07/14/2021 – Summer Philosophy Series Part 1: Heidegger
There’s a lot of videos on Heidegger, why do you need to watch this one? Because this sets the stage for the next two episodes on Tillich and Gadamer. Two hugely important dudes for understanding religion. Plus, my videos are funner. This is TenOnReligion. Boom.
Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. This video is closed-captioned here on YouTube and the transcript is available at TenOnReligion.com. This is the first of a three-part summer philosophy series on three German thinkers: Heidegger, Tillich and Gadamer. Heidegger set the stage with establishing Dasein as the ground of being. Tillich applied it to religion, and Gadamer applied it to hermeneutics. Are you ready dudes and dudettes?
The thought of Martin Heidegger is initially influenced by the thought of his teacher, Husserl, but then expands rather exponentially in another direction. For Heidegger, a person not only has a mind; but also, is a “self” in a “world.” This “self” in a “world” is also understood in terms of temporality, or time, which Heidegger terms with the German word Dasein. (I don’t really know how to speak in German. Sprechen sie Deutsch? Was ist Das?) Now the trouble in trying to understand Heidegger’s main writing, Being and Time, is that he uses regular German words in very different ways from their original meaning. When he can’t find a word in German to say what he wants it to say, he invents a new word. So, it can get a little confusing. Or a lot confusing. But the main word to keep in mind is Being, or Dasein, which means being which exists in a world, often written in English as Being-in-the-World.
Heidegger thought that much of the history of philosophy has been a forgetting of Being since it has focused on the ontical, rather than the ontological. This is a really critical distinction for both philosophy and religion. Ontical refers to beings which cannot really think about their own existence vs. ontological as creatures which can think about their own being. Typically, we do not exist to be observed and reduced to objects – much as we treat most other aspects of our experience such as psychological, physical, biological, socio-political, and economical, but rather we are in the world. Dasein as “there” or the space around us in temporality is factical in that it signifies an array of possibilities which can be realized in time. Heidegger interprets this temporally in terms of finitude and care: we’re not infinite beings and we care about our existence. For Heidegger, the ontical and reductive accounts mentioned above do not capture what is distinctly ontological. The idea that we’re finite and not infinite beings coupled with the fact that we care about our existence will become hugely important for Tillich in our next episode.
The two modes of Dasein in Heideggerian thought are inauthentic, or Being-in-the-World, and authentic, or Being-towards-Death. The first mode, Being-in-the-World, is not about spatial designations of being inside something, but rather familiarity and comfortability with something. (I absolutely love this aqua shirt I’ve got here.) This comfortability of feeling at home in the world is the typical and ordinary way we go about our daily lives. This is facticity, or how we spend much of our time. Thus, factically, we are absorbed in our regular routines as inauthentic Dasein and we care about these typical, everyday things. We have lost sight of our finitude. Nothing is really surprising, individual, or special about us because every thought is also already going on in someone else’s head. Within any given time or place we all have similar experiences. (She so did not post that about me!) Heidegger wrote that “Being-with” means Dasein is disclosing the “Dasein-with” of Others which belongs to it. We’re all part of the same show. We’re all in the same boat. Dasein’s Being is “Being-with.” The understanding of Others is already implied. Next, I will first mention a few things about equipment before returning to the two main types of care.
Artefacts we produce in order to use are termed by Heidegger as equipment. Dasein is completely integrated into a network of equipment which is referential, teleological, and intersubjective. Equipment constitutes our world in a complete, holistic conception which is interdependent. For example, we have cars, roads, parking lots and garages. It is referential in the sense that our complete dependence on this network of equipment shows us what the world is. It is teleological in that it has a realized purpose when used. The purpose of painted lines in a parking lot is to indicate where to park cars. Lastly, it is intersubjective in that there is a shared implication of referring to other Dasein. Many people park cars and we all know what that means because we have created such a world in which that makes sense. Such equipment is either ready-to-hand or present-at-hand. Equipment which is ready-to-hand exists as usable by Dasein such that the more we master it, the less visible it becomes, like a remote-control. Thus, we are not interested in the equipment itself per se, but in how the equipment is used and what it can do, both for us, and other Dasein.
Objects or equipment present-at-hand are ontically prior to those ready-to-hand, but ontologically equipment ready-to-hand comes first even though they are also ontical as well. Things become present-at-hand as ontical objects when breakdowns occur. These disruptive events Heidegger terms as equipment which becomes either conspicuous, obtrusive, or obstinate. Conspicuous is when equipment stops functioning, such as when a remote-control device loses battery power. [remote control fail] (Oh come on!) Obtrusive is when equipment is missing, like a lost tool on a construction task. (Dude, where’s my hammer? Hammer time… Just…no.) Obstinate is when equipment gets in the way of accomplishing something else (usually with other equipment), such as when there is road construction and one must take a detour on a different road driving to work. As such, objects are ready-to-hand but become present-at-hand through these breakdowns. We become more consciously aware of things when they don’t work right or don’t work as expected.
Heidegger’s purpose for describing equipment and its breakdowns in such detail is to show that much of the past history of philosophy considers objects and entities as present-to-hand and thus are viewing them ontically as things. Philosophy has forgotten Being because it has disregarded what is, at its most fundamental level, ontological. The goal should be to recover what has been forgotten. But why write about this or conceive of reality in this way? What’s wrong with ontical understandings? Aren’t we also objects too? These questions take us back to the two intimately linked ideas of finitude and care. Since we are typically absorbed with equipment ready-to-hand, we are always running out of time being fully engaged with time-consuming activities. We have lost sight of our finitude, and it is because of our finitude that we care. Which is more important to you – making sure your remote control works or eating a meal and sharing your life with one of your best friends? [remote control not working] (Ahhh, it’s not working again! Ah, forget this. Hey, you want to go out and eat some lunch? C’mon dude. Pizza? Wings?)
Heidegger classifies care as either concern or solicitude. Concern is simply using equipment as ready-to-hand, like parking a car, while solicitude is caring about other Dasein. Solicitude as a subcategory of care is further subdivided into leaping-in and leaping-ahead. Usually, we are somewhere in between this spectrum of the two. Leaping-in is when equipment is handled on one’s behalf, such as going to a restaurant and having a waiter wait on you. You are essentially using “their” time to fulfill “your” purposes. Leaping-ahead is showing someone something which is not in your own self-interest. This means opening up a factical possibility that they may have been previously blind to, thus adding to their own possible destiny rather than stealing their destiny from them. Have you ever “used” someone before? Not cool. Is Heidegger starting to step on a few toes here?
Okay, some of you are going to like this next part. Shortly after describing these aspects of care in Being and Time, Heidegger introduces his concept of “the they” which is in the German neuter case, so there’s no exact English language equivalent. “The they” are norms that govern conventions, including morals, which we are born into and did not choose, thus they are inherited from people in our society who came before us. The four main aspects of “the they” are distantiality, averageness, levelling down, and disburdening. Distantiality amounts to comparing ourselves, especially with status consciousness. Averageness is mediocrity signified by a baseline normality in society. But if one deviates too much, one has to come back into conformity and will be levelled down. Lastly, disburdening is using “the they” to excuse oneself (…but everyone does it…). “The they” represents a controlling factor as Heidegger writes about “the they’ as functioning as a real dictatorship over one’s behavior. The dictatorship of “the they” is constantly policing to keep one in average, everydayness. This explains why we are inauthentic. We lose ourselves living on autopilot, in smooth non-questioning and non-doubting daily routines in reference to everyone else around us in society. This is basically peer pressure on steroids.
Heidegger then refers to us as fallen, as well as elaborating on why we are fleeing. First, Heidegger differentiates anxiety and fear. Fear is being intentional about some particular object in the world, like being afraid of a wild animal or something like that. It is an intentional state as a derivative of anxiety because we are finite. Anxiety points to one’s authentic self and causes one to flee. One is fallen because one is fleeing. What is one fleeing? Anxiety. This anxiety individualizes Dasein. Anxiety is anxious in the face of Being-in-the-World. Being anxious amounts to feeling uncanny, which means being in the unfamiliar, not feeling at home. One is fleeing towards tranquilized familiarity and turning away from something unbearable. Thus, to care Heidegger says, is equiprimordial with Being-in-the-World. They exist originally together.
For Heidegger, death represents the possibility of the impossibility of Dasein, no more Being-in-the-World, and culminates the end in that totality has been realized, or as he terms it, Being-as-a-Whole. (No jokes here, I know what you’re thinking, but stick with me for another minute.) Death means “the there” stops. However, since there is no totality until death, we can never experience our totality. While we are alive, there is always more being added to the story. An ontologically adequate conception of death is an existential conception. Being-towards-Death is the authentic self, partially projected beyond the end point. That’s deep. So where does that leave us
The main crux of Heideggerian thought is the transition from the ontical to the ontological. We live in the world as temporal Dasein, not primarily as some category of objects to be studied and investigated by the various sciences. Because of finitude and care, the ontical reductive accounts by science and other disciplines do not encapsulate what is ultimately ontological about us. As fallen, we are fleeing anxiety in the face of this finitude. The bifurcation of, and simultaneously living as, both inauthentic and authentic lives represent a key feature of his thought. We only accomplish fragments of what we want to in our lifetimes and we have to learn how to live with those fragments. Whoa.
Okay that was the easy version of Heidegger. For a more intense version YouTube videos aren’t really enough. You’re going to have to go to college, or graduate school, take a philosophy course or something like that. Education baby!
In our next episode, Paul Tillich takes Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and relates it to religion as the ground of Being, and then in the third episode Gadamer relates it to interpretation and understanding, or what is called philosophical hermeneutics. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.