It sounds like Being and Time didn’t make sense for Steiner. — Joshs

Steiner wasn't saying that Being and Time doesn't make sense. He was explaining that it's incomplete and that people who heard him speak said his lectures went beyond what he wrote. I guess the same was said of Plato. Apparently there is a recording of him somewhere, and Steiner says it reveals a magnetic personality.

I'm thinking of how mesmerizing I found What is Metaphysics. Maybe that gives me a hint as to what Arendt and the others are talking about.

Dialectics? You mean Hegelian dialectics? — Joshs

Or Neoplatonic, yea.

The irony is that reductive naturalism is the product of Enlightenment philosophy, and is often aligned with rationalist theology and deism, where humanism is more closely aligned with atheistic existentialists like Sartre. — Joshs

Theists can definitely be a-humanistic to the extent that sinners are tossed away like garbage into a fire.

Steiner wasn't saying that Being and Time doesn't make sense. He was explaining that it's incomplete and that people who heard him speak said his lectures went beyond what he wrote. I guess the same was said of Plato. Apparently there is a recording of him somewhere, and Steiner says it reveals a magnetic personality. — frank

70% of Heidegger’s published work is lectures or seminars.

70% of Heidegger’s published work is lectures or seminars. — Joshs

Okay?

Yes. That would be part of the intelligent resolution of real problems, not philosophical ones. Dewey called the tendency to neglect context "the philosophers fallacy."

↪Joshs
Yes. That would be part of the intelligent resolution of real problems, not philosophical ones. Dewey called the tendency to neglect context "the philosophers fallacy." — Ciceronianus

Heidegger initially called his approach philosophy but then called it ‘thinking’ in order to distance it from the association between philosophy and abstraction.

Heidegger initially called his approach philosophy but then called it ‘thinking’ in order to distance it from the association between philosophy and abstraction. — Joshs

According to this essay, it's rationality itself he wants people to learn to get past.

This is the kind of thing that Habermas wouldn't have been able to accept because he and others perceived that the Holocaust was a manifestation of the indulgence of irrationality. In fact, the Nazis in general were thought of as such a manifestation. For Habermas, it was imperative to bolster rationality in every way possible to return to psycho-social stability.

If that meant giving up what Heidegger thought of as the special destiny of the Germans, it wouldn't have even been a consideration. Redemption wasn't on the table after WW2. There was nothing but silence. I never realized what the intellectual climate of post-WW2 Germany was like. It was a like a dark, empty cave. Just pure desolation.

Not a moral content but an ethical process. Authenticity guards against reifying experience into totalizing moral categories, and that is an ethical achievement. — Joshs

We need a thread on this alone. :wink:

This is the kind of thing that Habermas wouldn't have been able to accept because he and others perceived that the Holocaust was a manifestation of the indulgence of irrationality. In fact, the Nazis in general were thought of as such a manifestation. For Habermas, it was imperative to bolster rationality in every way possible to return to psycho-social stability. — frank

Wasn't the Holocaust also a product of scientisitc thinking and misapplied rationalism with a technocratic final solution? Zygmunt Bauman ( a philosopher and death camp surviver) argues that the Holocaust was a product of modernity, made possible by bureaucratic rationality, which allowed ordinary people to participate in genocide without personal hatred or direct violence. I have always thought of the Holocaust as what happens when rational calculation overrides people’s emotions and moral instincts.

This is the kind of thing that Habermas wouldn't have been able to accept because he and others perceived that the Holocaust was a manifestation of the indulgence of irrationality. In fact, the Nazis in general were thought of as such a manifestation. For Habermas, it was imperative to bolster rationality in every way possible to return to psycho-social stability — frank

Habermas was a long way from Heidegger philosophically. His longing for a metaphysical and moral foundation causes him not only reject Heidegger and poststructuralism, but Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Gadamer, Freud and the many philosophical movements they were connected to which questioned foundationalism and recognized the need to reconcile
the rational and the irrational.

Wasn't the Holocaust also a product of scientisitc thinking and misapplied rationalism with a technocratic final solution? Zygmunt Bauman ( a philosopher and death camp surviver) argues that the Holocaust was a product of modernity, made possible by bureaucratic rationality, which allowed ordinary people to participate in genocide without personal hatred or direct violence. I have always thought of the Holocaust as what happens when rational calculation overrides people’s emotions and moral instincts. — Tom Storm

I suggested that previously in this thread. I'm reading a book called Another Country which covers the intellectual scene in Germany after the war and into reunification. People who lived through it said the German tendency toward irrationality was the real problem. What occurred to me was that eugenics, which Hitler loved about the USA, was a product of scientism, not irrational nationalism and what not.

Habermas was a long way from Heidegger philosophically. His longing for a metaphysical and moral foundation causes him not only reject Heidegger and poststructuralism, but Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Gadamer, Freud and the many philosophical movements they were connected to which questioned foundationalism and recognized the need to reconcile
the rational and the irrational. — Joshs

I get that. But whatever you and I may love, you have to respect the attitude of people who are trying to find the way for their culture to come out of shock and take a step into the future. I'd leave it to them to figure it out, even if that means burying something had potential.

Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass tried to talk about it. Their attempts listened to the silence.

:up:

"The essential structure of everydayness" seems ineluctable blindness to its presupposed "essential structure" ... like, to use a naturalistic example, an eye that must exclude itself from its visual field in order to see. Afaik, phenomenological reduction (i.e. transcendental deduction) is just an overly prolix way for the puppet (e.g. dasein) to show itself its strings (e.g. being-with-others-in-the-world-towards-death) that is only shocking or profound to Cartesians, subjectivists, and other mysterians. — 180 Proof

I knew this sounded familiar. It goes back to Pierre Gassendi's argument against self knowledge. He writes,
In my reflections as to the reason why it is the case that neither does
sight see itself nor the understanding understand itself, the thought
presents itself to me that nothing acts on itself. Thus neither does the
hand (or the tip of the finger) strike itself nor does the foot kick itself.......
Give me then a mirror in which
you yourself may in a similar fashion act; I promise you that the results
will be that this will reflect back your semblance into yourself and
that you then will at length perceive yourself, not indeed by a direct,
but a reflected cognition. But, if you do not give this, there is no hope
of your knowing yourself." (p 57)

I discovered this in Michel Henry's Essence of Manifestation, which I have been struggling with (it is, after all, written for other continental philosophers exclusively. He simply assumes one has read everything). His response is phenomenology's essential problematic is presupposed by empirical models of auto-discovery, so when one thinks about eyes seeing themselves and the like, one has yet to determine whether they have any real application to the phenomenological problems Descartes opened up. He says that this kind of reasoning works from an empirical ground, "which has not yet learned to lift to an ontological level the problematic it raises." That is, the kind of intimation of "life," as he puts it---immanent affectivity, the phenomenology of life--that is the reduction's essential discovery, is not at all like the empirical conditions that apply in Gassendi's thinking. The reduction takes one into an affective existential affirmation, which then provides the basis for theoretical work, but this affirmation occurs in teh world of phenomenality.

It is interesting to add how the 19th century transcendentalists succinctly said somethig along these lines. Emerson's "I, eye, Aye!" comes to mind. "Aye" is an event apriori, a sublime recognition that brings affirmation to a singular primordiality, which is revelatory, not discursive in its nature. Of course, Emerson of considered something of a crank by philosophers, but then, it is powerfully argued, I think, that philosophy's end is not more philosophy. It seeks the truth at the most basic level of inquiry, and here, one has to make a dramatic move out of philosophy. This is the "direction" or the telos of phenomenology. For me, I think of things like Heidegger's extraordinary analysis of the ecstatic nature of existential temporality. This occurs in the second division, around from section 65 and forward, and its makes, to my thinking, crystal clear, how human existence is essentially outside of time when time is conceived in the "vulgar" linear way. The reason why I talk about two kinds of people (above) is that I am now convinced that when someone like Steiner comes away from B&T with the kind of cynical remarks mentioned in the OP, I can only conclude that while he could work competently through the thought, he really had no existential significance to bring to it, and so it remained merely theoretical, speculative, an work that cannot fully account for the its raison de'tre. I think it is clear Heidegger himself was baffled by his own thinking, evidenced here and there, like, e.g., near his death when he said he had never really left the church! I think it was Karl Rahner who was asked to say a few words at the ceremony, and who was just puzzled, because Heidegger was so bound to the finitude of his analysis of human existence in everything he wrote. Maybe he was like the early Wittgenstein who was aware how much the presumption of language could offend the seriousness of deep religious sentiment. He did used to carry a copy of Tolstoy's Gospels in Brief.

Oh, the horrors of everyday thinking! Ineluctable to those of us in the common herd, mired in life and living, and its seemingly real problems, neglecting its essential structure. — Ciceronianus

But then, philosophy proper is not the philosophy of this and that, as in one's philosophy of having a lasting relationship or that of making friends and influencing people, is it? Rather, it goes to basic question, the most basic questions, and here the world is turned on its head. Someone says existence for us can be understood best as the survival of the fittest, then I ask what is meant by 'fittest" and "existence" and "human" we are thrown into a world of thought about the presuppositions facile claims rest on, and it is here philosophy actually begins, and it is unfamiliar as can possibly be, asking questions pertaining to the nature of existence, of thought, of freedom, of ethics and aesthetics.

Philosophy is, in my estimate, a full assault on everydayness. And its insights can literally undo familiarity itself. The comments I made above are meant to suggest that there is a gravitas to our existence which everydayness cannot see because it exists, if you will, within the enclosure of common assumptions. Reading something like Heidegger's Being and Time puts a question to this enclosure: What IS it? It is THE philosophical question. Why not set aside a few months, or years, and read it? Or maybe I have it wrong and you have already done this?

My reading of the works of that dreadful man has been limited to short works, like What is Metaphyics? and The Question Concerning Technology. As to the former, I'm sympathetic with Carnap's view of it. As to the latter, I thought it so Romantic as to be almost silly (it seemed as if he was ignorant of the fact humans have been manipulating nature for many thousands of year). I've also read his rhapsodic tributes of Hitler while at Freiberg. I doubt I'd have the patience to read anything longer.

Carnap's intelligence was limited, but I think profound. I think he was right in thinking the vagaries of Heidegger and others are, if anything, efforts of persons lacking any artistic talent to do what artists do-evoke insights into life and the universe and our place in it. The spiritual can play a similar role.

Frankly, I find it difficult to believe anyone would think it's the goal of philosophy to address such questions as "Why is there something rather than nothing?" If the question relates to the origin of the universe, it strikes me as unlikely that philosophers will answer it by thinking really hard. It's possible, though, that physics, cosmology and astronomy may provide insight.

If the question relates to something else, I'm not sure what it can mean. I doubt it's a question, in fact, or that there's an actual problem to be solved.

Philosophy has all too often been an assault upon everydayness. Originally in the ancient West, though, it was vitally concerned with the best way to live our lives. I think that's a worthy inquiry. I don't look to an unrepentant Nazi like Heidegger for guidance in that regard.

My reading of the works of that dreadful man has been limited to short works, like What is Metaphyics? and The Question Concerning Technology — Ciceronianus

I have a friend who can probably outdo you in the insult department when it comes to Heidegger. The difference between him and you when it comes to that philosopher he refers to as that ‘little worm of a man’ is that, to his horror, my friend found that Heidegger’s ideas were indeed indispensable to him. Such is the dilemna many of us find ourselves in; one of most more despicable 20th century philosophers happens to be one of most profound thinkers in the history of philosophy, in the opinion of many who hate him as much as you do.

Frankly, I find it difficult to believe anyone would think it's the goal of philosophy to address such questions as "Why is there something rather than nothing?" If the question relates to the origin of the universe, it strikes me as unlikely that philosophers will answer it by thinking really hard. It's possible, though, that physics, cosmology and astronomy may provide insight — Ciceronianus

For the record, Heidegger doesn’t ask why there is something rather than nothing. He asks why philosophy has focused so much on ‘something’ and not on that which is not a thing.

Philosophy has all too often been an assault upon everydayness — Ciceronianus

I agree with Constance. Philosophy should be about challenging everyday common sense, not reifying it. As Deleuze says:

“Common sense is the ideology of the natural, and good sense is the ideology of the normative. Together they form the two aspects of the image of thought according to which thought is assumed to be in principle in accord with truth, and according to which the thinker is assumed to possess a natural capacity for thought.

“Common sense always interprets by reference to the identity of things; it thinks in terms of what is similar, what is continuous, what is known. It fears the singular, the event, and the unrecognizable. Thought is thus forced into the pre-existing framework of the recognizable, and loses its power to create new connections.”

I'm not sure what philosophers mean by "common sense." It seems they think it to be something the less enlightened and less intelligent of us rely on, but my suspicion is they have recourse to it all the time.

We live in and are part of an environment. Our minds are part of it because we're part of it. All we know, all we feel, all we do results from and are part of our interaction with it. That is what's "natural" to me.

To the extent our interaction with the rest of nature indicates certain conduct and information is useful and beneficial, we may come to rely on it and it may become customary. But we should always be willing to accept that our judgments and conduct are subject to change when what is learned through further interaction establishes change is appropriate. What's customary may become inadequate or undesirable. I consider that to be common sense. If Deleuze thinks we can gain special insight from some extra-natural source I think he's wrong.

But we may find nature, the universe, includes more than we know or is different from what we know.

Philosophy has all too often been an assault upon everydayness. Originally in the ancient West, though, it was vitally concerned with the best way to live our lives. I think that's a worthy inquiry. I don't look to an unrepentant Nazi like Heidegger for guidance in that regard. — Ciceronianus

:up: :up:

We live in and are part of an environment. Our minds are part of it because we're part of it. All we know, all we feel, all we do results from and are part of our interaction with it. That is what's "natural" to me.

To the extent our interaction with the rest of nature indicates certain conduct and information is useful and beneficial, we may come to rely on it and it may become customary. But we should always be willing to accept that our judgments and conduct are subject to change when what is learned through further interaction establishes change is appropriate. What's customary may become inadequate or undesirable. I consider that to be common sense. — Ciceronianus

Wisdom. :fire:

My reading of the works of that dreadful man has been limited to short works, like What is Metaphyics? and The Question Concerning Technology. As to the former, I'm sympathetic with Carnap's view of it. As to the latter, I thought it so Romantic as to be almost silly (it seemed as if he was ignorant of the fact humans have been manipulating nature for many thousands of year). I've also read his rhapsodic tributes of Hitler while at Freiberg. I doubt I'd have the patience to read anything longer.

Carnap's intelligence was limited, but I think profound. I think he was right in thinking the vagaries of Heidegger and others are, if anything, efforts of persons lacking any artistic talent to do what artists do-evoke insights into life and the universe and our place in it. The spiritual can play a similar role.

Frankly, I find it difficult to believe anyone would think it's the goal of philosophy to address such questions as "Why is there something rather than nothing?" If the question relates to the origin of the universe, it strikes me as unlikely that philosophers will answer it by thinking really hard. It's possible, though, that physics, cosmology and astronomy may provide insight.

If the question relates to something else, I'm not sure what it can mean. I doubt it's a question, in fact, or that there's an actual problem to be solved.

Philosophy has all too often been an assault upon everydayness. Originally in the ancient West, though, it was vitally concerned with the best way to live our lives. I think that's a worthy inquiry. I don't look to an unrepentant Nazi like Heidegger for guidance in that regard. — Ciceronianus

I read it. I see you haven't really read any phenomenology, I mean the way you talk strongly shows this. You have to read Kant first, then Husserl, Hegel. Fichte, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and so on. As for me, there is a great deal I haven't read, but Being and Time is ESSTENTIAL to understand phenomenology post Husserl. Who cares that we don't like what he failed to say about the Nazis. This is just ad hominem and entirely outside of the substance of this seminal philosophers work. It is not that he deserves to be read, regardless of what has been called his narcissistic disinclination to second guess his own decisions. It is rather that Being and TIme is flat out the most important contribution one could make to one's philosophical understanding. Good Luck!

It's interesting that the encomiums of Heidegger made by his admirers resemble so closely his praise of Hitler.

But I thank you for wishing me Good Luck, whatever that may mean in the proper, phenomenological, sense, and wish you the same.

Jung would say you have a Heidegger complex.

I have a fondness for Jung, primarily because he had a vision of God
defecating on a cathedral, though it seems he interpreted it differently than I would.

I remember it as God pooping out of the sky. I don't remember a cathedral.

m

↪Ciceronianus
I remember it as God pooping out of the sky. I don't remember a cathedral. — frank

Holy Sh*t

Holy Sh*t — Joshs

Exactly.