I’ve read people who claim to have read Heidegger too, but nothing they write about him accords with what I haven’t read of him.
Agreed this is the only cogent response to “have you read Heidegger” unless replaced with “god no.” or perhaps “are you mad?” but the Derrida quip is irresistible to me.
Gregor Vuga my questions are all about space and thinking.
I’ve seen interpretations (by Arisaka) of Being and Time that say Heidegger has an idea that cognition depends on constructing mental workrooms, made out of ideas/elements that are kept “at hand,” while less relevant ideas are pushed “away,” outside the field of attention.
I’d like to know what’s really going on there – is he just saying that you have to deliberately forget distractions in order to concentrate, or does he work out some further implications of these “workrooms?”
I strongly suspect this interpretation is a long way from anything H himself wrote – do you recognise it at all from his own words?
And, of course, how is Dasein different from anyone else’s idea of a conscious Subject that encounters the world?
Richard Grenville that sounds like a sort of restatement of Husserl’s ideas of intentionality and epoche (which Abstract Machine mentioned).
Intentionality simply means that consciousness is always consciousness of something. Epoche is the method of phenomenology in which you “put into parenthesis” everything not pertaining to the object of cognition “as it appears”. Deliberately putting aside not only distractions but prior judgement and knowledge, moods etc. letting the thing (phenomena) show itself on its own terms so to speak. It seems to me Arisaka (haven’t read him) is trying to rephrase Heidegger’s stuff in a more Husserlian framework perhaps? It’s certainly correct in a general sense.Â
However from what I’ve read I’m not sure Heidegger thinks cognition depends on this. It is the foundation of phenomenology and the only method of uncovering truth (in the eyes of the phenomenologists), but in later years Heidegger goes on several tangents that are not strictly speaking phenomenological any more.
As for Dasein, it’s my impression that 95% of the time the world could be simply substituted for “human being” in his books and the meaning wouldn’t change. The difference he’s trying to stress by using a different word is mostly that humans are capable of thinking about or experiencing being (Sein) as opposed to existence. These two things are often conflated, but Heidegger wanted to make a distinction, which he called “ontological difference”. Dasein is how being “experiences itself”, whereas encountering the world is experiencing things that exist.
I hope that’s clear, I didn’t read this stuff in English, so my terminology may be messed up.
it seems to me that not reading it in English might be vitally important.
…and I’m very deliberately avoiding his tangents about The Fourfold and any case where God and/or Spirit is an indispensable observer. Maybe I should read Husserl.
(since I lean toward analytical philosophy more or less instinctively, my motivation for reading the phenomenologists has never been very strong)
Unless you’re really into this I really wouldn’t recommend Husserl. There are very few writers I’ve had a harder time digesting than him. If you want more continental/phenomenological thought via non-continental authors Rorty might be the way to go, he wrote a bunch about Heidegger if I remember correctly.
I didn’t read it in the original German either, so I dunno how much gets lost in translation or not. The slovene translation for Dasein is literally Herebeing.
Tattered Remains of Tartary 
The second best part of this episode of Existential Comics.
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I dunno. This is/should be the standard response to have you read Heidegger?
…full disclosure: I have read people who claim to have read Heidegger.
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I’ve read Cicero. Does that count?
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I’ve read people who claim to have read Heidegger too, but nothing they write about him accords with what I haven’t read of him.
Agreed this is the only cogent response to “have you read Heidegger” unless replaced with “god no.” or perhaps “are you mad?” but the Derrida quip is irresistible to me.
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I’ve read Epicurus. Was fun. Would do again. Heidegger sounds like a wanker. And I’m not referring to the one from Final Fantasy 7.
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I mean, Heidegger from ff7 was a wanker too.
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I’ve read both Husserl and Heidegger. AMA.
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SUPER HEAVEN
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/84
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Gregor Vuga can you explain the joke? 😀
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No.
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Gregor Vuga my questions are all about space and thinking.
I’ve seen interpretations (by Arisaka) of Being and Time that say Heidegger has an idea that cognition depends on constructing mental workrooms, made out of ideas/elements that are kept “at hand,” while less relevant ideas are pushed “away,” outside the field of attention.
I’d like to know what’s really going on there – is he just saying that you have to deliberately forget distractions in order to concentrate, or does he work out some further implications of these “workrooms?”
I strongly suspect this interpretation is a long way from anything H himself wrote – do you recognise it at all from his own words?
And, of course, how is Dasein different from anyone else’s idea of a conscious Subject that encounters the world?
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Richard Grenville that sounds like a sort of restatement of Husserl’s ideas of intentionality and epoche (which Abstract Machine mentioned).
Intentionality simply means that consciousness is always consciousness of something. Epoche is the method of phenomenology in which you “put into parenthesis” everything not pertaining to the object of cognition “as it appears”. Deliberately putting aside not only distractions but prior judgement and knowledge, moods etc. letting the thing (phenomena) show itself on its own terms so to speak. It seems to me Arisaka (haven’t read him) is trying to rephrase Heidegger’s stuff in a more Husserlian framework perhaps? It’s certainly correct in a general sense.Â
However from what I’ve read I’m not sure Heidegger thinks cognition depends on this. It is the foundation of phenomenology and the only method of uncovering truth (in the eyes of the phenomenologists), but in later years Heidegger goes on several tangents that are not strictly speaking phenomenological any more.
As for Dasein, it’s my impression that 95% of the time the world could be simply substituted for “human being” in his books and the meaning wouldn’t change. The difference he’s trying to stress by using a different word is mostly that humans are capable of thinking about or experiencing being (Sein) as opposed to existence. These two things are often conflated, but Heidegger wanted to make a distinction, which he called “ontological difference”. Dasein is how being “experiences itself”, whereas encountering the world is experiencing things that exist.
I hope that’s clear, I didn’t read this stuff in English, so my terminology may be messed up.
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it seems to me that not reading it in English might be vitally important.
…and I’m very deliberately avoiding his tangents about The Fourfold and any case where God and/or Spirit is an indispensable observer. Maybe I should read Husserl.
(since I lean toward analytical philosophy more or less instinctively, my motivation for reading the phenomenologists has never been very strong)
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Unless you’re really into this I really wouldn’t recommend Husserl. There are very few writers I’ve had a harder time digesting than him. If you want more continental/phenomenological thought via non-continental authors Rorty might be the way to go, he wrote a bunch about Heidegger if I remember correctly.
I didn’t read it in the original German either, so I dunno how much gets lost in translation or not. The slovene translation for Dasein is literally Herebeing.
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