I think there’s a “not” missing in this sentence: “The point is whether a mug “exists” or not is a matter only of physical composition, but the matter of use and our engagement with it.”
I think Heidegger tries so hard to do away with metaphysics that he ends up leaving us no way to verify whether we're actually understanding (our, sorry!) Being. Ignoring his assumption of time, a person who may be hallucinating in a long term sense and thinking their thrownness is in the middle of some Cia conspiracy could hardly be called becoming authentic and yet in some sense we could be classified as all doing this.
I think his criticism of technology is important but probably for different reasons. I do think that technology can be more ready-to-hand than others. I'm not sure if he explores that but until he gives some verification of Being then there's really no point to it.
Hey Shawn. You're right that he phenomenologically “brackets” classical approaches to metaphysics, but he is, ultimately, doing a new kind of metaphysics. Although he leaves the term behind in B&T, he later writes/lectures "What is metaphysics?," a famous exposition of his late philosophy. The CIA conspiracy thing is perhaps a misplaced--at least, his entire point is to undermine such a possibility of skepticism. His means of verification is grounded in our "being-in" the world and "being-with" others, because they are prior dispositions to the world rather than on rational, logical principles. Heidegger doesn't deny logic or reason, but that dispositions toward being precedes rational judgements.
Yeah but how do you verify what your being-in is and being-with is at the point where that Cia conspiracy perspective is someone's perception in their entire being and to take it a bit closer to heidegger, how does he know that the naziism is his being-in considering they lost and him and Germany carried on and Germany is extremely liberal now?
Being-in and being-with are not mere matters of perception. These concepts are the possibility of existence/experience--it's not transcendental in a Kantian sense where mental structure like time and space are necessary for experience, but a dynamic relationship with the world that being arises. He's dealing with fundamental ontology, I'm not sure where the Nazism gets through here. Obviously, he thinks we're thrown into our cultures, so he was "thrown" into 20th century Germany.
If you're critiquing him for ultimately being a subjectivist, that's a valid argument to make. I'm not convinced either way myself--HE did not think he was a subjectivist, at the very least.
However, if you want to critique him for not having a rational, logical means of epistemic verification of his anti-skepticism, then I'm afraid you're already in the loop of skepticism yourself. You cannot "prove" by rational means that YOU aren't part of a CIA conspiracy--You have to get off the skepticism train before it gets to that point, which is what Heidegger is saying, I think.
I don't think he was a subjectivist, he definitely took the world to be real and morals to be engaged with particularly in terms of authenticity.
I'm not criticizing him for not being rationalist. I'm saying that the way a person finds their authenticity differs so much that it can include schizophrenics with a claim that their authenticity increases as they place themselves more in their schizophrenic worldview while also separating themselves from it. This can include hallucinations being ready-to-hand. The idea here is we actually know the schizophrenic is not aligning more with Being. They aren't becoming authentic and that this granularly applies to everyone because we have no way of verifying what Being is due to Heidegger avoiding it in order to avoid metaphysics.
Ahh, I see. My next essay in the series does deal with authenticity--and I think your critique of authenticity is right, but, on my reading, a schizophrenic person would actually lack proper being-with. Heidegger might say something like they're not being authentic enough, rather than being too authentic, but I agree that it's potentially a flaw in Heidegger.
What IS being authentic? He's sufficiently vague that your interpretation is plausible, and, if correct, detrimental to his project. That's a similar problem I have with him, I talk about in my essay on authenticity, is that it's more or less contentless or too vague to understand what he means.
There's a philosopher at York called Matthew Ratcliffe (who I've drawn on for my master's thesis a lot) who argues that dispositions (what he calls “feelings of being”) ground us in reality, and schizophrenia is a malfunctioning of those feelings of being--which, in turn, muddles with their beliefs. But, because, in a Heideggerian way, “moods” or attunement to the world is more fundamental than rational justification, schizophrenic irrationality is a symptom, rather than the root cause, of the mental illness itself.
In short, you might be right in your critique, but I need to think on it more, haha. Thanks for the comments
Mark- This is an interesting arc on different philosophers' beliefs and how they compare. I'm no philosopher, nor do I know much about it. But as I understand it: reason is one of those things that can't really look much at itself. It's kind of like a tornado trying to see every moving particle of its own swirl. Possible, but unreliant. I think Descartes' take is great because it gives humans ownership into the profiles of the future. But I suppose much like the tornado analogy, sure, for the most part it can for futures into being--except there are other moving variables, other moving tornadoes along the path(s). So much for me to think some more about when it comes to Descartes' thesis. Enjoyed this piece. Thanks!
Thanks, Thalia! I like your analogy of the tornado. It's worth noting that Heidegger is notorious for re-interpreting philosophers through the lens of his own thinking, rather than letting them stand on what they probably meant. If anyone wants to get started in Western philosophy, I usually recommend Meditations by Descartes because it's short, non-technical, forcefully logical, and extremely impactful on Western history. Thanks again for reading.
This is a wonderful exposition of Heidegger. I don't personally agree at all with most of what Heidegger is up to, but clearly for many people he has a lot of valuable things to say. On behalf of those less enchanted with Heidegger, I will only offer what his student Hans Jonas said to Heideggger when he stopped working with Heidegger and got out of Nazi Germany. Hans said, "I'm coming back with an army." Hans fought for the next dozen years or so and wrote what still seems like the best book on Gnosticism.
Thanks, Peter! Yes, I agree. I feel torn, I'm simultaneously enchanted with his unique approach to philosophy and feel doubtful of its staying power / efficacy, and, obviously, deeply feel the tension with his Nazism and philosophy
Great summary!…. of a guy often referenced, but seldom read (by me at least). Putting Being and Time on my Christmas list-
Thanks, Bill! Good luck, haha,😅
"Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Heidegger and Being and Time" byStephen
and "A Commentary On Heidegger's "Being and Time"" by Gelven were both helpful to me.
Great essay! Made me want to read Being and Time
I think there’s a “not” missing in this sentence: “The point is whether a mug “exists” or not is a matter only of physical composition, but the matter of use and our engagement with it.”
And maybe the last “the” was meant to be an “a”.
Thanks, Matt! And thanks for pointing out that error--I'll update it.
I think Heidegger tries so hard to do away with metaphysics that he ends up leaving us no way to verify whether we're actually understanding (our, sorry!) Being. Ignoring his assumption of time, a person who may be hallucinating in a long term sense and thinking their thrownness is in the middle of some Cia conspiracy could hardly be called becoming authentic and yet in some sense we could be classified as all doing this.
I think his criticism of technology is important but probably for different reasons. I do think that technology can be more ready-to-hand than others. I'm not sure if he explores that but until he gives some verification of Being then there's really no point to it.
Hey Shawn. You're right that he phenomenologically “brackets” classical approaches to metaphysics, but he is, ultimately, doing a new kind of metaphysics. Although he leaves the term behind in B&T, he later writes/lectures "What is metaphysics?," a famous exposition of his late philosophy. The CIA conspiracy thing is perhaps a misplaced--at least, his entire point is to undermine such a possibility of skepticism. His means of verification is grounded in our "being-in" the world and "being-with" others, because they are prior dispositions to the world rather than on rational, logical principles. Heidegger doesn't deny logic or reason, but that dispositions toward being precedes rational judgements.
Yeah but how do you verify what your being-in is and being-with is at the point where that Cia conspiracy perspective is someone's perception in their entire being and to take it a bit closer to heidegger, how does he know that the naziism is his being-in considering they lost and him and Germany carried on and Germany is extremely liberal now?
Being-in and being-with are not mere matters of perception. These concepts are the possibility of existence/experience--it's not transcendental in a Kantian sense where mental structure like time and space are necessary for experience, but a dynamic relationship with the world that being arises. He's dealing with fundamental ontology, I'm not sure where the Nazism gets through here. Obviously, he thinks we're thrown into our cultures, so he was "thrown" into 20th century Germany.
If you're critiquing him for ultimately being a subjectivist, that's a valid argument to make. I'm not convinced either way myself--HE did not think he was a subjectivist, at the very least.
However, if you want to critique him for not having a rational, logical means of epistemic verification of his anti-skepticism, then I'm afraid you're already in the loop of skepticism yourself. You cannot "prove" by rational means that YOU aren't part of a CIA conspiracy--You have to get off the skepticism train before it gets to that point, which is what Heidegger is saying, I think.
I don't think he was a subjectivist, he definitely took the world to be real and morals to be engaged with particularly in terms of authenticity.
I'm not criticizing him for not being rationalist. I'm saying that the way a person finds their authenticity differs so much that it can include schizophrenics with a claim that their authenticity increases as they place themselves more in their schizophrenic worldview while also separating themselves from it. This can include hallucinations being ready-to-hand. The idea here is we actually know the schizophrenic is not aligning more with Being. They aren't becoming authentic and that this granularly applies to everyone because we have no way of verifying what Being is due to Heidegger avoiding it in order to avoid metaphysics.
Ahh, I see. My next essay in the series does deal with authenticity--and I think your critique of authenticity is right, but, on my reading, a schizophrenic person would actually lack proper being-with. Heidegger might say something like they're not being authentic enough, rather than being too authentic, but I agree that it's potentially a flaw in Heidegger.
What IS being authentic? He's sufficiently vague that your interpretation is plausible, and, if correct, detrimental to his project. That's a similar problem I have with him, I talk about in my essay on authenticity, is that it's more or less contentless or too vague to understand what he means.
There's a philosopher at York called Matthew Ratcliffe (who I've drawn on for my master's thesis a lot) who argues that dispositions (what he calls “feelings of being”) ground us in reality, and schizophrenia is a malfunctioning of those feelings of being--which, in turn, muddles with their beliefs. But, because, in a Heideggerian way, “moods” or attunement to the world is more fundamental than rational justification, schizophrenic irrationality is a symptom, rather than the root cause, of the mental illness itself.
In short, you might be right in your critique, but I need to think on it more, haha. Thanks for the comments
Mark- This is an interesting arc on different philosophers' beliefs and how they compare. I'm no philosopher, nor do I know much about it. But as I understand it: reason is one of those things that can't really look much at itself. It's kind of like a tornado trying to see every moving particle of its own swirl. Possible, but unreliant. I think Descartes' take is great because it gives humans ownership into the profiles of the future. But I suppose much like the tornado analogy, sure, for the most part it can for futures into being--except there are other moving variables, other moving tornadoes along the path(s). So much for me to think some more about when it comes to Descartes' thesis. Enjoyed this piece. Thanks!
Thanks, Thalia! I like your analogy of the tornado. It's worth noting that Heidegger is notorious for re-interpreting philosophers through the lens of his own thinking, rather than letting them stand on what they probably meant. If anyone wants to get started in Western philosophy, I usually recommend Meditations by Descartes because it's short, non-technical, forcefully logical, and extremely impactful on Western history. Thanks again for reading.
This is a wonderful exposition of Heidegger. I don't personally agree at all with most of what Heidegger is up to, but clearly for many people he has a lot of valuable things to say. On behalf of those less enchanted with Heidegger, I will only offer what his student Hans Jonas said to Heideggger when he stopped working with Heidegger and got out of Nazi Germany. Hans said, "I'm coming back with an army." Hans fought for the next dozen years or so and wrote what still seems like the best book on Gnosticism.
Thanks, Peter! Yes, I agree. I feel torn, I'm simultaneously enchanted with his unique approach to philosophy and feel doubtful of its staying power / efficacy, and, obviously, deeply feel the tension with his Nazism and philosophy
repent: https://open.substack.com/pub/sanctistulti/p/phenomenology-is-sinful?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=wubfv
I responded AT LENGTH to this essay in the comments :)
Well written and argued, but utlimately incorrect, I think.