Rick Roderick on Heidegger - The Rejection of Humanism [full length]

our second lecture will be on Heidegger and that the rejection of humanism many of you may know Heidegger by reputation and I think that it's always nice and of course on the self in the twentieth century to present at least one lecture by a thinker who's extremely profound and raises the issue of the self in the modern era and also happens to be a fascist and again I always have to put in these disclaimers this is not an endorsement of fascism but but in a way I almost regret that I had to start with that snotty remark because Heidegger account of finding meaning in the 20th century is one of the most profound and powerful that we get in the twentieth century before I proceed to it I'd like to say though just a few brief summary remarks about the rather scattered out first lecture what I was the basic point that I wanted to set up for the for the rest of the course so that we can now proceed to look at various narratives about what the self might be or how it might be constructed in the twentieth century was to point out that the self is under the siege of two different sorts of factors one are the famous cultural critiques of that were produced in the nineteenth century and this doesn't mean that just a handful of peasants got us confused the critiques launched by Nietzsche and Marx or certainly products of the profound changes in the 19th century so on and similarly with Freud's a project so in a certain way what we're looking at are the problems that were that have been thrust to Bowness about modernity a modern life and arguably since we're speaking and will be speaking about what this means to us in the late 20th century about the the problems of postmodern life in any case I wanted to show that their challenge cut to the heart of one traditional way of understanding the self and that was the self in relation to God but it cuts another way too it cuts in regard to the selfs understanding of the self in other words it also shows us that what we think we know about ourselves may be driven by economic motives of which were unaware consciously by the motives of desire of which we are unaware consciously but they appear systematically in certain contexts we may be pushed by a certain resentment a certain kind of deformed will that is the product of a culture of which we are not largely conscious in any case I wanted to present this dark side of modernity as the kind of suspicion under which the self becomes problematic I also wanted to present it in conjunction with some of the obvious changes the huge and increasing flow of information the incredible I change in the complexity of social systems the enormous and still ill understood changes in the relation between people's cultures men women and the planet and so on and these changes are which now here in the late 20th century have reached a magnitude of of complexity that I think leaves us stunned in our attempts to build some small a place within which our self higher if you will authentic self since we'll be discussing Heidegger in this lecture might dwell high diggers account of the human situation begins by rejecting I mean I mean before I've said he's a fascist so now I guess all of you aren't going to listen to me no see that would be a philosophical fallacy people who make terribly tragic political decisions and even very evil people can hold views that are interests stick and can say things that are true we call this the ad hominem fallacy it doesn't work just to go well that must be wrong because the ACLU is for it that will only work with Jesse Helms in that case the ad hominem is not a fallacy but otherwise it is and in heidegger's case I want you to withhold judgment just because you know he has this for a while I'd like for you to play along and and follow this narrative I'm going to attempt to do it in 45 minutes now for Heidegger scholars this is an obscenity but I mean we're trying to cover a lot of material a short while and we're also trying to cover it in a way where I what you might call the non footnoting public I don't want to call them non scholarly because many people read many more books than academics academics when they're through with their meetings don't have time to read you know a little on teach I mean I don't know very many people to teach anymore and so I'm talking about the non footnote in public you know people who have a footnote in every article on Heidegger we're gonna try to make the account popular in that sense I have no problem with that I also want it to be as accurate as I can Heidegger attempts to recast and he's very aware that the very term that I've used for my lecture is no longer adequate namely the self the human so in his most famous work being in time Heidegger recast it as an interpretation of what he calls in German das sign and I'm going to translate that now into West Texas English that's something like human being there in the world something like that now why does he coined this in German it's a rich a very ordinary term it means being there we made a movie over here about it you know it's based on a novel being there why did he want to reject the language of self because he wanted to get rid of all the baggage that I've just discussed that has come under the mark suspicion and give a new narrative and if you'll have to forgive me for not using da sign throughout the lecture and instead talking about the self because what Heidegger is trying to do is give a new narrative of the self but without using that term so that he can distance himself from the philosophical tradition at least the modern one in order to give an account of the human subject well I Heidegger account has influenced I think it's been in in some ways the most influential account all the way up to the late 20th century you may and I will be talking about later the French philosopher Derrida for whom Heidegger was the most influential figure Heidegger is a very influential figure for Sartre and many others so we have to spend a little time with his with his position in terms of his position and philosophy Heidegger is the one who introduces the term the deconstruction of philosophy by it he doesn't mean to the kind of deflationary remarks I made in the first lecture to deflate philosophy no he wants as it were to destroy its project in the way that one would sort of destroy a mound of junk in order to dig down to what might be called it's sort of archaeological roots to find out if there's anything there that will help us in this project of understanding what it means to be in the world ok and I think I have some remarks about that that I would like to make here Heidegger begins with in a very odd way for philosophers ah most philosophers begin by ensuring their knowledge with some kind of method or Fiat you know they had they begin in a way by assuring you they won't fall into error but along with Hegel Heidegger believes that this fear of falling into error is Error itself so he does something very odd for ah sir he begins by beginning and as he just he starts riding and I think that's very nice he doesn't begin with a series of methods that will give us the single and and correct interpretation of the self which is sort of an obsession that I think only philosophers really have and I don't I mean he'll it's what I used to do for a living so I shouldn't rag on it too much but it's a kind of obsession I mean it's an obsession with being right all the time and one nice thing about hi diggers account is is that what he offers us is what he calls a hermeneutic of just sign and now use the English equivalent which means something like a story or narrative of the self a kind of story about the self now the nice thing about a story as opposed to a method is that you don't approach them the same way you don't for example about the someone's life story if it is powerful interesting and it grabs you and you can find meaning in it it's not the best question to ask about a narrative is it true or false that's the best question to ask about an argument but believe me I'm from Texas and when you hear a good story you don't go is that true because that takes all the fun out of it I mean the story that Heidegger has to tell has a lot of the power in it well Heidegger is and again I'm going to try to summarize being in time here now in about 30 minutes in being in time how do your wants to look at what the self is in its structure as a being that lives through a period of time and a being as opposed to being because one of Heidegger central points is one that I've already been through in terms of the Masters of suspicion classically in philosophy there was a distinction drawn between being with a capital B which is a full of philosophical way of writing the word God our fundamental entity being Big B and beings entities like one among which is decide Heidegger however and I don't want to mislead you here because many readers have been mislead is no humanist Heidegger looks around for what entity what being would be the best being to interrogate on the issue of design on human being in the world so I the being that HEPA chooses to interrogate turns out to be a sort of obvious selection he wants to interrogate or interpret that being that raises the question of being and that happens to be us we do that salamanders don't go what does it all mean why should there be something rather than nothing what am I about so he got instead of investigating salamanders newts are analytic philosophers he tries to investigate human beings I think that's a good you know that's sort of a reasonable place just to start I his account is fascinating and and I can advise you to read it I'm going to try to go through it very quickly you take the threefold structure of da sign won't surprise any of units not particularly profound the threefold structure of of the self in time is that you have a past and a present in the future that is struggling but when I've said this I've made a structural remark probably that's the structure the temporal structure of how we tell our lives we tell about our past our present that our plans and so on for Heidegger it is care and this is the early Heidegger I won't go into the lot what he thought later but for the early Heidi group it is the word care and many of you will like this word care concern is another word that could be used here the German is Sarg a SOR GE care is what Heidegger interprets as what is fundamental to the being of design so for example or the self so for example if you want to know what was interesting to a culture what they cared about I'll use my example I got the chance to go to Florence Italy okay it's a great place to get a chance to go to I got to see Florence and you can see the high and powerful his interpretation is when you visit a place like that because you can see what it is that those selves those designs cared about by what they built you go WOW they didn't care that their malls aren't still open you know they don't care that the Ponte Vecchio is now run in Arno is all green and mucky and the Ponte Vecchio is just a little gold shop they don't care I mean they've got to you feat see they've got the daveed they just that's what they care about that shows their care their concern the structure of their being and so on ah and you can tell this is not a bad interpretation of humans beings in the world you can look at what people construct what they build what they make what they cherish and this is supposed to be and I think it's not an unreasonable interpretation of human being in terms of the past care reveals something that you all already know by the time that you showed up here today you were already a being in the world it's an interesting structural feature of all of you er you know barring the possibility which we will reach by the time these lectures are over that at least some of your replicants cyborgs that's possible I mean it's even I think technically possible but in any case barring that last little note of suspicion uh the human structure has uncovered by Heidegger is care and it in terms of the past it shows that we are beings already in the world which means that the philosophical project of starting without prejudices starting without biases starting without interpretations would be as stupid as to have someone start speaking Shakespeare without having a language in a way that the deep and powerful blow that that Heidegger lays against the against philosophy is as a discipline that can start from scratch and tell us who we are they can just start with a clean slate and build it up know the way we experience our lives as we wake up and well we're already here we are in his phrase thrown into the world you were born somewhere some win some rice some class of gender and all of that Saul Reddy comes along and from the minute you begin to speak a language and learn a culture and learning a culture contrary to what analytic philosophers to society is not like learning to pick out patches of blue or being sure that this is your high end learning a culture to live in it is more like learning how to dance the Virginia real than it is learning how to pick out patches of blood it involves many complex steps before you're in one and I mean even in a crude and vicious culture like West Texas that's true but when I come from I mean there's a lot of subtle little machismo rituals that if you don't know they will beat you to death you just have to learn them they're complex they're much more complex than the standard philosophical examples which are picking out patches of blues and so on so highly versus we in terms of the past we're already in a world in terms of the present care reveals us as trying to be at home in the world see you may notice this home.this sort of homey language of Heidegger's it is the fact that he turns out to be a fascist this has made me to this day weary of language that's overly homey sort of that's why I don't like Grand Canyon it's too homey as a movie but anyway care reveals us at being at home among or being among trying to feel that you're in the right place you know that you belong in a place in terms of the future we are always according to Heidegger ahead of ourselves here and this is I think another profound part about the narrative of the self in a certain way what our plans and projects are are not a part of our future but a part of our present we're always ahead of ourselves we always like well you know lunch later let's see what do we want a Big Mac do you base it depends on your class I guess more than anything else and like that and even in terms of like college what what am i kids going to do for college what about my retirement this is a characteristic and again what I'm telling you here from Heidegger remember we just started with a story about the self and now we're just telling what and it's supposed to capture sort of the general features of selfhood being a self and so that's that's what he sees there in that structure doll sign reveals itself in terms of the past as being thrown into a world in terms of the present as being able to try to articulate our place within it and in terms of the future in terms of projecting ourselves forward and so on now here's the bad part how did you realize is that you can't just simply abandon this old philosophical project and then just tell this story and hope to capture its Universal features towards the features that are shared by dassai and wherever we happen to bump into da sign or to the self ourselves being there creatures like us that asks these questions about being without looking into what he calls nudes it's very interesting Heidegger is one of the few philosophers to discuss something that's very important to people moods I mean most most analytic philosophers have no interest in moods it's funny I mean I think this is why when you read these continental philosophers like something that I'm discussing today they're they're considered a bit effeminate because this mood talk is is not really macho you know like I'm in a bad mood I have a headache or I didn't mood talk is is sort of unsettling to men I continental philosophy appears even the discourse of the profession of philosophy is being soft and so there's all these nouns that you give it a certain characteristic but in any case it's clear to me that that mood is an important characteristic when you discuss the south what selfhood is so what and this is I think one of the most profound parts of the analysis that the Young Heidegger gives the mood that he thinks that reveals what das sign really is and if this will connect with my first lecture about the Masters of suspicion his anxiety that is the mood that will reveal as it were the formal existential character of decide is anxiety anxiety now when I say mood here you could easily misunderstand me all the the account Heidegger is giving well it's the story about the human self this this account of the eggs are the mood of anxiety I'm about to give you briefly is not the kind of anxiety for which you run to the doctor or the psychiatrist and you take a valium or talk it out or get on a damn 12-step program because it is an anxiety before the fear of nothingness it's an anxiety in the face of death I don't want to make it sound you know too scary but I've already said it is a democratic institution it is something you need to deal with and again we're looking for universal structures one of the structures of all stories about the selves even once we tell ourselves no matter how disconnected they may be they end in this rather interesting institution death very interesting institution well he examines the mood of anxiety then not as a mere mood that just comes to cup on you once in a while but is an underlying structure of what it means to be human in other words if you remove this anxiety you would also remove the self the same view Kierkegaard holes of despair I mean I'm not too deep or not depressing people here we're not trying to depress people but these are structures of the selves these aren't symptoms that Phil Donahue or Oprah Winfrey can fix to be asked to be cured of your fundamental despair your anxiety is to ask to be cured of what little self you may have it is a stupid thing to even want in a way because it is our anxiety that makes us look at what it how we came up from the past the way that that's described by Heidegger is that we were abandoned to the vey to dustman the crowd what does he mean by that what he means we grew up in a place like West Texas or Cleveland Ohio or Bangladesh where the way we grew up in and the way our past is structured we didn't learn our moral theories from cot or mill we learned them because our mamas spanked our butts said don't steal well you know this we were thrown into that we were abandoned to those values as it were it's not it's a scary thing that's how we learn see this is a way to try to redirect our attention to the concreteness of being a self as opposed to giving a fellow to account this was heidegger's attempt you're abandoned to the die and the reason I like that phrase does I is you're all familiar with remarks like well they say are they say well that's exactly the spirit in which heidegger's using the concept here you know if you if you violate certain restrictions of your culture somebody's going to go well but you know they say that well that's the way in which Heidegger sees us relating to our past anxiety reveals that to us now why is it anxiety well if we want to make our lives a project and Heidegger thinks fundamentally we do thinks that's part of the structure of design is to want to make your story a story a story not just a bunch of disconnected junk and debris that happened to happen to you but a story a project if that's true then our relation to the past is filled with anxiety because we all started from this moment of our from this time of abandonment to the values of others today that it's not an evil thing this is just means the culture around you means the opinion of people well you know they say that that you know you wearing your hair like that it's just and so on it's not unusual stuff this is the commons way of which we're brought up anxiety reveals our present state and Heidegger doesn't like to talk about this as either it's a fleeing away from now this is where Heidegger brings in the way in which that we try to fill our life up with busyness to flee away from it and I admit that this can't I don't think this could be universalized as an account let me admit that right now I just think it is uninteresting it is an interesting account not the account there is no such thing as a camp that's one of the underlying themes of this course but this is an interesting one well what are we fleeing away from or falling away from well how do you think's that and I mean this is sort of again these have all become general cultural possessions of people Heidegger takes until we face nothingness our own nothingness that we tend to fill our lives with busyness we flee into this and flee into that we fall away from our own best insights about what we should be doing and sowing and so on anxiety would reveal about the future if you can free yourself from the die to a certain extent you can't completely and if you can stop fleeing from the present and trying to live in it you can see why this account was popular in the 60s right your ever beatniks used to like Heidegger okay well this is why you try to live in the present if you try to do that the future will begin to look like a project which Heidegger characterized as being free for and from being free for your projects and being free from your sort of attempt to get away from yourself okay and someone during break mentioned this to Mellie it's true being free in this sense is not an easy thing to want to be let me let me just say that right away I mean being free from the valley is already a problem for most folks right I mean how many people want to live you know on in Bainbridge Drive and have the only red white and blue house I mean even that tiny little transgression could make some people into a nervous wreck no I mean sure some people are afraid of death and other people are afraid of being seen carrying People magazine I mean we live in a society that may be far too superficial for the account I'm giving so I'm hoping to try to make some sense out of it I mean different things bother different people I mean the culture that really scares me is the one in which death has no significance for our projects that's the culture that in which to self is under siege as long as Heidegger when he was young could write this narrative of the self this rather dramatic existential narrative about I'm going to realize that I will die then I will choose an authentic project and carry it out and I will free as many constraints as I can from the die I will stop fleeing from my stale self he even has a word in here for what he would probably call this lecture which is chatter you know I'm gonna free myself from the chatter of every day and talk deep thoughts in the Black Forest well I have sort of sketched the account for you and the sad part about it is it all sounds rather quaint and it would make a nice miniseries I mean we are living in a situation where even these basic accounts of the self like heidegger's have become sort of ironies I'm not trying to put it down too quickly I'm just trying to explain what anybody would listen to it today you're listening today only because it is an interesting story from a period not too long ago I mean after all of the beatnik the beatniks loved this account hey they used to say a lot I've read Heidegger about which they meant they had there's a little famous little set of notes where you could pick all this stuff up without actually reading being in time it was quite popular the book itself I only know a couple of other people that have read who cares right till they get it from the Cliff Notes but in any case I let me let me give you the what I think is the powerful account and then it's criticism that the final sort of punchline of it with Heidegger we choose this we choose a project in full awareness that being is always being towards death for Heidegger this doesn't our action but it makes a sea that just like if we wanted to write a beautiful poem we would plan an incredibly grand last stanza or whatever when we choose a project we want to choose one that will make of our life a complete thing a thing with meaning a connected story a story worth telling so that's the ideas that the recognition of one's own nothingness in one's own death is the ultimate possibility this recognition and acceptance frees us for our projects it allows us for one thing to engage in a bit of what I consider if you wanted to sum up the wisdom of the East you know oriental wisdom in a sense and in just one sentence it might be something like don't sweat the small stuff I mean that there was a real well-known Buddhist who told me I could sum up the Dow and the Gita and all that for you quickly it's this don't sweat the small stuff you Westerners you spend all your time sweating the small stuff Heidegger here says look if you really internalize this a part of your self story the knowledge that you two will be dead gone nothing that that will be a freeing and liberating experience that you have to be able to like work through it as it were to use US psychoanalytic traits to work through it what does it allow us to escape from well I actually have to say that this moment in existentialism has certainly been good for me I think just been a healthy thing for me it cuts short therapy I went to a therapist once I went three times and on the third or visit I went oh by the way I have a question why are we born to suffer and die and she went yeah that was the end of therapy for me I figured that if she couldn't help me with lock my fundamental problem she wasn't gonna do much good on the trivial problems I mean you know I had a big problem why are we born to suffer and died she just went a little bit a little bit I mean you know she said well I could write your prescriptions for some valium and I said no thanks I drink don't need I belong to a large club I'm a drunkard anyway what it does is this it makes you it for me it's like it's made it easier to talk to groups to teach classes and to talk to groups of students are not to be afraid of cameras and stuff like that because I mean in the end we're all dead in the end Johnny Carson his body will likely doubt turn into dust and in the end the earth will shrivel up like a cinder and fall into the Sun and in the end it's not the big bang anymore now they call it a thing KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK KK I'm gonna feel free to engage in my project without worrying about what they told me about how I should do philosophy so I think there's a moment of truth or a moment of interest in heidegger's account also it's made me rather short and sharp a small talk it really does I mean it makes me work people go achieve you know the weather today it's just me you know I'm sorry but I prefer conversations about sex religion politics of course being a man sports but if it's not something general grabs me I feel perfectly free to go well let's chatter I don't got time for it be dead soon okay do it now the most pathetic example of fleeing from sort of Kane on my way out of the lecture I happened to be a smoker I don't advocate it for anyone in here or watching me on on the type I don't advise smoking but we have a culture now where the most obvious example of fleeing from death is this utter obsession with being young until it's obscenely too late for it until it is this is fleeing from yourself in situated it's madness who wants to be the world's best looking a hundred and eleven year old person I mean what is the point in that for God's sakes I just you know this is something that I don't follow me and my grandfather was a good man he died at 78 I think that's good luck and when he long enough suit the hell out of me but why do we have 90 year olds running up steps wearing Nikes and dating 72 I mean this is not working it's not working and I'm not telling old people to go away hell I'm getting there myself it's ridiculous you take 30 year olds there trying to look like 11 year olds you know I mean it works all the way up and down the spectrum every 40-year old housewife wants to have a baby like Demi Moore be beautiful naked with her stomach out to you I mean it's just not working for us you know why it's fleeing from death and then and what I'd like to say about it is this you could eat all the tofu you want and jog as long as you like and compared to geologic time your life's gonna be gone like that anyway geologic times a long time and you can jog your butt off and you're still gonna die that's what I like about death it's democratic it would irritate me if you could jog and live forever and I got to be ups got stuck here smoking and having a good time and died over it now you'll die too you know you'll have 34 more years to run up and down the stair master now what in the world could be a better example of Heidegger's account of fleeing from our authentic projects than to imagine some poor sap who spends three hours a day running up and down just tires that are just in what kind of culture this is my question to you is there a human self left in a culture that produces people who run in place for hours doing nothing is there is there any reason to talk about humans like that I mean how digger is old-fashioned I admit and I certainly I don't advocate his politics I think fascism is a drastic solution what it what it sort of steers you away from this fleeing business the Stairmaster business to make it a very contemporary example is an authentic life and this is for Heidegger what you want to achieve you don't want to you want to achieve a life with authenticity and this is the key word for him an authentic life is one in which you don't flee from your destiny but one in which you shape it as far as you can and Heidegger is no romantic about it he knows that you'll be given certain historical conditions to deal with limitations that belong to all humans but authentic life is one in which you try as best you can to make your life at least something worth talking about in the same sentence with the word destiny and I think my example the Stairmaster if you go compare that to the to Odysseus you know I mean that that's a pretty far far gap for civilization to move in it from Odysseus you know goes from island to island and then comes home kills a bunch of people takes his wife back big story kill the Cyclops n' made fun of gods did all these tricky wonderful things that belong to our western past and i think it is interesting but I bet Odysseus wouldn't have had time to do that if he'd stayed in shape about four hours a day on that Stairmaster just wouldn't worked out for you and the very thought shows you that the theory of evolution may not work in the case of das I you know I mean there might be creatures that and I don't mean just the ones in giraffes park there may be other creatures that are not headed in the right direction in any case this this project is one to try to get away from empty conformity and to live authentically now here is its tremendous drawback and this is the one that becomes obvious in my remarks about fascism the trouble with leaving the account of being human this abstract you know we come from a culture we flee from conformity we try to get authentic the trouble with leaving it that abstract is that you can be an authentic anything follow me I mean turns out that you could be authentically a member of the Third Reich authentically a member of the Reagan administration just leave those two together for a while in your minds authentically a friend of Richard Nixon now wait a minute that's logically absurd no it isn't I guess that that's possible you could be I'll the trouble with the debt with this authenticity business is that trying as hard as he can to give a more concrete primordial account of what it means to be human and trying to avoid you know the traditional accounts he has ended up giving us an abstract account again at another level that immediately we've learned I hope we've learned something from it I mean I do think they're important things in it about fleeing from ourselves but for God's sakes I mean I we don't want a narrative about ourselves that's based merely on authenticity because I mean we know too many authentic swine or at least semi authentic swine to want that so that's that's a I think a powerful a criticism on the other hand I'd like for you to remember at least some of the positive things I've said about Heidegger one is that his account of human being in the world does free us from the philosophical that we just start a project from nowhere almost and carry it out rationally or whatever Heidegger has a much more concrete sense of the world and also a much more very important I think account of what it means to be fleeing from oneself and I think that's the important part so if you get a chance to read being in time which I don't entirely recommend because it's very long and life is very short and it might be your kind of Stairmaster you know I mean I don't know there's a difference difference sometimes between what what boards some people and what Boris others I admit that but in any case of Heidegger does not succeed in in bringing the self out from under siege or out of its problems but he does point out at least one thing about it so if we're going to be interested in the self at all we should be interested in it in trying to have some degree of authenticity we should be interested in that in having a project more interesting than getting skinny and rich and dying in a hunt as the best-looking 125 year old person on the block there ought to be something not in a strong sense but there ought to be something more interesting to say about your life is that I had a nice car and I died is the best looking one hundred and twenty-five year old jogger in Venice Beach California I just hope that there's more to say and in fact I think there is being a Texan uh I know you know that I think the people that that died at the Alamo I mean they were you know from the standpoint of some their imperialist swine from the standpoint of others they're heroes but there's one thing for sure their lives were an interesting story I mean I mean I don't always rely on the Odyssey Davy Crockett was an interesting guy ran for Congress you know got invite all these tall tales about him then showed up and tried to steal a lot of land in Texas ended up you know fighting and now we remember it it would be almost fair to say of him that he had a destiny and as corny as that may sound it's not something we're going to say about David Letterman or Richard Simmons follow me there's been a shift it's been a shift the self is under siege and I've talked about Heidegger and his rejection of a certain form of the older accounts and I'll talk about a famous account of being human in the next lecture on Sartre but uh for now that's all except I'll be sure you know and fear death I mean that's that's important to being human fear doubt that realized that

Channel: The Partially Examined Life

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Keywords: Rick, Roderick, Martin, Heidegger, Humanism, philosopher, Philosophy

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Length: 44min 51sec (2691 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2012

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Published on Jan 25, 2012

This video is 2nd in the 8-part video lecture series, The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (1993).

Lecture notes:

I. Heidegger developers a powerful account of meaning by recasting traditional talk of the self and the human into an analysis of "Dasein", literally "being there". He hopes to discard much of the baggage of the philosophical past in a kind of "deconstruction" that has, and continues to be, very influential with thinkers as diverse as Derrida, Macuse, and Sartre.

II. We should not let Heidegger's infamous connect to fascism blind us to his real insights. It is sad, but true, that even very bad people may have important things to teach us.

III. Heidegger does not begin with a "method". He begins by beginning. He offers a hermeneutic of Dasein, or the historical and cultural self. A hermeneutic is a narrative, a story , whose humans are always already interpreting beings and, from this, the analysis of Dasein can begin.

IV. In "Being and Time", Heidegger is guided by the distinction between Being and being. The only priority of human being or Dasein is that we are the beings that ask the question concerning the meaning of Being (what does it all mean?). He is no "humanist", rather it is Being that draws his concern toward Dasein which he proceeds to analyze across the dimension of time.

V. Humans relate to the past by being "thrown" into a world. This means we are socialized and have a language and a view of the self already. Thus, it is impossible to begin without a structure of prejudices as built into our culture and our history.

VI. Humans relate to the present as "being at home in or not being at home in". This means that we try to find a satisfying place view of ourselves and out world.

VII. Humans relate to the future as "being ahead or ourselves" or "on the way to". This means that we formulate projects and make plans. The fundamental structure thus revealed is that humans are beings who care, who have concern. This can be seen in what they build and do even more than in what they say or think.

VIII. Anxiety before death is the fundamental human mood, since death is the end or our projects and our concern. For Heidegger, authentic existence must not "flee from" this insight into the unthinking mass of people (the "they"), but rather use this insight to give meaning and purpose to our projects. Such projects are "free for" and "free from" the stifling yoke of conformity to "the they" or what other people think.

IX. Against Heidegger's powerful account of being human it can certainly be argued that "authenticity" is too abstract as a means to measure our projects. One can be an authentic Nazi, for example, just as well as an authentic Christian. Heidegger gives us absolutely no grounds for choosing one over the other.

X. Authenticity will be important in our account of the self, as will care and concern with a project, but it will not be enough to save the self under siege as the case of Heidegger himself makes clear.

For more information, see http://www.rickroderick.org

[u/finvek]

I wish the audio didn't get delayed. cut the video a few mins short and we missed his conclusion

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]