Heidegger

who is relevant then?

>dude everyone before me didn't have the balls to talk about what does it mean "is" when some says "what IS being" lmao

B&T, page 31

Hegel is the culmination of Cartesian metaphysics. Heidegger demolishes Cartesian metaphysics.

Can someone give me a quick rundown on his philosophy?

not satisfying answer

It's fascinating.

>heidegger eats magic mushrooms in his country house
>"woooaaahh" he goes
>proceeds to write what he felt in a very technical way
>he is also a Nazi
Thats it.

too bad

no, nobody can, it's not the kind of project that can be articulated briefly because it is rooted in a complex historical context and works through a multifarious methodology that builds upon itself.

Hegel should've known better. Honestly he didn't even need Heidegger, he BTFO'd himself alone by rambling about absolute knowledge blah blah blah as if he was living in the 17th century. Great mind though, of course.

It's an effort to understand the existence of man in a proper way, that is, without claiming to "demonstrate" anything, but by laying the emphasis on some kind of description. Therefore the traditional categories of mind and body, for instance, appear to have to relevance, whereas (for instance, and it's just one example among others) being kinda surrounded by others actually helps understanding what kind of being we are.
Now after that there's the whole thing about "Being", but let's stick to a superquick rundown.

...

How long until some analytical autist gets triggered by this thread?

I tried to come up with a rundown of Dasein, the ontological difference, equipment, worldhood, das Man, etc., but it quickly got out of hand. Hubert Dreyfus is adept at making this stuff intelligible, but his commentary (Being-in-the-World) is not very quick of a rundown. Probably impossible to put it tersely, since it's such a radical reorientation of philosophy away from its traditional form.

analytic grad student here, Heidegger is legit

Becoming is demolished, and Hegel is all about the philosophy of Becoming.

google husserl's phenomenology and his concept of umwelt, dilthey's lifeworld and his concept of hermeneutics, smush them together, and then try to understand some summary of heidegger's Sorge, das Man, and finititude/temporality and you'll probably get it

heidegger is mostly read for this early part of his career, but he "turned" (kehre) away from it later on. post-kehre heidegger is kind of its own thing

really, even interpretation of B&T is split between people who care a lot about the existential stuff (sorge, das man, finitude) and people who care a lot about the hermeneutics (for which, look at gadamer, ricoeur, derrida)

>muh being

He was a Nazi so pretty good in Veeky Forums's book.

>B&T is unfinished
>a philosophical work is unfinished

really makes you think

becoming is just a step

it's a philosophy that's more about your actual life than abstract stuff

treats real realities very seriously

being and time is literally the worst philosophy i've ever read
granted, it's valid
what's surprising to me though is that he's a catholic, as being and time seems like atheist ideology to me
bro heidegger's writing is shit, so easy to read

>dude there's death at the end of life...

wow original

>he's a catholic
Was he? I always thought that he used "God" in a very secular way, at least in his philosophical works.
>heidegger's writing is shit, so easy to read
This does not make any sense

iirc he was a catholic in his early years and was heavily influenced by augustine but eventually broke off. he also had interests in scholastics such as duns scotus. i think he also reconverted into catholicism close to his death due to his catholic burial

there was a book recently published on the relation between heidegger and augustine, but i forgot the title of it

sig hile!

>I gained nothing

yeah, it's clear that you didn't even attempt to engage his thought

I said I haven't studied it. It's just a first impression.

I've not read him, but just listened to this Jonathan Bowden lecture about him the other week. He basically summarizes his thought as a way to consciously enter death.

Here's Bowden's speech, highly suggested - youtube.com/watch?v=_os-ysZJM_I

well everyone knows they're gonna die, but Heidegger is different cause he points out that it's the only absolute certainty (somehow he misses taxes hehehe) and that the certitude of that event shapes (or should shape?) our approach to "being" (which I took, when I read it, to mean how we live our lives and how we interpret what it means to be alive).

I may be really wrong, always had a very hard time understanding Heidegger, but I think that's kind of an interesting idea. It's a little "dark" (which always annoys me, when a philosopher is trying to be edgy), but he doesn't throw death in your face in a hostile way... I mean, it's certain, isn't it?

There's not a maudlinism in it, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

heidegger didn't write anything entry level.
fortunately for you there are numerous lengthy explanations of his philosophy and terminology you can read/watch/listen to.

well everyone knows they're gonna die, but Heidegger is different cause he points out that it's the only absolute certainty (somehow he misses taxes hehehe) and that the certitude of that event shapes (or should shape?) our approach to "being" (which I took, when I read it, to mean how we live our lives and how we interpret what it means to be alive).

Yea...but still, I found this to be not so original. Montaigne said that.
Death is the only absolute certainty...how this certitude shapes us? What's the verdict? In the end, what exactly he is saying? I'm not angry

b-but maudlinism is the fun part

>how this certitude shapes us? What's the verdict? In the end, what exactly he is saying?

Idk, I never got that far. sorry

He really gets my heils sieging.

Stop reading Heidegger.

>named whitehead
>doesn't want to read the guy who supports supporting white heads
Was it autism?
Stop being a race traitor.

>glfklfjgkjal;kjd;lfkajdfekwjafoijfa
was it downs?

This "stop" meme never gets old.

This thread has me reading a history of German philosophy. I like it.

>he hasnt read Finnegans Wake
Stop being a pleb.

I dived straight into Being and Time and it's great.

Think Schopenhauer if had a lobotomy and used 200% more jargon

>Death is the only absolute certainty...how this certitude shapes us? What's the verdict? In the end, what exactly he is saying?
Since time is obviously a crucial part of Being for Heidegger, death becomes important to Dasein because it represents the ultimate end of everything. Yes of course everyone realizes this, but when applied to the thinking of Dasein Heidegger outlines in Being and Time, it essentially becomes the limit for all possible action Dasein can undertake. First, let's remember the concept of "thrownness": Dasein has no "beginning" when it realizes, "I am a conscious being in the world" but is instead already in the middle of its own existence and must project itself backwards and forwards through time to understand its relation through the world. For Dasein, all of life is lived in the middle until death arrives. Death is the only time that life is experienced outside Dasein's usual projection of past as "what-has-happened" and future as "what-will-occur": since death cannot be experienced by Dasein yet we know it has to occur, it becomes one of the only things that we can be sure exists outside ourselves. Any other thing that can happen in the future is projected as a Being "not-yet" but since death cannot occur TO us, it takes on an ontological significance that goes beyond anything that can occur in our usual relation to the world around us.

Part of this significance is that Death is the only occurrence that guarantees our unique individuality. Any other action can be feigned or copied (someone could dress up like me and go about in the world with everyone thinking it was me), but my own death is the only thing that is uniquely mine and cannot be taken away or deferred. Thus, thinking about death and living its consequences (what is meant by Being-toward-Death) is the clearest way to see yourself as an individual in your unique relation to the world and others. (Being-toward-Death detaches you from the They-self.) When you think this way, you are ALONE--there is no one to tell you what to do or think, and you are forced to reengage with the world as you live it, asking yourself "Should I live this way?" or "Is this the right thing to do in this situation?" This is the connection between thinking about death and existential angst. This process should be a scary one, but it should LEAD to a re-engagement with the world that you consciously choose. Existential angst does nothing if you wallow in it and get depressed.

So, to sum up, there's the ethical importance of death giving you a chance to reevaluate your existence outside the imposed strictures of society and there's the ontological importance of death serving as the ultimate limit of all action and possibility. Being and Time is a work that is thoroughly grounded in everyday thought, but remembering death forces you to understand that your life is not just a succession of "everyday days" but is instead bounded by an end that forces you to think beyond your immediate surroundings. Without death, there would be no issue with living our lives one day at a time, the constant future just being a resource for us to fill with a succession of presents, but since death could end us at any time, we must commit ourselves to living authentically ALL THE TIME. Death will be the most authentic thing you ever do, and in Being-towards-Death you are confronting this authenticity all the time, living as a full unique Dasein whose existence is projected not only into the past and future, but into an ontological grounding that gives your whole life an overarching significance. Whatever "meaning" you derive from this life is up to you and the culture in which you are immersed, but without a realization of death, any meaning will not reach your entire life and will one day desert you.

I came here to shitpost about literature, not evaluate the totality of my existence. Thanks user. (But truly, thank you)

It's good to read some accurate stuff, gg user.

Here's my ad hominem: he was an opportunistic nazi sociopath. If you can separate his writings from his shittiness as a human being, go for it.

But isn't this just transmuting self-realization into the realization of death? I mean, since death is "the only occurrence that guarantees out unique individuality," and this realization allows you to live "authentically," wouldn't the external appearance of this authentically-lived life be uniqueness or peculiarity itself? The more conscious you are of this impending, incomprehensible nothing (death), the more you "know nothing," the more creative you become. This seems very similar to Stirner's conception of uniqueness, "eigenheit," which literally means "ownness" but best translates as "peculiarity."

Uniqueness here is not important in the sense that it makes you stand out from others, but that it makes you aware of your possibilities for action in the world. Heidegger's concept of the "They-Self" [Das Man] is important here. Living an inauthentic life occurs when one is never aware of the possibilities one has for Being in the world, most often because one blindly follows the path of others without reflecting on these choices. In this case, you aren't connecting to the world, but rather are living through the expectations of others and letting the They-Self interpret the world for you. ("I'll go to college because that's what everybody does.") So when you realize your "uniqueness" it's not in the sense that you are different from everyone else, but that you realize that all your choices are up to YOU and you do not have to be part of the They-Self if you don't want to. "Unique" as in your choices are separate from those of everyone else. For Heidegger, you don't have to be "creative" to be "authentic" as you put it. One can be perfectly ordinary in their appearance and actions and still be authentic as long as they have weighed their options and this is what they consciously chose to give themselves the best life they could.

>m-muh m-morals
>UR A NAZI

Morality is man-made. Morality is a spook. He being a Nazi is no big deal. Im sure that you are probably memeing though.

Gas the Jews.

If I can add onto this, Hubert Dreyfus argues for a "positive" and "negative conception of Das Man. If it weren't for the expectations, the references, and the rules that Daseins collectively contribute to Das Man, then the world and all of its actionable possibilities wouldn't be intelligible. But there remains a constant threat of temptation into taking these possibilities for granted, with Dasein becoming too absorbed into its everyday activities to the point where it no longer takes a unique stand on its own being, aka what it means to be that Dasein.

He was a boozy begger

I just don't understand, lots of analytic philosophy, frege, Wittgenstein and such, strikes me as borderline irrelevant, not really sure what the point of their investigations are

But this phenomenology stuff takes it to another level, I just want to know how these people became respected, what is the goddamn point?

You should read Sein und Zeit in German

Then study Hegel faggot, nobody cares what you do.

Heidegger is one of the most original thinkers in the history of philosophy. His critique of metaphysics, introduction of the ontological differenz and his problematization of the subject-object dichotomy in epistemology are major contributions and have been foundational for modern continental philosophy. I know quite a few people who really do not care for Heidegger's philosophy on its own, they may even scorn the man, but they spend the time reading him because you can't deny his contributions. My prof in grad school said it something like this 'The annoying thing is that Heidegger was simply too great and innovative of a thinker for us to ignore him.

Heidegger IS hard to read, especially on your own. But doing the work pays off. And H is hardly the first one to create a dense vocabulary for himself.

I don't understand how people who seem to have less of an actual footing in the canon can outright dismiss a philosopher on as small grounds as are seen in this thread. The shitposting literally resort to 'muh nazi' and 'heidegger did shrooms in his cabin and thought he was 2deep4u because he invented some technical vocabulary'. Why don't you guys spend time actually reading instead of posing on an internet board with empty remarks that carry no weight to anyone outside of this echo chamber? It really is beyond me.

Was he really a psychonaut?

I don't know though, those nazi fellas always seemed a little "off" to me.

>I want to study Hegel

>being this buttblasted

No

Good point, Dreyfus is a really great commentator for getting into Heidegger. (I've listened to his series on "Later Heidegger" but not B&T, tho.) I'd say the distinction between positive and negative Das Man could be drawn at the level of ethics. In our daily interacting in the world, we are part of Das Man and there's really no reason not to. When you come to a doorknob you twist it instead of stopping to orient yourselves toward the equipmental possibilities that could be opened by your interaction with the knob; when a crowd of people gets in a line, you line up too since whatever is at the end of the line will only be granted to you if you follow the agreed-on social conventions. But, as I said, when you think ethically this becomes the point that following Das Man will inhibit you. Any question about how you are going to live your life is essentially one of ethics: even deciding whether you want to vacation in Europe or the Bahamas next summer involves a whole world of ethical values that decide one way of living over the other (eg cultural enrichment vs easy relaxation).

All in all, I think Heidegger argues that you should at least be aware of what the cultural expectations that link you to Das Man are. As I said in my last post, you could conceivable choose everything that would give you a "conventional" life, but as long as you're consciously interacting with the world instead of sleepwalking along the lines of Das Man, you're living authentically. Das Man can give us a blueprint for a way of living and we can decide if there's better ways to live. Heidegger doesn't argue that a total escape from Das Man is possible either: even the lines of escape and rebellion are decided by the culture we live in. If I wanted to live as a 16th century blacksmith, I can't do it because the equipmental totality needed to construct such a Being-in-the-World no longer exists in the worlding of any current culture. So Das Man in a way serves as the limit of what is possible within a society: you can rebel, but only in a way that is comprehensible to Das Man and the societal values it has set up.

Heidegger's neologisms are worthwhile because he actually needs them to describe real concepts and conceptual relationships. Being and Time is a difficult read at first, but you eventually realize that certain motifs appear again and again as Heidegger structures his work to naturally triangulate onto his philosophy of Being. If you're lost, take heart in that you'll recognize patterns despite being lost eventually. And from there, it's just a hop, skip, and a throw away from understanding the ontological difference, which is arguably the most difficult and most important foundation of Being and Time.

I just wanted to say thank you for your contributions. I'm currently reading Being and Time, and while I'm getting used to the language and the basics, I still find it hard to see the bigger picture as Heidegger lays out his foundations in B&T Part 1. You made Heidegger's concepts accessible and relevant to the lay person, which is an incredibly invaluable skill. Have you ever thought about lecturing?

But when you make your own choices, as in make your choices your own and not those of this "they-self," isn't the outward appearance of this choice-ownership that of a unique or authentic person? I'm not saying that the appearance (or "accident" if you want to call it that) is more important than its cause, but it remains nonetheless apparent. Also, I don't mean "creativity" in the sole sense of artistic creativity, I mean general creativity i.e. the ability to create. Wouldn't "creativity" in this sense blossom when a person takes ownership of their choices? The word Stirner uses for uniqueness is "eigenheit" which literally means "ownness," if that makes things any clearer.

Thank you. I really appreciate the comments I've been getting for these posts. I'm just happy to see people putting in the time and effort into the admittedly difficult task of understanding Heidegger, so I commend you on undertaking Being and Time. Trust me, at some point it'll all click as everything comes together in the most incredible way and from then on the book will be remarkably easy. Don't skimp out on reading post-Turn Heidegger once you're done, either! Although Being and Time is missing its second half, the rest of his life tackles the destruktion of metaphysics he promised in Being and Time, as well as getting a lot more mystical and religious via the path of poetry. Be sure to read the collections Poetry Language Thought and the immortal Question Concerning Technology.

I've considered lecturing but I have no academic background in academic philosophy besides three undergraduate courses. It's something I've considered but I'm just unsure of possible entryways into it. Plus the current academic climate (both culturally and economically) has made me very apprehensive about getting a job in academia.

gobless user

OK, I'm seeing your point more clearly now. Yes, living authentically by making your own choices separate from the they-self does make you more creative, or at least gives you an entryway into creativity. If you can get past seeing an axe as a tool to cut wood, you can imagine how its appearance could be incorporated into an artwork or that it's a reference to Wizard of Oz or something. If you've read Deleuze then you could consider detachment from the they-self as being the chance to cultivate a unique rhizome by forming new connections with the world that are not cut off or repressed by societal expectations. So yes, living outside the they-self is creative for art and for possibilities for how to live your live and how to think. The only thing I'd disagree with you about is that an authentic life has to appear as a unique entity: like I said, you could be perfectly conventional and still be authentic. Heidegger kind of implies that anyone who lives authentically will deviate from the norm in some ways, but it's entirely possible you can consciously choose to conform in every way and be happy about it.

To add on, now that I'm thinking about it, "creativity" could really be defined as inherently deviating from the they-self. Following the they-self always relies on previously conceived interpretations of the world and solutions to problems; being part of the they-self is always an act of mimicry through an inheritance of cultural values that dictate interpretation. So in order to create anything, whether it be an artwork, a good joke, or even a way to calm down your crying girlfriend without resorting to cliched phrases, you can't rely on the they-self and must create something.

I'd agree with your last point, to me it means that a person's uniqueness would simply be conventional and in that sense they're both authentic and unique, but their uniqueness (which is, again, just appearance of choice-ownership) is not very pronounced. This, to me, is why Stirner calls genius "a definitive eigenheit." You carve more of your own path the more a "genius" you are, and lesser "geniuses" find that their own path conforms more with the path of the "they-self."

>So Das Man in a way serves as the limit of what is possible within a society: you can rebel, but only in a way that is comprehensible to Das Man and the societal values it has set up.
wtf no

thats evidently wrong

How? Keep in mind I'm saying WITHIN a society. You can live however you want as long as it conforms to the laws of physics, but if you want to effect any sort of Being-with-others that makes the world you project comprehensible to other Dasein, then there are limits to what you can do. For instance, Das Man in America currently believes that being a Nazi is absolutely bad, no exceptions, so if you walk into public Seig Heiling and trying to explain to people, no actually what I really care about is having a nice white family that drinks their milk every day, other Dasein will deny your mode of Being-in-the-World and relegate you to a judgment of their own, opposite of what you are trying to project. You will be a "freak" instead of "someone standing up for what they believe" as you see yourself.

damn i was hoping he would respond but right now i'm leaving for the weekend, so if he does respond don't think im bitching out on a real answer lol. great thread everyone

The only way fo live authentically is to gas all the jews, anybody that disagrees is just Das Man trying to oppress you

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Do you think there's any hope left for us to have a nice white family? (((das man))) seems pretty unwilling to accept this.

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RARE HEIDI
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