Heidegger was just a nutter

[Santino]

I feel genuinely embarrassed for the OP. It is an appalling display of wilful ignorance.

 

[Dillinger4]

That's fair enough. I think you can say, though, that the themes he examines in Being and Time, which you wrote about in another thread, while they may be valuable in terms of sorting out how we should think about ourselves in the world, don't actually tell us anything about how we should act.

I haven't read Heidegger, but I have read other philosophers like Sartre and Husserl, and I'd say the same about their philosophy. It is an examination of the nature of knowledge, but it doesn't deal with the content of knowledge at all, really. And all of them hit the same brick wall when they come to the nature of decisions – I think because they misunderstand what 'decisions' are, mistaking our conscious representation for what is actually going on when they are in reality two completely different things. Free will is at root an incoherent concept, so any philosophy that attempts to account for it will end up going nowhere.

I would say that Heidegger (and the Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) believed there is no real way to relieve ourselves of 'existential anxiety, because there is no final defininitive true ideal of how to live a life. But they also thought that in surrendering our understanding and our choices to the world of what 'they say' or what I am supposed to do', we rennounce what is most essential about ourselves as human beings, the ability to take responsibility for choosing our own way to be.

I think that this is left open is what I find appealing about existentialism in general.

To quote an incredibly wanky film:

The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity, is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's, a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as, a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, it's like your life is yours to create. I've read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete, it's you and me talking, making decisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, it makes a difference to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are.

I don't really think much about existentialism now, and I believe Sartre (I have to point out here that I am not a great fan of Sartre, I always preferred Merleau-Ponty when I studied them) said somewhere that the only cure for existential crisis is that life changes and goes on. When I was younger existentialism has quite an effect on me, and in some ways still does. Reading those philosophers might not have taught me about the nature of decisions, or how to make them, but it made it clear that every was a choice, that making what you felt was the right choice was important, and that there is always possibility, that things are always changing. And a lot of other stuff. It genuinely changed my life.

So, I think I agree in general, I think they do tend to hit a brick wall, and that they don't explain everything. But I think that is also kind of the point. If that makes any sense.

 

[Knotted]

Have you reached that conclusion from reading the introduction of one book?

I read the whole book. To be honest I really enjoyed it. Gobbled it up I did. Probably the wrong place to start with Heidegger. It had none of his famed phenomenology.

What I quoted was not just one of the most nutty parts, it is central to the book. He is arguing that there is a spiritual something or other that is revealed in our use of the words "being" and "nothing" and that this spiritual something or other is there because German gramaticists have paid attention to ancient Greek and them Greeks were well spiritual like. He proves this by pointing out that the Greeks could be quite poetical when they used the terms like "existence". Especially the poets. Oh and the whole of civilization depends on this. Cracking stuff.

 

[Knotted]

He also has a nice hymn to confirmation bias. I would quote it but I don't have the book with me now. Basically, you have to really try to see the profound whatever it is even if it looks like what you're doing is a pile of wank.

And I saw Jesus in my toast.

 

[Dillinger4]

I think you are right, that maybe isn't the best place to start with Heidegger.

I think it might be better to get to grips with his phenomenological method first! Then all the nutty stuff might make a bit more sense.

Maybe.

 

[Knotted]

How can a philosophical system be conservative?

Genuine question.

I'm not sure I would describe it as a philosophical system. It's a quasi-mystical, quasi-mundane thesis about language. There is a clear aspect of renewing a lost ancient profound way of being and you trace this in the cryptic hints to be found in uses of the verb "to be". The cranky specifics are unique to Heidegger (as far as I am aware) but the overall outlook is typical of more "thoughtful" fascists. Troy Southgate for example...

 

[Knotted]

I think you are right, that maybe isn't the best place to start with Heidegger.

I think it might be better to get to grips with his phenomenological method first! Then all the nutty stuff might make a bit more sense.

Maybe.

The nutty stuff is just nutty. If he posted on urban he would be laughed off the boards.

 

[Dillinger4]

The nutty stuff is just nutty. If he posted on urban he would be laughed off the boards.

Urban isn't really the best place for an intellectual discourse, a lot of the time.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't really think much about existentialism now, .

Neither do I. I think existentialism is something of a growing pain, something to be got over like the first realisation that we are all mortal. Getting over it doesn't so much involve thinking it's wrong, simply that it is trivially true.

 

[Knotted]

The question of being is hardly hilarious, I'm assuming knotted doesn't appreciate the history behind it. Furthermore if he'd took on how Heidegger had layed out the question he would see why Heidegger is not just mindlessly asserting a false dicotomy, insofar as he already put forward the notion that the traditional understanding of being entails that little can be said of it and its meaning, and that was quite uncontroversially true. Yes, he does think his conception of being has consequences for Western spiritual life, but to deny that is to pretty much just to say no to his whole philosophy. With a philosophy such as this, you at least have to suspend judgement long enough to properly assess it as a whole, on the grounds that what you previously thought to be true may be altered if you accept its further assertions.

There is very little to disagree with what you say. It's still a false dichotomy. The traditional view is wrong therefore I must be the one who has it right. I didn't quote the next paragraph which wasn't far off a rendition of Deutschland Deutschland uber ales.

Even if Heidegger was slightly eccentric, he has alot of valid stuff to say. He challenges traditional philosophy by taking us out of our usual conceptual landscape by forcing us into a new one. His understanding of the relationship between us and the world is radical, and has proved fruitful grounds for all range of philosophy which truely demonstrates its value.

This was very traditional metaphysics. He argues that "being" is not an empty concept as some might say and he argues that it isn't a single certain sort of thing and so concludes that its a multifaceted something or other. He then goes onto count the facets. Like counting angels on a pinhead. It's a scholastic thesis and anti-thesis, if it's not that then it MUST be this sort of approach.

 

[Knotted]

The other thing I thought was poor was Heidegger explaining to me what I should be feeling. I don't feel this existential angst. On an emotional level I don't get it. But Heidegger's approach is just to dogmatically assert it. It's existentialism by numbers. Ein Zwei - consider that things exist but they might be nothing instead. Drei vier - now you feel ze angst don't you. We have ways of making you feel ze angst you know...

 

[bhamgeezer]

Its no suprise it looks like rubbish when you don't have the context. Confirmation bias does not apply to what Heidegger asserts apriori and holds to be ontologically prior to everything. If you're not willing to at unquestioningly accept what he say until at least until you have some idea how the picture looks then you have no hope.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What does he hold to be ontologically prior to everything?

That's dangerous ground!

 

[Knotted]

Its no suprise it looks like rubbish when you don't have the context. Confirmation bias does not apply to what Heidegger asserts apriori and holds to be ontologically prior to everything. If you're not willing to at unquestioningly accept what he say until at least until you have some idea how the picture looks then you have no hope.

You keep saying I don't understand something. But I do understand it. It's a refreshingly easy to read, straightforward book. It's light as candyfloss. A real page turner. You're missing that his point is only vaguely about philosophy or ontology, the central idea is one about the history of language and restoring some sort of spiritual greatness to Germany that has been "worn away". The thesis is quasi-mystical, quasi-empirical and philosophical only in it's pretentiousness.

 

[bhamgeezer]

Being is ontological prior to Heidegger's notion of the ontic. His maxim is what is closest to us ontologically is at the same time the furthest away. The ontic is the something like the concrete real of the world, what he would class as entities. This is what he sees as the fundemental failure of positivist science, that it not founded on solid apriori investigation of Being, because being is such a general everyday feature its easy to miss. Aristotle spoke about being, but it was often believed that nothing could be said of being other than it was self-evident, indefinable and the most universal of all concepts. Thus he just thinks he picking up where he left off.

Fact is Heidegger seriously challenged the subject / object dualism that dominated philosophy for centuries. His conception of the Being that we possess is contrasted with that of inanimate objects, this is why he is so interested in Being. The being of humans is that of "Being-there" thus closing the dualism. If you can't take him seriously you could at least take theories like the various forms of externalism that owe him a debt.

 

[bhamgeezer]

You keep saying I don't understand something. But I do understand it. It's a refreshingly easy to read, straightforward book. It's light as candyfloss. A real page turner. You're missing that his point is only vaguely about philosophy or ontology, the central idea is one about the history of language and restoring some sort of spiritual greatness to Germany that has been "worn away". The thesis is quasi-mystical, quasi-empirical and philosophical only in it's pretentiousness.

Well I would say that if you think that then you're missing serious philosophical challenges he raises.

 

[Knotted]

Well I would say that if you think that then you're missing serious philosophical challenges he raises.

The philosophical challenge he presents seems quite trivial to me. His philosophy is much like that of Descartes in that he has to slice and dice the world into fundamentally different categories. He just slices in a slightly different place. So we have mind and matter with Descartes and we have different modes of Being in Heidegger.

There's a step further backwards with Heidegger. Descartes is slicing substances. Heidegger is slicing meanings of the verb "to be". We have the mind-body question rediced and presented afresh in the form of does this facet of existence exist seperately from that facet of existence. But the whole thing about the proper mode of existence of a mode of existence can't really go anywhere - it becomes a thesis about language rather than ontology.

The problem is that I'm not totally clear what Heidegger uses his slicings for. Reading the book I kept waiting for him to go into some sort of phenomenological investigation but it just didn't happen. In this book he is much more interested in poetical uses of the concepts of being and nothing.

[This is another problem I have with Heidegger he accepts the positivist divide between scientific language and poetical language. His only difference with them is that he is interested in the poetical side rather than the scientific side.]

 

[Knotted]

I feel I should squash this myth that Heidegger had something significant to say about ontology. He only had something significant to say if you make essentialist assumptions about ontology.

Heidegger asks, "what do we mean by 'being'?" That's the big question. He really thinks its huge. But it isn't just a question about ontology it is also a question about semantics and meaning. We can tackle it as a question about being and we can tackle it as a question about meaning. Heidegger goes into the latter only very briefly. He asserts a very old fashioned theory of essences. We know what a tree is because we recognise the essence of a tree. We know what life is because we recognise the essence of life. (These are Heidegger's examples). Personally I find it remarkable that this sort of theorising survived into the 20th century. If I were to put on a Marxist hat for the minute I would say that it is undialectical - eye wateringly undialectical. It allows for no conception of one category transforming into another. Heidegger's big discovery is that essentialism doesn't quite work when applied to that category of categories - 'being'. This is everything that is novel and profound in Heidegger's ontology:- that this old essentialist outlook which is easy to demolish anyway needs to be modified when applied to 'being' (he still retains it in a fuzzier form even if it is now compromised).

When it comes to his model of language it just becomes outlandish. He discusses phrases of poets, playwrites and philosophers as if they were the exemplar of how language works. He treats odd, inventive, creative uses of language as language rediscovering an old essence that was always there. Ordinary everyday language is poetical language that has been worn out - you could say that it has died inside. I think this is just nuts. But even in the snobbery it is philistine. The poet is no longer being creative, the poet cannot really be playful, the poet can only comment on the use of words.

If people are wondering why I'm ignoring Heidegger's ontology, it's because it deserves to be ignored.

 

[Santino]

You're just factually incorrect.

 

[bhamgeezer]

You're just factually incorrect.

I agree, that is not how he has been read by most. Furthermore, if Knotted thinks the duality of "Being-present-at-hand" and Dasein is merely another dualism comparable to Descartes mind / world distinction then they are totally not getting it.

This it just a common case of someone seeing on sentence their contradicts their notion of contemporary metaphysics and instantly going into negative, it's all mumbo jumbo mode.

As for saying he is essentialist....he's an existentialist. The essense of Dasein lies in its Zusein "to be". If you think essentialism regarding to "Beings-present-at-hand" is laughable, I don't know what type of pragmatist crack you're smoking.

 

[Knotted]

I agree, that is not how he has been read by most. Furthermore, if Knotted thinks the duality of "Being-present-at-hand" and Dasein is merely another dualism comparable to Descartes mind / world distinction then they are totally not getting it.

I might go into this if you want. I feel I've said enough for the minute, though.

This it just a common case of someone seeing on sentence their contradicts their notion of contemporary metaphysics and instantly going into negative, it's all mumbo jumbo mode.

Not true at all. I agree with almost every negative point Heidegger makes about traditional metaphysics of being. It's just that I find it too timid to bother with.

As for saying he is essentialist....he's an existentialist.

Seriously? Did he ever claim to be an existentialist? His essentialism is explicit and clear as the day. I'm not making it up. He really does say that we know what a tree is because we recognise the essence of a tree.

 

[kyser_soze]

*subs to thread*

 

[bhamgeezer]

The 'essence' ["Wesen"] of this entities lies in its "to be" [Zusein]. Its "Being-what-it-is" [Wassein] (essentia) must, so far as we can speak of it at all, be conceived in terms of its Being (existentia).

The essense of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibitd in this entity are not 'properties' present-at-hand of some entity which "looks" so and so and is itself present-at-hand; they are in each case possible ways for it to be, and no more than that

Yes, Heidegger is somewhat of essentialist regarding the metaphysics of what is present at hand (inanimate objects), this is hardly a far out notion ableit questionable. He is completely existentialist regarding the things at we are.

 

[Knotted]

Yes, Heidegger is somewhat of essentialist regarding the metaphysics of what is present at hand (inanimate objects), this is hardly a far out notion ableit questionable. He is completely existentialist regarding the things at we are.

Is "life" an inanimate object? Is it even an object?

I'm not reading between the lines here. Heidegger makes only one exception to his essentialism and that's the "essence of being" which is still somewhat essency (but an essence with lots of faces). He considers the only alternative to essentialism to be that "being" is vapid and empty. That's the false dichotomy at the heart of the book. Either it has an essence or it's nowt.

 

[kabbes]

You're just factually incorrect.

Is he? I know nothing about Heidegger. And as an ignoramus, Knotted certainly sounds convincing.

 

[Knotted]

To be fair we could be talking at cross purposes. I'm talking about the Heidegger of Introduction to Metaphysics and that could be quite different from the Heidegger of Being and Time which is considered his classic work.

 

[bhamgeezer]

Is "life" an inanimate object? Is it even an object?

I'm not reading between the lines here. Heidegger makes only one exception to his essentialism and that's the "essence of being" which is still somewhat essency (but an essence with lots of faces). He considers the only alternative to essentialism to be that "being" is vapid and empty. That's the false dichotomy at the heart of the book. Either it has an essence or it's nowt.

Thats just not what is written in the book at all. You're using essence like some type of dirty word. I suspect you have taken it as it is often thrown about in contemporary critical theory on the left, and assumed Heidegger's use is eqivocable.

It's ironic because Heidegger's existentialism is the very opposite of reductive. The very notion he is attacking is that the essence of individuals is anything less that their potentiality within the world.

The idea the objects like tables, chairs, are reducible to a set of properties. Is hardly that exceptional or new. Now you may want to disagree with that idea. But a biologist might want to tell that the property of "being an alive thing" is indeed reducible to a set of further properties. You may want to disagree. Heidegger is principlely interest is in Dasein, not the metaphysics of objects.

You're also picking up on the vapid and empty thing alot, when really all he means by that is that being is as has been conventionally concieved, a way he believes to be vapid and empty. You can disagree with him on whether you think vapid and empty are the right describing terms, but its not a false dicotomy when you know what he means by it.

You seem to be conflating "Being" and "essence"

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Is he? I know nothing about Heidegger. And as an ignoramus, Knotted certainly sounds convincing.

That's what I was thinking too.

 

[Knotted]

Thats just not what is written in the book at all. You're using essence like some type of dirty word. I suspect you have taken it as it is often thrown about in contemporary critical theory on the left, and assumed Heidegger's use is eqivocable.

My main concern with the concept of tree essence is how it fits with post-Darwin evolutionary theory which is thoroughly anti-essentialist.

It's ironic because Heidegger's existentialism is the very opposite of reductive. The very notion he is attacking is that the essence of individuals is anything less that their potentiality within the world.

But he does talk about the essence of an individual though?

The idea the objects like tables, chairs, are reducible to a set of properties. Is hardly that exceptional or new. Now you may want to disagree with that idea. But a biologist might want to tell that the property of "being an alive thing" is indeed reducible to a set properties. You may want to disagree. Heidegger is principlely interest is in Dasein, not the metaphysics of objects.

It's not that I disagree. You might be able to come up with a set of properties that define the property of "being an alive thing", the problem is that this is highly problematic. There are various conditions which you could say that characterise life but it's difficult to define the essence. My problem is not whether there is a strict definition of "life" or not. My point is that you don't need to assume an essence for life to talk about "life". Meaning does not require an essence. The point I was making was about Heidegger's theory of meaning not Heidegger's ontology (although one has a tendency to slide into the other). He discovers that finding the essence of "being" is problematic. He concludes that this says something profound about "being". It doesn't - finding the essence of lots of things (including trees and life) is problematic.

 

[kyser_soze]

Hmm, essence: