Hey Veeky Forums, STEM fag here. Don't misjudge me, I've read plenty of books, currently reading Bolaño's 2666.
The thing is I took this course at uni called: "Being and Time: Around the philosophical work of Martin Heidegger" and I've never read philosophy, let alone Heidegger.
I just wanted to know, how FUCKED am I? Is Heidegger hard to read? Should I just drop the course? Or any recommendations on something to read as preparation? His Wikipedia page probably isn't enough, is it?
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A japanese hosso monk and zen master was teaching a class on Lao Ze, known riddler
”Before the class begins, you must adopt a meditation stance and reverence Lao Ze and accept that he was the most enlightened being the world has ever known, even greater than Heraclitus!”
At this moment, a brave, phenomenologist, continental German philosopher who had published over 1500 papers on hermeneutics and understood the necessity of an ontological characterization of human beings and fully supported all deconstruction of metaphysical thinking stood up and held up a rock.
”Does this rock have buddha nature?”
The arrogant professor smirked and smugly replied “mu, you stupid Westerner”
”Wrong. An existential analysis of the rock reveals that it has no language and therefore it is not opened to the disclosure of Being. If it was neither Dasein or not Dasein and its ontological nature, as you say, was indeterminate… then its rock-Being should be a concern to it!”
The monk was visibly shaken, and dropped his bonsai and copy of Tao te Ching. He stormed out of the room reciting those obsolete buddhist sutras. The same sutras buddhists recite for the “souls of the deceased” when they jealously try to devalue responsibility over their finitude from the deserving authentic Daseins. There is no doubt that at this point our monk, Gautama Bodhidarma, wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than an inauthentic onto theological thinker. He wished so much that he had a non metaphysical characterization of truth to reconstruct his ontology over a groundless ground, but he himself had petitioned against it!
The students applauded and all registered with the university of Freiburg that day and accepted Nietzsche as the last and greatest western crypto metaphysician. An eagle named “Ereigenis” flew into the room and perched atop an ancient oak and shed a tear on the now standing reserve of timber. The Ister was read several times, and Being itself showed up and spread existential angst across the country.
The monk lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of the technocratic plague nihilism and was tossed into the impossibility of possibilities for eternity.
Ex nihilo omnia
p.s. It rests by changing.
Nope, you're fucked. Start with the Greeks. Presocratics to be exact. Marty fuxd with Parmenides.
Drop the course.
And based Heraclitus.
Heidegger is extremely hard to read, but it doesn't need really much background. He obviously quotes past philosophers, but never in a overly specific way. The informations in the notes and appendixes should be enough to understand those references.
When it comes to the text itself, just keep in mind that it is maybe the most misread philosophy book of the first half of the XX century. Every sentence requires lots of focus and pondering, and it is very easy to completely miss the point.
Since you don't need such a solid background to read it, it's all on you. Do you have the discipline, intelligence and focus to read and analyze a very difficult book?
If you really don't have any experience don't quit the course, it will be a great first experience guided by people who actually know what they're talking about. You may flunk it, but it will be a decent overview on what does it mean to analyze a philosophical work.
Thanks for your honest answer.
>it will be a great first experience guided by people who actually know what they're talking about
That's exactly why I took it.
I was in literally the same position as you last semester. I spent at least a few hours everyday reading commentaries and watching lectures in addition to Being and Time itself. Dreyfus' commentaries are particularly useful and I recommend. Also the youtube channel "Philosophical Overdose" has many great videos on Heidegger. I think you'll do fine if you do the work + some extra. Once you get his vocabulary down he's isn't as hard as you think. It's important to keep in mind that Heidegger's philosophy is not like a math in that once you understand the parameters of whatever you're studying you have it forever. Being is an elusive concept and brief flickers of understanding will occasionally come to you before the concept is completely obtained. Being is a concept which you really need to intuit yourself and come back to Heidegger to see what he does with it. At some point you'll probably think he's full of bullshit but he's not, stick with it.
the response you're responding to is missing a very critical element of Being and Time, which is that it is a work deeply involved with the history of philosophy. frankly, the questions that are raised within B&T need to be illuminated through a proper understanding of why heidegger is taking them up at this point. why is it that he values praxis over theory? why does the theoretical gaze not exhaust the handiness of a tool? why is the world not an assemblage? why is the environment not a reflection of my representation of it as such? these are all questions responding to specific philosophers and the problems set forth by their work. if you haven't philosophy at all you will be passing over the vast majority of these questions uncritically. there are things in heidegger that are very worthwhile for people perhaps unschooled in philosophy to read but more often than not these things end up becoming some sort of "life philosophy" rather than the critical engagement that heidegger intended B&T to become.
>If you really don't have any experience don't quit the course, it will be a great first experience guided by people who actually know what they're talking about. You may flunk it, but it will be a decent overview on what does it mean to analyze a philosophical work.
analyzing philosophical works happens within every philosophy class. take something your speed. how would you react if i told you that i wanted to jump into a theoretical physics class even though i've never taken a physics or math course? same thing, man.
this, you don't start a wide field like philosophy with someone who epitomized it. You don't read Joyce as your first novel either, doesn't help much if you're motivated
Interesting. Tell me more.
It's a modified pasta.
I know. Tell me more about what it's saying.
This is amazing
The great thing about philosophy is that you can start with anyone. You may not get the hang of everything at first, but if you skip around and come back to heidegger, some new things will emerge for you.
START WITH THE GREEKS REEEEEEEEE
In english much of the meaning is lost, you should have a German original and two or three English translations to work with. Also note, that the German language characteristics are combined words and convoluted sentences, this special structure carries meaning and it's possible to get your thoughts out in way very similar to how it occurred to you. Also note, that many words, which seem to be very theological in nature in English aren't in German. You need to know, language for Martin Heidegger is a vehicle in, which being is "concernt" with itself, so it's always with the "being", but not the "being". You need to see him as a philosopher, who sacrificed certainty and clarity in his work, in order to get as close as possible to the "being" in the "house" of language, where the "being" lives.
It's not hard on a scale of things that are actually hard. Just read slowly, look up what each section is trying to accomplish, and ask the professor questions about it.
True, nothing is really hard, if you spend enough time doing it. To fully understand a philosopher like Heidegger you need to spend years, but in order to have decent understanding of his works and the "problems"/questions he tried to solve, two times reading it and contemplating it should be enough.
Well, it'll be very hard, but not impossible if you're willing to go slowly and with some humility in the face of one of the hardest and deepest thinkers of the 20th century. I came over to Heidegger via late Wittgenstein and Plato, and he makes a good deal of sense when you start trying to work out examples or reformulate elements of his vocabulary.
A good resource for you as a STEMfag is Hubert Dreyfus's lectures on Being and Time:
archive.org
He comes at the work from a pragmatic perspective, and he'll be very helpful in laying out what phenomenology is and does as a mode of analysis. His explanations of certain elements are not definitive, and he's probably least helpful when he discusses Heidegger's "question of the meaning of Being", which he strikes me as not understanding especially well. For that, look to Thomas Sheehan, whose book, "Making Sense of Heidegger", is a marvelously clear summary of what Heidegger's overarching theme is, and some of the ways he approaches it and why.
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wat
thanks for the link sweetpea
I mean compared to engineering requirements
I fucking love this pasta.
I mean, you could do that if it were Dubliners or Portrait. What's the Dubliners of Heidegger?
You're a STEMsperg, you're fucked from the beginning. Drop the course and enroll in "how to be a stupid homoman slave" instead.
sorry, whats STEM?
sorry, whats Google?