So I have an existentialism midterm, and to study, (as well as feed my drive to check this forum) I have decided to explain what I understand of Heidegger to you. Hopefully this will generate some thrilling discussion. I like to think it will, as a lot of the stuff people around here play with originated with the existentialists.
So Heidegger...
To begin, Heidegger thought that it was mistaken to think that people had an epistemological relationship to the world, that we are not fundamentally observers. Rather, we are the beings who are interested in Being. We are not separate from Being, we are in the midst of it. He called this "Dasein," which translates literally to "there being." We are interested in our own human Being, not in the abstract concept of Being.
Our original relationship to the world is not reflective, but we face various opportunities to become so, and we must become so in order to achieve our goals as "beings interested in Being." Something has to jar you, shake you out of what he called "primitive average everydayness" to intiate this reflection. He thought that when something is not right we become inclined to reflect. If we become reflective, we can begin to think about Being.
He described a structure of Dasein and gave it three parts:
A) Facticity (which is basically everything unchangeable such as our past and the present context of our environment, etc.)
B) Existenz (which is potential, the future, all the choices you may make.)
C)Fallenness (which is what happens when you choose to avoid questions of Being and flee.)
He thought that it was important to become aware of this structure as well as what we do to avoid it:
A) Instead of becoming aware of facticity we flee into ambiguity (which is busyness, the things people do instead of facing up to thier actual lives)
B) Instead of becoming aware of Existenz, we flee into curiosity (rather than becoming aware of our authentic possibilities, we distract ourselves with learning various interesting bits of information. i.e. gossip, etc.)
C) Instead of developing understanding through discourse, we engage in chatter. (Talking about meaningless crap instead of questions of Being. You know, how people can prattle on endlessly about movies or thier car, or whatever.)
He thought that we had a strong tendency towards fallenness, to avoiding questions of Being. It is a lot easier to flee than to face up to questions of Being. Which of you that has been faced with these questions has not at some point wished they could simply avoid them altogether and be content to do what "everyone else" does and distract themselves?
He thought that it was vital to surround oneself with others who were equally as interested in authenticity, as these sorts of people tend to support one another in thier mutual efforts. Discourse is essential to coming into Being. We cannot do it entirely alone.
Heidegger had a developmental theory which makes a lot of sense. He said that we initially develop a sense of self through seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of others, so our sense of identity is tied to how others percieve us. Being authentic requires tearing oneself away from this dependence on the perception of others. He called this form of identity "Das Man" - "the They" and he called this initial orientation "primitive average everydayness." Initially we all have this form of identity, but when we come across an opportunity to reflect and avoid it, we move into "fallen average everydayness" which is the choice to avoid questions of Being and to stick with our Das Man identity.
We have a great deal of anxiety (angst) that can be partially traced to our fear of death, but that is also connected to our fear of freedom, our Existenz. We know that we are free to choose and this is terribly frightening. Heidegger also thought that, although facticity is fixed and unchanging, we can choose the attitude we have towards it and thus have a great deal of freedom. We are not bound to any fixed course. We create our own personall identities that involve interpretations of past, present and future.
That is probably enough for now... any thoughts, questions? Is my description clear? The terminology can be a bit wierd, that is what I struggle with the most, but I think that his ideas are pretty clear and pretty apt.
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Hahah, yeah his language is a little over the top. It's funny that once you grasp the meaning of a sentence it turns out it's really not that complicated and could probably have been explained in much simpler terms. The man was brilliant though, so I can forgive him! I'm lucky that my excellent professor, who is unfortunately retiring (I'll miss you Bonelle!) gives great handouts for each philosopher outlining thier views. The readings fill in the gaps, but she basically hands it to us.
Sartre is definitly easier than Heidegger, and de Beavoir is just rad. Thier relationship with each other is rather inspiring as well. (de Beauvoir and Sartre, that is)
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