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Text For Philosophy Group, Brett Combs 2:24:16
Text For Philosophy Group, Brett Combs 2:24:16
Martin Heidegger.
Dryfuse"s Heidegger.
The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self
Ok so here is an approach to the topic. First, the history of philosophy. This gives context for all
of the important turns of Heidegger's philosophy. You can get this from Richard Rorty's
Philosophy and Social Hope, the introduction. IF you want you can skim the sections mentioning
Heidegger from the index.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/299470425/Richard-Rorty-Philosophy-and-Social-Hope-PenguinNon-Classics-2000
Then, if you want the stuff Marcuse has to say about the Heidegger's concept of a self as it is
related to a world political. He saw common ground between Marx and Heidegger regarding this
problem. Marcuse read the oppressive structure of advanced industrial society through three
lenses, the Marxian lenses of alienation, The Lukcsian lenses of reification, and the
Heideggerian lenses of inauthenticity.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/#PheMar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(Marxism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_(philosophy)
This gives us a nice frame for comprehending both how big a turn Heidegger is making and
then questioning the usefulness of his observations. This is what good philosophers do.
As far as covering Dasein. This begins with Kerikegard's definition of the self. "The self is a
relation which relates itself to its own self." This is important as it's at the center of his whole
project, to defeat the subject object distinction. You would also find much about this in the Rorty
introductory text provided below.
The subject object stuff is Heidegger's working out the equipmentality of equipment. This is
some amalgam of our having been socialized into shared practices and goals and that this logic
of skills, practical wisdom, interpenetrates as a mode of being the world in which we make
meaningful our lives. For Heidegger, we are meaning machines. Now get the three modes of
being by maybe watching the video I made.
>>>>>>>>ill get you the rest soon i'm marking out parts of the Dreyfus lecture and will use my
notes to get you the important stuff from the rest of being and time.
OK......
Dasine:::::: The background on the basis of which all modes of being are understood. These
modes of being we could conceptualize as a register from pre-conceptual skillful coping, to
skillful thinking.
Begin listening to track 3 at 17:44 seconds. Here you get the explanation of what fundamental
ontology is. This is the argument, explanation of how we have an embodied awareness that is
pre-conceptual that is ordering our understandings from moment to moment. And, that this is the
logic of the surroundings brought to bear on our senses. The, for opening for cooling down,
for ... and so on. It is the way in which stings show up for us as mattering. This is different than
how we tend to think of understanding as some kind of thinking. Or even how we conceptualize
what it is to be conscious. Its more a body thing than a mind thing. Dreyfus calls this out as : the
myth of the mental" @ t3 50:10
Then it picks up again at track 3 44:49 where he explains my paragraph above.
Yet only by there being something present at hand, only by there being a logic of the
surroundings brought to bear on our senses. Some content out of which we take a stand and
experience what shows up to us as mattering. Can there be a ready to hand way of being of
equipment. There must be a causal structure out from which some intelligibility is born.
This is the central point of being and time. That the self world distinction is the myth of the
mental. That intelligibility is a product of holism. That the world is the experiencing of the
showing up for us as mattering of a hammer as an all at once intelligibility of the inter-defined
lexicon of tables and nails and windows and doors and rooms and so on. >>>>>And<<<<< That
the way of being of equipment The structure of the story which is ever-present. IS there for us
as the result of our taking a stand on our being. We,,,,,,,, and here's the story,,,,, the structure.
Use a hammer "in order to" hammer in a nail, "toward" making it faster, "toward" making a
frame, "toward" making a house, "for the sake of" providing shelter, "ultimately for the sake of"
my being a homemaker, or father.....
Listen to the most important challenge of the entire western tradition since Plato beginning at
Track 5, 00:50 to 1:09 and at 1:12 he explains the Kierkergaardian self which Heidegger is
uncovering. A relation which relates itself to its own self. Each significant moment we are going
through this story sequence, a relation of relating itself to its own self. Of taking a stand on our
being.
Enough for now 2/19/9:30pm
Terms
Being: t1 at 44.01
Traditional understanding of being which goes all the way back to Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and
the pre-socratics. Rather than telling you about some necessary universal conditions like Kant
Heidegger tells us that there are three distinct ways hes aware of that, together, account for the
register of what we encounter. Three ahistorical cross cultural modes of being. 1) The way of
being of equipment, The ready to hand 2) Objects, or, substances that we note the properties
of.The present to hand. And 3) Human Beings, Dasine, that whatever it is about human beings
that makes them make their being an issue for them. This is the the Kierkergaardian self stuff
again. A relation which relates itself to its own self.
This bring us to the phenomena.
We have always a ready to hand relationship in the world. There is always the phenomena for
us of the affordance logic provided for us by our embodiment and embodiments predisposition.
First among these, our temporality, or lived time. This reminds me of the Pascal quote that
mankind is stretched on the contradiction of being possible and necessary, temporal and
eternal, finite and infinite. This basic feature of existence for us, temporality, earlier and later,
succession Dreyfus calls it. Plus the predisposition we have as human beings to take a stand on
our being yields the phenomena story which shows up for us in significant events. The story is
explained in spatiality II nicely. We with our Dasine, our meaningful dealing with things.
Spatiality II 16:10 Then he picks up again and explains the phenomena of the discovering ready
to hand relations. @ 18:10 In skillful coping we have some moment in which something is not
working as wall as it should be at which point it becomes conspicuous by there being some
deficiency. Once you have this deficiency and conspicuousness you get the story that comes
along with the un-ready to hand. This story is about our world of circumspective concern. Use a
hammer "in order to" hammer in a nail, "toward" making it faster, "toward" making a frame,
"toward" making a house, "for the sake of" providing shelter, "ultimately for the sake of" my
being a homemaker, or father.....
He then explains de-worlding as the transition to present at hand. When a hammer looses all of
its in-order tos, and for the sake ofs when as we confront it as if we had never understood a
hammer before and consider it as its properties.
Have to stop now...@/... Ok back again MOn@1:50 I think we could go back to the center of
the whole situation and then get to question of what the difference is, implications are for other
disciplines and much more if Heidegger is right about something a fundamental as the subject
object problem. OK?....
So in The One I, Dreyfus explains the history of philosophy stuff. He talks about how the
practice of philosophy having become the problem business, invent a problem and then try to
resolve it. @ 3:00 he begins. He explains Heidegger sees the turning of everything into
problems as the resurrection of metaphysics. Dreyfus then supports this view, saying that is
what has been going on the whole time I have been around. Flipping back and forth from
epistemology to metaphysics. Then we get Heidegger on what to do to avoid this. Avoid the
schema, he tells us. Subjects and objects, consciousness and being, being is the object of
consciousness, authentic being is nature, what science tells us, consciousness is an "I think",
consciousness is an ego, and ego pole, a center of acts. Consciousness has standing against it
beings, objects, natural things, things of value, goods... The relationship between subject and
object needs to be explained. IT is a problem, for epistemology. The dominance of this
"problem" of how your subjects get to know the external world or other subjects. This schema in
so doing ensures a foothold in life for various disciplines, psychology, philosophy and others,
ninety percent of the literature is preoccupied with ensuring that these problems do not
disappear and are confounded in still more and ever new ways.
Self / World
Reality / Appearance
Absolute / Relative
Found / Made
Plato > Descarte, Hegel, Kant, Searl
Then the split
Darwin > Heidegger, Sarte, Gadammer, Derrida, & Focualt, Dreyfus
And// WIlliam James, Emerson, John Dewey, Richard Rorty, William Quine, Donald Davidson
The shift in the field of philosophy turns on skeptical attitudes toward traditional vocabularies.
And as a result agreement with Thomas Khun that Philosophy, like Science, like politics, is
problem solving. The new vocabulary is time based. Beginning in Charles Sander Pierce.
Beliefs are habits of acting.
Philosophy And Social Hope xxiv
On this definition, to ascribe a belief to someone is simply to say that he or she will tend to
behave as I behave when I am willing affirm the truth of a certain sentence. Wc ascribe beliefs
to things which use, or can be imagined to use, sentences, but not to rocks and plants. This is
not because the former have a special organ or capacity - consciousness -which the latter lack,
but simply because the habits of action of rocks and plants are sufficiently familiar and simple
that their behavior can be predicted without ascribing sentential attitudes to them.
On this view, when we utter such sentences as 'I am hungry' we are not making external what
was previously internal, but are simply helping those around to us to predict our future actions.
Such sentences are not used to report events going on within the Cartesian Theatre which is a
person's consciousness. They are simply tools for coordinating our behavior with those of
others. This is not to say that one can 'reduce' mental states such as beliefs and desires to
physiological or behavioral states. It is merely to say that there is no point in asking whether a
belief represents reality, either mental reality or physical reality, accurately. That is, for
pragmatists, not only a bad question, but the root of much wasted philosophical energy. The
right question would be for what purposes would it be useful to hold such a belief.
ANSWER: useful for solving some problem
> Politics
Health
Culture
<<Norms>>
Politics
Absolute (Conservative)
(Justification) Arguments grounded in supernatural forces.
Talk about good and evil.
(Thomas Aquinas)
Relative (Liberal)
Arguments grounded in diminishing suffering and increasing human equality.
Talk about alternative goods.
(Richard Kraut, What is Good and Why)
____________________________________________________________________
Absolute (Conservative)
Talk about, Moral Principals VS Well Being
Moral Principals defended by arguments about Rationality.
Talk about, the relative advantages of different moralities.
Relative (Liberal)
Talk about, Well Being
Equal chance at happiness and concrete advantages of practices and <<NORMS>> over other
societies.
Politics becomes a war over wether what is the nature of the problem. The war between those
who insist our goal must be to do the morality business better, and those who see this as no
different than the struggle for existence business.
The important reason for this war over vocabularies in which we work out the justification for our
actions is that talk about firm moral principals is the danger of what one sees as a firm moral
principal in concrete terms is a form of prejudice cutting against the maxim of "equal chance at
happiness". This is because talk relying in justification from anything other than relative
advantage, will be as inconclusive as discussion of the relative superiority of a beloved book or
person over another book or person.
Developmentalism
But it is not only well-defined social roles that have this duality of giving room to one's own good
as well as that of others. For example. beingat loving person. when this is not mere sentiment
but is suffused with social intelligence, is an activity that brings into play a complex set of
affective and cognitive powers that are directed at the well-being of others.but whose very
exercise constitutes a good for the person who possessesthem. When, for example, we occupy
the role of a friend and performthat role well, we enjoy giving the people we like the help,
comfort, andamusement they need. Of course, we think directly about their good anddo not me
them as mere instruments for our own self-improvement ormaterial advantage. But we like
doing things for themnot to do sowould constitute a grave defect as a friend. And one reason
we find thisso enjoyable Is that being a good friend is in some respects like having agood job, it
offers abundant opportunities to he a comforter, a helper, acompanion, and when we do these
things, we put into play the sophisticated psychological skills that gradually took shape as we
emerged fromchildhood. For similar reasons. someone who has his heart on becoming aparent,
it is for his own good that he wants to raise a family, not as a wayto have helpers in his old age,
but because he thinks he will be a good father and he wants to develop and exercise the caring
skills called forthby the love of children. Another example: a single person may want tofind
someone to marry in part because he thinks that the complex affective and interactive skills
needed by a good marriage panner are ones that he will enjoy acquiring and exercising.
The norms, Heidegger goes on about in such a way, that they effectively take the place of what
Roprty describes as the Quasi-Devine faculty reason of the tradition in philosophy since Plato.
The norms tell us what to do and the right way to do things and if they didnt we wouldnt know
what to do. And, because of this being the case we have an organized world.
Norms, the positive an negative
Positive: He, Dryfus, gives an example, my mother would always put the shades down in the
front windows of our ranch house, because, what would the neighbors think if they could see
that we didn't get around to making the bed that a day.
There is a norm and you better conform to stand there are these neighbors watching to make
sure that you conform to it. The norm in this way is, sly, it governs everything you do and it does
so inconspicuously while making what you do sharedly intelligible.
The Negative: Averageness the averageness in which the norm prescribes what can and
cannot be ventured keep watch over everything exceptional and trusts itself to the fore.
Everything exceptional, anything outstanding, gets pushed back to doing the norm, the what is
the normal thing. Every kind of priority gets noisily suppressed. Everything primordial,
instinctive, primitive, basic, primal, primeval, intuitive, inborn, innate, inherent, visceral gets
glossed over as something that has been long known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes
just something to be manipulated.
The tendency toward norms an averageness when just natural and necessary has this bad
consequence. This car of averageness reveals this essential tendency leveling down. Theres
the norms in distanciality, the norms care of averageness, which ought to be neutral, and
leveling down, which is bad. AS ways of being for the one they constitute what we know as
publicness. the public is always covering up thats really interesting, and important. This
banality standard way of doing things, this publicness is always co-opting or coercing or
repressing all the derivations, many of which are crazy but some of which are very important
original stuff.
For this reason the skill managing this tendency toward norms and averageness, is the skill
involved in taking a stand on your being. And, i am going to add, a parallel Dewey sees when he
writes Aims, ideal do not exist simply in mind they exist in character in personality and action,
one might call the role of artists, intellectual enquirers, and citizens who are neighbors, to show
that purpose exists in an operative way.
On this view the good person and good citizen does what they can to be in many ways excellent
demonstrating a mastery of the culture. This is going back to Aristotle, to the phrnimos, the
person of practical wisdom. The man of practical wisdom does his in this particular situations
in his particular way. Does the uniquely appropriate thing at the uniquely appropriate time in
the uniquely appropriate way. This allows for a seeing and doing and thereby making sharedly
intelligible to others what is more appropriate. This becomes the measure of progress.
The argument becomes, the benefits of the compounding good of
Fighting for the equal chance at happiness in our exercising the carom skills called for by the
love of children. Or, the acquiring and expressing the affective and interactive skills needed by a
good marriage partner. And that in carrying out these duties an privileges that you do them in
your own uniquely better way by being you being excellent at being a father or, or being
excellent as a husband or spouse, or teacher or provider.
You can find this all in Dreyfuss track, The One II, @ 18:00 and again at 28:00 33:00
Heidegger has this Aristotelian talk where happiness is the actively phrnimos person. And that
the actively phrnimos person, is the good citizen and neighbor in and through his making
sharedly intelligible to others what is more appropriate.