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  • The Notion of Subject/Object


    What was meant was that Kant exemplifies the philosopher who tries to think the scientificity. That doesn't mean that science is transformed into an excessive speculation.
  • The Notion of Subject/Object
    I'll drop a few quotes.
    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10615/10615-h/10615-h.htm#link2HCH0004

    I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as well as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its stock, as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. — Locke
    mask

    This quotation serves as a good opportunity to try to contrast Kant against Locke (which implies how differently they view the subject/object relation)

    Locke is here just describing how all actually happens in mind. This is just self reflective empirical psychology. There is no principal philosophical problems involved here. What is lacking here is for example Kant's idea of synthesis. For Kant there is philosophical consciousness (or pure ego, selfhood) "behind" all these psychological operations. Kant is much more rational and theoretical in a philosophical sense. For Locke rationality* and theory are constructions on the basis of the empirical material without any philosophical mediation. This leads to a situation where rationality becomes (formal)logical and mathematical rationality. Thinking becomes pure logical and mathematical thinking (thinking as technique that one learns and masters). And this kind of thinking is seen as the natural functioning of the psyche. Scientific explanations and theories are the ultimate ground for Locke. Philosophy seems to be for him (neuro)psychological reflection on mental operations and general reflection on the genesis and usage of the human language. Kant tries to think logical and mathematical thought operations themselves and not just apply them to the world as a natural and true way to access things. * For Locke everything remains contingent, there is no (synthetic a priori) necessity. Or that there are only "natural necessities" forming mental operations.
  • The Notion of Subject/Object
    No wonder that Heidegger is interested in Kant and regards him highly important if one reads the following (in the chapter on noumena and phenomena there is a passage where Kant "demonstrates" categories i.e their temporal-empirical and not metaphysical-noumenal usage) (this could be also an example of the kantian subject/object mediation):

    "No one can define the concept of magnitude in general except by something like this: That it is the determination of a thing through which it can be thought how many units are posited in it. Only this how-many-times is grounded on successive repetition, thus on time and the synthesis (of the homogeneous) in it. Reality, in con­trast to negation, can be defined only if one thinks of a time (as the sum total of all being) that is either filled by it or empty. If I leave out persistence (which is existence at all times), then nothing is left in my con­cept of substance except the logical representation of the subject, which I try to realize by representing to myself something that can occur solely as subject (without being a predicate of anything). But then it is not only the case that I do not even know of any conditions under which this logical preeminence can be attributed to any sort of thing; it is also the case that absolutely nothing further is to be made of it, and not even the least consequence is to be drawn from it, because by its means no object whatever of the use of this concept is determined, and one therefore does not even know whether the latter means anything at all ..." (A243, B301)

    For Kant being is basically temporality. Being is mediated through the schematism of temporality. Being is real or actual in so far as it is something mediated through the schemes of temporality.
  • The Notion of Subject/Object


    "The division of objects into phaenomena and noumena, and of the world into a world of sense and a world of understanding, can therefore not be permitted at all, although concepts certainly permit of division into sensible and intellectual ones; for one cannot determine any object for the latter, and therefore also cannot pass them off as objectively valid. If one abandons the senses, how will one make comprehensible that our categories (which would be the only remaining concepts for noumena) still signify anything at all, since for their relation to any object something more than merely the unity of thinking must be given, namely a possible intuition, to which they can be applied?" (B311, A256)

    Kant is actually referring here negatively to intellectual concepts or "pure understanding" (?). Categories as concepts for noumena would refer only to unity of thinking. - Little later Kant refers to noumenon not as an intelligible object but as a problematic understanding which contains this object.

    Or: categories are originally noumena which are phenomenalized through schemes. This is a movement from rationalism to empiricism. However, there remains a strong rational or intellectual moment in Kant's system.

    Obviously not an easy subject, so many distinctions to keep in mind. :)
  • The Notion of Subject/Object
    In that chapter on noumenon Kant once refers* to categories as noumena. Categories are the only legitimate noumena? Categories as problematic or possible "objects" are legitimate because they exist only with regard to empirical knowledge that they are conditioning. Here noumenon is not a positive concept or object with its own kind of "seeing" but a negative concept where is only abstracted from the conditions of sensible experience. Negative concept of noumenon doesn't entirely reject the sensible intuition as the legitimizing basis. (Positive and negative noumenon is Kant's own distinction.)

    * Kant actually refers to "pure understanding" here
  • Marx's Value Theory
    What is your opinion on the role of the Hegelian dialectics in this first part where Marx deduces the category of money?
  • Husserl on the constitution of real objects.


    Husserl's theory depends, it seems, on his possessing the German language, which evolved for many years before it found its way to Husserl. He has to talk to himself in terms of 'protension' for instance. He needs to find words and call them the result of his investigation. So even if we find Husserl convincing to some degree, I don't see how we can do so without also being aware of ourselves as member of some community on a planet that orbited the sun before humans were aware of it.Eee

    These (protention, retention) are actually fairly "ungerman" terms derived from the Latin. Compare with Heidegger's temporal terms like Gewesenheit, Zu-künftigkeit, presence as Anwesenheit etc., words that entail deeper or more adequate philosophical meanings (at least according to Heidegger). Heidegger thought that the German (and the ancient Greek) language is the most suitable vehicle for the essential philosophical expressions. In German language with prepositions like zu, an etc one can add certain dynamic, spatial or other "philosophically intended" "polysemic" meaning to the words (I am not a native speaker of the German). And Heidegger highly respected certain basic ideas of Husserl.
  • What is the difference between subjective idealism (e.g. Berkeley) and absolute idealism (e.g. Hegel
    Berkeley's idealism is "representational", subjectivist, empiricist, epistemological, whereas Hegel's idealism is more like ontological realism. For Hegel subject is the constitution of reality itself. Subject and object are more or less identical. Perception is only a moment in a dynamic constitution or development of the absolute knowing (which is the presentation of the identity of subject and object). Hegel's point of view is not a general particular subject but holistic. Absolute knowing is concretely realized through spirit i.e. history, culture, art, religion, philosophy. Absolute means that there is something trans-historical, trans-subjectivist (infinite vs. finite).


    The following is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

    "The pantheistic legacy inherited by Hegel meant that he had no problem in considering an objective outer world beyond any particular subjective mind. But this objective world itself had to be understood as conceptually informed: it was objectified spirit. Thus in contrast to Berkeleian subjective idealism it became common to talk of Hegel as incorporating the objective idealism of views, especially common among German historians, in which social life and thought were understood in terms of the conceptual or spiritual structures that informed them. But in contrast to both forms of idealism, Hegel, according to this reading, postulated a form of absolute idealism by including both subjective life and the objective cultural practices on which subjective life depended within the dynamics of the development of the self-consciousness and self-actualization of God, the Absolute Spirit."

    ...

    “Idealism” is a term that had been used sporadically by Leibniz and his followers to refer to a type of philosophy that was opposed to materialism. Thus, for example, Leibniz had contrasted Plato as an idealist with Epicurus as a materialist. The opposition to materialism here, together with the fact that in the English-speaking world the Irish philosopher and clergyman George Berkeley (1685–1753) is often taken as a prototypical idealist, has given rise to the assumption that idealism is necessarily an immaterialist doctrine. This assumption, however, is mistaken. With the possible exception of Leibniz, the idealism of the Germans was not committed to the type of doctrine found in Berkeley according to which immaterial minds, both infinite (God’s) and finite (those of humans), were the ultimately real entities, with apparently material things to be understood as reducible to states of such minds—that is, to ideas in the sense meant by the British empiricists.

    As Leibniz’s use of Plato to exemplify idealism suggests, idealists in the German tradition tended to hold to the reality or objectivity of ideas in the Platonic sense, and for Plato, it would seem, such ideas were not conceived as in any mind at all—not even the mind of Plato’s god. The type of picture found in Berkeley was only to be found in certain late antique Platonists and, especially, early Christian Platonists like Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. But especially for the German idealists like Hegel, Plato’s philosophy was understood through the lenses of more Aristotelian varieties of neo-Platonism, which pictured the thoughts of a divine mind as immanent in matter, and not as contained in some purely immaterial or spiritual mind. It thus had features closer to the more pantheistic picture of divine thought found in Spinoza, for example, for whom matter and mind were attributes of the one substance."


    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/#Aca
  • Heidegger and Language

    I'll note once again, that you have not been able to provide any evidence from Being and Time that activities such as mowing the lawn or baking a potato are considered by Heidegger to be forms or examples of discourse.Fooloso4

    Activity "mowing the law" has certain form or grammar which gives it certain limits within which it is understandable as "mowing the law". So, in this sense it is discourse. In B&T, this grammar is formally presented as references, spatiality etc i.e. as the worldliness of the world. Constitutive elements of the worldliness applies to all innerwordly beings as their (ontological) grammar. And B&T is of course about significations as such and not their particular instances. Specific (ontical) grammar of the signification "mowing the law" determines all the specific references involved there. There is many different "languages" out there. Heidegger's ontology could be an application of Husserl's idea of the "universal grammar of meanings" (in Logical Investigations).
  • Heidegger and Language


    I’d have to agree with Fooloso4, though - I don’t see this as necessarily discourse. It is entirely possible to succeed in baking the potato without being able to know or say what an oven is or what it’s for, let alone to know or say anything about nutrition. You could teach a chimpanzee to bake a potato or mow the lawn, for instance, and he could then carry out the exact same actions without too much trouble - would that be discourse?Possibility


    Chimpanzees don't have "being-with" (which makes the activity or behavior to discourse, i think). So, other chimpanzees moving around the chimpanzee taught to bake don't have an understanding that there is a "baking" going on. That is, there is no effective discourse existing in that situation. Humans are in a world where there is "mowing the lawn" over there, "baking" over there, "nothing happens" over there, "something strange" over there etc etc. Every one basically "knows" what is happening. Every one is i n discourse. Chimpanzees are basically just feeling pleasure-unpleasure with regard to sensations. There is no "pleasurable b a k i n g", "unpleasurable m o w i n g the lawn". There is no such basic units of meaning in chimpanzees "world". It could be said that chimpanzees are governed by causality, not by discourse/sense. (Through the expression "causality" we try to give a certain sense to chimpanzees' nonsense random activity.)
  • Heidegger on technology:
    But can generalization ever really destroy context?(I think of Derrida's famous adage 'there is nothing outside context'). Even if a concept is experienced only with regard to some general properties, aren't these so-called general properties made relevant for an individual in relation to their particular contextual situation, without their being explicitly aware of this? In other words, is there any way to ever escape the particularizing effect of context, even when we lose sight of this?Joshs


    This is precisely the problem here, it could be the problem of "fallenness". To be as close or adequate as possible to the matter or case itself. What is the true experience or description of something? Differentiation, not unification, would make something appear as itself. Nature of natural sciences would be the realm of the technical unification though. After all, Dasein/existence has a physiological body which is often a technical object. Here Dasein is in principle exchangeable with any other Dasein.
  • Heidegger on technology:
    I think that for Heidegger ready-to-hand (worldhood) is l i f e, it is the Being of life. It is the basic or fundamental reality. It is like sense data for sensualists. It is something fundamental which is given to us. It is Heidegger's version of "historical materialism"? But just experiencing this given is not yet philosophy or philosophical reflection. Dasein/existence with its "sight" moving among ready-to-hand significances is the practical subject of life but it is not the philosophical subject (of life or Being and Time). "Ready-to-hand" is phenomenological-ontological existential-category, not anything that Dasein/existence encounters as such in the world. Existence encounters only "this table here to ..." and "that book there to ...", it doesn't encounter philosophical categories like "ready-to-hand", "concern", "temporality". I think this distinction (between ontical and ontological) is often forgotten (as though some (naive) "absorption" or "autopilot" or "flow" would be some ideal true authentic life experience, even though it could mostly be just blind and dull routine). Being and Time is about the whole structure of the "life", ready-to-hand-being is "only " the basic cell of this structure. It is the last analytical unit that can't be reduced any further ("I am therefore I think"). Unreflective practical dasein/existence is operating in this basic unit of life without being "conscious" (without being interested in) of various kinds of Beings and their phenomenal structures. For practical existence all Being is the same pragmatic-technical being.

    The present-at-hand could be seen only as an extension of ready-to-hand. (Prior it has become pure theory of what is this? Thing is seen as fallen from the sky.) Present-at-hand has often its roots still in pragmatic-technical-being and it merely theorizes some ready-to-hand relations so that theoretical relations are consequently embedded as ready-to-hand relations. For example, (in our hyper modernized global world) "improving" some tool requires that its properties are analyzed "abstractly" so that the device would work optimally in so general circumstances as possible. Here some general abstract properties tend to replace the adaptation or customization to individual situations. When this new improved device is commonly deployed we have ready-to-hand-being which is actually in part orientating itself according to present-at-hand-being. The more some thing or "state of affairs" in general is adequate or "closer" (intrinsic) to some other, the more there is authentic ready-to-hand-being and the less there is abstract present-at-handness. Abstract generalization means the estrangement from the concrete self-hood i.e. being as appropriate as possible in its own context. Abstraction/generalization broadens (or eventually destroys) the context so that the "fulfillment of the sense" (phenomenological concept) is experienced only with regard to some general properties. Dasein/existence orients itself towards property-significance as present-at-hand theoretical reality. New model of hammer with new improved properties makes Dasein/Existence hammering in a certain way in all situations.
  • What actually is ''Being'' for Heidegger?
    (I think that) Being is for H. actuality in different possible "historical" situations and contexts. It is what is actual, real or "there" (present) in different situations. However, actual and real not conceived as reference-object for some statements. "Mere" significance is "real" when it has meaning. Its being-meaningful "verifies" it in itself. Significance is verified when it "functions" with other significances "seemingly without a problem" ("evidently").

    For example, table is encountered primarily as a significance (as what it means "here and now"). It is not primarily a (verifying) reference-object for a statement like "table is a rectangular, horizontal surface on vertical supports". Things out there are not primarily "empirical reality" or evidence for theoretical statements, they are significances met in understanding living among those things. I think this is what it means when H. says that Dasein/existence is "in the truth".

    Husserl made a distinction between meaning/significance (Bedeutung) and reference-object (Gegendstand). Heidegger doesn't seem to make this distinction. Hereby distinction between intending (Meinen) and evident fulfilment (Erfüllung) is abandoned as well? That is, at least Husserl's conception of truth is modified. This could mean that existence is living in a "pragmatic" (non-theoretical) conception of truth. It is living in "mere" intending and is not explicitly concerned with the question about significance being really fulfilled.



    I think that the problem of temporality relates to the way how existence moves or proceeds among these significances. Significances are not intended as reference-objects when existence is relating "ecstatically" or originally (prior any "theoretical" acts) toward them. That is, significances are intended as significances and their "true" fulfilment is constantly transcending. For the most part, when living our "inauthentic" existence, we are among reference-objects in objective time with regard to some theory. We are concerned with that these objects correspond to some theory or to some general frame of reference (through which they are defined or constituted as what they supposedly "in reality" are) so that we can proceed from one reference object to an another in a systematic manner.
  • Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?
    Yes, I think Heidegger's distinguishing between an authentic and an inauthentic mode of Dasein made it necessary for him to identify an inauthentic modification of Care, which led him to Besorgen.

    The authentic and the authentic have a peculiar relationship. On the one hand, one might be tempted to see the former as 'better', more true, than the latter given the way Heidegger talks about the inauthentic in terms of average everydayness and the normativity of das man. But he reminds us throughout the book that this is not his intention: "The inauthenticity of Dasein does not signify a "lesser" being or a "lower" degree of being. Rather, inauthenticity can determine Da-sein even in its fullest concretion, when it is busy, excited, interested, and capable of pleasure." "Not-being-its-self functions as a positive possibility of beings which are absorbed in a world, essentially taking care of that world. Thus neither must the entanglement of Da-sein be interpreted as a "fall" from a purer and higher "primordial condition." Heidegger also cautions that the authentic is not more 'general' that the inauthentic in the sense of an overview. "Da-sein can fall prey only because it is concerned with understanding, attuned being-in-the-world. On the other hand, authentic existence is nothing which hovers over entangled everydayness, but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness."
    Joshs

    What the "modification" does mean here? I put the "over" inside the scare quotes to allude that "authenticity", what ever it is, is not leaving, it can't leave the immanency of the current (common) world. Authenticity is only alluding to something different with regard to "inauthentic absorption", in which it itself in a sense remains entangled? However, all this should mean that authenticity can't entirely remain an inner experience? Authenticity must somehow realize itself in(to) the world.(Hopefully adverbs are in the right places. I am obviously not a native English speaker.)

    Authentic existence could be something which "exists" more originally some motives and tendencies that are operative in the current activity. It tries to renew/restore/refresh something which here and now has become a phrase. Inauthentic living doesn't "see" any more the motives and tendencies which are currently guiding the activity. It "mechanically" repeats itself here and now and seemingly forever. There is no more any constant seeking after truth and its maintenance in dis-closedness. Some (in this context) sense providing "sameness" or selfhood is forgotten and authentic existence tries possibly to demonstrate it anew. Inauthentic lives in phrases and formal rituals (normativities) and authentic existence tries to give these present-at-hand phrases their original meaning or new life. Heidegger seems to mean by authentic existence something similar to that what was Luther's relation to Catholicism? Or that Luther is an excellent example of one's possibly highly radical authenticity. (Authenticity is actually a highly relative concept. (Basically it questions what is here and now the most adequate in this situation from our perspective [in fact, this kind of questioning transcends actual here and now] .) Lutheranism or Christianity in general can be considered from some other, i.e. "outsider's", perspective something completely phony or fake. Which doesn't rule out the possibility that they are right i.e. these are, as currently practised, indeed something fake and inauthentic. However, what Heidegger here has in his mind is Luther's certain attitude (to restore the original relations between beings or Sinnzusammenhang) in certain historical situation than any particular dogmas as such.)

    (The fact that Heidegger to some extent identified himself with Luther would explain his few otherwise inexplicable anti-Semitic comments. It is almost as if he regarded himself as the reformator of philosophy.)
  • Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?
    It's important to understand first of all that primordial Care for Heidegger, as well as taking care and concern, have nothing to do with ontical sentiments like having a good feeling about someone. One could despise someone and that would still represent for Heidegger a relation of Care and concern for. These terms for Heidegger, like primordial attunement, understanding and temporality, tel us that, as Dasein , each of us are always already in the world of involvement with others. There is no isolated subjectivity for Heidegger that then encounters others. It also seems that you are understanding handiness and 'taking care' in terms of a narrow thinking about praxis, tools , accomplishment and work.Joshs

    This is very true. There is something "formal" or a formal aspect in these terms which means that they transcend all actual "empirical" facticities. They give the basic sense to these empirical particularities so that they can appear (again: this relates to Heidegger's interpretation of phenomenology.)

    It is surprising how little Heidegger actually elaborates these terms (there is an interesting chapter in B&T where H. distinguishes Care from the concepts like will or instinct). You just have to "reconstruct" their meaning from the whole in which they are embedded. You carry the term along in your mind during the reading process and the context fulfils continually its meaning. The term is operative in many places but the whole point is that it can't be abstracted or separated and idealized as an independent concept.

    Care (Sorge) could be a reflective dimension "over" the more practical concern (Besorgen). The practical Besorgen is doing concretely this and that in order to attain concretely this and that. Care "thinks" this "in order to" in terms of more far-reaching meaning. I think Care and Concern are different levels of motivations. Extremely simplified: I am reaching for an hammer in order to nail this piece of wood onto that thing (= the level of taking care of). Or: I am reaching for an hammer in order to survive in this life (or: in order to that I'll comply with certain style or way of life which requires me to do so) (= the level of Care). Care thinks (or states) the basic and first "um willen" or "for the sake of which". It can ask: What it ultimately means to me that I am doing this here and now? In what am I actually/truly "absorbed"? Care is the basic "meaning of life", in a certain dynamic sense. The inauthentic life has completely lost sight of this overall view which guides one's life. Which gives the basic sense to all significances.

    Heidegger explains rationality and object are based in propositional subject-predicate statements "Like interpretation in general, the statement necessarily has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. But how does the statement become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it?" Heidegger says predication points something out in a way that we sheerly look at it. By transforming the circumspective 'something "as" something' into 'this subject "as" this object', the 'as' is forced back to the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It "dwindles to the structure of just letting what is objectively present be seen by way of determination."When we just stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more." Heidegger recognizes the theoretical as an impoverished, 'cut-off' modification of understanding. Ontologically, it originates from and never departs from heedful circumspective relationality.Joshs

    This is an important point in B&T. The statement isn't any more adequate or appropriate, it doesn't any more correspond to the original situation. It is already the form of the statement which "twists", that is, deforms and distorts the original sense into certain direction. And then arises the problem of truth as a correspondance: how this situation corresponds to this statement?
  • Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?


    Thank you for the profound criticism. I can comment it followingly:

    I came to this view about the innerworldy being while I was recently reading H's early lectures where he speaks about "something" (Etwas) which is not yet in-the-world. Heidegger stresses that this something should be seen "formally" not "generally". If it is seen generally it is something theoretical, that is, it is an object. It is not clear to me what H. means by this distinction. He refers to Husserl who has made this distinction. So, I saw the innerworldly being as something not yet generalized, that is, it is not present-at-hand. It is actually nothing! I think the innerworldly being or its "conceptual status" is what H. in his early lecturecs called "formal indication" (formal Anzeige). I think that all this has to do with the phenomenological reasoning where one tries to avoid any not-reflected mechanical generalizations and subsumptions. Difficult problems are involved here.

    I think you are intermingling too much the (practical) concern (Besorgen) with the more "general", that is, more original care (Sorge). There can be concern only because there is care but it is not necessary that care will "realize" itself primarily as concern (Besorgen). Dasein's being is Sorge, not Besorgen. Also, I think there can be Care ("basic interest") which cares that something is n o t done or used! There can be Care that is concerned to keep something not to be encountered as a tool or device (Zeug) (Could this be possible??). Something encountered as handiness presupposes (or i s) such a understanding (Seinsverständnis) and project (Entwurf) which constitutes such a worldliness where everything has a very specific significance as they are constituting some Work (Werk) to be accomplished. This actually resembles something thoroughly rational and calculated! Everything has its pre-determined place in the teleological system. However, I guess that for Heidegger this functioning system of the worldhood is some specific traditional way of life (possibly stiffen into forms). (Or it is something happening or proceeding immanently here and now and which some "external" telos is not transcending and systematizing) (Or: I am somewhere here confusing ontological and ontical or existential and existentiell.). Heidegger is analysing and describing something which is more like an existence in a culture than a system. Heidegger is aiming at something "organic" and not mechanic. (Heidegger is actually trying to overcome all dualistic oppositions (which has become phrases) which means that in B&T there is presented the sense nexus or ground from which in the first place can arise, which makes possible, the opposition between organic and mechanic. Same applies to opposition practical/theoretical). Heidegger was very close to the "life philosophy" (Lebensphilosphie; Dilthey, Bergson,Simmel) in his early years. This can be seen from his early lectures (which are highly recommended reading. Heidegger's basic motivations and tendencies become much more understandable when one reads these early lectures).
  • Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?


    I must disagree here i.e. I would interpret this differently because I think that Heideger is here only "reasoning" (through his phenomenological description) against the view which conceives the innerworldly being as the object-thing, that is, he is not reasoning against the possibility of the innerworldly being as such, before there is made a distinction between the tool-being and object-being.

    I think that there is already in B&T references to experiences that are neither practical nor theoretical. These experiences presuppose a relation to beings which is not dominated by tool-being or theoretical-presence-being. There are experiences which are not led by practical-relevance-being. For example, historically or traditionally inherited "cultural "objects which simply are there and and are part of some cultural-historical landscape. Their presence is simply or primarily "felt" (in Befindlichkeit) as part of "my world" or the relation to them is "aesthetic" where they are described or expressed in their innerworldly being. The same can be said of the natural landscape: mountains etc. i.e "Nature" has here its worldliness not in the practical or theoretical world. Something can be practically relevant in a negative sense: "I can't do anything with that". I encounter something here as not to be assimilated to this practical nexus. A being shows itself there as u s e l e s s *. It is there as something not to be mastered in the practical world. It stands there as an innerworldly being without practical-technical significance. It persists (at least for the time being) "open" as "something" (without any determinations or involvements). In practical understanding it can remain or can be sustained as something yet to be mastered and used (in some other situation in the future).

    * Here belong all the negative significances, for example "hindrance", for the practical concern, and which make room for the positive significances for other kinds of relations: for the generalizing ("hindrance" is a generalization) theoretical relation and for other relations. There has been encountered something that can't be handled practically inside the current relevance-relations and it becomes free for other ways of accessing it.
  • Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?


    I initially thought that the "inner" (innerweltliches Seiende) means cartesian space but it seems that these beings within-the-world or innerworldly beings (Stambaugh translation) are already in the heideggerian space of worldliness. Innerworldly beings are not real or reified beings which has to be taken from cartesian "in" to heideggerian "in". Innerworldly being is an original way of being for the things. And this being can become a tool-being (zuhandenheit) when brought together with dasein/existence. Or it can become a present-at-hand-being when observed and thought theoretically. Or it can simply remain a innerwordly being? Something not used or observed.
  • Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?

    Heideggers untenable, anthropocentric notion of ‚existence‘:
    „Existence is the name for […] human ‚Dasein‘. A cat does not exist, but lives, a stone does not exist and does not live, but ‚is there‘ GA 26,159“. This is not from ‚Being and Time‘ but from a lecture given in 1928.
    TheArchitectOfTheGods

    Heidegger is differentiating between various kinds of Beings here: existence-being, living-being and finally non-living, non-having-existence-being. Being means something that differentiates, it doesn't mean something common abstract being-ness.

    Stone is being too. It is being/entity within-the-world (innerweltliches Seiende). Some human existence moves in the world among beings and can discover there a being like "stone". There is something on which existence "hits" itself on its way or path (path as a horizon, perspective). This something is first "something" and depending on how existence becomes related to this something it can be disclosed in various ways. It can just be named as a "stone". So, there is some x "out" there as being within-the-world, now existence comes across this x which becomes "something" *. Here this something is on the verge of becoming something "in-the-world" (of some particular existence). When it is named as a "stone" and this "stone" has significance for existence it is "in-the-world". When I forget the name of that stone it is "merely" "something", and when I lose the (concerned) sight of it or interest in it, it is no more there (in the world, in this situation). It "is" presently nothing but can appear anew (in this sense it is still there).

    * However, existence can come across this something only if it somehow fits or suits to (has something to do with the) something which existence already was/will be/is concerned with (horizon is laden with interests). It can also "fit" "negatively" i.e. "be in the way", for example: "that something, oh, it is a stone, is in the way so that I can't accomplish this". Here being is in-the-world as something "disturbing", "not actually belonging there". Or being fits positively, is appropriate: "t h a t s t o n e over there fits to this project that I am trying to accomplish". However, afterwards it can be discovered not suitable for the project: "this stone is too heavy, I can't lift it (= it doesn't after all fit to my project)". Here this stone in a way disappears, it is no more "in-the-world", it is "merely" something recognizable as familiar/disposable in some other situation (which so to speak activates this being).
  • Is Heidegger describing fundamental reality or human experience?
    Heidegger presents here in a nutshell his philosophy (or meditation) (of the correlation of (temporal) Being and Truth (as the "lighting-up of the concealment")):

    "Setzen wir statt "Zeit": Lichtung des Sichverbergens von Anwesen, dann bestimmt sich Sein aus dem Entwurfbereich von Zeit. Dies ergibt sich jedoch nur insofern, als die Lichtung des Sichverbergens ein ihm entsprechendes Denken in seinen brauch nimmt.

    Anwesen (Sein) gehört in die Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit). Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit) erbringt Anwesen (Sein)."

    Richardson's translation:

    "If instead of "Time" we substitute: the lighting-up of the self-concealing [that is proper to] the process of coming-to-presence, then Being is determined by the scope of Time. This comes about, however, only insofar as the lighting-process of self-concealment assumes unto its want a thought that corresponds to it.

    [The process of] presenc-ing (Being) is inherent in the lighting-up of self-concealment (Time). [The] lighting-up of self-concealment (Time) brings forth the process of presenc-ing (Being)."

    William J. Richardson: Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought. Citation is from Heidegger's preface to this book (1962).

    https://books.google.fi/books?id=-NXoCAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
  • Heidegger's vision of philosophy in 1919


    It is interesting question though how the Heideggerian ontological existentials would "correspond" to Kantian epistemological categories. In some sense H. transforms Kant's epistemological transcendental subject into ontological being. So, Heidegger's project is from epistemology to ontology. Ontology (of dynamics (of "life")) with subject though (cf. early Husserl's intentionality + Dilthey's Life context (Lebenszusammenhang), Scheler's parallel project, Aristotle?) . Theoretically knowing subject becomes lived experience in the world. Husserl is hermeneutized and Dilthey ontologized (which results in "Existence" (Kierkegaard - Jaspers)). Existentials form the experience not to primarily produce "abstract" objects but significations or meaningful encounters in general. And everything happens or is "constituted" from "inside perspective" like in Kantian transcendental subject. Nothing is "created" here (idealism), there is always something already out there. This, which is out there encountered, becomes "interiorized" into a will driven world (Heidegger) not into a consciousness (Kant).