r/heidegger

Daily reminder!:

”‘Nature’ is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind 'in the sails'. As the 'environment' is discovered, the 'Nature' thus discovered is encountered too. If its kind of Being as ready-to-hand is disregarded, this 'Nature' itself can be discovered and defined simply in its pure presence-at-hand. But when this happens, the Nature which 'stirs and strives', which assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow; the 'source' which the geographer establishes for a river is not the 'springhead in the dale'.”

Like…didn’t you know this? 🙄

According to Heidegger, modern thinking has reduced intellectual mystery to intellectual mastery.

Modern thinking is conceptual, and a concept is, essentially, a form of grasping — from the Latin root conceptus, “to take in” or “to contain.” In our time, we speak of “grasping the material,” “retaining information,” “gaining knowledge,” and so on.

“In the modern age, through calculative thinking, we have long become accustomed to seeing in thinking, and demanding from thinking, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff], i.e., we understand the “concept” on the basis of a grasping: conceptus — no longer ὁρισμóς. — The Event

Symbolically, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff] evoke the gesture of seizing something in a clenched fist. Heidegger suggests that when thinking has been reduced to conceptus, it is no longer ὁρισμός (horismos) — the Greek word from which we derive “horizon.”

It is impossible to look at a horizon in a grasping way. The only way to truly see the horizon is to allow it to be what it is and to let it reveal itself. The moment we snatch something out of the horizon and trap it in a definition, we no longer see the horizon. It is gone. To see it, we must let it be.

Symbolically, Heidegger associates this with the opposite gesture: the open hand. He calls it Gelassenheit — releasement, or letting-be. Modern thinking becomes reductionistic because it has turned mystery into mastery. We see bits — broken pieces — but never the horizon.

For something to reveal itself, it must be released. We must open our hand and allow the horizon to open itself to us in a reciprocal gesture. If I listen to a melody or a song, for example, I cannot possess or seize any of its notes. To continue hearing and enjoying the song, I must allow each note to come and go so that the next one can appear.

If I try to grab, retain, or make use of a single note, the horizon of the song is lost. I may “grasp” the individual elements — I may learn the note’s position on the scale, its frequency, its intervals — but I will not hear or enjoy the song. I will never see the horizon.

I remember going to music school as a child — which I hated — and thinking: “I thought music was about playing songs, but it’s about scales, solfeggio, and learning about the lives of composers.” The only reason I went was because my mom insisted.

But one day, I saw a classmate sit down at the pianoforte and play a popular song. I was speechless. I loved the song. Suddenly, it occurred to me that what I had been doing at music school for two years had little to do with Music. It was a bitter-sweet discovery.

I realized that music was something entirely different from what I had been taught. It was a mystery.

And mystery never begins with mastery. Mastery always follows mystery.

Eventually, I dropped out of music school, and a few years later I taught myself to play the guitar — this time, driven by a sense of mystery.

Surprisingly, mastery came too, over time — as a side effect. I learned the scales, the notes, the intervals, the solfeggio. But this time, my interest was nourished by the mystery of music.

Unless we first embrace the horizon, we won’t know the meaning of the elements that fill it. The first gesture is never to grasp conceptually. The first gesture is always to become super attentive to what the horizon wants to reveal.

There is no need to attack, seize, grasp, or retain.

Reality will yield itself willingly to the one who is willing to wait for the revelation of its hidden beauties.

Philosophy is like a hologram: each of its “parts” contains the whole. The whole of Heidegger’s thinking from his middle period is contained in Contributions to Philosophy, section 136.

We are inclined to think that Being must be all the time. If there were no Being, no beings would show up. Heidegger starts by breaking this illusion: “Beyng—the remarkable erroneous belief is that beyng must always “be”.” (Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), Section 136)

Not just that it is not necessary for Being to be all the time, “but beyng “is” not at all; instead, it essentially occurs.” (ibid.)

That is just terminological pedantry, we might say, the substitution of the word “occur” for the word “be”. Nevertheless, we might argue, Being must occur all the time. If Being did not occur, there would be no beings. But that is not what Heidegger is saying. He says that Being is “the most unique” and possesses the “utmost rarity”. No one can truly esteem the few moments in which it occurs.

Being occurs only rarely and for a moment, if ever. In the twinkle of an eye. The occurrence of Being is a real phenomenon, even though it is not a being. It is an ontological phenomenon.

The occurrence of Being is not evenly distributed among all people. There are people who are more ontologically inclined, and people less prone to ontological phenomena. There are people who spend their lives in a larval state of Being-blindness. We know that from personal experience: for a long period of our lives, we were Being-blind. There is no moral judgment about this: a larval life is no less worth living, and there is no practical use for the occurrence of Being.

If we are Being-blind, there is no point in reading about Being. Reading will not make Being occur; all that it can do is help us make sense of the experience we already have and see that we are not alone.

For beings to step forth, Being must keep itself back in self-concealment. We find ourselves in the street, surrounded by buildings, roads, trees, cars, and streetlights. But there is no Being.

We might repeat a Heideggerian mantra: the self-concealment of Being is its occurrence. But Heidegger warns us about that: “to leave beyng in concealment is radically different from experiencing beyng as self-concealing.” (ibid.) To leave Being in concealment means precisely that Being does not occur. The occurrence of Being is something completely different.

Beings are, yet there is no Being. Beings are devoid of Being. Are the beings then annihilated in the occurrence of Being? No, on the contrary! “They become beings in the more proper sense, i.e., they occur more essentially in the essential occurrence of beyng.” (ibid.)

Then it all comes down to the relationship between the human being and Being, we might jump to the conclusion. A human is an empty place where Being occurs. Once again, Heidegger breaks this illusion. There is no separate “human” and “Being”, so there can be no relationship between them. “To speak of the relation… makes it seem as if beyng essentially occurred, with regard to the human being, as something over and against, as an object.” (ibid.) As if there is Being and it occurs to humans. But there is no Being. “Being itself” is just one name for the occurrence of Being.

Human being is the t/here of Being—it is where Being occurs, and nothing else. Larval life is a mode of this “being the t/here for the occurrence of Being”—but that does not mean leaving Being in concealment is the occurrence of Being. Just as a person can go blind because humans have the ability to see, but we would not say that blindness is “how someone sees.”

On the other hand, there is no Being prior to its occurrence. Being occurs to humans, and in no other way. Its truth, the unconcealment of Being, “essentially occurs only if sheltered in art, thinking, poetry, deed.” (ibid.) If there were no sheltering, Being would not occur at all; it would be left in concealment and completely forgotten. Then the only possible mode of life would be a larval one. We would eventually lose our organs for perceiving ontological phenomena, and our Being-blindness would become incurable. That is a real, threatening possibility, the utmost danger, and perhaps the most likely outcome of the progress in which we live.

For millennia we have been interpreting Being from beings, and that is the best-known Heideggerian taboo. Maybe that is why precisely what Heidegger does in this section is interpret Being from beings: “If it is still allowed, for the sake of a preliminary orientation, to characterize beyng on the basis of “beings,” then we will call upon the actual as what genuinely is.” (ibid.) Scandalous! Not only does he say that he is going to “characterize Being on the basis of beings”, but he focuses on the actual. And we all know that the actual is what is constant in presence. By that logic, Being would be constant presencing.

But there is a twist: “What is actual, i.e., what is, is first that which is remembered and that which is still the prepared.” (ibid.)

There is nothing more actual than Sophocles' tragedies and future revolutions. The present “has already been borne and pervasively disposed by memory and preparedness.”(ibid.) The present is then the unique moment, the singular point in which memory meets preparedness, in which Sophocles’ tragedies are staged for the revolution that is on its way. That is how sheltering works; these unique moments in which memory meets preparedness are when Being occurs.

Of course, it goes without saying that it is not as though humans “produce” Being in the present. These unique moments are not under our control; they are exactly what breaks our illusion of control.

Hello everyone and welcome to this online reading & discussion group on Heidegger, Aristotle and the Medievals (hosted by Philip, James, Adam and others). The meetings will take place on Zoom.

For the first few sessions we will be reading from this book:

• "The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy: Phenomenology for the Godforsaken" by S.J. McGrath (A copy of assigned reading materials will be provided to registrants.)

Ideally we would have started with the following short booklet, but sadly it is not out yet. As soon as it is out in paper format we will temporarily switch from reading McGrath to reading:

• Heidegger and Aristotle (Cambridge Element) by Francisco J. Gonzalez

Along the way we will frequently read Heidegger himself. Usually we will read short essays by Heidegger mostly focused on his early views on Medieval philosophy. The one big exception is that we will read some of the early chapters of Heidegger's "Being and Time" in the new Yale translation by Cyril Welch.

This will be a 2 hour meetup. Some sessions will be dedicated entirely to the reading of the McGrath book. Other sessions will be dedicated entirely to the reading of works by Heidegger or Gonzalez. This is a little bit different from my usual format where we read from two books in each session.

The format will be our usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15-20 pages from the book assigned for that day's session. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want us to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. We mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. In other words, if you want to talk in this meetup, you have to read the assigned readings. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not read the books this meetup is based on. You probably are brilliant and wonderful – no argument there! But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.

Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is mostly for philosophical reasons: We want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy.

https://preview.redd.it/d0992zmkscjh1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e02918480771fdf0ed75c343754dcb9d222baa74

To join the 1st meeting, taking place on Monday August 17 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

Meetings will be held every other week on Monday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

Here is the (tentative) reading schedule:

• For the 1st session (August 17), please read the Preface and also pages 1-6 in McGrath
• For the 2nd session (August 31), please read pages 6-24 in McGrath
• For the 3rd session (September 14), please read the Preface and also pages 25-40 in McGrath
• ..... (updates on the main group page)

Check the group calendar (link) for future updates. A pdf of reading materials will be provided to registrants.

This initial reading schedule makes it look like we will mostly be reading McGrath in this meetup. But this is misleading and not true. I want us to get a foothold in McGrath before we tackle Heidegger, but once we have that foothold we will be more or less alternating one session of McGrath with one session of Heidegger himself.

I have found that sometimes people assume that I pick books for these meetups because I agree with them. This is not true! I pick books because they are thought provoking and because I think they will work in a meetup context. But for the record, it just so happens that I do tend to agree strongly with Gonzalez. And it just so happens that I have some serious disagreements with McGrath even though I also have deep respect for his book and expect to learn a lot by engaging with it with all of you in the meetup. Some people like to know where I stand with regard to the books I have picked, so now you know.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About the McGrath (from the publisher):

The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy is a major interpretive study of Heidegger's complex relationship to medieval philosophy. S. J. McGrath's contribution is historical and biographical as well as philosophical, examining how the enthusiastic defender of the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition became the great destroyer of metaphysical theology.

This book provides an informative and comprehensive examination of Heidegger's changing approach to medieval sources―from the seminary studies of Bonaventure to the famous phenomenological destructions of medieval ontology. McGrath argues that the mid-point of this development, and the high point of Heidegger's reading of medieval philosophy, is the widely neglected habilitation thesis on Scotus and speculative grammar. He shows that this neo-Kantian retrieval of phenomenological moments in the metaphysics of Scotus and Thomas of Erfurt marks the beginning of a turn from metaphysics to existential phenomenology. McGrath's careful hermeneutical reconstruction of this complex trajectory uncovers the roots of Heidegger's critique of ontotheology in a Luther-inspired defection from his largely Scholastic formation.

In the end McGrath argues that Heidegger fails to do justice to the spirit of medieval philosophy. The book sheds new light on a long-debated question of the early Heidegger's theological significance. Far from a neutral phenomenology, Heidegger's masterwork, Being and Time, is shown to be a philosophically questionable overturning of the medieval theological paradigm.

Hi all,

I am new to Heidegger, and I am wondering where would be the best place to start? Do I need to have some background authors, or am I able to start off with some introduction texts?

Thanks

Given that Heidegger (in Being and Time) posits unconscious mechanism (for-which, to-which, at-hand, moods etc.) that determine behaviour why is his existential philosophy not considered a psychological theory?

Hello All,

First off, I should note that I do not read german, so cannot speak to the original text of Being and Time. But I have read the Macquarrie and Robinson english translation several times, and always had to skip over several sections in division one because I simply could not disentangle them.

The Welch translation, while by no means "easy," at least renders many obscure d1 concepts somewhat comprehensible. The spatiality section in particular had always been a major sticking point. As was the de-structuring of Cartesian metaphysics. But now, I am getting traction. This new translation is really revolutionary for me. I am moving slowly, but at long last feel as though I can clearly understand what's going on with enough effort.

The Macquarrie and Robinson translation felt like a pitch-black labyrinth by comparison. I always ended up "feeling" my way through it, and inevitably got lost. I have very little experience with the Stambaugh translation, which seems decent as well, but I've never been through it all the way.

Has anyone had a similar experience with the Welch translation? Anyone beg to differ? Can anyone compare the Welch Translation to the Stambaugh translation?

Thanks for taking time to read this!

I’ve been thinking about a methodological question in Being and Time, and I’d like to know whether anyone has discussed it.
I understand that Heidegger is not making an ethical distinction between “authentic” and “inauthentic” people. Authenticity is an existential possibility built into the structure of Dasein, not a permanent state that some people possess and others don’t. He repeatedly insists that Dasein never simply leaves das Man behind.
My question is different.
Heidegger gives extraordinarily rich phenomenological descriptions of anxiety (Angst), the call of conscience, Unheimlichkeit, and resoluteness. These passages don’t read like abstract deductions; they read like descriptions of phenomena that are somehow familiar to the one describing them.
This makes me wonder: where does the authority of these descriptions come from?
If Being and Time is an ontological analysis rather than an ontic one, how can Heidegger describe these phenomena with such precision without presupposing some existential familiarity with them?
Part of why this question occurred to me is the contrast with Sartre. In Nausea, something very close to Heideggerian anxiety is presented as an explicitly lived, ontic experience through Roquentin. There, the source of the description is obvious. Heidegger, however, wants to remain at the ontological level.
So I wonder whether there is a kind of methodological tension here.
Heidegger seems careful to avoid creating an existential hierarchy between “those who have seen” and “those who haven’t.” Yet the very voice of Being and Time sometimes feels as though it speaks from someone who has already been existentially touched by what he is describing.
I’m not claiming this is a contradiction. I’m asking whether phenomenology itself requires this sort of familiarity, or whether Heidegger would say that such descriptions are possible without any privileged existential standpoint.
Has anyone written about this issue?

The Debate That Came Too Late

Thoughts on the Derrida/Searle Exchange

by: AFTER THE COLLAPSE on Substack

AUG 5

Toward mid-twentieth century two paths opened before philosophy. One was marked by Martin Heidegger and Werner Heisenberg, who presented a seminal exchange at a conference in Munich in 1953.

Heidegger had recognized that Western metaphysics had exhausted itself. He prepared the clearing for another beginning, though he never fully crossed into it.

Heisenberg arrived from the opposite direction. Quantum mechanics forced physics itself to confront the boundary of representation. Nature no longer permitted the old metaphysical assumptions. Reality refused to appear as a completed collection of determinate objects awaiting description.

One recognized the threshold. The other was driven across it by the phenomena themselves. Taken together, they disclosed a possibility that philosophy and physics have scarcely begun to think, or worse—chosen to avoid.

One might have expected philosophy to follow that path. Instead, another path gradually emerged.

It culminated decades later in the celebrated exchange between Jacques Derrida and John Searle. Their disagreement appeared profound. Historically, however, they represent a common response to the very rupture Heidegger and Heisenberg had already disclosed.

The exchange has always struck me as theater.

Searle entered believing he was in a courtroom. The courtroom demands definitions, arguments, evidence, logical consistency, and conclusions. It assumes philosophy advances through increasing conceptual precision.

Derrida entered as the court jester knowing he strode upon a stage. The stage exposes assumptions, reverses expectations, and reveals that the courtroom itself has become part of the performance.

One cannot logically debate a jester without immediately becoming a fool in the play. Searle never seemed to realize that every demand for greater conceptual precision had already become another line in Derrida’s performance.

The exchange remains enormously entertaining. Derrida dismantles Searle’s confidence with remarkable wit. The laughter is deserved.

But laughter is not another beginning.

Every civilization needs its jesters. The jester exposes pretension.He punctures complacency and pomposity. He reminds us that what appears self-evident often rests upon forgotten obsolete assumptions.

Derrida performed this historical task with extraordinary effectiveness.

The temptation is to stop there. I confess feeling it myself.

There is undeniable satisfaction in watching false certainty collapse. But satisfaction is not philosophy. Here lies the decisive distinction.

Destruction can be diagnostic.

Or it can become performative.

Diagnostic destruction clears away what obstructs another beginning.

Performative destruction turns dismantling itself into the philosophical act.

Nietzsche’s hammer was diagnostic.

Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysics was diagnostic.

Both destroyed because another beginning demanded a clearing.

Derrida’s deconstruction gradually became the main performance.

The clearing became the destination. The king had already died, yet the jester remained upon the stage exposing a kingdom that no longer ruled anyone.

The tragedy was not that the jester laughed. The tragedy was that no lawgiver entered after him.

Yet Derrida genuinely perceived something important. No system establishes itself without drawing a boundary. Every conceptual order depends upon what it brackets, excludes, or relegates to the margin. Its apparent completeness conceals constitutive decisions that cannot themselves be justified from within the system.

This insight should not be dismissed.

It should be radicalized.

Quantum mechanics disclosed the same phenomenon at a more primordial level. Every representational system depends upon constitutive reductions. Nature reveals itself only as partial complementary slices, and only in the form of the question.

Chosen axioms.

Selected events.

Boundaries of space and time.

Nothing within the articulated world uniquely determines these reductions.They are decisions. They are cuts. They are the conditions under which a determinate world becomes representable.

Here Heidegger and Heisenberg converge.

Here Derrida almost arrives. He recognized that every conceptual system depends upon what it brackets. But because he remained within language, the constitutive reduction appeared as textual exclusion rather than as first articulation itself. The grounding first articulation is forgotten, and we find ourselves floating in ever-iterative text.

This observation invites one final question: If every system depends upon what it brackets, then the same question must be asked of deconstruction itself.

What has deconstruction bracketed? It concealed the possibility that meaning has a history older than language.

Deconstruction begins with texts, writing, signs, and différance. Its analyses are often brilliant, yet this beginning is itself a constitutive reduction.

It quietly assumes that the privileged site of philosophy is linguistic meaning. In doing so, it Conceals the more primordial history through which meaning first enters the world. The grounding and originating act.

The boundary of deconstruction is therefore the boundary of language. The deeper irony lies elsewhere.

Both Derrida and Searle place meaning at the center of philosophy. Curiously, neither pauses to ask what this astonishingly rich word itself gathers together.

We speak of the meaning of a word.

The meaning of a sentence.

What I mean by what I say.

What I mean to do tomorrow.

The meaning of a gesture.

The meaning of a symphony.

The meaning of life.

The meaning of suffering.

The meaning of existence.

Are these really one phenomenon?

Or has philosophy quietly allowed one late articulation of meaning—linguistic meaning—to eclipse every other sense in which the world matters?

Searle reduces this richness until meaning rests upon logical distinctions, facts, ordinary language, and intention.

Derrida demonstrates that such stability continually dissolves into iteration, displacement, and ambiguity. His critique succeeds. His conclusion does not.

For both philosophers remain confined within language. Neither asks how there first comes to be a world in which anything can matter.

Quantum mechanics had already disclosed that the deepest instability was never linguistic. It belonged to representation itself. The representational understanding of reality had encountered its own boundary.

Searle could not see the historical shift. He continued searching for logical stability where history had already withdrawn it.

Derrida experienced the withdrawal with remarkable sensitivity. Like Nietzsche’s Madman, he inhabited the vertiginous collapse of an old world.

But where the Madman wept, Derrida laughed. The laughter was deserved. The old certainties had become absurd.

Yet the instability Derrida celebrated in language was not the event itself. It was the reverberation of a more primordial rupture. The collapse had first occurred in our understanding of reality. Language merely echoed it.

The question therefore begins much earlier than either philosopher imagined.

Hydrogen does not care whether it combines with oxygen.

Oxygen does not care whether it combines with hydrogen.

The reaction has effects.

It has no consequences.

Nothing matters. There is no meaning

Only with the emergence of life does the universe first become a place where something can matter.

The first single-cell life is aware of nourishment and poison.

Safety and danger.

Attraction and aversion.

Caring enters the universe.

And with caring, meaning.

Where there is no caring there are effects.

There are no consequences.

Where there are no consequences there is no meaning.

Meaning is therefore neither a logical relation nor an endless play among words. It belongs to the primarily esthetic relation between a conscious being and its world.

Over four billion years that caring has undergone profound transformations.

The bacterium distinguishes nourishment from poison.

The animal distinguishes companion from predator.

Human animals distinguish justice from injustice, beauty from ugliness, dwelling from homelessness, communion from isolation.

Language appears astonishingly late within this history.

It does not create meaning. It articulates meanings that caring has already disclosed.

This is why both Searle and Derrida ultimately remain groundless.

One mistakes a mirage for solid ground.

The other concludes that no ground exists.

Both share the same metaphysical Ungrund because both search for the ground of meaning where it cannot be found or deny it altogether.

The search itself begins one articulation too late.

The twentieth century needed its diagnosticians.

It needed those who exposed exhausted foundations.

It even needed its jesters.

But diagnosis is not healing.

Performance is not commencement.

The task before philosophy is no longer to defend inherited foundations, nor endlessly to celebrate their collapse.

Its task is to ask what becomes thinkable once representation has reached its limit.

Heidegger and Heisenberg together, but arriving from different directions, announced announced this task in Munich in 1953.

Whether philosophy finally dares to answer it remains our task.