Rorty jokes about us always finding Hegel ahead of us on the path. — plaque flag

Really? It's true, Hegel's mind was gigantic. Nobody knows how he got it all crammed into that little skull.

Really? It's true, Hegel's mind was gigantic. Nobody knows how he got it all crammed into that little skull. — frank

Some of it might be projection (finding what you look for), but that cake is crazy rich.

Are you saying ‘that kind of talk’ represents a failure on Heidegger’s part to express himself clearly? — Joshs

No. I think it's not useful as a way of explaining Heidegger's thought to people who don't already understand it.

No. I think it's not useful as a way of explaining Heidegger's thought to people who don't already understand it. — fdrake

Tbh, I don’t know that there’s a good substitute. It all
depends on how serious one is about understanding what he’s getting at. One could work ones way up to his language via secondary sources, but there are risks, like taking Dreyfus as a solid authority on Heidegger. It was because of secondary sources that I delayed reading Being and Time, having convinced myself I already understood him. But those sources didn’t prepare me for the real thing, which was a life-changing experience for me.

It's true, Hegel's mind was gigantic. Nobody knows how he got it all crammed into that little skull. — frank

Also should note in passing that Kojeve's Hegel is weird and great (scifi ?) (mixed with Heidegger and Marx.) Brandom's is profound in its relentless reasonableness. Nothing iffy or mysticalsounding is left over but the tower stands glorious anyway.

depends on how serious one is about understanding what he’s getting at. One could work ones way up to his language via secondary sources, but there are risks, like taking Dreyfus as a solid authority on Heidegger. It was because of secondary sources that I delayed reading Being and Time, having convinced myself I already understood him. But those sources didn’t prepare me for the real thing, which was a life-changing experience for me. — Joshs

Perhaps. That's just about H. though. If you're engaging with other strands of thought I believe you've got a responsibility to translate into a more neutral vocabulary. Hence, my request to de-Heidegger-ese your remarks. If they can only be articulated in Heideggerese it proves all those hermetic cult accusations quite true.

If they can only be articulated in Heideggerese it proves all those hermetic cult accusations quite true. — fdrake

:up:

And one could even embrace the exclusive cult approach, but to me it's not the way to go.

If you're engaging with other strands of thought I believe you've got a responsibility to translate into a more neutral vocabulary. Hence, my request to de-Heidegger-ese your remarks. If they can only be articulated in Heideggerese it proves all those hermetic cult accusations quite true. — fdrake

Well, the OP is titled ‘Martin Heidegger’ and includes its own request: “I'd like to reserve this thread only for those who have at least read Being & Time”.

Heideggerian thought is best delivered in Heideggerese, Derrida’s thought is best articulated in Derrida-eze, Deleuze’s ideas are best conveyed in Deleuze-speak. This is a key difference between analytic -style and Continental-style philosophy. The former strives for a commonsense normative discursive vocabulary while the latter tries to say close to the text. This does not mean one should only use vocabulary from the author’s text, rather one should interweave exegesis closely with the original terminology.

Instead of attempting to make Heidegger's statement more understandable, you cover it over, shroud it under a "background". As if, "you can't get there from here". — Fooloso4

I thought you studied Heidegger ? Doesn't everyone know at least this part ? As with Wittgenstein, in the beginning is the deed. At the bottom of The Anyone we find an ungrounded way of doing things. Our spade is turned. This is how one does it. For no deeper reason. A chair is handled as something for sitting on, treated as a tool with that role in a vast system of equipment which we navigate with animal confidence.
*****
Heidegger argues that we ordinarily encounter entities as (what he calls) equipment, that is, as being for certain sorts of tasks (cooking, writing, hair-care, and so on). Indeed we achieve our most primordial (closest) relationship with equipment not by looking at the entity in question, or by some detached intellectual or theoretical study of it, but rather by skillfully manipulating it in a hitch-free manner.
...
...while engaged in trouble-free hammering, the skilled carpenter has no conscious recognition of the hammer, the nails, or the work-bench, in the way that one would if one simply stood back and thought about them. Tools-in-use become phenomenologically transparent.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#ModEnc
*****

One could work ones way up to his language via secondary sources, but there are risks, like taking Dreyfus as a solid authority on Heidegger. — Joshs

Heidegger is quite readable at times. Of course I'd vote for focusing on his own (translated) words first.

Dreyfus is one of many interpreters worth checking out. Rorty's approach in terms of Harold Bloom is also nice. Sheehan. Farin. Derrida. So many.

We are all faithful Hegelbots, doing our best.

He is letting the future lead the show. The future isn’t the not-yet , but a kind of scaffolding into which the present emerges. The having-been is already shaped and defined by how this scaffolding produces the present, so that is why Heidegger says the past comes to us via the future. — Joshs

:up:

We are always on the way, bringing to fruition, living into or toward a possibility. This organizes our grasp of the world and our past.

“In Being and Time, Being is not something other than time: "Time" is a preliminary name for the truth of Being, and this truth is what prevails as essential in Being and thus is Being itself.”(What is Metaphysics) — Joshs

Woa. I missed this one. Nice quote.

Two additional reasons why I think it important to put things in my own words.

First it is not always clear that we understand the terminology in the same way. We use Heidegger's or some other author's words but that does not mean we understand the concepts in the same way.

Second, putting things in my own words forces me to think through and articulate what I think is meant by a statement. What may seem clear to me upon reading it may turn out to need further work on my part if I am to understand it.

“In Being and Time, Being is not something other than time: "Time" is a preliminary name for the truth of Being, and this truth is what prevails as essential in Being and thus is Being itself.”(What is Metaphysics) — Joshs

H uses these terms as synonyms the way (though not for the same reason/s as) Spinoza uses God and Nature.

The equation of being and time seems to be a truistic pseudo-profundity if it is accepted that time is nothing over and above change, and being is nothing over and above becoming.

The equation of being and time ... — Janus

I don't think using "being" & "time" as synonyms implies that these terms are equated. Maybe I'm mistaken but they seem to me complementary in H's usage rather than identical.

The Concept of Time (tr. Ingo Farin) was written as something like commentary on the recently published (back then) Dilthey / Count York letters. Quotes from those letters are comment on. In my view, it's helpful to focus on what Heidegger says about us as timebinding (historical ) hermeneutic beings.

Hegel => Feuerbach => Heidegger

Heidegger articulates what 'kind' of thing we are (among other things we are self-articulating, what we take ourselves to be, but within the limits of our having been thrown.)

I agree it's not a simple equation, otherwise Being and Time would be just Being.
And there is of course a conceptual difference between #being# and #time#.
I was going off-topic; thinking of Julian Barbour's idea that time is nothing but change. :halo:

Here's some info on Count Yorck which could be helpful.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/

Together with Dilthey, Yorck was the first philosopher to elaborate the specific concept of historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] as a defining characteristic in the ontology of human beings. In particular, Yorck emphasized the generic difference between the ontic and the historical...Yorck aimed exclusively at the ontology of historical life, particularly the historical band (syndesmos) and effective connection (virtuality) that unites generational life. Based on the primacy of historical life, Yorck adopted a decidedly anti-metaphysical stance, rejecting all claims of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis.
...
According to Yorck, the analysis and evaluation of the contemporary intellectual-historical situation is integral to philosophy—all the more so if philosophy self-reflexively grasps its ineluctably historical nature, which in itself is one of Yorck's main philosophical objectives. The basic idea for the historicity of philosophy is straightforward. For Yorck, as for Dilthey, philosophy is “a manifestation of life” [Lebensmanifestation] (CR, p. 250), a product or an expression in which life articulates itself in a certain way. But all life is intrinsically historical. Life is inconceivable without its historical development. Yorck writes:

The entire given psycho-physical reality is not something that is, but something that lives: that is the germ cell of historicity. And self-reflection, which is directed not at an abstract I, but the entirety of my own self, will find that I am historically determined, just as physics grasps me as determined by the cosmos. Just as I am nature, I am history. And in this decisive sense we have to understand Goethe's dictum of [our] having lived [Gelebthaben] for at least three thousand years. Conversely, it follows that history as a scientific discipline exists only as psychology of history. (CR 71/72)

For Yorck, as for Dilthey, human life is incorrectly understood if it is subsumed under the generic catch-all category of “existence.” The first point is that human life is inconceivable without temporal and historical development, movement, and change; life always transcends itself, hence it never simply “is.” The mode of being for humans is “life,” not “existence.”[3] And life, unlike existence, is intrinsically historical.

Yorck emphasizes the “virtuality” or “effectivity” of history, i.e., the cumulative effects and results of individual persons exerting power and influence in transmitting the possibility and conception of life to their descendants. Successor-generations develop their own stance towards life in response to what they have inherited from the individuals and generations preceding them. History is the ongoing transmission of life's potentiality, including the transmission of power, ideas, and material conditions.

The child gains through the mother's sacrifice, her sacrifice benefits the child. Without such virtual transmission of power [Kraftübertragung] there is no history at all. (CR, p. 155)

Yorck does not refer to some anonymous bio-power or power structures, as discussed in much of contemporary philosophy, but to the authority, sacrifice, and direct action and communication through which an individual person or groups of persons form and shape the lives and behaviours of coming generations. It is for this reason that Yorck insists that “person” is the key historical category (CR, p. 109). History is the history of historical, individual agents, projecting their power and authority into the future.

For Yorck, there is one continuous and common line of historical life—a living syndesmos. Past generations and past persons are not “outside” a present horizon in a past world of their own. Rather, they live on, as it were, in their descendents. Moreover, because of this connecting band, one can go “backwards” by way of what Yorck calls “transposition” (CR, p. 61), transposing oneself into the lives of others and thus “re-enacting,” as Dilthey would say, the positions towards life that have been lived by one's predecessors. That life is historical means that each person is always already outside his or her own individual “nature” and placed within the historical connection to predecessor- and successor-generations. For Yorck, living self-consciousness is, to use Hegel's fortuitous phrase, “the I that is we and the we that is I” (Hegel 1807, p. 140).

Consequently, Yorck rejects from the start the transcendental method in philosophy as insufficient for grasping lived historical reality. Transcendental philosophy reduces historical life to the merely “subjective,” which misses the genuine characteristic of Geist, spirit or mind, namely its real, historical extension and connection.

A little more:


Yorck's primary category of historical life does not only challenge transcendental philosophy as too-narrow a foothold for philosophy. A fortiori, it also challenges the entire metaphysical tradition, which presupposes or searches for an ultimate objective reality (being, idea, substance, and so on), divorced from the ground of the always shifting historical life. Yorck rejects claims to “knowledge” sub specie aeternitatis. For Yorck, metaphysics is a flight from the historical reality ‘on the ground.’ By making historical life primary, Yorck effectively aims to dismantle the predominance of Greek metaphysics, including the modes of thought of modern science derived from it.

But Yorck is not content with just opposing metaphysics and transcendental philosophy. Instead, he attempts to instill and to cultivate historical awareness in philosophy itself, based on the principle that all productions of life are as historical as life itself. He writes: Since “to philosophize is to live,” “there is no real philosophizing which would not be historical” (CR, p. 251). More radical than Dilthey, Yorck calls for the “historicization” [Vergeschichtlichung] of philosophy:

Just as physiology cannot abstract from physics, so philosophy—especially if it is critical—cannot abstract from historicity [Geschichtlichkeit]. After all, the uncritical Critique of Kant's can be understood historically only, and thus be overcome. [Human] behaviour and historicity are like breathing and air pressure—and—this may sound somewhat paradoxical—the failure to historicize philosophizing appears to me, in methodological respects, a metaphysical remnant. (CR, 69)

It is therefore not surprising that, unlike Dilthey, Yorck specifically appreciates the emphasis on historicity [Geschichtlichkeit][5] in Hegel and some of his followers, despite his rejection of Hegel's speculative or ontical superstructure (CR, 59).[6]
...
The separation [Trennung] of self and other, I and world, soul and lived body [Leib] is such an early separation, indeed, the first act of life, as it were, such that these derivatives appear as absolute, autonomous, and self-sufficient. (ST, pp. 11/12)

Yorck concludes: “The self is only through the other, just as the other is only through the self” (ST, p. 11).
...
Yorck distinguishes between the feeling of transitoriness, i.e., that everything passes away [Vergänglichkeitsgefühl] (ST, p. 33), and the feeling or awareness of one's own mortality [Sterblichkeitsgefühl][14] (ST, p. 90). Acquiescence into one's own mortality constitutes the opposite pole to self-affirmation, “self-renunciation” [Selbsthingabe] (ST, p. 14), which is thus distinct from and even antithetical to the ethical impetus in philosophy and science. Yorck argues that the inversion of volitional and cognitive projection in feeling and its concentration in pure, passive interiority amounts to a “religious comportment” and the feeling of dependency (ST, 121). To the extent that the religious concentration of life in interiority is inversely related to projective representation, Yorck understands religious life in terms of its “freedom from the world” or Weltfreiheit (ST, p. 81 & 112). Psychologically, freedom from the world is the precondition for the consciousness of a world-transcendent God, or the consciousness of transcendence (ST, p. 105).
...
History has nothing of the isolation [Selbständigkeit] of the natural [order]” (ST, p. 6), but rather, in each of its phases, history is self-reflexively involved in its own historicity—“as the ferment of its aliveness”—and thus opens itself to the ever new “historical contrapposto” (ST, p. 6). Nothing is exempt from historical change. Philosophical categories through which the world is understood are historical products of life and hence inextricably bound up with the historicity of humankind. For instance, Yorck explicitly claims that the category of “being” is itself “a result of life” (ST, p. 8). This liberates history from all relation to an unchanging, fixed point of reference outside historical life.

Here are some relevant strands from Dilthey [ note that an analogue of das Man is presented as 'objective spirit.']

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dilthey/

The Kantian I-think that is the basis of the conceptual cognition (Erkenntnis) of the natural sciences really derives from a direct knowing (Wissen) rooted in Dilthey’s more inclusive thinking-feeling-willing of lived experience (see 1883/SW.I, 228, and ca. 1880–93/SW.I, 263–68). The natural sciences merely construct a phenomenal or ideal world that abstracts from the real nexus of lived experience. The world that is formed by the human sciences is the historical-social reality in which human beings participate. It is a real world that is directly possessed or present in what Dilthey calls Innewerden. This term has sometimes been translated as “inner awareness,” but is is better to translate it as “reflexive awareness” to indicate how things are there-for-us. Reflexive awareness is a pre-reflective, indexical mode of consciousness that “does not place a content over against the subject of consciousness (it does not re-present it)” (ca. 1880–93/SW.I, 253). It is the direct know-how that reality is present-for-me prior to any of the reflective act-content, inner-outer, or subject-object distinctions that characterize the representational world of conceptual cognition.

I am tired from overworking; having reviewed my files, I worry about their unfinished contents, whose completion demands incalculably more work from me. All this “about”, “of”, and “toward”, all these references of what is remembered to what is experienced, in short, all these structural inner relations, must be apprehended by me, since I now want to apprehend the fullness of the lived experience exhaustively. And precisely in order to exhaust it, I must regress further in the structural network to the memories of other lived experiences. (1904–9/SW.III, 50)
...
Individuals can be studied as psychic productive systems inherently related to each other as well as to more inclusive productive systems that are also at work in history. These larger productive systems come about because of the need for communication, interaction, and cooperation among individuals. But they can also take on a life of their own and survive the individuals that formed and shaped them. Dilthey’s category of Wirkung or productivity is at the root of Gadamer’s theory of the productive history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of works of art that grants them new meanings over time that exceed those intended by their creators. In the Introduction to the Human Sciences, Dilthey had been unwilling to consider purposive social systems as subjects or carriers of history. In The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, he qualifies his opposition to the idea of a transpersonal subject such as the soul of a people by de-reifying it as the spirit of a people that is to be considered as a logical rather than a real subject. It is possible to regard cooperative productive systems as logical subjects that transcend individuals without positing them as super-empirical real subjects.
...
Whereas Hegel restricted objective spirit to the legal, economic and political aspects of historical life, Dilthey expands the concept to include not only the sciences, but also the triad of art, religion and philosophy that Hegel had assigned to absolute spirit. But most of all, objective spirit embodies the everyday, mundane aspects of life that we grow up with.

From earliest childhood, the self is nurtured by this world of objective spirit. It is also the medium in which the understanding of other persons and their life-manifestations takes place. For everything in which spirit has objectified itself contains something that is common to the I and the Thou. ...

This common background suffices for the elementary understanding of everyday life. But whenever the common meaning of life-manifestations is called into question for some reason, higher understanding becomes necessary. This can occur because of an apparent inconsistency among various claims being made, or because an ambiguity that needs to be resolved. In each case we discern an unexpected complexity that requires us to shift our frame of reference.

Together with Dilthey, Yorck was the first philosopher to elaborate the specific concept of historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] as a defining characteristic in the ontology of human beings. In particular, Yorck emphasized the generic difference between the ontic and the historical...Yorck aimed exclusively at the — plaque flag

"Temporality and historicality" is an important section in B&T. It is the (authentic) historicality that transcends the banality of everydayness.

It is interesting to note that Dilthey was one of the first to direct wider academic attention to Husserl. He began holding seminars on Husserl in Berlin around 1901. Dilthey believed that Husserl (like William James) represented the new psychology he was aiming for. Heidegger has pointed out the somewhat strange fact that Dilthey was interested in an "abstract" philosopher like Husserl (who, in fact, thought that Dilthey was too much of a skeptical relativist and not interested in "ideal" meanings).

Here is the table of contents of Being and Time. One gets a good overview from it. In Heidegger's (or Kant's, Hegel's etc) case one has to know the "big picture" before pieces start to fall into their places.

https://www.beyng.com/pages/en/BeingandTimeMR/BeingandTimeMR.ToC.html

I thought you studied Heidegger ? Doesn't everyone know at least this part ? — plaque flag

I am aware of your penchant and fondness for tangent, but try not to mistake your tangential excursions for something that has anything to do with the issue under discussion. If you want to take my question about what someone with little or no background in Heidegger would understand about a statement that was supposed to explain another statement as an opportunity to talk about the background of a text then go ahead, but don't mistake the one for the other.

Putting it differently, the traditional approach is to treat past, present and future as having separate contents and the. line them up in a sequence. We could instead glom them onto each other and say that we have freed ourselves of linear time by making these three contents (past, present, future) simultaneous. But that is not what Heidegger is doing. He is letting the future lead the show. The future isn’t the not-yet , but a kind of scaffolding into which the present emerges. The having-been is already shaped and defined by how this scaffolding produces the present, so that is why Heidegger says the past comes to us via the future. — Joshs

Interesting and vivid description. Can we 'un-linear' ourselves in practice? What does an account like this mean for day-to-day living and how can it be utilised in human thought?

Interesting and vivid description. Can we 'un-linear' ourselves in practice? What does an account like this mean for day-to-day living and how can it be utilised in human thought? — Tom Storm

Eugene Gendlin’s Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning introduces an approach that applies this non-linear temporality to everyday life. His Focusing technique, incorporated into his psychotherapy practice, offers a way for us to go back and forth between the implicit intricacy of bodily-felt meaning and linguistic-scientific and logical conceptualization.

“Implying is not an occurring that will happen. It is not an occurring-not-yet. It does not occupy a different time-position than the occurring. Rather, one implying encompasses all three linear time positions, and does not occupy an additional linear time position of its own. (See A Process Model, IVB. This is a more intricate model of time. It includes a kind of “future” and a kind of “past” that are not linear positions. This time model can be reduced back to the liner model by considering just occurring-occurring-occurring as if it were cut off from implying.”

“The future that is present now is not a time-position, not what will be past later. The future that is here now is the implying that is here now. The past is not an earlier position but the now implicitly functioning past.”“......the past functions to "interpret" the present,...the past is changed by so functioning. This needs to be put even more strongly: The past functions not as itself, but as already changed by what it functions in”(p.37 )

Husserl (who, in fact, thought that Dilthey was too much of a skeptical relativist and not interested in "ideal" meanings). — waarala

As it turns out, Dilthey’s historicism ends up
idealizing history in a way that Husserl avoids.

But those sources didn’t prepare me for the real thing, which was a life-changing experience for me. — Joshs

My experience is very much the same.

Now I continuously read Being and Time in conjunction with other writers. I especially like William Blattner and Taylor Carmen.

putting things in my own words forces me to think through and articulate what I think is meant by a statement. What may seem clear to me upon reading it may turn out to need further work on my part if I am to understand it. — Fooloso4

excellent point!

I would go so far as to say that if I cannot put it my own words, then I do not understand it.

"Temporality and historicality" is an important section in B&T. It is the (authentic) historicality that transcends the banality of everydayness. — waarala

:up:

Yes, a key chapter ! I happened to have just reread in the last week.