
Heidegger, the homesick philosopher - deepbow
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2019/09/heidegger-homesick-philosopher
======
madacoo
> The book was a refutation of the distinction between mind and body, and all
> the fallacies that follow. “I think, therefore I am” was, in Heidegger’s
> reckoning, a “naive supposition”, an anthropocentric conceit that went all
> the way back to Plato. Humans cannot be imagined either outside or prior to
> the world into which they are “thrown” – a bed of land, language, tradition,
> history and more. Heidegger believed that only once this embeddedness, this
> “Being-there” (Dasein) in the world, is recognised can it be restored to its
> fullest, most authentic form, and the “forgetfulness of Being”, “the
> homelessness of man” and “the Fallenness of the world” overcome.

I actually don't see that "cogito ergo sum" and Heidegger's "thrown-ness" are
so contradictory. Descarte wanted to find a claim irrefutable by logic on
which to found his subsequent thought. And he did. The fact he went on from
there to separate mind and body in a way that Heidegger's thrownn-ness doesn't
require doesn't mean the ideas aren't compatible.

The problem with Descarte's thought is not the first but second therefore: I
think therefore I am therefore my mind is separate from my body.

~~~
inesprimibile
No, Heidegger explicitly attempts to refute and attack Descartes's supposition
"cogito ergo sum" (the first therefore). And one can read all of Heidegger's
early philosophy as an attempt to undo the errors started by Descartes:
Heidegger faults Descartes with stymieing all of modern philosophy with a
false first presupposition.

Heidegger's fault with Descartes lies in the very first two words: "I think."
Heidegger does not believe that the "I" (Dasein/Being) is the thing that
thinks (directly at least). In Descartes' world, humans are "res cogitans"
("thinking machines"): the "I" is that which thinks. For Descartes, there is
some _thing_ that is doing the thinking. In Heidegger's world, there is not
some mysterious being that thinks, but rather the "I" is the
experiencing/thinking itself (the "thrown-openness"). This is why Heidegger
always uses verbs/gerunds to describe Being.

For Heidegger, the simple statement "I think" cannot possibly be true because
there is no "I" behind the thinking. For Heidegger, the analog basic first-
claim would instead simply be: "there is thinking" (the "ego"/"I" as we think
about it is the "thinking" itself for Heidegger).

~~~
woodandsteel
I agree. That is why Heidegger says that dasein, which roughly speaking means
human being, is being-in-the-world, rather than a metaphysical substance
outside the world that posits ideas about the material world.

The people who think Heidegger's philosophy is compatible with the Dartesian
ego are reinterpreting his concepts to fit their own ways of thinking.

------
joe_the_user
_Once discredited by his association with Nazism, Martin Heidegger is enjoying
a posthumous revival. So what is it about his ideas that resonate with so
many?_

It seems like the situation is exactly the opposite. Heidegger was considered
a leading throughout the 20th century and it is only in the last few years
that the intensity of his NAZI affiliations has become evident (as well as the
degree to which he mix philosophy and politics), leaving his philosophy much
more suspect.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
It hasn’t been just the last few years. Heidegger’s Nazism became an issue
already in the 1960s, when other intellectuals like Paul Celan struggled to
reconcile his philosophical insights with his actions during the Hitler
regime.

~~~
dang
Marcuse was corresponding with him about it in 1947.

[https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/40spubs/47MarcuseHeideg...](https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/40spubs/47MarcuseHeidegger.htm)

~~~
cygx
Heidegger's response looks rather weak to me, but note that Marcuse also
didn't get his point about the treatment of East Germans by 'one of the
Allies':

Not too long ago, I saw an exhibition on the 'Wolfskinder'[1], and what
happened there looked pretty genocidal to me (though of course it wasn't the
same as the meticulously planned 'Endlösung').

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_children)

------
osullivj
Heidegger perpetrated nonsense like "Das Nichts selbst nichtet" (The Nothing
itself nihilates) [1], which positivists and empiricists rightly disdained.
Obviously I am firmly in the analytic camp. If you like a bit of mysticism in
your philosophy the later Wittgenstein is your man, especially his thoughts on
language games, intersubjectivity and forms of life. A far more incisive set
of philosophical tools for understanding notions of community and place than
Heidegger's Blut und Boden bluster. IMHO of course!

[1]
[https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher...](https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/03/heidegger-
nothing-and-the-analytic-continental-schism.html)

~~~
coldtea
> _Obviously I am firmly in the analytic camp_

Obviously. But it's not the only camp, nor it's some settled question. It's
just the most popular in anglosaxon countries...

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The_rationalist
Does Heidegger has had an added value on the world? He is very known which
does not say anything about if he is a bullshit artist or a real truth seeker.

Could anybody explain one of it's new ideas? Did he just improved existing
ideas?

I believe he is a bullshit artist but I would love to be refuted.

------
corporateslave5
Even though Heidegger was a nazi, he had a close relationship with Hannah
Arendt, who was a Jewish political philosopher. Weird to conceive of holding
nazi ideology in your head whilst dating Arendt.

~~~
FillardMillmore
Slightly tangential, but Hannah Arendt, in addition to being a political
philosopher, wrote a fairly thought-provoking tome called 'The Origins of
Totalitarianism'. Worth a read if one is interested in such things.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism)

I'm not completely well-versed in Heidegger, but is it possible that he did
not hold his Nazi beliefs so close to his heart that true love (corny, I know)
could not usurp those feelings? I would not suggest that a man such as
Heidegger would not be forthcoming in his beliefs, but I do think it's
possible that him (and others throughout history) adopted political beliefs
partially out of convenience. Sometimes, it's difficult to tell the lengths to
which someone holds their convictions.

~~~
corporateslave5
Yeah I’ve read about half of origins of totalitarianism. Really unique book.
One interesting thing I read is how she shows that colonialism from the
dominating powers was quite often rooted in capitalist goals. And so she shows
how underpinning totalitarianism and powers spreading over other countries was
the result of greed by those in power. Makes sense, but I never think of how
capitalism could lead to that.

------
coldtea
> _And yet, Heidegger still stands as one of the commanding figures of 20th-
> century philosophy. His heirs include Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Paul
> Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir and Jacques Derrida. His denial of mind-body
> dualism – his belief that we are rooted beings, inextricable from time and
> place – continues to influence fields as diverse as architecture, ecology
> and art history. Readers are left to discern whether the essence of his
> ideas leads inexorably to fascistic thinking or whether, in that aged
> refrain, the life can be separated from the work, so that we are free to
> forage as we please._

There's a third option, that didn't seem to pass through the writer's mind:
that what they call "fascistic thinking" is a constellation of things, many of
which were invoked in the past without negative consequences, and most would
still find totally find, were they not today tarnished by association with a
mass murdering regime...

The fascists also pushed major welfare reforms for example, and nobody today
(hopefully) considers welfare something fascist in the bad sense...

The same can be said for all kinds of philosophical ideas (including of
Heidegger). Just because they were themselves adopted by Nazis doesn't mean
adopting them brings upon a Nazi regime, antisemitism, or mass murder...

------
tryitnow
For more on Heidegger and any other philosopher, I highly recommend the
podcast "Philosophize This", it's helped me understand philosophy better than
anything else.

------
nn3
>>>At the time of writing, “Martin Heidegger” is one of only 174 English
Wikipedia pages –out of a total 29 million – officially flagged as
“incomprehensible” by the site.

If nobody can understand him, he's not worth caring about.

~~~
richardjdare
If you want to get a handle on Heidegger, I recommend working through Being
and Time while listening to Prof Hubert Dreyfus's UC Berkeley lecture series,
'Philosophy 185 - Heidegger'. I heard them on ITunes U long ago, but they are
also available on archive.org [0].

Dreyfus wrote a critique of AI, "What Computers Can't Do" in the 70s, and
talks a bit about a Heideggerian approach to AI in his lectures which may be
of interest to a few people here.

[0]
[https://archive.org/details/Philosophy_185_Fall_2007_UC_Berk...](https://archive.org/details/Philosophy_185_Fall_2007_UC_Berkeley)

