This is why it makes no sense, for Heidegger, to speak about an 'external' world - it is simply a category error. The world is neither internal nor external; this is what the neologism 'being-in-the-world' is meant to capture, the fact that Dasein 'structurally' wedded to the world - no world, no Dasein, and inversely, no Dasein, no world. — StreetlightX

Thanks for the passage. Would you say that this is something like the revenge of common sense and/or emotional intelligence on the artificiality of epistemological tangles? Let's say that we further paraphrased your paraphrase into even simpler language. Would not the average person be tempted to agree? Did he just inject a worldly "emotional" intelligence into an otherwise arcane and dryly "theological" game? This is not intended to diminish the accomplishment, but only to try to specify it.

the world is basically the shared background practices that we take for granted. Why are they taken for granted. Because they are background practices, they have to be for the most part. — bloodninja

Thank you. I truly appreciate that you humored me with the risk of a paraphrase. I actually am familiar with the concept of World through secondary sources, and I always liked it. Beings are revealed to us (brought "up" from the background) in terms of our projects? Sometimes they are invisible extensions of us. Sometimes we contemplate them isolated from use.The finitude thrust upon us by the consciousness that we must die shakes us from absorption in the They. We die alone. That we exist as possibility is arguably possible through desire alone. Hard to say what immortality would do to change things. If Dasein is only Dasein it if Dasein dies.

So the mystery for me is why Being and Time was written the way it was. Why all the technical terms, divisions, the pompousness? It's as if the content and form are hellishly dissonant.

all post 1950 philosophers are extremely narrow specialists and world and humanity interpreting theories have, as far as I know, gone extinct. — PiggyBoi228

Have you read Zizek? There are also many great videos available. He's a charismatic guy. I'd say he's definitely a "world and humanity" theorist. I adore the man for being the real thing. I don't always agree with him, but that's beside the point. He is present as a person, warts and all. He's no generic expert emitting state-of-the-art technicalities.

Hi...again. That's my take on intellectual history, too, or what I've read. I've spent more time with Wittgenstein than Heidegger, probably because I prefer the prose. I had a realization that I won't blather on about concerning the fuzziness of language that absolutely demolished my ability to take most of the old issues seriously. In short, the questions themselves are often fog and fuzz.

What I wanted to ask is what you make of Nietzsche? In my view, he demolished metaphysics and epistemology before W or H. Is it just the case that he didn't catch on? That only with Wittgenstein and Heidegger did the mainstream give up on the Cartesian and linguistic/transcendental approaches? I've read some of Foucault and Derrida, other more contemporary names, but really IMO has that much of a kick after Nietzsche. (I do like Zizek, though.) And when I think of Nietzsche I have the critical Nietzsche in mind, not the moralist. I think of all the approaches he put into question or demystified.

I think in really simple terms, For Heidegger, death relates closely to authenticity/mineness. What turns out to be authentic (or owned) are ways of existing (possibilities) that disclose the mineness aspect that is basically characteristic of every dasein. Whereas what turns out to be inauthentic (or unowned) are ways of living that disclose the conformism aspect that is equally basic of every dasein. So for example, any of your possibilities that involve making the world intelligible in a unique and original way are authentic. Whereas, all of your ways of making the world intelligible by falling back upon the everyday meanings circulating within everyday public life, are by default inauthentic. — bloodninja

I know that wasn't a reply to me, but I really like it. Would you agree that this kind of thinking already exists outside of Heidegger? Even as a teenager (perhaps you can relate) I felt a certain disgust toward conformity, doing the things that "one" did without question, although they didn't feel right. It was all there for the taking in the word "nonconformist" or in the stories about Van Gogh, for instance. Romanticism. Creative genius. The heroic weirdo.

Is it possible that Heidegger wrote as he did because the book was a way for him to emerge from the objective /metaphysical pose, still dripping with a metaphysical style? Or did he choose his liberating rhetoric so that it would appeal to his scientistic, academic readers? Was he bringing down the house from the inside? Seducing them in a scientistic language that could sneak under their metaphysical pretentiousness? I'd guess it was a combination of the two. He was pretentiously waking up from pretentiousness and was well-equipped to help others do the same. They would have ignored a 100 page book in clear German and he didn't have the nerve to write it?

Hi. I'd be curious about how you might unpack that definition of being. What is the gist of Heidegger in your own words? Do you find this gist significant? If so, why? I'm not completely ignorant about H. I've looked at some books. Being thrown and being stretched between the past and the future makes sense to me. I understand present-to-hand versus ready-to-hand. Supposedly being is time. If we are our own stretched lifeworlds, then that makes some sense.

Wouldn't mind hearing a good "digested" interpretation apart from the lingo. I have the Stambaugh translation & frankly it disgusts me. I do think H had some good ideas. But this translation at least strikes me as obscene. Words like "occurantness." Are they really necessary? Is this book written scientistically to conceal its anti-philosophical or anti-metaphysical thrust?