I tend to find death-facing machismo a significant ingredient in the early Heidegger. — green flag

I find it unreadable so I can't comment, but I am interested to obtain a general understanding of his themes and subjects. An awareness of different readings and interpretations is engaging in itself.

Is there any humor in Heidegger?

We can find attempts to answer the question of the ground of all that is by all the major philosophers. — Joshs

The problem is we cannot find a single agreed upon definition of what metaphysics is.

I find it unreadable so I can't comment, but I am interested to obtain a general understanding of his themes and subjects. — Tom Storm

The 'Dilthey review' version of The Concept of Time is exceptionally readable 100 pages. It's excellent on how existence is primordially enworlded, bodily (tool use), social, and linguistic -- basically the opposite of the fantasized boy in the bubble. It is still a bit foggy on the role of death, which is arguably glued on as a spiritual extra, but I think that's because it's not so easy to articulate how facing my death liberates me from the culture I was thrown into. There's a hint that we are already looking back on our lives as if we are dead and our story is being told. Do we want to be conformist creatures not worth remembering ? This is never stated so bluntly. But it seems that something (the void perhaps) gives us distance and therefore leverage against the otherwise semi-automatic conformity.

Is there any humor in Heidegger? — Tom Storm

Sometimes. He could be savagely sarcastic.

It is overlooked that ontology arises out of a already functional world which already has its understanding of being. There is a basic substrate within which all thinking already operates, which it always presumes and which can't be ignored or abstracted. — waarala

Perhaps Heidegger was influenced by Kierkegaard in this. In his journal (I paraphrase), he criticizes the fantasy of presuppositionless philosophy by emphasizing that the medium, language, is already there, as a kind of inescapable presupposition. This is one of my favorite themes in Heidegger. This inherited medium is the sediment of the living thought of previous generations. We are thrown into ways of thinking, a cage of concepts that can only be question from within, using those very concepts.*

*This sounds more gloomy than I meant it to be. The tone is supposed to be neutral.

“… all metaphysics leaves something essential unthought: its own ground and foundation. — Joshs

If we are thrown into a language with a history and a baked-in interpretation of life that can only be questioned within that unchosen language, then perhaps we 'are' metaphysics. Philosophy dreams of escaping itself, catching its own tail, being its own father. Becker, in The Denial of Death, stresses the project of becoming self-caused, becoming god, becoming unthrown...and even reinterprets the Oedipus complex as this Sartrean project.

What crystal castles we construct, when first we see that we are fucked.

Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. — Joshs

Is it not also plausible that philosophy seeks rhetorical leverage ? In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined. (Szasz)

What unites all these attempts as metaphysical is their defining of this ultimate ground as some sort of abiding presence. — Joshs

Is it plausible that abiding presence is a metaphor for immortality?

We are thrown into ways of thinking, a cage of concepts that can only be question from within, using those very concepts. — green flag

Is there not a limit to that idea in so far that it could not be expressed without a shared language.?

If I was convinced of existence as a solipsist, what would be the point of proving it to other people?

the medium, language, is already there, as a kind of inescapable presupposition. This is one of my favorite themes in Heidegger. This inherited medium is the sediment of the living thought of previous generations. We are thrown into ways of thinking, a cage of concepts that can only be question from within, using those very concepts — green flag

I wouldnt say that Heidegger considered language as a mere medium, tool or presupposition that intermediates between thought and expression. What we are thrown into isn’t already packaged concepts, but language that reveals itself anew, that remakes its past in our ‘use’ of it. Language isnt the sedimented past, it is the transformation of this past in the disclosure of the world.

This may be an imprecise question - but in your view how difficult is it to obtain a useful reading of Heidegger? How would a student begin a process of understanding his work (outside of academe)?

What I'm gesturing toward is our culture (centered here on language, but applicable to physical technology also) as a Neurathian vessel which can only be modified at sea.

In case it helps, I reject solipsism as self-dissolving. It's crucial, in my view, to understand thrown-ness as essentially social-shared, even if each child does get a customized version of the software.

Language isnt the sedimented past, it is the transformation of this past in the disclosure of the world. — Joshs

I'd say it's both sediment and transformative disclosure. See page 270, for instance, of the lecture version of The Concept of Time, which can be summarized as "the Anyone has in idle talk its true form of being." And "what one [the Anyone] says is really what controls the various possibilities of the being of Dasein." And sure enough here we are talking about Heidegger, working from within the conceivable and genuine possibilities he helped install, himself enable by Kierkegaard and Luther and ...

Language isnt the sedimented past, it is the transformation of this past in the disclosure of the world.
— Joshs

I'd say it's both sediment and transformative disclosure. See page 270, for instance, of the lecture version of The Concept of Time, which can be summarized as "the Anyone has in idle talk its true form of being." And "what one [the Anyone] says is really what controls the various possibilities of the being of Dasein — green flag

Idle talk doesn’t illustrate the sedimented nature of language, as if we directly introject verbal meanings from the culture. On the contrary, idle talk is a failure of meaning, its impoverishment. For Heidegger the social norms and practices that Dasein takes in are specific modifications of meaning on the order of a diminution of significance.

In that same section of Concept of Time you mentioned , Heidegger says “What is talked about in idle talk is meant only in an indeterminate emptiness, which is why discourse about it is disoriented.”

Heidegger chooses words like average, vague, flattened , confused, uprooted state of suspension, and ambiguous to describe Dasein's being as Das Man, to indicate that the heedfulness of Care is still primordially and implicitly operative even when it is explicitly concealed and suppressed . Average everyday discourse has to be vague, approximate, superficial and ambiguous enough to conceal, disguise, cover over, miss, obscure, suppress the fact that the meaning of what is shared is never interpreted identically for each dasein.

“What is talked about is understood only approximately and superficially. One means the same thing because it is in the same averageness that we have a common understanding of what is said.” “Publicness ” does not get to "the heart of the matter," because it is insensitive to every difference of level and genuineness.”

“Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without any previous appropriation of the matter. Idle talk, which everyone can snatch up, not only divests us of the task of genuine understanding, but develops an indifferent intelligibility for which nothing is closed off any longer. Discourse, which belongs to the essential constitution of being of Dasein, and also constitutes its disclosedness, has the possibility of becoming idle talk, and as such of not really keeping being-in-the-world open in an articulated understanding, but of closing it off and covering over inner worldly beings. “ “ Ontologically, this means that when Da-sein maintains itself in idle talk, it is-as being-in-the-world-cut off from the primary and primordially genuine relations of being toward the world, toward Mitda-sein, toward being-in itself.”

Idle talk doesn’t illustrate the sedimented nature of language, as if we directly introject verbal meanings from the culture. — Joshs

Thanks for the detailed reply. Having the quotes on idle talk around is useful. Now I respond (all can be prefaced with the tedious 'in my view.') Quotes are from The Concept of Time again.

Introjection is your word, though, not mine. My metaphor would be joining a dance already in progress. Heidegger's work is itself a focal point, something we both find already available in our creations of ourselves. Idle talk about Heidegger would be the place where every One is forced to start. It's what one knows of course, that he was a nazi, that he was an existentialist, that he was a mystic or a charlatan (if one came up in a community where that was the default to accept or rebel against), that he was a secret king of thought, that he climbed on top of Hannah.

What is talked about is understood only approximately and superficially.. Note that this is not the absence of sense but just a diminished form of it, 'chugging along in language.' One, [the Anyone], is a lazy chatbot, barfing up the gossip of a curiosity which is never serious. "Idle talk becomes...the mode of being of the Anyone", which is to say the who of everyday Dasein. Our human default is falling immersion that does not pause to appropriate originally. Note also that "Language itself has Dasein's kind of being," and that "every language is historical in its very being." This is why phenomenology had to become interpretative. "Language is an organ of perception" (can't remember the source.) And interpretative means historical, given the character of language. The beginning lies before us on our way to the future.

Discourse... has the possibility of becoming idle talk, and as such of not really keeping being-in-the-world open in an articulated understanding, but of closing it off and covering over inner worldly beings.

This is what is meant by the metaphor of sedimentation. We start in invisible-to-us prejudice and unnoticed ambiguity and do what we can to improve the situation, running around that familiar racetrack, the hermeneutic circle, never getting final clarity.

Idle talkers "pass along what they have read and heard about the matter without any sensitivity for the distinction of whether or not that opinion or their own is actually relevant to the matter. Their care in discovering does not apply to the matter but to the discourse." To me this hints at both curiosity in the negative sense and the grasping of the phenomenon with help from merely formal indications. Also I trust we can both agree that point of talking about Heidegger is to talk about reality, which includes talking about Heidegger because reality is fundamentally social and historical (and includes a way of looking at it that methodically ignores this or that aspect as much as possible.)

Perhaps Heidegger was influenced by Kierkegaard in this. In his journal (I paraphrase), he criticizes the fantasy of presuppositionless philosophy by emphasizing that the medium, language, is already there, as a kind of inescapable presupposition. This is one of my favorite themes in Heidegger. This inherited ... — green flag

The basic idea is actually almost directly from Dilthey, which you already mentioned, and for whom the "life" was a central concept as the ultimate "transcendental" ground of all human acts. Life not merely as biological concept but rather as a human life i.e. as something spiritual (geistig) i.e. cultural-historical. And this human environment is at its base a language-like, differentiated-articulated whole. With his phenomenological approach Heidegger's aim is to treat this "life context", as ontology of "Dasein", more systematically and strictly than Dilthey . Heidegger's Kierkegaardian existentialism adds to this a radical individualistic and subjectivist moment (subject here can be whole life form, not just individual person). And the result is the tension between authentic and inauthentic.

“Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without any previous appropriation of the matter. Idle talk, which everyone can snatch up, not only divests us of the task of genuine understanding, but develops an indifferent intelligibility for which nothing is closed off any longer ...” — Joshs

Husserlian strive for intuiting the subject matter itself behind or under the existing conventional disourse is strong influence here.

With his phenomenological approach Heidegger's aim is to treat this "life context", as ontology of "Dasein", more systematically and strictly than Dilthey . Heidegger's Kierkegaardian existentialism — waarala

I don’t see Heidegger as a Kierkegaardian existentialist. His philosophy moved quite a distance from Kierkegaard, despite the surface similarities.

In Being and Time he says “In the nineteenth century S. Kierkegaard explicitly grasped and thought through the problem of existence as existentiell in a penetrating way. But the existential problematic is so foreign to him that in an ontological regard he is completely under the influence of Hegel and his view of ancient philosophy.”

In What is Called Thinking, Heidegger writes: “By way of Hegelian metaphysics, Kierkegaard remains everywhere philosophically entangled, on the one hand in a dogmatic Aristotelianism that is completely on a par with medieval scholasticism, and on the other in the subjectivity of German Idealism.” In 1958 he writes: “Marx and Kierkegaard are the greatest of Hegelians.”

As far as Heidegger’s relation to Dilthey, he moves beyond the latter’s historical structuralism by freeing history from the relativity and skepticism of Dilthey’s project.

extrapolation from members of a set to an axiom of the set? — ucarr

Beings are not members of a set "Being". — Fooloso4

How can "beings" as signifier have meaning if it doesn't signify common attributes of things, thereby gathering these things together into a set?

How can "beings" as signifier have meaning if it doesn't signify common attributes of things, thereby gathering these things together into a set? — ucarr

I do not think it helpful to look at this in terms of sets and axioms. The question is: what does it mean to be? Being is not an common attribute of things that are. It is tautological to say that what all things that are have in common is that they are.

Thanks ! I haven't got around to reading Dilthey himself.

Life not merely as biological concept but rather as a human life i.e. as something spiritual (geistig) i.e. cultural-historical. And this human environment is at its base a language-like, differentiated-articulated whole. With his phenomenological approach Heidegger's aim is to treat this "life context", as ontology of "Dasein", more systematically and strictly than Dilthey . — waarala

This sounds correct. As far as I can tell, this is also a description of zeitgeist or 'the spirit of the times.' Or, to quote Shakespeare's Edmund, 'men as as the times are.' Do you find Heidegger plausible as a modification of Hegel ? It's as if there are a stream of German thinkers who take cultural-historical 'spirit' (software) seriously, giving the social a kind of priority to the personal. As you stress, Heidegger adds the radically subjective moment, which is a bit tricky to connect with the rest (which is not to say impossible.) Anyway, what do you think about Hegel influencing Heidegger ? And what do you make of the significance of death in Heidegger ?

I'm not sure we should trust Heidegger when it comes to Kierkegaard. I'm reading K's journals at the moment and the strong influence is clear. As I mentioned above, Heidegger himself seems influenced by Hegel, even if he rips out this or that module, for which he indeed deserves credit.

Husserlian strive for intuiting the subject matter itself behind or under the existing conventional disourse is strong influence here — waarala

Yes, Heidegger has not abandoned the Husserlian epoche

How can "beings" as signifier have meaning if it doesn't signify common attributes of things, thereby gathering these things together into a set? — ucarr

You might want to google 'existence is not a predicate' for the argument toward that conclusion. I do not mean to imply that the story stops there or anywhere.

Joshs
I'm not sure we should trust Heidegger when it comes to Kierkegaard. I'm reading K's journals at the moment and the strong influence is clear. As I mentioned above, Heidegger himself seems influenced by Hegel, even if he rips out this or that module, for which he indeed deserves credit. — green flag

In one sense, all poststructuralist and phenomenological thinking is indebted to Hegel and shows his influence, thanks in part to Kojeve’s interpretation of him. The question is how Hegel’s thinking, even as it influences their work, is critiqued and transformed by writers like Heidegger.
I don’t think it’s a question of ripping out, in isolated fashion, this or that particular component of Hegelian thought, but of a wholesale revision of its grounding presuppositions. What do you think is preserved of the Hegelian dialectic in Heidegger ( or Nietzsche, for that matter)? Why has the dialectic become a dirty word for postmodern readings of Nietzsche?
You can always hold onto a Kierkegaardian interpretation of Heidegger by sticking with Dreyfus , Sheehan or any of the other theologically oriented readers of him. But many have rejected those readings.

What do you think is preserved of the Hegelian dialectic in Heidegger ( or Nietzsche, for that matter)? — Joshs

Big picture, we can understand the sequence of philosophers as spirit/'software' becoming more and more aware of itself, making its nature more explicit, thereby increasing its distance from itself and its 'turning radius.' This might be described as communal self-knowledge.

For context, I claim (with some irony) that there is only one philosopher. This philosopher is a computation on the 'cloud' of linguistically-and-otherwise networked human brains. This 'philosopher' is generative and adversarial, arguing with itself like Hamlet, sedimenting a larger and larger model which can only be relevant, given the finite hardware, if sufficiently compressed. In this connectionist tale, it's therefore the task to find the best connections between the dots and not simply as many dots as possible. Is this why it's almost silly to pretend to start from scratch and do philosophy without allusion to those who came before ? That'd be the waste of immense inherited wealth, and suggest a low level of insight about the historicity of spirit.

I am deeply suspicious of the practice of appealing to other philosophers we may not understand in order to understand this or that philosopher.

You can always hold onto a Kierkegaardian interpretation of Heidegger by sticking with Dreyfus , Sheehan or any of the other theologically oriented readers of him. But many have rejected those readings. — Joshs

This is where Heidegger's thinking of death becomes applicable to itself. Folks do of course have all kinds of biases and preferences. We all enter the game through a different entrance and hold more or less tightly to this or that contingent assimilation of the other as self. We might talk of transference as choosing some hero as an avatar.

I'm an atheist, so I like Heidegger's atheistical transformation of Kierkegaard. In fact, my own work (more novel than paper) is focused on philosophy itself (not just writing) as pharmakon (poison/cure). The 'toxic masculinity' in Heidegger and Hamlet is more explicit than that in Jesus and Socrates, who walk into their deaths. Of course Heidegger 'walked into his death' (only) virtually. What I'm getting at in my blurry way is the risk and glory of standing alone. If we do as strong philosophers do and not as they say, then we interpret them violently, with an eye toward an unborn future and not toward the past with the sleepy eye of a historian who is satisfied with mere correctness (like Nietzsche's men of science as smooth mirrors unable to create.)

I'm suspicious of your deep suspicion, at least in its abstract form. We figure out how well we understand philosophers in the first place by discussing them. Life is terribly finite. It will not do to wait for a perfect clarity that may never come before one embraces the risk of an experiment. You seem to suggest that philosophy not be done -- or only done elsewhere in order to be shown off as a completed product here.

Big picture, we can understand the sequence of philosophers as spirit/'software' becoming more and more aware of itself, making its nature more explicit, thereby increasing its distance from itself and its 'turning radius.' This might be described as communal self-knowledge — green flag

I’m getting hints of a complexity theory, dynamical
systems-type model here. I do think one can draw all
sorts of parallels between Hegelian dialectic and such models. But if one agrees with Heidegger, Nietzsche , Foucault , Deleuze and other pomo types that the past arrives already changed by the present that occurs into it , these realist models become incoherent. It no longer makes sense to build structures that progressively unify themselves as ‘better and better’ , ‘closer and ‘closer’, ‘more and more aware’. These substitutes for god simply reinstantiate theology in a different form.

These substitutes for god simply reinstantiate theology in a different form. — Joshs

Perhaps, but maybe philosophy is the generalization or update of theology. Atheism makes a god of humanity. I guess I'm a structuralist of some variety, so I'd say look behind the signifiers at the role they play in the system. To what do we aspire and appeal?

the past arrives already changed by the present that occurs into it , these realist models become incoherent. — Joshs

The changing of the past is part of what the self-updating philosophy software does. What happened is a function of what ought to happen. (To be sure, there's an important sub-game that tries to think what is most invariant in the past, perhaps in terms of physical science.). Philosophy is the Inner Party, but in this version they are the good guys or at least antiheroes.

these realist models become incoherent. It no longer makes sense to build structures that progressively unify themselves — Joshs

I just want to point out that you are criticizing my theory that theory is directed toward greater and greater coherence in terms of its supposed incoherence. You also invoke strong thinkers with which my own theory 'ought' to cohere. (I'd define a strong thinker in terms of that norm, or as one whose work deserves being woven into the story the storyteller tells about itself.)