Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?
Note: I am not a Heidegger scholar and have only recently started reading his work.
In Being and Time, Heidegger raises the question of the meaning of Being, a question he believes has hitherto been forgotten by philosophers.
What I am confused about is whether, in raising this question, Heidegger is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, or rather (merely) with the reality of the human experience/condition. That is to say, is Heidegger concerned with what reality is like, in the sense that a physicist can be said to be, or is he concerned with what it is like to be a human being, more in the sense that an existentialist can be said to be?
Prior to reading sections of Being and Time, I assumed that the work was concerned with the fundamental nature of reality. Yet, the book is written exclusively from the standpoint, or perspective, of the human being (''Dasein''). It seems, then, that whilst Heidegger can tell us a lot about what it is like to be a human being, he cannot tell us what reality itself is like?
I understand that Heidegger focuses on the human being since the human being is the only being for whom their being is an issue for it, and hence an inquiry into human being, i.e. what it is like to be a human being, presumably lends us insight into Being itself?
In Being and Time, Heidegger raises the question of the meaning of Being, a question he believes has hitherto been forgotten by philosophers.
What I am confused about is whether, in raising this question, Heidegger is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, or rather (merely) with the reality of the human experience/condition. That is to say, is Heidegger concerned with what reality is like, in the sense that a physicist can be said to be, or is he concerned with what it is like to be a human being, more in the sense that an existentialist can be said to be?
Prior to reading sections of Being and Time, I assumed that the work was concerned with the fundamental nature of reality. Yet, the book is written exclusively from the standpoint, or perspective, of the human being (''Dasein''). It seems, then, that whilst Heidegger can tell us a lot about what it is like to be a human being, he cannot tell us what reality itself is like?
I understand that Heidegger focuses on the human being since the human being is the only being for whom their being is an issue for it, and hence an inquiry into human being, i.e. what it is like to be a human being, presumably lends us insight into Being itself?
Comments (64)
Heidegger argues that precisely because science derives from the way of being-in-the-world of humans, the question of what reality is like in itself is incoherent. That is why he always puts the word reality in square quotes. For me the most interesting part of Being and Time is the way Heidegger derives the kind of thinking that founded the basis of modern science in logical causality and objectivity.
He shows how objectivity derives from propositional sentences, and this type of assertion is a modification of a more primordial form of thinking. The problem is that for so long people have mistaken objectivity as the primordial access to truth, and thus miss what is essential about understanding, truth, meaning, being., which is that objectivity is only a modified derivative of our relating to the world in terms of the way it always has significance for, matters to, is relevant for us, in actual contexts of interaction with it.
Thanks for your answer.
Heidegger's account, then, seems to lead to a certain subjectivism that undermines science. The scientist claims that he is describing the world as it is, and the great success of his theories/predictions in the empirical world would suggest that science is not merely describing the world as it appears to human beings but as it really is.
Take Heidegger's account of time. We know that this account differs from that of modern physics, specifically Einstein's special relativity, which treats space and time not as distinct entities (as Kant had assumed) but as combined, thus creating a four-dimensional world. Thus, the physicist would argue that Heidegger's account of time is flawed. I suspect Heidegger would reply that the physicist has conflated a mathematical model for how human beings experience the world, and these are two different things. In other words, one can accept the physicists' account of spacetime and accept Heidegger's account of how human beings experience time. But this is nevertheless to concede that there is a scientific view of the world and an ''existentialist'' view (I use quotation marks there as I am aware that Heidegger rejected that label) concerned with human experience.
Hiedegger rejects both objectivism and subjectivism. He's not saying the world is a construction of mind. He unravels the traditional notion of the subject, the ego, consciousness ans well as the empirical object.
"One can accept the physicists' account of space-time and accept Heidegger's account of how human beings experience time. But this is nevertheless to concede that there is a scientific view of the world and an ''existentialist'' view (I use quotation marks there as I am aware that Heidegger rejected that label) concerned with human experience."
Heidegger doesn't say a scientific account of time, or anything else, is wrong. He says it rests on presuppositions(I'm not just talking about specific mathematics models but fundamental metaphysical presuppositions) that physicists ,a t least till recently, aren't aware underlie their understanding of the pre-conditions of objective description. You , for example, are talking about reality here as something 'out there' independent of accounts of it, and thus scientific truth is aimed at a correspondence or mirroring of what is out there with our constructions of it.
This is called the correspondence theory of truth. It is a older explanatory worldview of what science does. More recent interpretations of science view empirical truth not ass correspondence but as pragamtic interaction. Science doesnt match some supposed reality sitting out there independent of us, it interacts with it in ways that are useful to us. In this account knowledge isnt correspondence, it is transformation.
Some quotes from Heidegger:
"Of course, the question of "being-in-
time" is exciting, but it was also raised prematurely. The question is
exciting specifically with regard to natural science, especially with the
advent of Einstein's theory of relativity, which established the opinion
that traditional philosophical doctrine concerning time has been shaken
to the core through the theory of physics. However, this widely held
opinion is fundamentally wrong. The theory of relativity in physics does
not deal with what time is but deals only with how time, in the sense of
a now-sequence, can be measured. [It asks] whether there is an absolute
measurement of time, or whether all measurement is necessarily relative,
that is, conditioned.* The question of the theory of relativity could not
be discussed at all unless the supposition of time as the succession of
a sequence of nows were presupposed beforehand. If the doctrine of
time, held since Aristotle, were to become untenable, then the very
possibility of physics would be ruled out. [The fact that] physics, with
its horizon of measuring time, deals not only with irreversible events,
but also with reversible ones and that the direction of time is reversible
attests specifically to the fact that in physics time is nothing else than the
succession of a sequence of nows. This is maintained in such a decisive
manner that even the sense of direction in the sequence can become
a matter of indifference."
"If you ask a physicist, he
will tell you that the pure now-sequence is the authentic, true time. What
we call datability and significance are regarded as subjective vagueness,
if not sentimentalism. He says this because time measured physically can
be calculated "objectively" at any time. This calculation is "objectively"
binding. (Here, "objective" merely means "for anyone," and indeed only
for anyone who can submit himself to the physicist's way of representing
nature. For an African tribesman, such time would be absolute nonsense.)
The presupposition or supposition of such an assertion by a physicist
is that physics as a science is the authoritative form of knowledge and
that only through the knowledge of physics can one gain a rigorous,
scientific knowledge. Hidden behind [this presupposition] is a specific interpretation
of science along with the science's claim that a specific form
of viewing nature should be authoritative for every kind of knowledge.
[The scientist has not asked] what this idea of science itself is founded
upon nor what it presupposes. For instance, if we talk about time with
a physicist sworn in favor of his science, there is no basis whatsoever to
talk about these phenomena in an unbiased way. The physicist refuses to
"In physics, a theory is proposed and then tested by experiments to see
whether their results agree with the theory. The only thing demonstrated
is the correspondence of the experimental results to the theory. It is
not demonstrated that the theory is simply the knowledge of nature.
The experiment and the result of the experiment do not extend beyond
the framework of the theory. They remain within the area delineated
by the theory. The experiment is not considered in regard to its correspondence
to nature, but to what was posited by the theory. What is
posited by the theory is the projection of nature according to scientific
representations, for instance, those of Galileo.
Yet today even pioneers in physics are trying to clarify the inherent
limitations of physics. It is still questionable whether physics, as a matter
of principle, will ever succeed in doing this."
"The projection of nature in natural science was enacted by human beings.
This makes it [a result of] human comportment. Question: What aspect
of the human being appears in the projection of things moving through
space and time in law-governed fashion? What character does Galileo's
projection of nature have? For instance, in the case of the falling apple,
Galileo's interest was neither in the apple, nor in the tree from which
it fell, but only in the measurable distance of the fall. He, therefore,
supposed a homogeneous space in which a point of mass moves and falls
in conformity to law.
What then does Galileo accept in his supposition? He accepts without question:
space, motion, time, and causality.
What does it mean to say—I accept something like space? I accept that
there is something like space and, even more, that I have a relationship
to space and time. This acceptio* is not arbitrary, but contains necessary
relationships to space, time, and causality in which I stand. Otherwise I
could not reach for a glass on the table. No one can experiment with
these [a priori] assumptions. That there is space is not a proposition of
physics. What kind of proposition is it? What does it indicate about the
human being that such suppositions are possible for him? It indicates
that he finds himself comported to space, time, and causality from the
beginning. We stand before phenomena, which require us to become
aware of them and to receive-perceive them in an appropriate manner.
"It is no longer up to the physicist, but only to the philosopher to say
something about what is accepted in this way. These assumptions are out
of reach for the natural sciences, but at the same time they are the very
foundation for the very possibility of the natural sciences themselves."
"At the beginning of our last seminar our question was: What does
"nature" mean to modern natural science? We called upon Kant for
its determination. He gave us the definition: Nature is the conformity
to the law of phenomena. This is a strange proposition. Why have we
bothered to ask about "nature" in the natural sciences at all? Because
natural science does not expressly think about this determination of
nature. Galileo developed this projection of nature for the first time. In
doing so, did he simply make a "presupposition" ? What
kind of presupposition would it be? It is a supposition .
What is the difference between a presupposition made to reach logical
conclusions and a supposition? The difference is that we can derive
something else from logical presuppositions through inferences—that
a logical relationship exists between presupposition and conclusion. In
contrast, in a supposition, the scientific approach to a specific domain
is grounded in what is supposed. Here we are not dealing with a logical
relationship, but with an ontological relationship.
To what does modern natural science make its supposition? As a
natural scientific observer, Galileo disregarded the tree, the apple, and
the ground in observing the fall of the apple. He saw only a point of
mass falling from one location in space to another location in space in
law-governed fashion. In the sense of natural science, "nature" is the
supposition for the tree, the apple, and the meadow. According to this
supposition, nature is understood only as the law-governed movement
of points of mass, that is, as changes in location within a homogeneous
space and within the sequence of a homogeneous time. This is natural
science's supposition.
In this supposition, that is, in this assumption of "nature" determined
accordingly, there lies simultaneously an acceptio. In such a supposition,
the existence of space, motion, causality, and time is always already accepted
as an unquestionable fact. Here accepting and taking mean immediate
receiving-perceiving. What is accepted in natural science's supposition
is a homogeneous space."
Heidegger is completely wrong abut relativity in general, and space time in particular. Spacetime is a physical reality that is distorted by gravity. This is evident on earth, where two atomic clocks run differently, where one is at sea level, and the other is in plane flying 30,000 feet above. This is called 'time dilation' - and it's a scientifically proven phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
It's a genuine shame a mind as fertile as Heidegger's could not accept the reality staring him in the face. Sadly, this is not an isolated example. This kind of attack on science has to end:
Quoting Joshs
The two atomic clocks do not differ because of the theory that they should, but because of the difference in altitude. It is the physical reality that is tested. Theory is a variable - upheld or destroyed by the experimental results. These pernicious, or perhaps merely self deluding metaphysical philosophers bring us within sight of our extinction. If we do not recognize the significance of scientific truth now - a sustainable future will soon be impossible.
His argument for giving time a core postilion in physics as it has has in evolutionary biology sounds a bit like Heidegger.
Do you have any quotes, sources or examples? I'm unwilling to take your word for what someone else said. I can't really engage with that. I've heard of Smolen, but I can't place his work.
Heisenberg is a quantum physicist - and I have serious concerns about the entire field; particularly - I'm not at all confident that there's anything fundamental to be discovered at the sub atomic and quantum level - and downright dismissive of the notion that those mechanics, or lack thereof - can be imported into the macroscopic world we inhabit.
I'm not a physicist - I'm a philosopher, but I rather suspect that the seat of reality is the middle ground we inhabit, and quantum physics is looking at the frayed edge of reality - on the border between something and nothing. It's the very loss of existential properties like velocity or location that underlie indeterminacy in quantum physics, that lead me to posit this idea. I accept it occurs, I just don't accept it's fundamental indeterminacy. It's frayed edge indeterminacy.
With regard to Kant and Nietzsche - I think they're both ridiculous. Their work is unreadable, and that's an entirely deliberate mystification. I have a rule - if you invented a new word to explain what you mean, or indeed, are apt to lapse into Latin at the drop of a petasum then you favour obscurity over clarity, because you're wrong or you're lying.
String Theory is a frantic effort to save the quantifier from the chaos of unformed matter at the smallest reaches of our commitment to quantifying it. We are hard put to concede our unjustified commitment to find being something that is, rather than the dynamic between departure and recognition. But that dynamic is a logic of contrariety, not contradiction. That is, the fundamentals of geometry, mathematics, and logic are, in real terms, hopelessly incomplete. Their only completeness is in that contrariety in which contraries, each as capable of being the departed as being the response recognized the worth of that departed, form a community as opposed to the continuity of its antecedent terms as to each other in that capacity for worthiness and love. You cannot isolate any jot or tittle of that drama to be confirmed scientifically. And yet it is the only explanation of how we can be capable of sharing our thoughts. Explains, too, why language always comes into being fully grown. Not lexically, but grammatically, and most surely dramatically. This, because time is personal, but so far from divine as to be gloriously profane.
Don't get Kant? Doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence on the claim of being a philosopher. He was probably the most lucid author ever, save, maybe, for trivial ones like Jaspers, Camus, or Thoreau.
A distinction I'd like to highlight is between experiential temporality and time. Heidegger's analysis in Being and Time links three fundamental aspects of human experience (which he calls existentialia): projection, thrown-ness and fallen-ness.
Projection: expectation/anticipation of what is to come; the temporal modality of the experiential future / futurity.
Thrown-ness: your life history insofar as it is relevant to your currently lived situation; the temporal modality of the experiential past / historicality.
Fallen-ness: the understanding of your currently lived situation: the temporal modality of the experiential present / presence.
These different components are always active; one's expectations are mediated through your understanding of the present and constrained by what you have lived until now. Their joint function is called ekstasis, which embeds every human in their lived experience by providing the contours for the past, present and future. The three modalities co-implicate, projection requires an understood past and an uncertain future, thrown-ness requires anticipated consequences from understood actions, fallen-ness requires understanding of what may be through what has already been; so the three are aspects of one unitary phenomenon, existential temporality or temporalising ekstasis. This temporality is more similar to the development of a narrative in a story rather than the unfolding of events over time as measured by a stop-watch.
The later Heidegger, after what's called the kehre or the turn, changes his emphasis from existential temporality to a notion of unfolding. His motivating questions are no longer asked from the perspective of a human; a methodology which the earlier Heidegger strongly adopts - he's trying to get at Being as what underlays Being-in-the-world, and stops at existential temporality in Division 2 of Being and Time; now the notion of unfolding places humans alongside the world, now the becoming of nature and the existential temporality of humans are seen as equally foundational questions for ontology.
This change in questioning style changes the fundamental topic of analysis from the human/Dasein to the event/ereignis, Being itself is given a more active interpretation - it arrests/appropriates humans to it. The shift in emphasis changes the subject of interpretation from a socially/culturally/experientially conditioned understanding of being distinct from nature to one where human being spans social/cultural/experiential structures and patterns extrinsic to human being which nevertheless can constrain us and our experiences - what was extrinsic can become embedded.
Why Heidegger makes the methodological decision to frame his analysis after the kehre in terms of poetry and somewhat mystical categorisations of nature and culture (earth/sky and mortals/divinities respectively), I don't have much of a clue. The reliance on the interpretation of art in his pursuit of these questions might be related to how he thinks technology occludes/transforms our essential relationship with nature, but I don't have enough knowledge to pursue the exegesis here further.
Do you not know what the word philosopher means? You've got google - look it up! REAL philosophers get paid - do they? Okay then. Socrates wasn't a philosopher! Funnily enough, that's what the town elders thought - only, history doesn't record their names.
Quoting tim wood
To quote Richard Feynman, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. I don't - but I do understand the philosophy of science, and I'm not willing to accept that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is a relevant factor, or that it applies to macroscopic phenomena. This desperate latching onto quantum mechanics by every crackpot metaphysical hack makes my skin crawl.
Not sure I follow this. I don't see Heidegger allowing for a conditioning model of social shaping in his earlier work.
Explicit analysis of social structure would be more similar to anthropology, which Heidegger takes care to distinguish the aims of his inquiry from. However, he does care a lot about sociality and how the experiential world is natively occupied by other people; being-with as an existentialia. He cares less about the (ontic) specifics of social organisation and more about what it is about humans that grounds (ontological) our capacity for social organisation. We're shaped by others in the account, through discourse and das-man, and this capacity to be shaped by others is a fundamental moving part in the account of Being and Time; distinguishing inauthentic expectation from authentic anticipation, distinguishing being-toward-death from fleeing into the-they/discourse, and partially constitutes fallen-ness in its linguistic/normative aspect.
Quoting tim wood
"There's" means - there is! "Theirs" means belonging to them! But forget that. Let's talk about quantum mechanics and the philosophy of science!
Quoting tim wood
I don't accept this is a question, per se:
Quoting karl stone
It's a snide remark. What was to be gained from answering as if it were an honest question? Let's see.
By 'I'm a philosopher' I mean to say I constantly engage with philosophical questions - and do so in relation to all the other questions I've engaged with, in order to develop a coherent understanding of reality, I hope can be useful to others. I'm never not doing philosophy. I am a philosopher. It's not a job - it's a vocation.
The thread's clearly supposed to be about Heidegger exegesis and criticism, specifically about the relationship of his account in Being and Time to nature. While there is a relationship to physics (which Josh provided uncommented quotes for and perpetuated the myth that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle has anything to do with uncertainty rooted in perspectival variation), the ontology of nature, and how scientific understanding constrains and enables metaphysical speculation, your discussion isn't really on any of these topics.
The question is what does it mean to be 'shaped by others'. The characteristic of of inauthentic being-with as average everydayness (das man, curiosity, idle talk, etc) is that one thinks of oneself as being shaped in the sense of falling prey to the world. Idle talk is generic, one 'means the same thing'.
But there's a difference between how one understands oneself inauthentically and the primordial existential basis of average everydayness. Similarly, in the mode of the present-to-hand , one asserts logical propositions which most on this forum(Karl Stone, for example) think of as 'objectivity,and don't realize derive from a more primordial mode of understanding.In other words, what we think were doing (inauthentic comportment) and what we're actually doing(in a primordial sense) are two different things.
We think that we are simply conditioned and shaped by our social environment, but we miss the underlying circumspectival basis of our being-in-the-world. Normativity is an assumption based in inauthentic being-in-the-world, but deconstructs itself ontologically.
Temporality is 'simultaneously' of 3 ecstacies. The past as 'having been', the presencing, and future. Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general."
"Only because Da-sein in general IS as I AM-having-been, can it come futurally toward itself in
such a way that it comes-back." Thus, "Having been arises from the future".
"We are hard put to concede our unjustified commitment to find being something that is, rather than the dynamic between departure and recognition. But that dynamic is a logic of contrariety, not contradiction."
Heidegger articulated the self-differing of temporality as the being-together of Overwhelming and Arrival. Overwhelming is the surprise of overtaking.
To my mind the question of whether normativity is part of the essential constitution of Dasein for Heidegger of B&T is distinct from whether it's part of our essential constitution. There's an exegetical question, then there's a question of its truth (or of the strength of the account). They're also mostly separate questions from how to relate natural temporality to experiential temporality - with the qualification that nature still unfolds (also for Heidegger) even if there are no clocks or clock-time.
With regard to the time question, which is a nature question in disguise: just because there's experiential temporality doesn't mean there is no possible account of natural temporality. Heidegger's critique of present-at-hand/scientific time doesn't absolve the work of a responsibility to account for natural temporality - and struggling with this kind of question. with lingering doubts about framework of B&T inquiring from the wrong vantage point (questioning towards being as it is implicated in the existential structure of Dasein does not necessarily mean questioning towards being simpliciter), is definitely part of the turn.
With regard to the normativity question; perhaps Heidegger does think authentic modes of being are more important ontologically -'anxiety is an ontological mood' (paraphrased)-, but this is far from denying the importance of inauthentic modes of being to Dasein's essential constitution. Is it really more true to say of Dasein that it is anxious than that it is constantly being influenced by others? How could being-with work without normativity?
What do you think 'nature' means for Heidegger? What on earth is 'natural temporality'? Don't you think he wants it in scare quotes the way he puts 'reality' in scare quotes? That is to say, the notion of 'nature' as something that has any meaning or coherence outside of the structure of temporality seems to me to be something that Heidegger would argue against.
"Is it really more true to say of Dasein that it is anxious than that it is constantly being influenced by others? How could being-with work without normativity?" There are conditioning inter-subjective models of influence. Then there is Heidegger's (and Derrida's) in which the ways another influences me is always interpreted by me via fore-structuring. It lends a certain self-consistency to my engagements with those I am lnfluenced by.
There's actually a lot of capital N Nature in Being and Time. It's a name for a 'totality of entities' in a specific 'domain' - which tells us nothing of what Nature is for Heidegger, just that it is a certain domain of entities which may have a merely regional (rather than fundamental) ontology:
However, introduction 2 explicitly links the question of experiential temporality, and the 'clearing of the ground' he wants to achieve with his 'destruction of metaphysics', with the question of what it means to inhabit a world or nature in the broadest sense:
though there is also a connotation of Nature being thingly/must be understood as present-at-hand, as he contrasts beings of Nature to persons:
but he doesn't necessarily restrict the understanding of Nature to a present-at-hand understanding:
In short - the story of Nature in B&T is fucking complicated.
You're quite right. I apologize and shall make no further comment, that's not strictly related to the subject of the thread.
Metaphysics sucks! Epistemology rules! Whhoooo! Yeah!
I disagree. Metaphysics sucks because it's all rhyme and no reason; in contradiction to epistemology which asks "What can we know?' and "How can we know it?" - thus providing any epistemology based philosophy with a theory of truth and reason by which its claims can be measured.
Metaphysics can say anything, and reason anyhow. As Heidegger's obsession with the random concept of "being" demonstrates. One has to ask - is Heidegger's work merely the longest dictionary definition of a word ever? A word coined - not as an exacting definition of a nuomenal phenomenon, but for linguistic convenience.
He's merely being metaphysical!
LOL
I think metaphysical statements are best understood as being speech acts or instructions to think in a certain way. Nobody can avoid doing metaphysics of some sort, even if this consists of refusing to do metaphysics.
To his end, Sartre's Being and Nothingness critiqued Heidegger's Existenz Philosophy because it permitted Death as a natural End to life. Well, no--we choose life or death as a choice of freedom or slavery, etc...
"Essence precedes Being"
From Wiki:
"The proposition that existence precedes essence (French: l'existence précède l'essence) is a central claim of existentialism."
Heidegger didnt consider himself an existentialist, and critiqued Sartre's position.
Derrida, who I consider the closest writer to Heidegger, and the one who understood him best, wrote this about Sartre(which I agree with);
"there were some enlargements, distortions, simplifications(in Satre's work), which from that point of view seemed to me to amortize what was essentially interesting about the work of Husserl and Heidegger." "Sartre was not a rigorous enough reader."
"But it is a fact that Sartre's thought obscured in quite a powerful way what was happening elsewhere in German philosophy, even in the philosophy that he himself pretended to be introducing in France. To say nothing of Marx and to say nothing of Freud and to say nothing of Nietzsche, whom he, in a way, never really read. I mean that he misunderstood Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche (to put them together as is usually done) even more than he misunderstood Husserl and Heidegger, whom he nevertheless quoted "
"What must a society such as ours be if a man, who, in his own way, rejected or misunderstood
so many theoretical and literary events of his time, let's say, to go quickly, psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, Joyce, Artaud, Bataille, Blanchot-who accumulated and disseminated
incredible misreadings of Heidegger, sometimes of Husserl,
could come to dominate the cultural scene to the point of becoming
a great popular figure?" "So, in short, you see in Sartre the perfect example of what an
intellectual should not be."
Gary's 1st law: The least term of time is all the differing it is.
Please break up your post into paragraphs.
Mind needs to put more effort into post formatting or mind will soon receive mod attention.
"Setzen wir statt "Zeit": Lichtung des Sichverbergens von Anwesen, dann bestimmt sich Sein aus dem Entwurfbereich von Zeit. Dies ergibt sich jedoch nur insofern, als die Lichtung des Sichverbergens ein ihm entsprechendes Denken in seinen brauch nimmt.
Anwesen (Sein) gehört in die Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit). Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit) erbringt Anwesen (Sein)."
Richardson's translation:
"If instead of "Time" we substitute: the lighting-up of the self-concealing [that is proper to] the process of coming-to-presence, then Being is determined by the scope of Time. This comes about, however, only insofar as the lighting-process of self-concealment assumes unto its want a thought that corresponds to it.
[The process of] presenc-ing (Being) is inherent in the lighting-up of self-concealment (Time). [The] lighting-up of self-concealment (Time) brings forth the process of presenc-ing (Being)."
William J. Richardson: Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought. Citation is from Heidegger's preface to this book (1962).
https://books.google.fi/books?id=-NXoCAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
„Existence is the name for […] human ‚Dasein‘. A cat does not exist, but lives, a stone does not exist and does not live, but ‚is there‘ GA 26,159“. This is not from ‚Being and Time‘ but from a lecture given in 1928.
Here is the original:
„Existenz ist der Titel für […] das menschliche Dasein. Eine Katze existiert nicht, sondern lebt, ein Stein existiert nicht und lebt nicht, sondern ist vorhanden (Vorlesung: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (SoSe 1928): GA 26, 159)
So, a stone is there, but doesn’t exist. A cat lives, but doesn’t exist?
Existence in this definition is only biological existence with a complex degree of consciousness. Everything else does not exist.
So much for clarity in Heidegger’s definitions. Btw ‘Vorhandensein’ is the exact German translation of ‘Existenz’.
I think that Heidegger is highly overestimated. He was clearly just grasping for words and defining his own terms in a quest for meaning in (human) existence. He was never concerned with the nature of reality outside of its reflection in the human mind. I wonder what he would write now 100 years later.
What I would say is that all three, human, cat and stone, consist of trapped radiation/energy which we call matter. But we do not know the nature of this radiation/energy, so we do not know what we are and what the universe is. No need to invent new words and no need to write big books about it.
How would a universe without matter ‘look’ like?
Probably the same things that scores of postmodern, pragmatist, hermeneutical ,phenomenological , constructivist and enactivist writers in philosophy , cognitive science and the philosophy of science already write today. Which is that your account of reality is outdated and quaint, assuming an independent reality that our constructions attempt to mirror or represent .
Quoting TheArchitectOfTheGods
It's not a question of denying a n empirical account of matter and energy, but of showing what underlies the conditions of possibility of models based on objective causality. Heidegger didn't say that matter doesn't 'exist', he says it is the product of a derivative thinking.
I think you may have misunderstood the intention of my question, I should have written:
How would a universe without matter and purely consisting of energy ‘look’ like? Black, white, or something in between? Infinitely big or infinitely small?
If we had a better understanding, we would be close to knowing what this that energy everything consists of is, we knew what the universe is. That is what keeps human philosophy going. Einstein said something indefinitely more meaningful with five symbols than Heidegger did with with all his jumbled grasping at linguistic straws. For scientific and philosophical purposes, it is unnecessary to distinguish between the existence of a stone and existence of a human mind.
Quoting Joshs
Well, he wrote, and that was a literal quote, that the stone does not exist, it is just there (vorhanden). That is what he wrote. And that doesn't make much sense to me, and I hope also not to most others.
The earth existed even when there were no humans living on it. The earth is not the product of a derivative thinking. It is the product of a star explosion, a lump of matter in the universe, whether humans are thinking about it or not.
If a tree has fallen in a forest and only cats were there to hear it, it has still fallen and it is still a tree. A star has exploded and we are his stardust. We are matter. We are the luckiest matter to have lived on planet earth so far, in that we know enough about the fundamental building blocks of nature to understand that we are only thinking matter.
Quoting TheArchitectOfTheGods
What Heidegger meant was that it is meaningless to talk about the existence of objects outside of any account of an object.
'Matter' and 'energy' are not just neutral facts about what is out there. They are human constructs. Their modern empirical versions were invented somewhere between Galileo and Newton. Both matter and energy presuppose the idea of a self-identical force or thing. They also presuppose self-persistence over time and certain categorical notions of causality, space and time. These are pragmatic abstractions that are useful in modelling and interacting with the world , but as Kant argued, they require certain categories of thought in order to make sense. Heidegger was trying to reve3al the basis of those categories.
There is no such thing as a specific object like a stone outside of an account of a stone.
Quoting TheArchitectOfTheGods
There's a lot I need to clarify in this. First of all, have you read Kant? Einstein certainly had, and admired and identified with his philosophy. This makes sense, given that relativity implies a subjectivism , the recognition that our accounts of nature are relative to the way we frame our theories.
This thinking , in both Einstein and Kant, is consistent with a philosophy of science that Popper delineated in terms of falsificationism, the idea that we can never exhaustively prove a theory, but we can asymptotically approach scientific truth through trial and error, and endless falsification of prior theories. Falisficationism, Kant and Einstein's approaches all imply a correspondence theory of truth, the idea that our theories are intended to mirror or represent an independent reality that we approximate more and more closely with our models.
It wasn't Heidegger, but Hegel and those in Hegel's wake (Kierkegaard, Marx, American pragmatism, analyst philosophers like Quine and Putnam, who first critiqued the correspondence theory of truth and falisficationism. Their patron saint in terms of philosophy of science was Thomas Kuhn, who rejected Popper's falsificationism in favor of the idea that science creates paradigms which are overturned. It is not a linear march of truth but a revolutionary shift from one worldview to another. Science doesn't represent an independent world, it enacts a world. Knowledge is not representation but transformative interaction,and this implies an indissociable interaction between subject and object.
I'm guessing in embracing einstein you're defending Kant against everything that's come after. Heidegger is just a straw man. It's the entire history of philosophy as well as science that critiques Kant from a post-Hegelian stance that you're attacking.
Anything else is, in my opinion, hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo. Let me elaborate on this statement, by giving some very simple example:
We have geological and fossil records that show that earth existed long before Kant, Popper and Kuhn started thinking about it. So therefore this was a reality outside the human mind, which was very real to the pre-human lifeforms that inhabited it. We have proof of this in the form of broken bones, which resulted from e.g. two dinosaurs fighting or an early mammal breaking his bones falling off a cliff. So the stone that it fell against, was real. Yet you say:
Quoting Joshs
What I maintain is that the stone has existed, since a couple of billion years ago, and it impacted an organism some million years ago. And one dinosaur impacted the other, regardless of whether years later a human lifeform evolved that had a high enough degree of consciousness to start deducting the events of the past. Moreover, these 'simple science' examples are so close to absolute truths, that the falsification probability is in the parts per trillion range.
You go on to say:
Quoting Joshs
In my opinion the more simple approach would be that our human brain has no impact on reality whatsoever, apart from the technology we created, some of which is polluting and transforming the ecosystem of our planet.
This of course leaves specifically open the possibility that a technology had evolved in the past which has created the reality we are living in, including the brains that we are using to analyze it. But then again the knowledge we can come to with our human brains is not a transformative interaction, it is mere attempt at description.
Quoting TheArchitectOfTheGods
Heidegger is differentiating between various kinds of Beings here: existence-being, living-being and finally non-living, non-having-existence-being. Being means something that differentiates, it doesn't mean something common abstract being-ness.
Stone is being too. It is being/entity within-the-world (innerweltliches Seiende). Some human existence moves in the world among beings and can discover there a being like "stone". There is something on which existence "hits" itself on its way or path (path as a horizon, perspective). This something is first "something" and depending on how existence becomes related to this something it can be disclosed in various ways. It can just be named as a "stone". So, there is some x "out" there as being within-the-world, now existence comes across this x which becomes "something" *. Here this something is on the verge of becoming something "in-the-world" (of some particular existence). When it is named as a "stone" and this "stone" has significance for existence it is "in-the-world". When I forget the name of that stone it is "merely" "something", and when I lose the (concerned) sight of it or interest in it, it is no more there (in the world, in this situation). It "is" presently nothing but can appear anew (in this sense it is still there).
* However, existence can come across this something only if it somehow fits or suits to (has something to do with the) something which existence already was/will be/is concerned with (horizon is laden with interests). It can also "fit" "negatively" i.e. "be in the way", for example: "that something, oh, it is a stone, is in the way so that I can't accomplish this". Here being is in-the-world as something "disturbing", "not actually belonging there". Or being fits positively, is appropriate: "t h a t s t o n e over there fits to this project that I am trying to accomplish". However, afterwards it can be discovered not suitable for the project: "this stone is too heavy, I can't lift it (= it doesn't after all fit to my project)". Here this stone in a way disappears, it is no more "in-the-world", it is "merely" something recognizable as familiar/disposable in some other situation (which so to speak activates this being).
the difficulty that arises from this is that if our only access to the being of the stone is through Dasein's being-in-the-world, then what would it even mean to talk about the being of the stone as world-less? It would seem to presuppose what would be incoherent beginning from the being-in-the-world of Dasein. This was Derida's issue with Heidegger's formulation of the being of a stone, as well as the being of the animal as 'poor in world'.
It's not a question of whether there was reality outside of human understanding and activity, but of what in the earth this means? What is the practical significance of making a claim that rocks existed before there were humans to name them? The question is what we are doing when we name a rock, when we construct a theory about what a rock is. Names of things, and their associated attributes and functions, are only useful and meaningful to us to the extent that the allow us to do things with objects, to manipulate and build things with them, to predict their behavior. That's what a theory is. It exists for us to do things with our world.
To say there was something there in the world before human came along and constructed theories and categories about the things in the world is one thing, but to talk specifically about objects in terms of their attributes and practical features is to refer to how a scientific, technological and social culture of a particular time makes use of those things. The way we understand objects that we theorize about acts as a kind of blueprint, an instruction manual for interacting with that object, for using it in certain ways, Over time our scientific concepts for the objects in our universe change, and with them our blueprints and instruction manuals for manipulating and interacting with those objects.The reason that we can say that the universe is real is because it provides specific opportunities and constraints that allow us to construct more complex models and blueprints of interaction. We can't just invent any old account and have it work for us, and this is what makes the universe 'real', instead of an arbitrary human invention. But the universe is also a continual, unfolding development taking place on the dimension of time. Humans are participants in this unfolding and thus our constructions of the world are in themselves a further development of it, rather than just a 'copy' of a static set of facts.
If we place a man from 30,000 years ago in front of a bus, how will that person's eyes track the vehicle? It depends on many things. Will they see it as a single thing or a collection of parts? And what is the significance of these parts for them? Are they seeing the same bus as we are? What about it is the same? We could say their ability to avoid bumping into it maybe, but that will depend on their assessment of what it is made of and whether it is a mirage. Is a series of lines and curves scrawled in the sand a group of letters that form words or is it random patterns? It depends on many things, including what languages we are familiar with and our vocabulary. What is the 'object' or 'same object' that we all can agree on here? And what would it even mean to ask such a question apart from the intentions , background knowledge an context of each person encountering such a situation?
. An object is the result of a particular active engagement between person and world based on a interrelational framework of intentional directionality, personal history and knowledge, context, culture, for the sake of ongoing purposes. Object means nothing outside of how it relates to our goals.
The problem with associating the real with time-bound human concepts of it is illustrated in this
piece by Nelson Goodman:
"To be objective, one would have to have some set of mind-independent objects to be
designated by language or known by science. But can we find any such objects?
A point in space seems to be perfectly objective. But how are we to define the points of our everyday world? Points can be taken either as primitive elements, as intersecting lines, as certain triples of intersecting planes, or as certain classes of nesting volumes. These definitions are equally adequate, and yet they are incompatible: what a point is will vary with each form of description. For example, only in the first "version," to use Goodman's term, will a point be a primitive element. The objectivist, however, demands, "What are points really?" Goodman's response to this demand is worth quoting at length: If the composition of points out of lines or of lines out of points is conventional rather than factual, points and lines themselves are no less so. ... If we say that our sample space is a combination of points, or of lines, or of regions, or a combination of combinations of points, or lines, or regions, or
a combination of all these together, or is a single lump, then since none is identical with any of the rest, we are giving one among countless alternative conflicting descriptions of what the space is.
And so we may regard the disagreements as not about the facts but as due to differences in the conventions-adopted in organizing or describing the space. What, then, is the neutral fact or thing described in these different terms? Neither the space (a) as an undivided whole nor (b) as a combination of everything involved in the several accounts; for (a) and (b) are but two among the various ways of organizing it. But what is it that is so organized? When we strip off as layers of convention all differences among ways of describing it, what is left? The onion is peeled down to its empty core."
I initially thought that the "inner" (innerweltliches Seiende) means cartesian space but it seems that these beings within-the-world or innerworldly beings (Stambaugh translation) are already in the heideggerian space of worldliness. Innerworldly beings are not real or reified beings which has to be taken from cartesian "in" to heideggerian "in". Innerworldly being is an original way of being for the things. And this being can become a tool-being (zuhandenheit) when brought together with dasein/existence. Or it can become a present-at-hand-being when observed and thought theoretically. Or it can simply remain a innerwordly being? Something not used or observed.
Innerworldly being exists for an individual Dasein out of a totality of relevance.
I don't think there can be any innerworldly being that is not part of a totality of relevance of useful things, or itself a present to hand being(which is also a derived mode of relevant taking care of something). Without a relation of heedful circumspective care, no being can disclose itself as a being to Dasein.
"Strictly speaking, there "is" no such thing as a useful thing. There always belongs to the being of a useful thing a totality of useful things in which this useful thing can be what it is. In accordance with their character of being usable material, useful things always are in terms of their belonging to other useful things: writing materials, pen, ink, paper, desk blotter, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. These "things" never show themselves initially by themselves, in order then to fill out a room as a sum of real things. A totality of useful things is always already discovered BEFORE the individual useful thing." Being and Time
I must disagree here i.e. I would interpret this differently because I think that Heideger is here only "reasoning" (through his phenomenological description) against the view which conceives the innerworldly being as the object-thing, that is, he is not reasoning against the possibility of the innerworldly being as such, before there is made a distinction between the tool-being and object-being.
I think that there is already in B&T references to experiences that are neither practical nor theoretical. These experiences presuppose a relation to beings which is not dominated by tool-being or theoretical-presence-being. There are experiences which are not led by practical-relevance-being. For example, historically or traditionally inherited "cultural "objects which simply are there and and are part of some cultural-historical landscape. Their presence is simply or primarily "felt" (in Befindlichkeit) as part of "my world" or the relation to them is "aesthetic" where they are described or expressed in their innerworldly being. The same can be said of the natural landscape: mountains etc. i.e "Nature" has here its worldliness not in the practical or theoretical world. Something can be practically relevant in a negative sense: "I can't do anything with that". I encounter something here as not to be assimilated to this practical nexus. A being shows itself there as u s e l e s s *. It is there as something not to be mastered in the practical world. It stands there as an innerworldly being without practical-technical significance. It persists (at least for the time being) "open" as "something" (without any determinations or involvements). In practical understanding it can remain or can be sustained as something yet to be mastered and used (in some other situation in the future).
* Here belong all the negative significances, for example "hindrance", for the practical concern, and which make room for the positive significances for other kinds of relations: for the generalizing ("hindrance" is a generalization) theoretical relation and for other relations. There has been encountered something that can't be handled practically inside the current relevance-relations and it becomes free for other ways of accessing it.
I would say that the practical significance in this is, that regardless of human consciousness and ability to philosophize, reality exists with or without us. We do not know what this reality is on the subatomic level. But we know that matter exists. This might sound trivial but is fundamental to the question of Being. The rock is. The universe is. They exist as concepts in our minds, but they also exist independent of our minds.
Now there can be different categories of being and degrees of interaction and relevancy between the different beings, for all of which Heidegger has coined different terms in an attempt to systematically structure these relations.
But when we take a deep breath and a step back from all the Seiendes, In-der-Welt-Seins and Zuhandenheiten, would we then not be able to divide the totality of all Being into:
I Being that was not created by humans:
1. Sub-atomic of which we know very little and where parallel states/realities seem to be possible to exist.
2. Atomic-> physical and chemical natural states and processes. They can be described well by conventional science and there are laws to be observed here which are seemingly universal
3. Biological. These are complex chemical processes which result in a self-perpetuating system with no fixed end
4. Biological with consciousness. Again we know very little about consciousness, but Heidegger knew even less and was trying to expand on the idea of phenomenology used to describe different states of mind/consciousness using his own categories. The status of current neurological research is that consciousness results out of the neural network that is our brain and can have different grades of complexity corresponding to the complexity of the network. At some degree of comlexity of the network there is a threshold to simple consciousness, then medium and advanced consciousness
II Being that can only result from consciousness:
5. Representational beings (Images). ie describing or conceptualizing about things that exist in the real word, eg our image of a flower or stone, when we talk about it
6. Phantastical beings and concepts like 'Mickey Mouse' or 'Nation' ie beings that are not existing in the real world outside of human brains and conventions
7. Man-made physical objects like houses that come to be part of the real world and some of which will still be there when no more human brains exist. They will then exist in the universe, even though there might be no more complex enough consciousness around to assign meaning and function to them
8. Virtual beings and simulations. They are created by humans, like phantastical beings, but they are able to make own decisions such as simple or complex computer programs, and are able to perpetuate themselves with no fixed end
And now comes the most fun part in all philosophy, whether this last point 8 is the only feasible answer to point 1 where it all could only have started? We do not know (yet).
Lastly let it be said that I like this forum full of intelligent people, and appreciate all answers I have received so far.
You seem to be thinking of what you refer to as 'innerworldly being as such', that which you say is not yet 'object-thing', as present-to-hand. Yet you don't seem to realize that's what you are doing. What do you understand the 'present to hand' to mean for Heidegger? In my understanding the present to hand is precisely that which you describe as an innerworldy experience that is , as you say, "not led by practical-relevance-being", "inherited "cultural "objects which simply are there" . You say "their presence is simply or primarily "felt" (in Befindlichkeit) as part of "my world"". As I pointed out, Befindlichkeit is equiprimordial with Care. Thus , any thing which is 'primarily felt' is also at the same time primarily experienced through the Care structure of heedfully circumspective handiness, and relational significance, Your understanding of innerworldly experience supposedly outside of 'practical handiness' jibes perfectly with Heidegger's definition of the present to hand as an experience which exists in and of itself outside of my relating to it in circumspective relevance.
Quoting waarala
On the contrary, Heideger says 'Nature' is a present to hand concept derived from our heedful relating to the world in handiness.
""Nature" is also discovered in the use of useful things, "nature" in the light of
products of nature. But nature must not be understood here as what is merely objectively present, nor as the power of nature. The forest is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock, the river is water power, the wind is wind "in the sails." As the "surrounding world" is discovered, "nature" thus discovered is encountered along with it. We can abstract from nature's kind of being as handiness; we can discover and define it in its pure objective presence. But in this kind of discovery of nature, nature
as what "stirs and strives," what overcomes us, entrances us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow, the river's "source" ascertained by the geographer is not the "source in the ground." Along with the public world, the surrounding world of nature is discovered and accessible to everyone. In taking care of things, nature is discovered as having some definite direction on paths, streets, bridges, and buildings."
Our absorption in taking care of things in the work world nearest to us has the function of discovering; depending upon the way we are absorbed, innerworldly beings that are brought along together with their constitutive references are discoverable in varying degrees of explicitness and with a varying attentive penetration. 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. "
Quoting waarala.
Heidegger discusses cultural artifacts in the context of an an authentically temporal understanding of historiography. Objects in a museum aren't simply 'there' as representatives of a past history. This would not only be taking these objects as present to hand, but understanding them via a vulgar concept of time as itself present to hand. Present to hand thinking of time fails to understand that when we experience something from an earlier point in history, we carry that history forward and transform it by redetermining its meaning via our future-directed interests and involvements. So the cultural object from the past is never simply there for us outside of the care structure of heedful significance.This is the only landscape that gives it meaning and through which it emerges for us as a being.
Quoting waarala
That which is not to be asimllated to a practical nexus belongs to that nexus via its unusabilty, Its very meaning as unusable is made possible and framed via that nexus of relevance. The object's uselessness is always in connection to the context of our current dealings. We never measure a thing with respect to "THE practical world" in general(the idea of a world in general is a present to hand concept. The only world that exists primordially for Dasein is a world of relational relevance)). It is always THIS specific context of heedfully relevant dealings. My discovery of the uselessness of something is always in relation to THIS specific context, which specifically defines the meaning of its lack of usefulness for me. Quoting waarala
No, it stands there conspicuously in its significance for me in relation to my context of activity as something not useful. Handiness isn't the same thing as 'practical' if by practical you mean the narrow sense of the tools I am using right now. Handiness, relevance, Care, heedful circumspection are about a relational totality of meaningfulness in a situation in which I am involved in my world. Things that break, that I cant use in a specific practical context, things that are missing , these are all part of the totality or meaningful relevance of that context, and thus all belong to handiness.
Quoting waarala
That which can't be handled practically inside the current relevance-relations derives its very meaning and significance via that current totality of relevance. It belongs through and through to the handiness structure of that situation.
Heidegger talks about objects that are 'practically relevant in a negative sense' in the guise of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness and obstinacy.
"Modes of taking care belong to the everydayness of being-in-the-world, modes which let the beings taken care of be encountered in such a way that the worldly quality of innerworldly beings appears. Beings nearest at hand can be met up with in taking care of things as unusable, as improperly adapted for their specific use. Tools tum out to be damaged, their material unsuitable. In any case, a useful thing of some sort is at hand here. But we discover the unusability not by looking and ascertaining properties, but rather by paying attention to the associations in which we use it. When we discover its unusability, the thing becomes conspicuous. This objective presence of what is unusable still does not lack all handiness whatsoever; the useful thing the objectively present is still not a thing which just occurs somewhere. The modes of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy have the function of bringing to the fore the character of objective presence in what is at hand. What is at hand is not thereby observed and stared at simply as something objectively present. The character of objective presence making itself known is still bound to the handiness of useful things Privative expressions such as inconspicuousness, unobtrusiveness, and obstinacy tell of a positive phenomenal character of the being of what is initially at hand. These negative prefixes express the character of keeping to itself of what is at hand."
Thank you for the profound criticism. I can comment it followingly:
I came to this view about the innerworldy being while I was recently reading H's early lectures where he speaks about "something" (Etwas) which is not yet in-the-world. Heidegger stresses that this something should be seen "formally" not "generally". If it is seen generally it is something theoretical, that is, it is an object. It is not clear to me what H. means by this distinction. He refers to Husserl who has made this distinction. So, I saw the innerworldly being as something not yet generalized, that is, it is not present-at-hand. It is actually nothing! I think the innerworldly being or its "conceptual status" is what H. in his early lecturecs called "formal indication" (formal Anzeige). I think that all this has to do with the phenomenological reasoning where one tries to avoid any not-reflected mechanical generalizations and subsumptions. Difficult problems are involved here.
I think you are intermingling too much the (practical) concern (Besorgen) with the more "general", that is, more original care (Sorge). There can be concern only because there is care but it is not necessary that care will "realize" itself primarily as concern (Besorgen). Dasein's being is Sorge, not Besorgen. Also, I think there can be Care ("basic interest") which cares that something is n o t done or used! There can be Care that is concerned to keep something not to be encountered as a tool or device (Zeug) (Could this be possible??). Something encountered as handiness presupposes (or i s) such a understanding (Seinsverständnis) and project (Entwurf) which constitutes such a worldliness where everything has a very specific significance as they are constituting some Work (Werk) to be accomplished. This actually resembles something thoroughly rational and calculated! Everything has its pre-determined place in the teleological system. However, I guess that for Heidegger this functioning system of the worldhood is some specific traditional way of life (possibly stiffen into forms). (Or it is something happening or proceeding immanently here and now and which some "external" telos is not transcending and systematizing) (Or: I am somewhere here confusing ontological and ontical or existential and existentiell.). Heidegger is analysing and describing something which is more like an existence in a culture than a system. Heidegger is aiming at something "organic" and not mechanic. (Heidegger is actually trying to overcome all dualistic oppositions (which has become phrases) which means that in B&T there is presented the sense nexus or ground from which in the first place can arise, which makes possible, the opposition between organic and mechanic. Same applies to opposition practical/theoretical). Heidegger was very close to the "life philosophy" (Lebensphilosphie; Dilthey, Bergson,Simmel) in his early years. This can be seen from his early lectures (which are highly recommended reading. Heidegger's basic motivations and tendencies become much more understandable when one reads these early lectures).
If there is already some thing for Dasein, then there is besorgen. A 'thing' is that which is disclosed for Dasein as a definite possibility, which always takes the form of the handiness of 'taking care' or 'concern'.
I should mention I use the Stambaugh translation of Being and Time: "The trio of words Sorge, Besorgen, and Filrsorge is rendered as "care," "taking care," and "concern," respectively."
It's important to understand first of all that primordial Care for Heidegger, as well as taking care and concern, have nothing to do with ontical sentiments like having a good feeling about someone. One could despise someone and that would still represent for Heidegger a relation of Care and concern for. These terms for Heidegger, like primordial attunement, understanding and temporality, tel us that, as Dasein , each of us are always already in the world of involvement with others. There is no isolated subjectivity for Heidegger that then encounters others. It also seems that you are understanding handiness and 'taking care' in terms of a narrow thinking about praxis, tools , accomplishment and work. It's true Heidegger uses many examples of tool-use and the work environment to illustrate the concept of handiness, but heedfully circumspective concernful involvement for Heidegger is a much broader and more profound dynamic that of workplace mechanics Quoting waarala.
This is very far from what Heidegger has in mind with handiness. There need be no specific work that has to be accomplished, no specific tools being used at all , for handiness and taking care to apply. Handiness is not about the rational, the calculable, the teleological. All of these belong to the theoretical modality of the present to hand, which is a derivative mode of taking care of. Reality, the rational, the calculative, the theoretical lose sight of their origin and basis in heedful circumspective involvement in the world.Heidegger explains rationality and object are based in propositional subject-predicate statements "Like interpretation in general, the statement necessarily has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. But how does the statement become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it?" Heidegger says predication points something out in a way that we sheerly look at it. By transforming the circumspective 'something "as" something' into 'this subject "as" this object', the 'as' is forced back to the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It "dwindles to the structure of just letting what is objectively present be seen by way of determination."When we just stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more." Heidegger recognizes the theoretical as an impoverished, 'cut-off' modification of understanding. Ontologically, it originates from and never departs from heedful circumspective relationality.
The distinction between primordial Sorgen and inauthentic Besorgen for Heidegger is a subtle one, but I think the essence of Care and taking care is not 'doing' as manipulating objects, but meaning, intentionality, experiencing as self-transformative(thinking is also doing), the way the world makes sense to us in new ways from moment to moment. A 'thing' is a way in which I am transformed by the world. For Heidegger there is a 'glue' that binds my present to my having been(my past) and my future as a single, unitary stretching along. It makes all my experience anticipatory and future oriented. It make me ahead of myself in just being myself. In experiencing moment to moment I carry forward and articulate forward my past. But in articulating myself I also transform myself. That is why for Heidegger care is fundamentally uncanniness. You are right that Care is more general than taking care of. Taking care is Care that has been directed toward definite factical possibilities, whereas Care can also imply indefinite possibilities as well. But this doens't make taking care more 'practical', just a more definite mode of relevant being-in-order-to. That which has no relevance for Dasein does not exist for it.
"Since being-in-the-world is essentially care, being-together-with things at hand could be taken in our previous analyses as taking care of them, being with the Mitda-sein of others encountered within the world as concern. Being-together-with is taking care of things, because as a mode of being-in it is determined by its fundamental structure, care. As a primordial structural totality, care lies "before" every factical "attitude" and "position" of Da-sein, that is, it is always already in them as an existential a priori. Thus this phenomenon by no means expresses a priority of "practical" over theoretical behavior. When we determine something objectively present by merely looking at it, this has the character of care just as much as a "political action," or resting and having a good time. "Theory" and "praxis" are possibilities of being for a being whose being must be defined as care."
Care is Being-in-the-World."The multiplicity of these kinds of being-in can be indicated by the following examples: to have to do with something, to produce, order and take care of something, to use something, to give something up and let it get lost, to undertake, to accomplish, to find out, to ask about, to observe, to speak about, to determine . . . . These ways of being-in have the kind of being of taking care of which we shall characterize in greater detail. The deficient modes of omitting, neglecting, renouncing, resting, are also ways of taking care of something, in which the possibilities of taking care are kept to a "bare minimum." We do not choose the term "taking care" because Da-sein is initially economical and "practical" to a large extent, but because the being of Da-sein itself is to be made visible as care.
Again, this expression is to be understood as an ontological structure concept . The expression has nothing to do with "distress," "melancholy," or "the cares of life" which can be found ontically in every Da-sein. These-like their opposites, " carefreeness " and " gaiety"-are ontically possible only because Dasein, ontologically understood, is care. Because being-in-the-world belongs essentially to Da-sein, its being toward the world is essentially taking care. According to what we have said, being-in is not a "quality" which Da-sein sometimes has and sometimes does not have, without which it could be just as well as it could with it. It is not the case that human being "is," and then on top of that has a relation of being to the "world" which it sometimes takes upon itself. Da-sein is never "initially" a sort of a being which is free from being-in, but which at times is in the mood to take up a "relation" to the world. This taking up of relations to the world is possible only because, as being-in-the-world, Da-sein is as it is."
This structure of being of the essential "being concerned about" we formulate as the being-ahead-of-itself of Da-sein. Being ahead-of-itself means being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-in-a-world. As soon as this essentially unitary structure is seen phenomenally, what we worked out earlier in the analysis of worldliness also becomes clearer. There we found that the referential totality of significance (which is constitutive for worldliness) is "anchored" in a for-the-sake-ot-which. The fact that this referential totality, of the manifold relations of the in-order-to, is bound up with that which Da-sein is concerned about, does not signify that an objectively present "world" of objects is welded together with a subject. Rather, it is the phenomenal expression of the fact that the constitution of Da-sein, whose
wholeness is now delineated explicitly as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being- in . . . is primordially a whole. Expressed differently: existing is always factical. In being-ahead-of-oneself-already-being-in-the-world, entangled being-together-with innerworldly things at hand taken care of lies essentially included."
This is very true. There is something "formal" or a formal aspect in these terms which means that they transcend all actual "empirical" facticities. They give the basic sense to these empirical particularities so that they can appear (again: this relates to Heidegger's interpretation of phenomenology.)
It is surprising how little Heidegger actually elaborates these terms (there is an interesting chapter in B&T where H. distinguishes Care from the concepts like will or instinct). You just have to "reconstruct" their meaning from the whole in which they are embedded. You carry the term along in your mind during the reading process and the context fulfils continually its meaning. The term is operative in many places but the whole point is that it can't be abstracted or separated and idealized as an independent concept.
Care (Sorge) could be a reflective dimension "over" the more practical concern (Besorgen). The practical Besorgen is doing concretely this and that in order to attain concretely this and that. Care "thinks" this "in order to" in terms of more far-reaching meaning. I think Care and Concern are different levels of motivations. Extremely simplified: I am reaching for an hammer in order to nail this piece of wood onto that thing (= the level of taking care of). Or: I am reaching for an hammer in order to survive in this life (or: in order to that I'll comply with certain style or way of life which requires me to do so) (= the level of Care). Care thinks (or states) the basic and first "um willen" or "for the sake of which". It can ask: What it ultimately means to me that I am doing this here and now? In what am I actually/truly "absorbed"? Care is the basic "meaning of life", in a certain dynamic sense. The inauthentic life has completely lost sight of this overall view which guides one's life. Which gives the basic sense to all significances.
Quoting Joshs
This is an important point in B&T. The statement isn't any more adequate or appropriate, it doesn't any more correspond to the original situation. It is already the form of the statement which "twists", that is, deforms and distorts the original sense into certain direction. And then arises the problem of truth as a correspondance: how this situation corresponds to this statement?
Yes, I think Heidegger's distinguishing between an authentic and an inauthentic mode of Dasein made it necessary for him to identify an inauthentic modification of Care, which led him to Besorgen.
The authentic and the authentic have a peculiar relationship. On the one hand, one might be tempted to see the former as 'better', more true, than the latter given the way Heidegger talks about the inauthentic in terms of average everydayness and the normativity of das man. But he reminds us throughout the book that this is not his intention: "The inauthenticity of Dasein does not signify a "lesser" being or a "lower" degree of being. Rather, inauthenticity can determine Da-sein even in its fullest concretion, when it is busy, excited, interested, and capable of pleasure." "Not-being-its-self functions as a positive possibility of beings which are absorbed in a world, essentially taking care of that world. Thus neither must the entanglement of Da-sein be interpreted as a "fall" from a purer and higher "primordial condition." Heidegger also cautions that the authentic is not more 'general' that the inauthentic in the sense of an overview. "Da-sein can fall prey only because it is concerned with understanding, attuned being-in-the-world. On the other hand, authentic existence is nothing which hovers over entangled everydayness, but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness."
I understand the distinction in two ways. First, in falling prey to and losing oneself in everyday inauthentic existence, one forgets the 'mineness' of what it is that Dasein is caught up with in its particular factical engagements with its world. In inauthentic existence one thinks of oneself in general, normative terms. We convince ourselves that we all understand language the same way, that we are experiencing the same world. In this way, Dasein cuts itself off from itself(Itself not being a thing or subjectivity, but a certain ongoing integrity and intimacy of relational self-transformation). That is, what individualizes meaning for each of us is suppressed and distorted in favor of the average. The 'mineness' of Dasein means not only that we belong to ourselves moment to moment, in a radically integral way, but that experience belongs to us and to itself moment to moment in this radically integral way. By contrast, the movement of unauthentic experience is fragmented, trivial, ambiguous since the 'mineness' that ties one experience to the next is forgotten and suppressed.
But that ongoing 'sameness' of authentic mineness is not to be understood as a subject persisting outside of its experiences.
"The sameness of the authentically existing self is separated ontologically by a gap from the identity of the I maintaining itself in the multiplicity of its "experiences ."
Maybe one can think of the distinction this way. In being-in-the world, one can focus on one of two poles. The inauthentic pole would be focusing on the pull of the matters of engagement that grab our attention. We fall prey to them and are held hostage to them.The authentic pole is the way in which whatever we encounter in the world is fore-closed and projected by Dasein. What appears to us never comes at us from nowhere but is framed and has its relevance within the context of our ongoing engagements.
Second, and this goes to your point about the authentic as a more far-reaching meaning, in inauthenticity we orient our motivation around the particular ways in which the world affects us. We frantically chase after new experience. Novelty becomes an addiction. In authenticity, at the same time that we recognize the integrity of unfolding of meaning for Dasein in its being-in-the-world, the individual experiences become insignificant as we become directed toward Dasein's ownmost possibilities of being. One could look at this transition from inauthentically being caught up in beings to authentically being directed toward beings as a whole as a move toward generality or , as you say a more 'far-reaching' horizon.
I see it as Dasein's wresting itself free of setting its future-oriented expectations based on the meaning relevance of the particular something it is caught up in. In wresting itself free, it hasn't abandoned the world, but can now see more clearly each moment of investment of dasein in meaningful relationality is at the same time an investment IN and an investment BEYOND each particular. Authenticity sees this complete 'in' and 'beyond' that each encounter with the world implies. So one could argue that authentic understanding is more practical than inauthentic in a fundamental sense. Heidegger shows how in all sorts of situations, including experiences of fear as well as conversation, authentic understanding doesn't take us away from the task in front of us by generalizing or abstracting from it. On the contrary, it allows us to penetrate beneath the distortions, illusions, fragmentation and closed-offness that falling prey to particulars of the world implies, in order to act more purposefully and understandingly with regard to whatever we are involved in. We see our engagement as stretched along via our temporality. "Only because Da-sein in general IS as I AM-having-been, can it come futurally toward itself in such a way that it comes-back." Thus, "Having been arises from the future".
What the "modification" does mean here? I put the "over" inside the scare quotes to allude that "authenticity", what ever it is, is not leaving, it can't leave the immanency of the current (common) world. Authenticity is only alluding to something different with regard to "inauthentic absorption", in which it itself in a sense remains entangled? However, all this should mean that authenticity can't entirely remain an inner experience? Authenticity must somehow realize itself in(to) the world.(Hopefully adverbs are in the right places. I am obviously not a native English speaker.)
Authentic existence could be something which "exists" more originally some motives and tendencies that are operative in the current activity. It tries to renew/restore/refresh something which here and now has become a phrase. Inauthentic living doesn't "see" any more the motives and tendencies which are currently guiding the activity. It "mechanically" repeats itself here and now and seemingly forever. There is no more any constant seeking after truth and its maintenance in dis-closedness. Some (in this context) sense providing "sameness" or selfhood is forgotten and authentic existence tries possibly to demonstrate it anew. Inauthentic lives in phrases and formal rituals (normativities) and authentic existence tries to give these present-at-hand phrases their original meaning or new life. Heidegger seems to mean by authentic existence something similar to that what was Luther's relation to Catholicism? Or that Luther is an excellent example of one's possibly highly radical authenticity. (Authenticity is actually a highly relative concept. (Basically it questions what is here and now the most adequate in this situation from our perspective [in fact, this kind of questioning transcends actual here and now] .) Lutheranism or Christianity in general can be considered from some other, i.e. "outsider's", perspective something completely phony or fake. Which doesn't rule out the possibility that they are right i.e. these are, as currently practised, indeed something fake and inauthentic. However, what Heidegger here has in his mind is Luther's certain attitude (to restore the original relations between beings or Sinnzusammenhang) in certain historical situation than any particular dogmas as such.)
(The fact that Heidegger to some extent identified himself with Luther would explain his few otherwise inexplicable anti-Semitic comments. It is almost as if he regarded himself as the reformator of philosophy.)
The sense of "reality" itself has a long, checkered history which he discusses in Being and Time.
One thing Heidegger wants to get "beyond" is the subject/object divide, which goes back at least to Descartes' division of the world into the res cogitans (thinking substance, mind) and res extensa (extended substance, objects in space) -- the famous mind/body dualism.
It may seem frustrating, but Heidegger doesn't define "being" at all -- rather he discusses how it has been interpreted throughout Westery history from the Greeks onward. The Greeks, he claims, privileged one aspect of time when interpreting being: the present. Furthermore, time itself (which we, as "caring" beings, embody as "temporality") is also interpreted as a kind of present-at-hand being, a sequence of now-points, since Aristotle.
So to answer you question: he sees being "in general" and human being as interconnected, but mainly focuses on the latter: the temporal "there" (dasein) which understands and interprets being. Hence his "analytic of dasein" as being-in-world, care, and temporality.
Hope that helps.
Can you give me the source of this please?
Do you really think Heidegger wasn't aware of time dilation -- that this managed to escape him somehow? Come on. I think it's far more likely you're misunderstanding -- which is in fact the case.
Heidegger never says time dilation isn't a reality. He doesn't make a claim that physics is "wrong" because it assumes a certain conception of time as "now-points." He is simply saying that experiential time (temporality) is different from the time of physics (measured time, based on a conception of "time" as a sequence of now-points). This seems obvious from the quotations above.
Time dilation does, in fact, demonstrate that the measurement of time is conditioned by factors like speed and distance.
You're neither, actually.
I believe Heidegger is concerned with something more basic than the physicist is concerned with, and phenomenologically demonstrating that that is the case, but not necessarily ultimate to reality. He seems to be concerned with what it means to be human, and he is suggesting that it is taking a stance on what we are and why that occurs. To do these, he is making sense of our continued sense-making activity. However, in doing so, I believe he is saying something very radical about the primacy of coping and meaning over any type of reflection about the world we are capable of conjuring in analysis, whether scientific or philosophic. In this sense, he seems to be more in alignment with an information theorist and than a theoretical physicist.
This is "Man is the Measure" in modern garb. Problem is that all the findings of science over the past several centuries from astronomy, geology, paleontology to biology are Copernican revolutions away from humans being at the center of the cosmos, deciding what is and what isn't. Rather, humans are just another animal among a tree of life extending back several billion years on this one little planet in a vast cosmos of planets and stars and all sorts of wonderful things. We evolved, our planet and star formed from a dust cloud out of a previous supernova, and there was a Big Bang, or so science tells us.
Relativity is just as objective as Newtonian physics, but because the speed of light is a constant (which is an objective measure), space, time and mass become relative measures between frames of reference, which are objectively determined. Relativity is also about gravity and spacetime, both objective measures, but spacetime is a field whose geometry is shaped by gravity.