Thanks for this - so I didn't have to. — 180 Proof

You are quite welcome! I'm thinking you know though that I chose that infamous gem precisely as an easy target in order to rescue it somewhat.

FWIW, I like your criticisms of Heidegger. I still don't see a problem in raiding his texts for spare parts. I think we both love Nietzsche, and to me it's not clear why Nietzsche is any less of a target for a certain uncharitable reading than Heidegger, Hegel, or Derrida. To me it's a matter of what we make of their traces, how we weave them here and now into our discussions.

I see that we have only so much time and that we have to make choices. We decide to set some writer down, having seen enough. But when is the story finished? Who knows ahead of time how things might be re-contextualized? In any case, I think it's great that you elaborated on Heidegger. I always enjoy your posts, even if you call some of my favorite thinkers sophists.

H is a "priestly-type" of human, all too human — 180 Proof

Petey Sloterdijk almost agreed, but shifted the scene

He [Heidegger] does not think on the stage but rather in the background, at best on the side stage, or in a Catholic context, not before the high altar bur rather in the sacristy. Because of influences that are older than his thought, he came to the conviction that what is visible and prominent, what is right in the middle, lives from the inconspicuous preparation of assistants backstage and in the wings. He too is such an assistant, and that is what he wants to be: a pioneer, a second, someone who blends into a greater event - in no case, or at least only momentarily and awkwardly, is he the hero standing center stage. Heidegger is never actually a protagonist who exposes himself in exemplary battles to the heroic risk of being seen on all sides. Moments of apparent deep emotion cannot change anything in this regard. A hidden power was at work in him, which was neither exhibited nor explained, let alone admitted or apologized for. When distressed or embarrassed, he tended to fall silent, and no god gave him the words to say how he suffered.

It seems important to me, in everything having to do with Heidegger’s spiritual physiognomy, to take into consideration his father’s occupation as a sexton. If, in his biographical studies, Hugo Ott has plausibly argued that much in Heidegger’s thought is only understandable as a metastasis of southwestern German Old Catholicism circa 1900, then we should add that it was not so much a priestly Catholicism, thus a catholicism of the high altar and the nave, that formed Heidegger’s dispositions; it was rather a Catholicism of the side aisle, a Catholicism of the sexton and altar boy, a religiosity of the quiet assistant on the periphery, desperate for acceptance.

Given that S was an excommunicated Jew, the first openly secular philosopher in Christendom in the last half or so millennium and the father of biblical (Tanahk & Xtian NT) criticism, he certainly wasn't "struggling with Christianity" (Judaism, Islam or any 'religious faith'). — 180 Proof

I don't think that's true. Maybe "struggling" is too imprecise, but within the context of a Christian worldview- otherwise why mention "God" at all, even if meant in a quasi-pantheistic way?

If nature or existence generally is "god," then I'm certainly a believer.

based on H's 1976 revisions of SuZ instead of the 1927 manuscript on which Macquarrie's & Robinson's translation was based, I'll stand by Stambaugh's as more authoritative (pace Dreyfus et al). — 180 Proof

Fair enough. Perhaps in further discussion we'll come across examples where Stambaugh is more clear - I wouldn't be surprised.

If you say so. Clearly, neither of us is convinced of the other's bona fides. — 180 Proof

If you say you've read B&T twice then I believe you, but you haven't said stated where he's off the mark, given his thesis.

For me, sir, H is not worth my time delving any deeper than I have - e.g citing chapter & verse - in order to more thoroughly critique his work ( — 180 Proof

But that's exactly what this thread was created for. You don't have to necessarily cite "chapter and verse," but something a little more concrete or perhaps elaborated more (like your point about wu wei) would be appreciated. If you're not interested, you're not interested - I can't help that. But you apparently cared enough to comment, so we're left where we are.

A philosophy which is either of no consequence to or concerned even tangentally with its own implications for "politics, ethics, social issues, etc" is not worth bothering with — 180 Proof

But that's not the case. There are plenty of connections. It's simply that politics ethics are not his main thesis, as you know. He claims only to be doing "fundamental ontology." Later he will say that this is connected to the "spiritual fate of the West."

If one is serious, one doesn't choose philosophers a la cart or from a buffet table; rather serious study includes running down significant sources wherever and whomever they are. If you are serious, Xtrix, then you know that, and that your question is disingenuous. — 180 Proof

So you had to bother with Heidegger at some point for various reasons- fine. I'll rephrase: given your claim to have read him, and your finding his thought on par with postmodernist babblings, and further your unwillingness to give any potentially valuable elaboration on his shortcomings, then again I ask: why come here? Why bother? If it's simply boredom, so be it.

as Freddy Zarathustra might say, H is a "priestly-type" of human, all too human "underhanded (onto)theologian" decadent one must overcome in oneself in order to affirm the whole of life - amor fati! — 180 Proof

This is a good example of what I wrote above. "Onto-theologian" has the potential to be a criticism, but I can only guess as to what you mean. Where's the theology in Heidegger? I don't see it. Any examples would be helpful, as maybe I missed something important. But as far as I can tell, I don't see where the "priest-type" comes into play.

If one were to criticize him for being a stuffy, scholarly type man, I wouldn't deny it. But again, this is pretty superficial.

:up:

I wish I could remember where it is, I can't find it now, but somewhere or other I read an account by someone observing Heidegger talking to students. He was described as intense, but with downcast, flitting eyes, gesturing and describing. I will try to find it. It put me very much in mind of a kid trying to describe a big event (too big) to other kids, in a quiet space, after (or before) the fact.

In any case, I more or less echo @fdrake's response to Heidgger. I was drawn to him initially because he was a Big Name and mysterious; came back later and found a lot to like in B&T; now have a qualified appreciation for him, while understanding and sympathizing with some criticisms.

You are quite welcome! I'm thinking you know though that I chose that infamous gem precisely as an easy target in order to rescue it somewhat. — path

:up:

FWIW, I like your criticisms of Heidegger. I still don't see a problem in raiding his texts for spare parts.

Thanks. Neither do I.

I think we both love Nietzsche, and to me it's not clear why Nietzsche is any less of a target for a certain uncharitable reading than Heidegger, Hegel, or Derrida.

N was a piñata of "uncharitable readings" by Anglo-American analytical/positivists for the first half of the last century, as I recall, until Walter Kaufmann translated his dionysian music into lyrical english in the 50s and R.J. Hollingdale brought Zarathustra back down to old "Motley Cow" in the 60s-70s, both of which helped make N accessible, even hypnotic, to postwar students and bohemians - though, as you know, never quite respectable (fortunately) - on both sides of the Atlantic.

But when is the story finished? Who knows ahead of time how things might be re-contextualized?

Every decade since the late 80s it seems rereading Spinoza's oeuvre has "re-contextualized" "things" for me. As I once had learned by example to read N against N, I read S against S (always mindful that S had read Descartes Maimonides & Aristotle against themselves!) "Beware lest a statue slay you" indeed!

In any case, I think it's great that you elaborated on Heidegger. I always enjoy your posts, ...

:cool:

...even if you call some of my favorite thinkers sophists.

Yeah, well, some of my favorites are sophists too ...

Very interesting.

If we're all operating with an understanding of being, then this effects everything - our politics and our culture and our future. If Heidegger is right, and our current understanding is a "technological-nihilistic" one, then we're in bad shape indeed. You can see the results all around you.

So it's not that the questioning of "being" has no relevance to the current political or social world; it does.

Worth pointing out.

:up: Thanks. Sloterdijk and I are old acquaintances (since his masterful Critique of Cynical Reason days, which that 'Heidegger quote' could be from(?)).

Given that S was [1] an excommunicated Jew, [2] the first openly secular philosopher in Christendom in the last half or so millennium and [3] the father of biblical (Tanakh & Xtian NT) criticism, he certainly wasn't "struggling with Christianity" (Judaism, Islam or any 'religious faith').
— 180 Proof

I don't think that's true. ... but within the context of a Christian worldview- otherwise why mention "God" at all, even if meant in a quasi-pantheistic way? — Xtrix

Again, read Spinoza. What you "think" is clearly uninformed and/or not thought through.

Good- now you know how I feel. :up:

If we're all operating with an understanding of being, then this effects everything - our politics and our culture and our future. If Heidegger is right, and our current understanding is a "technological-nihilistic" one, then we're in bad shape indeed. You can see the results all around you.

So it's not that the questioning of "being" has no relevance to the current political or social world; it does.

Worth pointing out. — Xtrix

I agree, but there's a double-work to be done. One kind of work involves universal, invariant structures (like the kind you see in B&T). Another involves the here-and-now texture of where you live, how you're 'thrown'. And of course thrown-ness is a big thing in Heidegger - but it's universalized in him. That's a neat trick. Thrown-ness (facticity, destiny etc) is discussed, but in the mode of the universal. It's always : One, in a given historical situation, has to do such and such ('retrieve' from the past, and so on) but it's always spoken of in this abstract way. What you don't get is any clear communication about how that is working on the actual, thrown, human that is Heidegger, and how he's working through it. While there is much to love and take from him, the he-was-a-nazi criticism of him is not - definitely not - all wrong. Unclear to himself, only able to talk in abstractions about the concrete, or in universals about the singular, he became co-opted by the first thing that came along that, in its broad contours, seemed to check his boxes.

Thanks. Sloterdijk and I are old acquaintances (since his masterful Critique of Cynical Reason days, which that 'Heidegger quote' could be from(?)). — 180 Proof

You're the one who turned me on to him, actually, mentioning Spheres over on the old forum ( I think.) This is from a newer collection Not Saved: Essays After Heidegger (but I've only read what's available on google books preview.) I think [Heidegger+ Sloterdijk] is a valuable pulse of thought in the same way Spinoza is [Descartes+Spinoza], but I'm not sure - I still have to give Spinoza more attention.

This helps me relate to Heidegger trying to awaken the question of being. I am still trying to figure out how the question of meaning and the question of being relate, beyond the straightforward way (what does it mean to say something is?) — path

I think they're intimately connected through "disclosure," through aletheia. Being is only vaguely understood in a pre-theoretical way and then interpreted in some fashion. Interpretation certainly involves meaning. So the human being is a "clearing," "unconcealing" beings while giving them meaning.

Yanked out of context like that, the passage is far from conclusive. Surely I am reading into it also. But if the beetle in the box plays no role, then that's revolutionary. Hegel made a similar point in his first book. A crude empiricism wants to point 'here' and 'now.' 'Look! Reality is right there.'

Some kind of ineffable direct access is vaguely taken for granted and yet plays no role. This is why the question of being is related to the question of meaning and the question of consciousness for me.

I have a strong sense that I'm always still finding words to say in new ways that we human beings don't know what we are talking about. Now obviously we get along practically. So I'm exaggerating as a rhetorical device in order to make something visible. This helps me relate to Heidegger trying to awaken the question of being. I am still trying to figure out how the question of meaning and the question of being relate, beyond the straightforward way (what does it mean to say something is?)

Is it the same-enough question? I think AI connects to this, not because (at all) I project some mystical capacity on AI. Rather because AI is a kind of a mirror for us. Whatever we think that AI can never be is related to whatever meaning is or being is. Just to emphasize, I don't have answers. With Heidegger, I just want to light up a question, drag our 'ignorance' or hazy preinterpretation into the light.

It's basically a thrust against complacent chatter that has no choice but to work within that chatter. — path

I lashed out at you the other night. I think I had to, then - but I'd like to bury the hatchet, if you would also like to. (If not, understandably, pass this by)

This post ties together a lot of themes that are important to me.

I've long thought the beginning of Hegel's Phenomenology (say what you mean) has the flavor of a kind of bullying. You point to the thing, it's this. The responding voice: but what is this? This is just "this", it has nothing to do with what you're pointing to. And so forth through Sense-Certainty- 'now'? But now it's not when you said 'now'! You can see the bullied kid thinking: no, I'll show and tell them what I mean!

And then elaborately, flourishingly, extravagantly, trying to use their own logic to show them they're wrong (I also get this vibe from Derrida in his response to Searle.)


Reality is right there, but you can't see it unless you can process the objections to it that have gotten to you. Reason, in this mode, is a bully. The meaning of reality, and of being, is just what it was before something snuck into your head and scrambled everything, like the sound of a coin in a washing machine. There have always been beetles in boxes, before the bully showed up, only what you did was play with one another to express or articulate the beetles, thereby creating something new (and the beetles themselves were shaved off from a common space, they were both outside and inside, which is what allows the play) Convention - which is important and has its place- develops from this sort of thing, but then afterwards turns back and says : 'there is nothing important to say that we haven't all already decided upon - consider the language of laying slabs.'

What you have to do is figure out how to handle both aspects - if there's bullies, there's bullies and you have to meet them on their level. But meeting them on their level is not the whole point - it's the very beginning.

The questions: does life has a meaning? What is meaning? etc only make sense if you have some backdrop sense of what 'meaning' is in order to show that it doesn't. In other words: you can only think life has no meaning, if you already know what meaning is, but you've lost it. The question of meaning is more like: can you remember? Can you play again?

----

Regarding AI, I think we should think of it less as a potential 'also-dasein' and more in the sense we relate animals to cells (or, more precisely, whatever facilitates the organization of cells into animals) At one point in the history of life, there were just single-celled organisms. They would have no sense, at any level, of what it would mean to become an animal* Still, they did. This development is impossibly mindboggling from a 'before' perspective. The relation of a single-celled-organism to an animal is not the same as the relation of a single-celled-organism to another single-celled-organism. But we tend to think of AI as a potential 'agent' or 'consciousness' on the same level as us. It seems to me that AI, for better or for worse (I'm terribly torn on this) is less 'another dasein or non-dasein entity' than a potential skeleton, or fusing spirit.



I don't think this is either good or bad, but I think it may be inevitable. I imagine that these kinds of fusing-powers are slowly introduced, in times of crises, until we don't know how to live without them. This is how agriculture developed: we didn't choose it. We incorporated it, as one source of food among others, and it allowed us to grow more crops (extract more energy) which created more of us, which made us dependent on it to sustain that population, and suddenly here's the State and this is how we live now. Was the state good or bad? It's hard to say. I can imagine AI being used for something like population control for allocating immigrants, for sentencing, for distribution etc, until we don't know how to live without it. At each crisis, we cede more power to it, until, a few generations down the road, it just, in-your-bone-feels, like a universal force (like god, or the market) that you don't question. And then how it progresses from there?

----------
*[for another perspective shift: In the first caves with cave art ----the length of time they were inhabited means that the cavemen in the middle of that span had a greater distance between them and the original cave-artist than we today have between ourselves and the earliest Egyptians]

but I'd like to bury the hatchet, if you would also like to. — csalisbury

Of course! You are too valuable a conversational partner to abandon.

I've long thought the beginning of Hegel's Phenomenology (say what you mean) has the flavor of a kind of bullying. You point to the thing, it's this. The responding voice: but what is this? This is just "this", it has nothing to do with what you're pointing to. And so forth through Sense-Certainty- 'now'? But now it's not when you said 'now'! You can see the bullied kid thinking: no, I'll show and tell them what I mean! — csalisbury

I like the way you frame this. I'm no expert on the conflict, but I think of Hegel mocking Schelling (the mystic) for the night in which all cows are black. I think the basic idea was that 'all is one.' The world was a mystic blob of subject-object, something like that. But Hegel found it all too easy and mushy. It had to be made Conceptual and Scientific. So he mocked a friend in his first book and ruined the friendship forever. Then Schelling came back on the scene later and spoke some mystic stuff about the blindness of systems. That's my imperfect memory, without leaning on sources. Feuerbach also was really annoyed with Hegel about this. Feuerbach stressed sensation and emotion, the stuff that is not in thought, or not 'directly' in thought, not in the 'pure' Conceptual Science. But all of them were mystics! in the sense that they had a sense of the meaning of life, were basically (anti-)priests. (I know the least about Schelling, but I've been impressed by some of his quotes.)

Had to look some up, and found some good ones:

One is almost tempted to say that the language itself is a mythology deprived of its vitality, a bloodless mythology so to speak, which has only preserved in a formal and abstract form what mythology contains in living and concrete form.
...
Nothing upsets the philosophical mind more than when he hears that from now on all philosophy is supposed to lie caught in the shackles of one system. Never has he felt greater than when he sees before him the infinitude of knowledge. The entire dignity of his science consists in the fact that it will never be completed.
...
This is the incomprehensible basis of reality in things, the irreducible remainder which cannot be resolved into reason by the greatest exertion but always remains in the depths. Out of this which is unreasonable, reason in the true sense is born. Without this preceding gloom, creation would have no reality; darkness is its necessary heritage.
...
All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create. — Schelling

Reality is right there, but you can't see it unless you can process the objections to it that have gotten to you. Reason, in this mode, is a bully. The meaning of reality, and of being, is just what it was before something snuck into your head and scrambled everything, like the sound of a coin in a washing machine. — csalisbury

If you mean the meaning of life, then I think I agree. To me there's enough 'enlightenment' in just getting back in that state of immersed play. The coin in the washing machine annoys us into a 'lower' state of troubleshooting (which is sometimes good for us in the long run.)

There have always been beetles in boxes, before the bully showed up, only what you did was play with one another to express or articulate the beetles, thereby creating something new (and the beetles themselves were shaved off from a common space, they were both outside and inside, which is what allows the play) Convention - which is important and has its place- develops from this sort of thing, but then afterwards turns back and says : 'there is nothing important to say that we haven't all already decided upon - consider the language of laying slabs.' — csalisbury

Yes indeed. I do ultimately believe in the beetles, however ineffable. So I don't know if belief is the right word. 'Since feeling is first,...' And we live a kind of inside-outside. If I do bully people in the Hegelian style, it's often against hardened complacent convention --against other bullies who invoke common sense as a kind of law. Sarl is an annoying dad, who refuses to understand his arty son, and he panders to other annoying dads, Polonius to Polonius. I'm Hamlet of course. Who else?

What you have to do is figure out how to handle both aspects - if there's bullies, there's bullies and you have to meet them on their level. But meeting them on their level is not the whole point - it's the very beginning.

The questions: does life has a meaning? What is meaning? etc only make sense if you have some backdrop sense of what 'meaning' is in order to show that it doesn't. In other words: you can only think life has no meaning, if you already know what meaning is, but you've lost it. The question of meaning is more like: can you remember? Can you play again? — csalisbury

I like all of this. I can't know for sure exactly what you mean, but it sounds right. That backdrop sense of meaning is what I try to point out by talking about 'myth,' however awkwardly. We are always already invested, never coming from nowhere. We are after something, have some orientation, as we join the conversation. So the angtsy nihilist just wrestling with the death of god is a tender heart. He's sort of identifying with his tormentors as he cast away all beliefs and restraints (only in his imagination, thankfully.)

a newer collection Not Saved: Essays After Heidegger — csalisbury

I have it on a pile somewhere but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

Regarding AI, I think we should think of it less as a potential 'also-dasein' and more in the sense we relate animals to cells (or, more precisely, whatever facilitates the organization of cells into animals) ...But we tend to think of AI as a potential 'agent' or 'consciousness' on the same level as us. It seems to me that AI, for better or for worse (I'm terribly torn on this) is less 'another dasein or non-dasein entity' than a potential skeleton, or fusing spirit. — csalisbury

This is a deep issue, which is maybe two issues.
On the mirror issue, I have coded some neural nets and I really personally don't see them becoming daseinlike unless Issue B becomes important. For me they are currently rhetorical devices or mirrors for showing us that we don't know what we are talking about with 'consciousness' and so on. I do think there is some kind of beetle in the box, but we can't ever say it clearly, outside of all conventions. I can't prove that you exist on the other side of your posts, but I 'know' it. But this knowledge is somewhat ineffable, and 'I know' only signifies within conventions. So this Issue A is for me all about pointing out how loose and slippery language is, that it's not anchored to the ineffable beetle in any calculable or master-able way, despite the wishes of a metaphysical Polonius (a type) who won't admit that he really doesn't know except 'mystically' or 'ineffably.' Metaphysics won't admit that it's poetry !

Issue B is just the thought that somehow the stuff that we are made of (hydrocarbons and whatnot) became 'conscious' or daseinlike. Are zygotes conscious? Most don't think so. So somehow a fertilized egg becomes daseinlike, which by Issue A is an ineffable or 'mystical' thing. So from this angle it seems possible that some brain-analogous but non-bio structure becomes 'self-aware,' whatever that 'really' or 'ineffably' means. I don't think about this much, but maybe some kind of panpsychic stuff is happening and we just don't know it. I can't really act on this or take it seriously. But I have to admit that I don't see how it's ruled out, given the strangeness that we are daseinlike bags of water. I also love animals. My cat has a soul of some kind. Do rocks? Maybe I just can't handle the truth or have any access.

Was the state good or bad? It's hard to say. I can imagine AI being used for something like population control for allocating immigrants, for sentencing, for distribution etc, until we don't know how to live without it. At each crisis, we cede more power to it, until, a few generations down the road, it just, in-your-bone-feels, like a universal force (like god, or the market) that you don't question. And then how it progresses from there? — csalisbury

Right, and I'm in interested in 'false necessity,' what we learn as children to take for granted, as if the nature of things and not some invention that become dominant. I'm ambivalent about AI, really. You mention some creepy possibilities, but even their use in targeting ads is already disturbing. I'm not crazy about the automatic panopticon. We may end up treating ourselves the way we treat pigs (or do so even more intensely.) But I'm no saint. I had pork for dinner, even if I didn't buy it. It's complex navigating relationships with humans and animals at the same time. I think the way we treat animals is part of a taken-for-granted inheritance that might one day gross out our descendants (well not mine, but somebody's).

Because of influences that are older than his thought, he came to the conviction that what is visible and prominent, what is right in the middle, lives from the inconspicuous preparation of assistants backstage and in the wings.

I love this. Thanks!

If Heidegger is right, and our current understanding is a "technological-nihilistic" one, then we're in bad shape indeed. You can see the results all around you.

So it's not that the questioning of "being" has no relevance to the current political or social world; it does.

Worth pointing out. — Xtrix

It's a good point. I think Heidegger is insightful on our current situation. It sucks that he acted on his insights then the way that he did, but we can still raid him for parts (like Caputo does.)

Thank you for the charming response. You make me want to study Spinoza closely. I mostly just know what Durant writes about him in Story. Durant adores him and paints an amazing personality, but your response to him suggests that he deserves a careful reading in the original (well, in translation.)

Thanks also for admitting that you too like some sophists. I'm pretty stuck on the idea that it's the poetic core of thinkers that does the heavy lifting.

I think they're intimately connected through "disclosure," through aletheia. Being is only vaguely understood in a pre-theoretical way and then interpreted in some fashion. Interpretation certainly involves meaning. So the human being is a "clearing," "unconcealing" beings while giving them meaning. — Xtrix

One way I can approach this (which is maybe Braver's way) is to think of being as reality. Philosophers obsess over what is real. What do they mean? Some people say the physical, which is one beetle in the box. And some say the mental, which is another. If we try to determine the physical, we end up mentioning all kinds of mentalistic stuff. If we try to determine the mental, we end up talking about the worldly stuff. The whole game of reducing the whole to some X....seems doomed and confused.

In practical terms, no one even cares about the philosophical game. We don't have to know what money 'really' is in order to chase it furiously. Scientistic types beat down challenges to their foggy philosophical foundations with (seems to me) implicit appeals to raw power or better paying jobs. Then the other side is often trying to beat down the secular-critical threat of newer philosophy in a nostalgia for lost religion or attachment to some method.

Basically we get scientism or theology, which is maybe better expressed as scientism-theology, given that the essence of each is a forgetfulness of the question of being-meaning (taken it as a dead question that has been answered well enough, so please stop wasting everyone's time.)

I guess I understand the clearing in terms of a holism. We social beings and our world are one. In our form of life we have a system of entities, things we take-as or take-for this or that, for these or those purposes within various typical roles (professor role, student role, restaurant server role.) This 'system' is given as a whole. We are the clearing for this system. Sheehan interprets the clearing as a kind of wiggle room for our interpretations. I am still trying to grok some of Heidegger's basic concepts, while others seem quite vividly 'there' for me. Like I seriously feel connected to 'idle talk' or 'interpretedness' or 'forehaving.' These things rings bells in my skull. Like yes, that's it!

Just in case you haven't seen this quote (you probably have), it seems relevant:

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not. — Hegel

This is that whole 'we don't know what we are talking about' yet we go on arguing as if we do or just appealing (anti- or pre- philosophically) to what Everybody knows. 'One knows of course that blah blah blah.' Such idle talk or gossip or chatter lives in the buzzing we grow up in. It's that old familiar fuzz. It's those routines that are second nature, false necessity, the bottle in which the flies are trapped masters.

I repeat this kind of thing routinely, which makes me fear that I'm a bot. (Kidding! Sort of...)

I congratulate myself on my restraint in not commenting in this thread. It seems I've learned to control my contempt for this vile, loathsome, bigoted, back-stabbing, mumbo-jumbo spouting mountebank and Nazi.

Aw, dammit! Not yet, perhaps.

The questions: does life has a meaning? What is meaning? etc only make sense if you have some backdrop sense of what 'meaning' is in order to show that it doesn't. In other words: you can only think life has no meaning, if you already know what meaning is, but you've lost it. — csalisbury

I think this is exactly right. "Backdrop sense" is well put, because it's not really a "definition" laying dormant somewhere in our heads.

:yawn:

But that's what an anti-Heidegger bot would say....

No, no. He'd say Yawhol!, not "yawn." He was quite punctilious, especially during his time as Rector at Freiburg. I doubt he ever yawned in that joyous, busy time.

It's a good point. I think Heidegger is insightful on our current situation. It sucks that he acted on his insights then the way that he did, but we can still raid him for parts (like Caputo does.) — path

I think Heidegger probably was thinking he would be the Third Reich's go-to philosopher, and so that was tempting. He was also apparently pretty naive politically.

One way I can approach this (which is maybe Braver's way) is to think of being as reality. Philosophers obsess over what is real. What do they mean? Some people say the physical, which is one beetle in the box. And some say the mental, which is another. If we try to determine the physical, we end up mentioning all kinds of mentalistic stuff. If we try to determine the mental, we end up talking about the worldly stuff. The whole game of reducing the whole to some X....seems doomed and confused. — path

The whole idea of "reality" and how it's traditionally thought of is misleading from the beginning. Remember Heidegger discusses this in B&T, and it's quite interesting (the concept of "reality," that is).

Also, the "mental" and the "physical," or the subject and object (or representation), seem to dominate Western thought since at least Descartes. We seem stuck in this dichotomy, which is what Heidegger tries to find a way out of, in part by calling Dasein's way of being "existence," or being-in-the-world. We start with a world -- so it's not a scandal that no one can "prove" the existence of the external world; it's a scandal that anyone is trying to.

Basically we get scientism or theology, which is maybe better expressed as scientism-theology, given that the essence of each is a forgetfulness of the question of being-meaning (taken it as a dead question that has been answered well enough, so please stop wasting everyone's time.) — path

Or perhaps scientism and "mysticism," but I take your meaning of "theology" in this sense as well. Excellent point -- I think that's what we're left with, yes. Along with one very important third position (usually embodied in science or in a reaction to the "death of God"): nihilism. Nietzsche worried about this quite a bit. Heidegger takes it up in terms of "technological nihilism." But it amounts to the same basic trend: away from God and gods, without any moral "ground" or any story (context) that gives us goals, purpose, and meaning, towards complete faith in the results of science, and mesmerized by technology (cell phones, computers, TV, cars, etc).

To add to this, I would say our current world is also dominated by propaganda, consumerism, and a variety of unsophisticated hedonism. Especially in Europe and the U.S.

Just in case you haven't seen this quote (you probably have), it seems relevant: — path

That's a great quote, and that's exactly right. Funny, I just started in on Hegel this year. I've heard for years that he's the "hardest" philosopher to read. But so far I don't find him hard at all. Schopenhauer repeatedly throws insults at Hegel, and between that and what I heard through secondary sources, I figured I would just wait. Heidegger comes down favorably on Hegel, however, and so I thought it worth while to actually read the man and see what all the fuss is about. So far I see why he was so influential. His contributions towards a history of philosophy (and the importance of interpreting history generally) are alone very important indeed.

:up: