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The basic premise of existentialism is false

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The basic premise of existentialism is false
Erik
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Posted 08/04/08 - 08:34 PM:
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#41
Crow wrote:
Please excuse me for not just responding with Sartre quotes.

I think the main problem with the brand of philosophy held by Sartre, Heidegger, and others of their ilk is that they start from an artifically abstract notion of the concept of Being. They see Being as being prior to its context and environment and, therefore, can properly be conceived abstractly as an independent purity... as a nothingness, a revealedness, as a primal emptiness, etc . I think that this existentialist premise is false. I hold that 'being' is a brain construction for the experience of its consciousness just as surely as "red" is a brain construction for the experience of its consciousness. Our experience of 'being' and 'red' is not prior to conscious, and consciousness is not prior to brain. Only a naive realist would take his mind-created experience of 'red' as a primal element of reality; only a naive realist would take his mind-generated experience of 'being' as a primal element of reality. A philosophy which has such an error as its basic premise is metaphysically false.


Please point me to the work(s) of Heidegger in which 'being' is seen as something prior to its context and environment. Dasein's throwness and facticity are essential elements of its being; this is of such vital importance to his thought that I'm curious as to how you missed it. Far from starting off with an abstract or metaphysical notion of being, he investigates 'it' through our practical engagement with such mundane things as hammers and pens.

As I understand him, he tried to show the exact opposite of what you ascribe to him, i.e. that there is no 'being' outside of a particular context, and that far from being an abstraction (one of the objections he deals with at the beginning of Being and Time), we're so immersed in a pre-theoretical understanding of being that we fail to notice it. Even when we investigate 'being' theoretically, we also fail to notice it, as paradoxical as that sounds.

Perhaps notions like 'consciousness' and 'mind' are the abstractions, rooted in the very Cartesian presuppositions that he sought to overcome via hermeneutic phenomenology. Where is this 'mind' that you speak of? If it's not a thing (a no-thing), then it must be a being, no? Where is it?

Also, Heidegger and Sartre are about as far apart as can be on many essential issues - I'm not sure how you can equate the two. But again, please provide textual support (within context) since I very well could have missed something, or many things, and may have been misinterpreting him all of these years.

Thanks.
The more we have the less we own.
Meister Eckhart
springmo


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Posted 08/04/08 - 09:24 PM:
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#42
I think what he meant is that Heidegger thinks that our "being" is somehow foundational and something that can be isolated in that it is prior to everything else. Heidegger thinks that the question of "being" should be the lens through which we look at phenomenology, metaphysics, the history of philosophy etc. The potential problem with doing this is that it distorts the meaning of phenomenology and metaphysics as well as radically reinterpreting past philosophers.
Erik
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Posted 08/04/08 - 09:43 PM:
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#43
Hmmm, maybe that's true for the early stuff like Being and Time, which indeed seems at times to be an extension of Kantian transcendental philosophy - looking for the a priori conditions which make an understanding of being possible. In the 'later' works all attempts to discern an ahistorical (metaphysical) ground or foundation are given up. Even prior to this, however, 'being' (perhaps I should write 'Being') is not posited as something that occurs independent of entities.

But again, maybe I've missed something.
The more we have the less we own.
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springmo


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Posted 08/04/08 - 10:24 PM:
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#44
True, I've mostly studied Being and Time and am only now moving onto his later works. You haven't missed anything. Although I don't think it's necessary to capitalize the word being because it doesn't seem to illuminate the meaning of the word even in Heidegger's sense. I think it may have been previously translated that way into English because German nouns are often capitalized.

I wasn't trying to imply that being occurs independent of entities. Heidegger would say that there is no "being" without man. I don't agree that

Crow wrote:
Only a naive realist would take his mind-created experience of 'red' as a primal element of reality; only a naive realist would take his mind-generated experience of 'being' as a primal element of reality. A philosophy which has such an error as its basic premise is metaphysically false.


because Heidegger didn't talk about the experience of being as mind-generated but described it as something more concrete. However, even if it is "metaphysically false" Heidegger wasn't doing metaphysics in the typical way. Instead of saying that it is metaphysically false, you could say that he wasn't doing metaphysics, or that he was doing a new kind of metaphysics, or even that he was critiquing metaphysics. Saying that such premises are "metaphysically false" misses the point and seems to provide a justification for not reading or understanding Heidegger. Also, I don't think Heidegger was an idealist or realist but rather something in between that I haven't been able to put my finger on yet.

Erik
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Posted 08/04/08 - 10:26 PM:
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#45
springmo,

The more I think about it the more I disagree with Crow's notion that 'being' is some sort of abstraction which is projected onto dasein, even granting him the interpretation you supplied.

The 'existentials' which Heidegger speaks are drawn directly from the concrete life of dasein. There is, once again, nothing abstract about the way he describes the way equipment like a hammer or moods like anxiety show themselves prior to some ready-made interpretation of dasein, be it of a scientific, religious, or philosophical nature. These assumptions are bracketed off, precisely because it is they which abstract from the factical life of dasein.

EDIT: In his later philosophy Heidegger describes the way things have shown themselves in different ways at different times. For example, a mood like anxiety is not understood as something which universally afflicts dasein - something which cuts across particular cultures and historical epochs - but is instead seen as a particular manifestation of modern man's 'rootless' existence. We moderns (or 'post-moderns') live in a world in which the 'gods' have fled and in which everything has been reduced to raw material, material which is then exploited by a power-hungry humanity simply to satisfy it's insatiable lust for power and efficiency.The situation fosters a type of anxiety that, for example, the ancient Greeks didn't experience. On the flipside, ancient Greek existence was rooted in a fundamental mood (attunement) of astonishment in the face of the overwhelming 'presencing' of what was present (in other words, in the disclosure of Being), a feeling which is supposedly just as alien to we moderns as anxiety and boredom were to them. I'm just using this as an example of his 'later' thought, thought which claims to find a particular trajectory in Being's various historical transformations. Arrogant stuff for sure, as if he somehow held the key with which to unlock the 'truth' of Being and could in turn be of service in opening up a new paradigm.

In light of anti-modern, 'being-historical' views like these, it's no surprise to me that Heidegger supported an anti-democratic movement like Nazism, and I'm really beginning to dislike quite a bit about his personal life, which in turn I see in many important ways as an extension of his philosophy. But that's another topic, and having said that, I still think he's probably the most profound thinker I've read as of yet for a number of reasons. But slowly, I feel as though I'm no longer in thrall to his constricted and oftentimes tedious musings on Being. I don't think Being is a mental construct, as Crow seems to think, but I also don't feel that Heidegger has the final say on the issue. Hope that makes sense.

Edited by Erik on 08/04/08 - 11:08 PM
The more we have the less we own.
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springmo


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Posted 08/04/08 - 10:32 PM:
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#46
What I'm saying is that the notion that Dasein's "existence is its essence" seems to be trying to get at rock bottom but loses a lot in doing so. Sure, using being as the starting point gives an open playing field but I don't think it's fundamental in the way that Heidegger thought. Again, since I haven't carefully read much after Being and Time he may have abandoned such a notion.
springmo


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Posted 08/04/08 - 11:23 PM:
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#47
Erik wrote:
But slowly, I feel as though I'm no longer in thrall to his constricted and oftentimes tedious musings on Being. I don't think Being is a mental construct, as Crow seems to think, but I also don't feel that Heidegger has the final say on the issue. Hope that makes sense.


This sounds quite similar to Crow's complaint that Heidegger just talks of some abstract notion of being. However Heidegger says in Being and Time that he is doing something called "formal indication" where he becomes clearer and clearer about what he means by being and only at the end you can judge if it holds together. What you say about his later work does make some sense.

Erik wrote:
Arrogant stuff for sure, as if he somehow held the key with which to unlock the 'truth' of Being and could in turn be of service in opening up a new paradigm.

In light of anti-modern, 'being-historical' views like these, it's no surprise to me that Heidegger supported an anti-democratic movement like Nazism, and I'm really beginning to really dislike quite a bit about his personal life, which in turn I see in many important ways as an extension of his philosophy.


I agree that it is arrogant but then again Heidegger always seemed to see himself as the answer to philosophy's problems. However, I will give him credit for resurrecting a lost question and saying s heck of a lot more than I thought possible about "being." Although, as I've said already, I'm not sure it's as fundamental a question as Heidegger makes it out to be, though it does add a certain sense of excitement and gives consistency to his works.

The more I learn about Heidegger's personal life, the more dislike him. Heidegger thought that the life of a philosopher was irrelevant in light of what they wrote, as he said in a speech "Aristotle lived, worked, and died. Now let's talk about what he thought." I don't agree, I think that a philosopher's life illuminates their thought and the other way around. A little known fact is that Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party all the way to the end. However, it's reductive to think that Heidegger's idea of being-historical was that related to his Nazism because Heidegger's pupil Hannah Arendt had a similar nostalgia for ancient Greece and was on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
Erik
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Posted 08/04/08 - 11:41 PM:
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#48
springmo wrote:
This sounds quite similar to Crow's complaint that Heidegger just talks of some abstract notion of being.


Not really. My sentiments come from having read and re-read him for almost a decade now. His single-minded focus on particular aspects of Being at the expense of other things (e.g. he has little or nothing to say about very important aspects of human life such as love, friendship, hatred, etc.) leaves much to be desired in my humble opinion. That however does not mean that he engages in nothing but abstractions.

Also, Heidegger's support of Nazism is a difficult topic (I probably shouldn't have brought it up), one that deserves a thread of its own. Quickly, as deplorable as his brand of Nazism was, we have to keep in mind that it was quite a bit different from that which came to dominate the thinking of most other German fascists.

There's no denying that he was no friend of liberal democracy, of capitalism, of communism, or of any other modern 'idols' - it's very hard to tie his thought down to common positions like 'left', 'right', 'conservative' or 'liberal' (incidentally, this is part of his appeal to me) - but he also didn't think in terms of race or values. It's no surpise that he's had an influence upon people who hold a wide range of political positions, from neoconservatism to the environmental movement of deep ecology.

I would suggest reading his 'Contributions to Philosophy', which was written in 1936 I believe, if you want to understand his positions on controversial topics. This is a book in which his 'private' National Socialism is articulated, albeit in strange form laden with very difficult, if not at times near incomprehensible passages. You'll find much to disagree with for sure, but you'll also see that by this time he had all but stopped believing that Nazism represented anything other than the most extreme form of nihilism yet seen in the West; well beyond that found in the liberal democracies he so despised in fact.

Edited by Erik on 08/05/08 - 12:14 AM
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springmo


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Posted 08/05/08 - 12:14 AM:
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#49
In Being and Time at least, I think he does leave a place for things like love, hate, etc even if he doesn't talk about them. His concern is the ontological (which is beginning to seem more and more like abstract anthropology but that's beside the point) and arising from that are the ontic things like a belief in the existence of God which each Dasein can choose for himself. Realizing that Dasein's possibilities are his ownmost and that certain modes of being-in-the world arise from falling and inauthenticity, which he's rather vague about, I think we can get insight into the ontic.
Erik
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Posted 08/05/08 - 12:26 AM:
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#50
But the ontological is only gleaned through the ontic, and that is precisely the crux of the issue that I have with Crow's assessment of Heidegger's alleged abstractions. He spends literally hundreds of pages in one book talking about the ontic phenomena of boredom (this is no exageration by the way) - I think he could have spent at least a page or two addressing love or compassion or things of that nature.

Edited by Erik on 08/05/08 - 12:37 AM
The more we have the less we own.
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