The problem is that it is nearly always interpreted as nihilism, as a literal nothingness, although I really don't think it is. It is just the ending or stepping outside the 'nightmare of history' that is being talked about. My view is that there's a shadow, in the sense intended by Jung, in the Western psyche, around this question, as a consequence of the particular religious history of the West, but that is a big argument. — Wayfarer

We westerners tend to be very attached to thingness. We grasp at things as though they were lifeboats that facilitate the very possibility of our own life and, by extension, the possibility of life itself. We even tend to regard our own identity as a thing: if not a stable body than an unchanging soul. Indeed, the very word that English employs for “indefinite nonoccurrence” is “no-thing-ness”. Such that the absence of things is equated to absence of being itself.

Not to refute your hypothesis, but I find this archetypally existential – to not say metaphysical – motif that modern western culture is subliminally steeped in to be at least equally a product of a materialistic tendency: wherein being is equated to physicality. And this carries over into the spiritual as well for the common westerner: If God is not a psyche, a guy, hence endowed with thingness - be it on top clouds or waking the earth in some garden - then this God is no God whatsoever, for whatever is addressed must must be devoid of any real being … so the western intuition tends to flow (notably, this for atheists and theists alike). In contrast there can be found the concept of “the One” in the west and (tmbk, at least some interpretations) of “Brahman” in the east, such that both are here conceived as devoid of thingness … and, yet, rather than being nothingness, are then deemed the essential source for everything. This “no-thing-being” - to so term it - is within these cultural contexts maybe even interpretable as the core essence of life itself. This, again, in direct contrast to the typical westerner’s views that upholds the principle that the only reality there can be can only consist of thingness.

the passage from moment to moment is its own kind of death and re-birth. He should have focused on that instead. — Joshs

I agree that living is dying is being born. Life is a controlled burn. It has a learned, inherited shape (genetic, cultural, and even little bit individual).

For me it's the intersection of Heidegger of language and history (and therefore what we are able or not to think now.)

One of the most interesting and important 'concepts' in Being and Time is that of Das Man, for which there is no exact English translation; different translations and commentators use different conventions. It is often translated as "the They" or "People" or "Anyone" but is more accurately translated as "One" (as in "'one' should always arrive on time").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology

I connect this 'one' with the generation.

Dasein, whiling away its own time in each case, is at the same time always a generation. So a specific interpretedness precedes every Dasein in the shape of the generation itself.

A definite sense of being guides every natural interpretation of beings....Precisely by its being inexplicit, it possesses a peculiar stubbornness...

The fundamental way of the being-there of the world, namely, having the world there with one another, is speaking… — Heidegger

In another thread we disagreed about whether it makes sense to call the community prior to the individual. Well, I had this kind of thing in mind:

'Being together with others' implies an ontological characteristic of Dasein that is equiprimordial with 'being-in-the-world'. — Heidegger

Attempts to separate language from the world tend to crash and burn. The purified, isolated subject is ultimately unintelligible, but so is the notion of the purely physical. Note that I can snap the words together, but this is like writing a check I can't cash. It won't stop the philosophers from thousands of pages of intricate fun, of course.

Anyway, I credit Heidegger as one of several thinkers who seemed to grasp the shape of philosophy as a whole (or/also he creatively took-it-as such.) This take on Gadamer (H's student) gets it right.

The prejudicial character of understanding means that, whenever we understand, we are involved in a dialogue that encompasses both our own self-understanding and our understanding of the matter at issue. In the dialogue of understanding our prejudices come to the fore, both inasmuch as they play a crucial role in opening up what is to be understood, and inasmuch as they themselves become evident in that process. As our prejudices thereby become apparent to us, so they can also become the focus of questioning in their own turn..
...
Conversation always takes place in language and similarly Gadamer views understanding as always linguistically mediated. Since both conversation and understanding involve coming to an agreement, so Gadamer argues that all understanding involves something like a common language, albeit a common language that is itself formed in the process of understanding itself. In this sense, all understanding is, according to Gadamer, interpretative, and, insofar as all interpretation involves the exchange between the familiar and the alien, so all interpretation is also translative. Gadamer’s commitment to the linguisticality of understanding also commits him to a view of understanding as essentially a matter of conceptual articulation. This does not rule out the possibility of other modes of understanding, but it does give primacy to language and conceptuality in hermeneutic experience. Indeed, Gadamer takes language to be, not merely some instrument by means of which we are able to engage with the world, but as instead the very medium for such engagement. We are ‘in’ the world through being ‘in’ language.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/#DiaPhr

Right. Which is why I'm considering that the real obstacle is 'objectification'. I've been discussing that in another thread. I have the feeling I read something from Heidegger about 'objectification', but I can't recall where. But as it's a thread about Heidegger then I can cite this excerpt:

Heidegger believes that early Greek thinking is not yet metaphysics. Presocratic thinkers ask the question concerning the being of beings, but in such a way that being itself is laid open. They experience the being of beings as the presencing (Anwesen) of what is present (Anwesende). Being as presencing means enduring in unconcealment, disclosing. ...The departure of Western philosophical tradition from concern with what is present in presencing, from this unique experience that astonished the Greeks, has had profound theoretical and practical consequences.

I think this is because the presocratics were ecstatic in orientation. Compare from the Wiki entry on Parmenides: 'Parmenides describes the journey of the poet, escorted by maidens ("the daughters of the Sun made haste to escort me, having left the halls of Night for the light"), from the ordinary daytime world to a strange destination, outside our human paths. Carried in a whirling chariot, and attended by the daughters of Helios the Sun, the man reaches a temple sacred to an unnamed goddess (variously identified by the commentators as Nature, Wisdom, Necessity or Themis), by whom the rest of the poem is spoken. The goddess resides in a well-known mythological space: where Night and Day have their meeting place. Its essential character is that here all opposites are undivided, or one. He must learn all things, she tells him – both truth, which is certain, and human opinions, which are uncertain – for though one cannot rely on human opinions, they represent an aspect of the whole truth.'

Whereas when this becomes the subject of discursive metaphysics, then it looses its awe-ful immediacy. It becomes quotidian, no longer ecstatic. I think that's maybe what he means by 'overcoming metaphysics'. Be interested in others takes on that.

In contrast there can be found the concept of “the One” in the west and (tmbk, at least some interpretations) of “Brahman” in the east, such that both are here conceived as devoid of thingness … and, yet, rather than being nothingness, are then deemed the essential source for everything. — javra

'The nothing that is everything'. Echoes of the apophatic. But there's no use trying to turn that into any kind of conceptual understanding.

Authentic Dasein does not feel at home in the world. The older I get, the more comfortable I am not feeling at home in the world.

Which is why I'm considering that the real obstacle is 'objectification'. — Wayfarer

In some sense, "objectification" is the end of philosophy.

It serves no meaningful purpose.

But it serves a great many purposes in physics, science, engineering and so on. Don't you see a relationship between the emergence of Galilean science and the process of objectification? I mean, prior to Galileo, the world was conceived in terms of intentional forces which caused things to happen. It wasn't until Galileo began to conceive of objects in a manner that could be comprehensively described in terms of mathematical physics that the scientific revolution really got underway. So that understanding, which really becomes a way of being or mode of consciousness, is distinctively modern. I'm sure, even though I've never read much Heidegger, that he would have commented on that.

In some sense, "objectification" is the end of philosophy.

It serves no meaningful purpose. — Arne

has a point. Scientific thematization and objectification have their place for Heidegger, albeit distinctly circumscribed as regional ontologies. He claimed that science doesn’t think, by which he meant it doesn’t think philosophically , because it derives its sense and bases its inquiry on an already generated frame of intelligibility rather than constituting a fundamental questioning and ground laying.

Scientific thematization and objectification have their place for Heidegger, albeit distinctly circumscribed as regional ontologies. — Joshs

If wayfarer wants to throw out words such as "objectification" and fail to clarify that he is using it as a synonym for the "scientific method", then isn't he "covering up" at least as much as he may be "uncovering"? Though Heidegger indeed has a significant amount of respect for the scientific method, the scientific method is derivative of being-in-the-world and has no use in the absence of world.

And in Heideggerian terms, isn't the real issue the degree to which a scientific mode of being can be an authentic mode of being? And if so, then the scientific mode of being is inauthentic insofar as it leads Dasein to mistakenly live as if Dasein were outside the world looking in. You cannot be more "in" the world than Dasein.

Though Heidegger embraces the subject/object observer/observed dualisms as useful to understanding the universe, he unequivocally rejects them to the degree they are rooted in Cartesian substance dualism. For Heidegger, transcendence is from Dasein to the world, not from subject to object.

People misinterpret the introduction to Heidegger's — Arne

Nobody should give a shit what a Nazi said. As in, at all. Most people misinterpret Mein Kamf. You see how that's working there? That's exactly what it sounds like to ethical philosophers when someone entertains the theories of people whose ethical framework allows for complicity in genocidal violations against the Human Consciousness, through imperial statism, as if they deserve to ever be brought into the same league as philosophers.

Nobody should give a shit what a Nazi said. — Garrett Travers

On the contrary. We should be incredibly curious about what the Nazis had to say, if for no other reason than to understand one's own enemy.

That's exactly what it sounds like to ethical philosophers when someone entertains the theories of people whose ethical framework allows for complicity in genocidal violations against the Human Consciousness, through imperial statism, as if they deserve to ever be brought into the same league as philosophers. — Garrett Travers

This is short-sighted and simplistic. People who do horrible things can still have deep philosophical, ethical and/or scientific insights. It would make things a lot simpler if this weren't true, but it is true.

Nobody should give a shit what a Nazi said. — Garrett Travers

If you want to prosecute Heidegger, I certainly will make no objection. He was not a good person for many reasons with his Nazism being foremost among them. If you expected me to defend Heidegger, then you were mistaken. If the court were to order me to defend Heidegger, I would turn in my law license and go and grind lenses.

But Heidegger is dead. It is no punishment of him or any other Nazi to ignore what he had to say regarding the nature of being. Instead and for a serious philosopher, ignoring Heidegger because he was a bad person is self-flagellation.

I wish you nothing but the best.

And in Heideggerian terms, isn't the real issue the degree to which a scientific mode of being can be an authentic mode of being? And if so, then the scientific mode of being is inauthentic insofar as it leads Dasein to mistakenly live as if Dasein were outside the world looking in. You cannot be more "in" the world than Dasein — Arne

But don’t forget, it isn’t just the objectively present objects of empirical study that Heidegger considers inauthentic. It is all intraworldly beings , including ready-to-hand being-with-tools. The ‘as’ structure of experiencing something as something is inauthentic.

“...in interpretatively addressing something as something, one addresses the thing encountered against the background of a more or less explicit acquaintance with it: as a tool as suitable for this or that, etc….The world with which we are concerned and being-in itself are both interpreted within the parameters of a particular framework of intelligibility.”

All pragmatically relevant engagement in activities in the world , all the things, activities and projects Dasein is being in the world with , are inauthentic because of the fact that they are interpretations within a larger frame of intelligibility. This indicates that, as Heidegger says, authentic Dasein depends on and is in fact a modification of inauthentic everyday being in the world.

“… authentic existence is nothing which hovers over entangled everydayness, but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness…. Falling prey reveals an essential, ontological structure of Da-sein itself. Far from determining its nocturnal side, it constitutes all of its days in their everydayness.”

This is also why we must spend most of our time in inauthentic existence and only momentarily and occasionally attain an authentic comportment. Once we attain authenticity the particulars of the world lose their significance for us.

But don’t forget, it isn’t just the objectively present objects of empirical study that Heidegger considers inauthentic. — Joshs

That is incorrect. Inauthentic, undifferentiated, and authentic are temporal modes of Dasein's being that have no application to entities other than Dasein. To say that something ready to hand (such as a hammer) is authentic or inauthentic makes no more sense than to say that something ready to hand (such as a hammer) is happy or sad.

And most of the time we spend making our way through the world is spent in an undifferentiated mode of being rather than in an inauthentic mode of being. And the only difference between inauthentic and authentic is choice. And the hammer has no choice.

On the contrary. We should be incredibly curious about what the Nazis had to say, if for no other reason than to understand one's own enemy. — Aaron R

Didn't disagree with this. I said care and relate them to philosophy, no not happening.

This is short-sighted and simplistic. People who do horrible things can still have deep philosophical, ethical and/or scientific insights. It would make things a lot simpler if this weren't true, but it is true. — Aaron R

No, they can't. They can have deeply held beliefs and intellectual explorations, but evil is contradictory philosophy. I'll take short-sighted and correct, over entertaining genocide support. Heidegger should be analyzed in exactly the same manner his master should, and in the same ways all their views should. Evil shoud be analyzed philosophically, as a means to remain philosophically consistent and Ethical, so as to produce the greatest harmony for all humans possible.

It is no punishment of him or any other Nazi to ignore what he had to say regarding the nature of being. Instead and for a serious philosopher, ignoring Heidegger because he was a bad person is self-flagellation. — Arne

I would almost agree with this, and I see the elements of reason, however miniscule, in such an approach. But, no. However, I didn't say ignore him, by the by, I said care and relate to philosophy, he isn't, neither is his master. Self-flagellation would be regarding him as philosophically relavent, and seeing as philosophers have been endlessly exterminated throughout history, and seeing how the world collective group of "philosophies" are predicated on the very evil that Heidegger's and Hitler's are, a world that is now inching closer to another global conflict as the result of those horrifying ideas that justify them, I think the time has come to dispense with fake philosophers, and truly give life to the concept Dasein by regarding it as inviolable. Then, I will explore Heidegger with the world. Until the carnage stops, I simply find no reason that outweighs the impermissability of ideas that violate reason itself.

Inauthentic, undifferentiated, and authentic are temporal modes of Dasein's being that have no application to entities other than Dasein. To say that something ready to hand (such as a hammer) is authentic or inauthentic makes no more sense than to say that something ready to hand (such as a hammer) is happy or sad. — Arne

Ready to hand is a mode of encountering entities, and present to hand is a further modification , a derivation of the ready to hand. Both of these , as modes
of falling prey to the world, are inauthentic modes.

“As factical being-in-the-world, Da-sein, falling prey, has already fallen away from itself; and it has not fallen prey to some being which it first runs into in the course of its being, or perhaps does not, but it has fallen prey to the world which itself belongs to its being.”
The hammer that we experience can be experienced as an objectively present object, this hammer, with such and such properties of size , color and weight. This is the mode of present-to-handness, which is a derivative mode. It is inauthentic because it is a closed off and flattened mode. The object only has meaning relative
to its pragmatic relevance to our ongoing pragmatic , goal-oriented engagement with the world. And this pragmatic ready-to-hand use of the object as a tool only has relevance in relation to the totality of relevance of Dasein’s self-understanding.Grasping dasein in terms of this holistic self-understanding is authentic , grasping dasein in terms of a particular object that is present at hand is inauthentic , and grasping dasein in terms of a particular pragmatic tool use is also inauthentic.

Heidegger is not a realist. He does not accept the ideas that there are objects in the world existing independent of dasein’s relation to them.

“Equipment is “in order to.” This proposition has an ontological and not merely an ontical meaning; a being is not what and how it is, for example, a hammer, and then in addition something “with which to hammer.” Rather, what and how it is as this entity, its whatness and howness, is constituted by this in-order-to as such, by its functionality. A being of the nature of equipment is thus encountered as the being that it is in itself if and when we understand beforehand the following: functionality, functionality relations, functionality totality. In dealing with equipment we can use it as equipment only if we have already beforehand projected this entity upon functionality relation.”(Basic Problems of phenomenology 1927)

“The kind of being of these beings is "handiness" (Zuhandenheit). But it must not be understood as a mere characteristic of interpretation, as if such "aspects" were discursively forced upon "beings" which we initially encounter, as if an initially objectively present world-stuff were "subjectively colored" in this way. Such an interpretation overlooks the fact that in that case beings would have to be understood beforehand and discovered as purely objectively present, and would thus have priority and take the lead in the order of discovering and appropriating association with the "world." But this already goes against the ontological meaning of the cognition which we showed to be a founded mode of being-in-the-world. To expose what is merely objectively present, cognition must first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of. Handiness is the ontological categorial definition of beings as they are "in themselves. " “(Being and Time)

In the following , Heidegger critiques the notion of a world of objects existing independently(objectively present) of Dasein's pragmatic structure of the in order to'.

“… the understanding of the being of an entity which is and can be in itself, even without the Dasein existing, is possible only on the basis of the ontological rooting of functionality relations in the for-the-sake-of-which. Only on the basis of the clarified ontological interconnections of the possible ways of understanding being, and thus also of functionality relations, with the for-the-sake-of is it at all decidable whether the question of an ontical teleology of the universe of beings has a legitimate philosophical sense or whether it doesn't rather represent an invasion by common sense into the problems of philosophy.”

Didn't disagree with this. I said care and relate them to philosophy, no not happening. — Garrett Travers

I don't see where you said this, but it's moot if we're in agreement.

No, they can't. — Garrett Travers

I'm assuming that you wouldn't ignore a scientific discovery because it was made by a Nazi scientist or reject a revolutionary engineering technique because it was invented by a Nazi engineer.

[

most of the time we spend making our way through the world is spent in an undifferentiated mode of being rather than in an inauthentic mode of being. And the only difference between inauthentic and authentic is choice. And the hammer has no choice. — Arne

Heidegger makes only a one-sentence reference in all his work , as far as I know, to an ‘ undifferentiated mode’ of being, and many many pages to authenticity and inauthenticity. What in the world is ‘undifferentiated mode’ supposed to mean? Can you tell me?

Heidegger uses expressions like ‘falling prey’ and ‘thrown’ to refer to inauthenticity, to indicate that it is not a choice. It is something we succumb to.The hammer for Heidegger isnt a thing in the world independent of dasein, because he is not a realist. It is a relation between us and world, given in a certain mode of interpretiveness.



“To say that the world is subjective is to say that it belongs to the Dasein so far as this being is in the mode of being-in-the-world. The world is something which the “subject” “projects outward,” as it were, from within itself. But are we permitted to speak here of an inner and an outer? What can this projection mean? Obviously not that the world is a piece of myself in the sense of some other thing present in me as in a thing and that I throw the world out of this subject thing in order to catch hold of the other things with it. Instead, the Dasein itself is as such already projected. So far as the Dasein exists a world is cast-forth with the Dasein's being. To exist means, among other things, to cast-forth a world, and in fact in such a way that with the thrownness of this projection, with the factical existence of a Dasein, extant entities are always already uncovered.”

I don't see where you said this, but it's moot if we're in agreement. — Aaron R

I suppose I didn't use those words, fair enough. It is what I meant, however.

I'm assuming that you wouldn't ignore a scientific discovery because it was made by a Nazi scientist or reject a revolutionary engineering technique because it was invented by a Nazi engineer. — Aaron R

No, I would ignore the methods by which he justified such a discovery as dispicably evil, and to be ridiculed, ostracized, and reasoned into the dust bin of history where it belongs. But, we aren't talking about discoveries of objective nature, are we? Because objective standards could never be used to justify the genoiced of the Human Consciousness. No, such discoveries would have to be tainted with a behavioral framework distinguished by evil, and I think that is what is in question here. Wouldn't you say?

No, I would ignore the methods by which he justified such a discovery as dispicably evil, and to be ridiculed, ostracized, and reasoned into the dust bin of history where it belongs — Garrett Travers

Presumably it would have been his use of the scientific method that justified his discovery. Beyond that, I'm not sure what methods you have in mind.

But, we aren't talking about discoveries of objective nature, are we? Because objective standards could never be used to justify the genoiced of the Human Consciousness. — Garrett Travers

A philosophical insight is a philosophical insight, regardless of who conceived it. Do you think that none of your favorite philosophers ever acted in a way that was inconsistent with their own philosophical insights?

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3quhly

Batman's right.

Presumably it would have been his use of the scientific method that justified his discovery. Beyond that, I'm not sure what methods you have in mind. — Aaron R

Similar to that of Unit 731. That kind of shit.

A philosophical insight is a philosophical insight, regardless of who conceived it. — Aaron R

An insight that can be used to justify negating human life in the form of genocide, or lead one to suppot it actively, is not philosophical, but contrary to it.

Do you think that none of your favorite philosophers ever acted in a way that was inconsistent with their own philosophical insights? — Aaron R

Inconsistency isn't the issue. And, as it happens, the principles of the philosophical tradition from whence I come, and am a continuation of, have NEVER been used to justify atrocities and violations of the Human Consciousness. In fact, the principles of that tradition have only EVER produced the most peaceful, non-violent, wisdom pursuing, virtue seeking, mysticism dispensing, and pleasure/happiness maximizing communities and societies that have ever in history existed. Which is why they have been murdered, oppressed, and slandered for thousands of years by the war pigs and fake philosophers. So, it isn't about consistency, it's about objective standards, outcomes, and production.

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3quhly

Batman's right. — Ciceronianus

:lol:

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task. — Jargon of Authenticity, p.9

(emphases added)

As specifically relates to H, "resolute" (i.e. subjectivist aka "ownmost") "being-towards-death" makes for "authentic Dasein", reminiscent of soldiering (kamikazi-like), that resonates with a Kierkegaardian "knight of faith's" fervor rationalized by the theodicy of death at the drum-beating heart of H's SuZ. "Authenticity" – purportedly the highest subjectivist (and historicist) goal – is the hymn of this Absolute (which for H's Dasein is (my) "death") invoked as en-chanting (i.e. "jargoning" Adorno suggests) in lieu of, or over above, public reasoning. :eyes:

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task. — Jargon of Authenticity, p.9

“One gains the impression that Heidegger's temporary entanglement in Na­tional Socialism rather suited Adorno; in this way he could aggressively phi­losophize with Heidegger and yet keep a distance-which, in philosophical matters, was not all that marked.”
(MARTIN HEIDEGGER :Between Good and Evil
RUDIGER SAFRANSKI)

Inconsistency isn't the issue. — Garrett Travers

It's precisely the issue because it leaves open the possibility that even a moral degenerate could expound profound philosophical insights despite their own repugnant behavior. Heidegger may (or may not) be one such person.

As specifically relates to H, "resolute" (i.e. subjectivist aka "ownmost") "being-towards-death" makes for "authentic Dasein", reminiscent of soldiering (kamikazi-like), that resonates with a Kierkegaardian "knight of faith" fervor rationalized by the theodicy of death at the drum-beating heart of H's SuZ. "Authenticity" – purportedly the highest subjectivist (and historicist) goal – is the hymn of this Absolute (which for H's Dasein is (my) "death") invoked as en-chanting (i.e. "jargoning" Adorno suggests) in lieu of, or over above, public reasoning. :eyes: — 180 Proof

— Ciceronianus

I've been told more than once on this forum when complaining of Heidegger's mysterious pontificating that it's my fault I can't understand him. I would, if I just read enough or really tried to do so in some fashion--I think someone even said I must read the work of all phenomenologists in order to grasp what point. I like to think of this as deciphering the "Heidegger Code."

Heidegger presents many interesting insights, but of course they won't be interesting if you are not interested. What could be more obvious than that? If you are not interested in the kinds of things he has to say, then why trouble yourself thinking about him at all?

If wayfarer wants to throw out words such as "objectification" and fail to clarify that he is using it as a synonym for the "scientific method", then isn't he "covering up" at least as much as he may be "uncovering"? — Arne

It's not a synonym for scientific method. It is an implicit assumption. By describing it in terms of 'objectification', attention is being drawn to this fact.

It's precisely the issue because it leaves open the possibility that even a moral degenerate could expound profound philosophical insights despite their own repugnant behavior. Heidegger may (or may not) be one such person. — Aaron R

I'm going to safely conclude not. And no, that isn't the issue. A singular philosophical insight within an ethical framework is negated by the implementation of the framework, unless it is the intent of any who interact with it to extract such a concept and diviorce from the framework entirely. As clearly such a concept wasn't enough of a friend to the human to be expected to inhibit genocide. Now, if that's what you wish to do, I will do it with you, as I said above to another commentor. But, this entertaining of Nazi's as relavent is not going to fly.

I've been told more than once on this forum when complaining of Heidegger's mysterious pontificating that it's my fault I can't understand him. — Ciceronianus

Fuck Heidegger. If someone can't tell you about a concept without worshipping the Nazi it comes from, then they've more philosophy to get to. Besides, the Dasein concept was covered over a thousand years before he got here, it isn't profound, and there are better explications of it. Hell, I can give you a better explication.