Introductory Heidegger Lecture

all right today we're going to begin a discussion of Heidegger and this will be in the way is a general introduction because the reading selection an article called on the essence of truth is profoundly difficult reading anything in Heidegger is extraordinarily challenging because what Heidegger is attempting to do is to articulate something which generally hides itself something which is not given to expression and that is what he calls it being and it is the same concept of being with which we've been dealing all semester for Plato the good is being versus the visible realm which is in a state of becoming Aristotle asked what does it mean to be and address the question teleologically the modern philosophers wanted to know also what does it mean to be but especially how do I know what is but Heidegger looks at the history philosophy and charges that while it begins with the question what is feeling what does it mean to be which is an ontological question ontology is the philosophical inquiry into the meaning of being because being which will have to await the discussion of always reveals itself as the being of a particular kind of being like the desk as a being or the earth as a being or a human being the ontological question of what it means to be always slides into metaphysics and I had suggested to you a long time ago that the distinction between ontology and the metaphysics or the investigation into being versus the investigation and reality is a very subtle one it is a difficult distinction to articulate and so Heidegger finds himself having to string together German constructions of words which is perfectly grammatically correct a German but not quite so in English and so the translation into English of Heidegger's German which is difficult enough in the German becomes even more foreign sounding odd now what Hydra would say is that this is fundamentally because being likes to conceal itself and must conceal itself so that we can have experiences of things in 1927 Heidegger published his magnum opus his major work called being and time in which his guiding question is again what does it mean to be but because he discerns what he calls the Forgotten Asst of being in the history of philosophy such that what we seek namely being itself not the being of this being or that being but rather being in itself to put it differently what we want to know is not what it means to be this or that but what it means to be at all why is there anything rather than nothing now Heidegger's teacher was Edmund who sure rules and who Cyril developed a method of philosophical investigation called phenomenology the phenomenological method and essentially what this method does is to table the discussion of whether or not things in themselves exist and simply to attend to the phenomena themselves and so we begin by describing our experience of the world as it presents itself the phenomenological motto is to the things of themselves and by that he does not mean things in themselves in the content sense he means let's return to things as they present themselves in our everyday experience and let them speak for themselves without imposing any theoretical baggage or construct upon those things and then let us return to that everyday pre theoretical understanding that we have of the world in an attempt to show how it is possible now that should sound familiar to you because this Wisconsin how is our experience of the world possible but Heidegger takes who surles phenomenological method and applies it to the ontological question so hot occur is asking what does it mean to be at all another way that I could demonstrate the difference between metaphysical questioning and ontological question is that as a meta position I asked what is X where I'm interested in knowing what X really is as opposed to the Waverley appears to be but as an ontology I'm focused on the is I want to know what gives things to be what does the is nests of things consist of what makes it possible for there to be anything at all rather than nothing at all and his answer in 1927 anyway is that the meaning of being is time now this again should sound familiar because Kahn said what makes possible the perception of things are the forms of intuition one of which is inner sense or time we can have perceptions of things only because they are formatted in sequence which is our way of intuiting the world Heidegger radicalizes what Conte is doing the critique of pure reason and is going to maintain that being really is time itself and in the early Heidegger time is us we make it possible for there to be things rather than nothing because the way in which human beings exist for the meaning of human existence is to be an opening an open space a location within which the world arises by our interaction with things our naming of things and the judgments we make about things we unconcealed the world we uncover it we let it be and so because the ontological question what does it mean to be gets answered in terms of the being of the human being hydras analysis is called existential ontological so the first part of being in time is dedicated to an analysis of the ways in which human beings exist and he calls these ways of existing existential x' rather than Kant's concepts of the understanding which make experience possible Heidegger speaks in terms of ways of being in the world four modes of being what she calls existential x' the most fundamental way in which we exist is being in the world we are always in a world we exist alongside objects and we exist always toward our death and so what we find in Heidegger is really the confluence the coming together of two major strands of Western philosophy the Anto theological and the practical dramatic the focus on metaphysics and the focus on human existence the psychological because there is a world only so far as we bring it forth into presence we make it possible for things to become present and what makes that possible is the present time we are presencing beings we wrench things out of concealment and into the open by our interaction with them the first thing that we've got to establish in approaching this article is a truth is what heidi recalls the ontological difference and it is the distinction between being such as it appears in the title being in time which is sine wound site in and time where being gets distinguished in english by being spelled with a capital b but when you see being capital b that is a translation of the german dust zine being itself and what that essentially means is presence to be is to show up to become present to announce itself as opposed to beings which we designate with a lowercase B which are things or entities yura being i'ma being the tables of being the earth is a being okay but what Heidegger ultimately seeks here is not what it means to be this being or that being but what it means to be at all now of course the difficulty in answering this question is that everything that we can talk about is in being so there is nothing against which to distinguish it as my mentor Michael Zimmerman put it it's like walking into a blue room everything's blue the walls the ceiling the floor the furniture the people all the same shade of blue and then being asked to show me what blue is where do you point everything is blue well anything that we can think about is in being so how do i distinguish it how do i indicate what it is to be because to be is to be in time and time is in US or even more radically we simply are time again the first part of being in time is devoted to an analysis of human existence okay now here's something that I must caution you about existence is used in a very special way by Heidegger only human beings exist tables are the earth is the light computer the desk these things are they are real he's not saying that these things are just imaginary they are in being they're real things but they do not exist because to exist for Heidegger means to stand open or to open oneself for the manifestation of the being of things now different things have different modes of being for example the chalk or hammer these are tools and the way that they announced themselves or present themselves is what Heidegger calls ready at hand they're being consists in being ready to be used usefulness as opposed to let's say a bare thing like a clot of dirt in the middle of the sidewalk which he would call simply present at hand but we exist and he supposes that the word existence comes from the Latin exes theory which literally means outstanding or to stand out to exist means to stand out in the open or better yet to become the opening within which the world can become present now we can exist in a way that lets the meaning of human being show itself and he calls that authentic existence the German is identified which literally means owning oneself when I own my existence or my being when I own up to my being then I take responsibility for the fact that I alone am responsible for letting possibilities for my life be but when I attempt to disown my being to blame others for if not seizing upon possibilities for my life or if I hide out in the anonymity of the everyday world but how do your calls average everydayness then I am not truly myself I am the anyone the they you know we say things like they say it's going to rain this weekend or they say this and they say that well who is the day it's the everyone and the no one it dis burdens my me of responsibility now he doesn't mean authenticity and in authenticity as moral evaluative terms it is natural for us to fluctuate between authentic and inauthentic existence and proximally and for the most part we exist in inauthentic everydayness as we must we have obligations we move from responsibility to responsibility we live according to clock time but what triggers the ship into an authentic moment of existence wherein I resolve upon the possibilities for my life is when I actively anticipate my own death course everything goes back to socrates sir but that's a very good analysis you might say that those who prefer or opt to remain in the cave yes our have found comfort and security in the anonymity of the everyday interpretation of things but when and of course we all know we're going to die we expect it but we don't actively anticipate it so usually it requires some kind of crisis or an event like a near-death experience or something that stops your momentum for you to realize to have a real encounter with your own mortality and it's at that moment when we become resolute and you hear people say boy it's like I've been given a second chance I'm really going to live now to be authentic is to resolve upon the possibilities that that lay ahead of that one possibility which cannot be avoided my own death and so to answer the question of what it means to be requires an analysis of the way that human beings exist in the world but the word he uses for the human being remains untranslated it is design which is itself a German construction of two words okay da means here we're there okay and we've seen the design means being so human being or design is being here and being there we are here there and everywhere we have a savvy a know-how we know how to get around the world but for the most part we flee toward entities and into anonymity so that we can avoid the act the Ox the anxiety of being individualized down to ourselves because when that happens we feel uncanny or not at home we feel alienated in a sense from our world and in that moment which have your calls the moment of vision I realized that I alone am responsible for the possibilities open to me now the more open I am and without Sally and hopefully without sounding trite the more open-minded I am or the less dogmatic I am the more I can detach from my grip on things and unexamined ways of living and thinking as Socrates said then my world opens up and there are worlds upon worlds they're everywhere but for the most part we live in the world of everyday understanding we understand things the way that they understand them attagirl it early calls that self or that mode of being human das Maud the they that they sell for the anyone's self and when I really become fixated on something when I become obsessed with with something or someone then my world shrinks and everything shows up in terms of that one thing yes absolutely there is a very Eastern mystical element in attica thought yes what just my opinion Oh if God's essence existence is he basically saying that weird but it's not where we exist because goddesses and this is probably the saying that this is also Heidegger would reverse that and he would say that God is he wouldn't think God exists okay because if God is a real entity which course Hydra doesn't know then God makes things actual he creates the actual world but only finite beings make things possible God has no possibilities this is very strongly for my just a vantage point of a human being like things are because we've made them yes so we met them need so that would be awesome on concept okay they self what would be the idea of since it's sure you know we can hide out the idea that in others a guy you know it doesn't matter really what I do because eventually saviors going to come along to make it alright okay now Heidegger rejected being called an existentialist because for him we do have in essence but our essence is to exist what it means to be a human being is to let things be now there is a play on words there what I mean by letting things be is letting them enter into presence to present themselves when I pick up the piece of chalk and use it I let it show itself for itself I let the meaning of the thing come forth okay when it just lays there and if I had never encountered such a thing before then its meaning remains concealed but here's the problem what he calls the Forgotten miss of being when we are actively engaged with things in the world that which makes them possible the being of those things which is time gets covered up when I am engaged with you know when I'm using the tool when I'm sitting in the chair what reveals itself conceals something else when the chair comes into my awareness then the space within which the chair exists disappears because it's filled up now in the same way in everyday existence we fill ourselves up with this and that and so becoming authentic is also and this is another very Eastern Buddhist idea emptying oneself so organic hmm do you think self again sure yeah forgetting oneself although when we talk about it in Socrates kind of lies the problem was so forgetting okay we forget who we are but of course as for Socrates becoming wise which I suppose and Heidegger would almost be the same thing as becoming authentic requires the sort of dismantling of the ego okay emptying myself like wringing out a sponge so that I am open for new possibilities to avoid Ramiro's sure and when you know when I had when I have those moments of what he calls anticipatory resoluteness anticipation of my death which makes the resolution to be what I already am namely the condition of the possibility of there being anything at all I feel anxiety exposure I feel out of place I don't feel grounded anymore but that's where we ought to be because for the most part on an everyday basis we consider the world to be a settled affair we've got things figured out there's nothing new Under the Sun but when I realize that in fact there are countless possibilities that have yet to be uncovered and that I alone can let those possibilities come forth into the present this is a moment of horror existential horror I alone am responsible for what becomes of me and I neither own up to it in which I let in which case I let the meaning of being human show itself where the meaning of being human is letting be or I cover it up I just place responsibility here and there Heidegger actually was in the seminary he dropped out nicely but you know Heidegger is for the most part Heidegger follows cod ok in not dealing with the transcendental because we are the beings that make things possible and that's what it means to transcend but especially in the later Heidegger Heidegger of the 40s and 50s he says things like only a God can save us now ok but of course by that he doesn't mean necessarily you know Supreme Being he means some something something to will reawaken our sense of purpose let's yeah but you just Superman that's right exactly and and uh you know Heidegger interprets Nietzsche as already right you know RiRi awakening the question of being so what Heidegger wants to do is sort of reappropriation this forgetfulness of being but the forgotten is of being is not just an error okay it is a necessary event because again time does not show itself when we reveal things by using them by naming them thinking about them that revealing at the same time is a concealing of the structures that make the revelation possible okay now he follows Kierkegaard in this and this is really quite remarkable that Kierkegaard excuse me Heidegger makes one reference to Kierkegaard in being in time but he owes a heck of a lot more than machen the whole idea of truth as appropriation for Heidegger truth means uncovering or unconcealed it is an event so he uses the term the Greek term ilithyia which we've seen before uncovering truth is letting be uncovering something and in the later Heidegger this uncovering really focuses on the act of creation when I create I uncover possibilities all right now the article is called on the essence of truth what is truth at bottom and at the end of the article he concludes that the essence of truth is the truth of essence the essence of truth is the uncovering of the essence of existence letting unconcealed Minh itself enter into the open I met I think of this moment of vision that he talks about being in time is like a moment of highly-charged vivid perception where you know just things are alive with you know just pulsating with their their presence where you almost can see the presence sing itself all right so again I caution you that this article is Scholarship of the highest order okay so it's going to be very difficult but try to read it do your best with it and you know if you want you can also read the other article that I uploaded which is well it takes the name existence in being okay which is quite a bit easier but still difficult but I'm going to put together a set of lecture notes for the essence of truth article this weekend okay and we'll start to take it apart piece by piece on Tuesday and you know hopefully be able to review on Thursday and then take quiz number ten toward the end of class but over the weekend you got to prepare for your start quiz and try to read the Heidegger re yeah yeah and remember next week is the last week of class except for Monday Wednesday classes which meet for the last time next Monday okay fish so any quizzes that you have not completed you have to get done make arrangements or just come see me in my office hours to do so okay

Channel: Michael B Brezinsky, Ph.D.

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Length: 48min 48sec (2928 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 25 2014