means then how is it inherently obscure? — Gregory

That's a big if. We love to get drunk on words, my friend. We may get the best high exactly when we don't understand, when perhaps the triviality or absurdity of our mantra is hidden from us.