Heidegger and Being and Time

[Hereandnow]

Wondering if there is any brave soul out there who would like to discuss Heidegger's Being and Time. Take up any theme you like. I am in the middle myself. Kant, Husserl help, but they are certainly not essential.
I am keenly interested in phenomenological ontology: an account of our Being here as the encounter with the world discloses itself as phenomena, putting aside the presuppositions of science and its body of theory which presupposes phenomena and claims to be originary. I want to know what it means to be a self, a dasein, thrown into the world.

i am willing to take considerations beyond the boundaries of Heidegger, indeed, it is going beyond that makes for speculation and inquiry. I am a fan of Kierkegaard and Emanuel Levinas, and I have little interest in scientific reductionism. This latter is, of course, very open to debate.

[ThamiorTheThinker]

I am currently reading Heidegger's "Introduction to Metaphysics". Once I've read "Being and Time" and have a better idea of what Heidegger discussed - and indeed once I've grasped the ideas you are bringing to the table - I'll enter this discussion. Until then, nothing I can say would be of value to you.

[Burning ghost]

SAY NO MORE!!

All over that area

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My opinion of Heidegger is that he went out on a limb from Husserl's work.

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Sorry busy at mo .. back in a bit

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I am very interested in phenomenology. I have read Being and Time and found that much of Heidegger's terminology is lifted from Husserl. That said Heidegger is useful in getting to grips with philosophical terminology in general and a great way of looking into linguistics and hermeneutics.

Heidegger takes patience. I really need to go back and read Being and Time again. The whole use of Dasein I personally don't quite get. It is almost like he attempted to hijack Husserl's work but made a bit of a hash of it. As you probably know Husserl was very much directing phenomenology as a "science" of consciousness. I do think reading Critic of Pure Reason is worth the effort and not just as a way to approach phenomenology. Reading Kant, I found, is a challenge and a must for anyone wanting to engage in philosophy (I say this simply because it requires repeated reading and gave me a better understand of what philosophy is about and how obtuse it can be in its act towards clarity).

I can only really speak from my perspective. Dasein, and phenomenology in general, is about Husserlian "grounding", which I think was Heideggerian "thrownness". Honestly I cannot remember because been a while since I looked at Heidegger! I do remember that what Husserl called the "life-world" Heidegger termed "being-in-the-world". Heidegger took Husserl's phenomenology and focused purely on the idea of "self". From my view Heidegger was trying to introduce a whole new conceptual terminology about our "beingness". I think I need to sit down with a copy of Being and Time and cross check it with Husserl's terminology ... sadly I don't have a copy anymore so I might just order one if you are as interested in this subject as I am??

[Hereandnow]

Thanks for that Burning ghost.

Granted, they all take a lot of patience. But to me, phenomenology is where philosophy wants to be. It wants to find its own field of inquiry that science cannot touch, or rather that is what philosophy is supposed to be: an examination of the underpinnings of the self, which, as i see it, begins with Kant, moves through Husserl then into Heidegger.

How about if i simply put an idea out there and see if find your interest inspired (pr provoked). Heidegger is certainly not a Kantian rationalist; in deed, he argues away from this. And as a radical departure form Husserl he posits that an investigation into human dasein is better done minus the Kantian/Husserlian assumption of a transcendental ego. Heidegger argues that giving dasein this kind of egoic center divests a proper analysis of phenomena of its true character. After all, such an ego is simply not a phenomenon, is not to be found within the presentation of "the things themselves," which is Husserl's way of calling philosophy back to its own domain of inquiry.

You're right to see how Heidegger takes up the mantle of Husserl's phenomenology, but the former is no rationalist, nor is he a Cartesian. My question is, given how important this premise is, that for human dasein, there is no basis for a center in the Cartesian sense (though dasein does "run through" a given locus of dasein, which is a kind body of language and societal institutions, it is difficult to find the ontology of this locus, that is, if the sense of a personal self is reduced to a minimum or being merely a passive conveyor if societal institutions , that are "ready to hand"Can Heideeger get away with this? Does it make sense to remove a transcendental ego from human ontology? Is there something that is being ignored, something there, among the things themselves that Heidegger cannot account for regarding the structure of phenomena?

[Burning ghost]

Man! I don't know where to start here. Rarely come across anyone who has an interest in this area.

Husserl's view of phenomenology (and he started it so probably worth listening to where he says it begins) is that Plato started and then Decarte uncovered it but didn't know what to do with it. He viewed the history of phenomenology as Plato, Decarte and then himself.

I wish I had a copy of Heidegger to hand. What copy do you have? I made quite a few notes. I found Being and Time very tedious in places. In my notes I remark that one whole chapter may as well be removed apart from the last three paragraphs! Haha!

My view was that he made some interesting contributions such as hermeneutics, but overall he took a piece of phenomenology and left the body of Husserl's work behind.

I am bias because Husserl makes a great deal of sense to me (at least the way I view what little I have read of him). I view Husserl as the master and Heidegger as the rebelliois student who didn't quite grasp the intent of Husserl's work.

Interestingly I think whatever your view is of them it is the disparity that can elucidate what phenomenology is about and what Heidegger brought to the table in hermeneutics.

How far are you through Being and Time?

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I have to admit some of his stuff is really clever/ridiculous!

"In interpretation understanding appropriates what it has understood understandingly. In interpretation understanding does not become something different, but rather itself."

Quite a lot of his writing in Being and Time is very psychological. Husserl did say phenomenology is something close to psychology. At one point Husserl says phenomenology is almost "religious".

With Da sein literally translated into English as "being there", the term almost makes fun of itself because, as we all do, we as beings refer to the world "through" our being in it. What Heidegger does, in my view, is play on how we verbally express our being and take it beyond the literal into some "being" beyond the meaning of "being" in literally the literal sense.

The term Dasein the way I see it is about semantic interpretation, ordering of language, linguistics and gives us the beginnings of his hermeneutics. Heidegger seemed to me to be obsessed with the idea of "self" and overly fixated on this idea.

Did he say Dasein is the ontogical "doing" not the ontic? Or something like that? He does seem to spend a lot of time trying to approach different way of talking about objectivity and subjectivity whilst holding "being there" (Dasein) to one side as the constituting "body" ... that obviously is not a "body" being more like what Husserl wouls call an "entity" (so as to disregard any confusion between "inner" or "outer" contents - phenomenology being concerned with the "immediate").

Anyway. I think we'll have a lot to talk about. Cannot wait to talk more. I am by no means an expert on Husserl or Heidegger as you can tell. I do spend a lot of time trying to find out as much as I can though.

-- Updated July 3rd, 2016, 1:48 pm to add the following --

Nearly forgot! Have you read Kierkegaard's Either Or?? I was seriously considering ordering a copy.

[Hereandnow]

Heidegger followed Kierkegaard on several points. There is the rejection of rationalism and a failure take human existence in all of its everydayness seriously. This Christian bourgeois academic metaphysics completely fails to look at the reality of what a human is, and a human is not a thing or some kind of thinking substance, some otherworldly ego. If we want to know what a human is, we have to look to the agency that puts forth the question of Being, namely, us. This is a Kantian move. Kant, the father of phenomenology, but a Platonist and a Cartesian, to be sure.

I am reading, on a back burner, Sickness Unto Death, which I find the kind of thing usually found among the existentialists he inspired but didn't turn up for another century. His analysis of the self and it structures is remarkably phenomenological, and reminds me the little book called transcendence of the Ego by Sartre contra Husserl. And his raising of the subjectivity of the common man to the highest place in religious faith really gives a new meaning to the Protestant doctrine of a priesthood of common believers. As to either, Or, I read it or part of it once. This is where he presents his models of evolvement toward faith: aesthetic, moral and faithful. It does give a very important statement regarding the the limitations of reason. Kierkegaard is not considered to be a father of existentialism for nothing. It is a blast against Kant (and Hegel, of whom I've read precious little, but Kierkegaard was obsessed with refuting him) for privileging reason above all else, while underplaying the thing that is really at the core of faith and reality: human subjectivity (This, i am sure, is where Heidegger got his doctrine of the everydayness of dasein).

If one puts aside all of the Christian content and just look to his analyses of the self, Kierkegaard is a powerful read. Kierkegaard was right: Truth, religious truth is a foundational part of our humanity. We are born into despair, but we really don't know it till we start analyzing structures of consciousness. Interesting study would be Freud and Kierkegaard and concept of repression.

My copy of Being and time is a pdf Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. I also have a pdf of Hubert Dreyfus's Being in the world which is a commentary on Being and time. If you wold like I can send you these (I have a considerable library of pdf's). There rare many very good things to read on heidegger. I also have John Haugeland's Heidegger on Being a Person, and others.

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AS to Husserl and his religious gtake on phenomenology, Eugene Fink online, as well as Steinbock's Phenomenology and Mysticism, in which the discussion of "verticality" in Husserl's phenomenological reduction (epoche) is taken up. What happens when you put in suspension all of the usual presuppositions that go into one's thinking about the world? And leave only the world, the "things themselves" standing before your critical eyes?

[Burning ghost]

Please do. I read Stambaugh's translation. Would be very helpful if we can refer each other to the same text. I wouldn't mind giving it another read again as other areas I've looked into may have changed my perspective.

Do you have a good pdf of Either Or ?

When it comes to Husserl I have read many different snippets of his work here and there. I have read A D Smith routledge about Husserl's Cartasian Meditations, which was my first introduction to Husserl. You can find pdf of that online easy enough. If I remember correctly he pin points where Heidegger went in his own dirction. Smith, in my opinion, does not really do justice to Husserl though ... but who am I to day so!

I ordered Crisis and Philosophical Investigations a few days ago. I have read extracts of Crisis before but never the complete work. Looking forward to that. At the moment I am paying attention to Derrida and his critic of phenomenology as "metaphysics of presence". Derrida has been fun up to now.

My knowledge of philosophy is limited. I have read what I said above and Critic of Pure Reason, Beyond Good and Evil, The Republic, Politics and most of History of Western Philosophy and Thus Spake Z.

I have easily spent the most time on Critic and Husserl in general. Also read some Camus, but that was not really pure philosophy imo. Just about to finish Derrida's introduction to Husserl's Origin of Geometry which I recommend! For me it makes clear what phenomenology is about and where Husserl began (starting with logic and its application to scientific method). Not to mention points that I find especially intersting in regard to language and its application, and the look at historicity too. I have a feeling Derrida may have mistaken Husserl's approach to time and immediacy (protention and retention). Still trying to figure that out!

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Can you give me an outline of what "verticality" means? Looks like an interesting book.

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Sorry for jumping around a lot here. Bit excited to meet someone interested in this area.

I think the most telling thing about phenomenology is that is doesn't concern itself with questions of reality or existence directly. This is where I feel Heidegger stopped doing phenomenology and became fixated on a topic which he could only habe approached through use of phenomenological methodology. I view Heidegger as being concerned mainly with the "grounded".

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Heidegger appears to be focused on intentionality as mood, or rather as being being emotionally directed at the world rather than having concern for the constitution of the world or any regard for the world as adumbrated from our grounded position.

Maybe I am wrong, but I viewed Heidegger as trying to make an objective case of being rather than bothering to establish a meaningful distinction between subject and object as a constitution of being itself. His attempts to create a language to apply to subjective experience to our objectified reality falls short because it is not possible. It looked to me like he was caught in endless reduction rather than attending to the reduction through its use and how language is limited. Which is my main interest. The reach and limitation of language, its misapplication, cognitive use and use in reason, and its application and integration with empiricism in general and the beginings of scientific and philosophical investigation in general.

[Hereandnow]

I tried to send several pdf files but the web site doesn't allow for this. No matter, really. I think we need to start at the beginning to discuss Heidegger. You have a copy of Being and Time, and it doesn't matter which edition, really. It's the text that matters.
In order to speak of Heidegger clearly, we have to let him first do the speaking. I am sure when you take the text right from the start and move from there, then a great deal of your assumptions about hem come into question. For example, his not "bothering to establish a meaningful distinction between subject and object as a constitution of being itself" falls short of credit due. After all, It is precisely this dimension of his thinking that falls in line with and is foundational for Derrida and the post modern argument tht there is no center to human value and cognition structures; that an analysis of thought and language doesn't yoeld a Kantian model at all, but shows only a shift from one center to another given the pragmatic circumstances that define the occasion for use. Heidegger is a major foundational thinker for post modern thought and to fully understand Derrida you have to go through him. rejection of the subject as an absolute center in an analysis of the self, a center that grounds a human understanding in something greater than its own contingent self, is at the heart of postmodern thought. Heidegger is a pragmatist.

Chapter one is entitled: THE NECESSITY, STRUCTURE, AND PRIORITY OF THE QUESTION OF BEING, is a good place to recapture this work. I wonder if you would be interested in reading several pages into this, as far as you feel comfortable, and bringing comments, questions issues.

Frankly, I am trying to master Heidegger, and the only way to do this is read critical works as well. I have quite a bit of this, all pdf and i can't send them to you via this site. If you can think of a way for me to send these to you, let me know.

But for now, Heidegger needs to understood. These first pages, the intro., doesn't not get very technical, but it does lay out an approach. The issues i am intereste din here are his reasons for revitalizing inquiry into Being, why this is paramount to philosophy. He gives a brief account into the common claims about this extraordinary "word" and his arguments are helpful for putting things in perspective.

As to verticality: You can go online with this. Phenomenology and Mysticism is available as a Google book with pages missing. No matter, it allows you to get the gist. But you do have to keep in mind Husserl's Cartesian Meditations or Ideas where he presents his epoche, the suspension of presuppositions in order to see things themselves. Verticality says there is in this rarefied and thinned out perceptual state a presence, or an uncovering of something that suggests an upwardness (as opposed to something sequential and linear only) or transcendence, a presence of divinity.

[Burning ghost]

I read Being and Time. I wasn't too impressed by it and often found that it could have been made at least 50% shorter.

Like I said I'll give it another go. I have certainly got a better idea of what Husserl's phenomenology is about and I imagine going back to Heidegger will make it more concrete in my mind.

[Hereandnow]

Well....not to be a nudge, but Being and Time terribly profound. Heidegger won't make Husserl more clear because he is utterly original. I mean, just because Heidegger drew on Husserl's phenomenological approach doesn't mean he follows Husserl in content. The two differ in the extreme on the following points:

First, Heidegger is not a Cartesian; he is a European cornerstone of postmodernism. Husserl thought that the transcendental ego was an essential part of an analysis of consciousness. You know, consciousness is always conscious of something, the nexus of connectivity is what his philosophy talks about. Heidegger has no such nexus. There is no "I" in the Husserlian, Kantian, Cartesian sense at all. There are phenomena that are placed before dasein, or that are within the interpretative purview of human dasein. All there is, is this interpretative machinery in Time ( are not In time; we ARE Time, as with Kant).

Next, Heidegger is not a rationalist, that is, he doesn't privilege human reason above all else to define what a self is. He rather tries to look, as Husserl's phenomenology did, solely at what lies before an inquiring mind as it is, not conditioned by the empirical theories theories of the sciences tht make knowledge claims about everything. Science is not philosophy (though Husserl sought to make philosophy a science!) because philosophy is not an empirical science. It is (should be understood as) a phenomenological "science". It deals with the world and its forms, structures that are presupposed by science. This latter point is essential: empirical science presupposes what philosophy sets out to analyze. Take this cup on the table. Physics has a good many things to say about its composition and the laws logically inferred by a series of observations, but does it ever question value? Does it bring a critical eye to bear upon the inquirer herself as a manufacturer of the kind of experiences that possess the basic data the empirical scientist takes for granted?

Now, Heidegger rejects the rational nature of what is there in the horizon of being, or, he does not think reason is what we ARE. He sees it as dasein: a flow of everydayness in the way we think and feel and care and use the world. This is what a human Being is. Husserl was no where near this.

You may like Husserl better. Sometimes i do since i believe a phenomenological reduction reveals many things, very important things that are hidden behind our everydayness. Heidegger says there is no behind to speak of. He is like Wittgenstein on this: Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. There is no verticality in Heidegger. The thing is, Heidegger needs to be understood, not just read, but studied intensely. This puts a theoretical body of thinking that defines a century at work fot you. All of the postmodern studied Heidegger and he weighs in as more important than any in the 20th century. And for good reason. He is to the 20th century what Kant was to the 19th.

So please do give it another go. But as you likely know, Heidegger cannot be read, simply. He has to be studied very closely. I takes patience (less than Husserl, I thought. Husserl is tedious when he starts going into the complexity of phenomenological relations and so on).

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i should add that Heidegger, to be frank, didn't trash Husserl at all and I wonder what this is based on. Heidegger set the stage from Levinas, Sartre, and others

[Burning ghost]

I am on holiday next week and concentrating on Derrida at the moment. I will print out Being and Time, and some other things. Hopefully I'll get time to go over the notes I made on Being and Time whilst on holiday so we have something to discuss when I get back.

It does sound like we both see something worth while in phenomenology. I found it by way of cognitive neuroscience. I guess when I read some of Husserl's work I was very happy to find parallels to my own thoughts. I am suspiciois of his religious attitude though and have read that he can be quite obscure. What I am reading now is very interesting. Derrida seems to be focusing on historicity.

Either way I see in Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida a particular, if distanced, look at language itself. I also am of the opinion that philosophy is at its heart an investigation into semantics and general use and structure of language and its possible limitations in communicating pure thought. Being interested in cognitive neuroscience I also find emotion to be of great importance and this is where Heidegger did interest me.

I think all philosophical works have something to offer and what I have read has always given something I value. Once I've read Crisis cover to cover I'll no doubt have some harsh words for Husserl. I am reading Derrida because he opposed Husserl as did Heidegger.

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I can already see there are things we are not going to agree on. That is good! What I care about is understanding not agreement. My aim in reading different works is to at least understand as best I can opinions and reasoning differing to my own. Of course if I understand your view completely I would be hard pressed to disagree with it unless you disagreed with it to ... which makes little sense.

I am not here to defend any position only propose my own as best I can. I don't read philosophy to find agreement. I read philosophy to expand my vocabulary and develop or destroy ideas.

Science up until very recently was called "experimental philosophy". They both rely on logic. What logic means is precisely where Husserl seems to have started and his work was certainly a turning point at the start of the 20th century and has since helped greatly in the neurological investigation into consciousness and perception in general. In this respect I imagine Heidegger was helpful too. I do get the general impression in the current philosophical climate that phenomenology is not popular expect as in regard to consciousness (which was the point of Husserls work). Maybe I am wrong about its popularity?

[Hereandnow]

i don't see the connection between phenomenology and neuroscience; but them, i don't know what they have in mind. Phenomenology isn't an empirical science. But this much intrigues me. Call it the paradox of phenomenology and really the basis for Heidegger's skepticism while at the same time the core of husserl's intuitionism: Take the standard tendency in science to reduce some given x to some y. Science can respond to the question What is this chair? by giving an alternative account, and we tend to take this to be closer to the truth of what the chair is than the original chair presentation. Stars are REALLY clusters of animated gas, or compacted containments of basic elements, and so forth. Husserl tells, conversely, us that there is a foundational phenomenon there: It is these intuitive and (in Descartes's language) undoubtable, or apodictically certain raw feels bound up in eidectic essences. He thinks that science uses these, errrr, call them pre-empirical science substrata, but are parasitic on THE foucdational "science" of phenomenology and cannot get behind these basics. They what is Given. For me, the difference between Kant and Husserl is simply that kant thinks these phenomenological presentations are of empirical reality only and are inferior or mere Platonic shadows of the real. Husserl holds that we have reached rock bottom and have the Real and its essence right here before our consciousness.

The reason I don't see phenomenology as useful to neuroscience is that these latter observers do what other empirical scientists do, which is, they make observations and infer to conclusions, and their studies are not about the structures that make things, things. Husserl thought he had come upon the final calling of philosophy and it was not empirical science. It was an apriori study of things themselves.

I mention Heidegger here. I mean to say that what Husserl called intuitive and apodictic, Heidegger called hermeneutic. Forir him, there is no absolute to be had, and our inability to get behind the meaning making that produced meaning confined us utter darkness regarding anything beyond dasein.

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Oh, i forgot to mention the paradox. Science wants, for example, to reduce consciousness and its objects to neurological observables, or, organic chemistry; I mean, they are reductionists. The paradox lies in the omnipresent begged question of a reductionism, namely, that one's observational perspective necessarily precludes the phenomenon one is trying to obviate. to call a mind a brain begs the question, How is the concept 'brain' any more free of the vagueness or ontological uncertainty than 'mind'? This gives Sartre his "aspectival" (gets it from Husserl) account.

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And I think Derrida rests on Heidegger, though I haven't read much of him. Language and meaning change like the weather. There ARE winds that blow north east and so on; but there is no true north, no north star. This is the Opposite of Husserl.

[Burning ghost]

Well, we are each inclinwd to our own ideas and interpretations. Scholars of philosophy still argue of what Kant was saying and from my understanding Hussels body of work and ambiguity is larger than Kants.

There are obvious parallels between neuroscience and phenomenology. There is a field called neurophenomenology, although admittedly this is not true to what Husserl meant phenomenology for, but it has nevertheless been helpful. Husserl whole approach, the way my limits allow me to understand, was to not disregard science but to strengthen its method.

I cannot really say what Husserl meant exactly. I give him the benefit of the doubt in not assuming he meant anything "absolutely". The crux of whatbhe writes that I find interesting, and something that has intrigued me before coming across Husserl, is the "absolute".

Just finished reading Derrida's introduction to Husserls Origin of Geometry. This point of absolutes, objective, univocal, and numerous other terms, incline me to believe more that Husserl almost meant the opposite of what is seemingly presented. He certainly does seem to be operating at the edge of language and may very well have overstepped in its application - I am of course bias because I am claiming my own meaning in his work as only I can.

Anyway, to the matter at hand ... Heidegger!

You want to talk about phenomenological ontology. It is probably best you pick a point to start from and lay on your thoughts about what Heidegger says and your interpretation of it, as well as others if you wish. I will print the book out soon so I will focus on the opening chapters and ontology/ontic.

Hopefully in a couple of months once I've readdressed Heidegger I can quickly get to the task of compare and constrast with Husserl if you are interested? I think that would be interesting.

There is also a Book Reasing thingy on this site. May be worth trying to involve some other members and encourage them to read Being and Time? Good luck with that!! Haha

Look forward to much more here with you. Thanks for pdf files. I will read through Being and Time once more in full before approaching anyone elses critic/analysis of it.

[Hereandnow]

The only place to start with Heidegger is at the beginning. This i believe is important. One cannot enter Heidegger through a review of the history the came before him. He is truly original. But as such, he is also quite technical, and he goes out of his way to describe his philosophy in specifically designated terms. In the end, we find him to be a pragmatist. Husserl would give a foundation from which he works, but the real and significant comparison would be with Dewey or Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. I haven't read this latter, only Tractatus, which is more like Husserl than Heidegger in that Husserl is trying make a science grounded in absolutes through an examination of the intuited "given." Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus, while having nothing to do with absolutes, still puts his focus on the logical layout of the world of affairs. His facts are Kantian facts, bundles of eidetically essenced (my awkward word) or conceptually animated (Husserl's word). we can compare Husserl with Heidegger. Fact is, everything ha been done to death, ,but it would be very enlightening all the same.

The trick is to get technical. These philosophers are very detailed and their general thoughts have value because of this, because of the justification. One has to absorb Heidegger before comparing him. That is a lot of work (though it could be worse. Kant's Critique is harder).

So by all means, read heidegger and let's discuss phenomenological ontology. His a an unusual take on Being, and he reviews the general tendencies at the outset to let us know he is not among these. i am in the middle of The Worldhood of the World, page 85 (in the original German pagination, which is in all translations).

to the point of a prior comment you made regarding Heidegger's use of Husserl--granted, he draws from Husserl's eidetic essences to reveal human ontology. This is a hint as his starting off point: The human self, human dasein, is not "physical," though he will not use this word, nor does he use the 'consciousness' at all.

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Richard Rorty is helpful to understanding Heidegger, I thought.

[Burning ghost]

Have printed it out now. Hopefully I'll get through some of it on holiday. I prefer to draw my own conclusions before reading other critic or introductions. Even though I have read it once before I always intended to go back to it (having made a reasonable amount of notes with page ref.).

I'll at least address the introduction and also probably jump ahead to historicity, because it is in line with what I have been reading elsewhere.

In meantime feel free to talk about what you understand of Heidegger and his phenomenological ontology.

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I have a question. How does Heidegger distinguish the ontic from noumenal?