Heidegger

Joe, you wrote:

[snip]

>in english, physical objects like stones, chairs, horses and even the
>human body are said to exist; and, thus, the interesting question for
>philosophy is: is there a being within the existing human body? Am I a
>being or just an existing (thing)? and so on.

As i tried to say in my previous post, for Heidegger it is crusial to
understand a human being not just as a physical object among other
physical objects. Human being is in the first place Dasein, i.e. an
entity that is characteristically open to the world (cf. Erschossenheit).
Dasein, being-here, means being-in (In-sein), means being-in-the-world
(In-der-Welt-sein). To think/name ‘men’ is to think/name ‘world’.
There is no human being without t/here being, in an equiprimordial
sense, a world in which s/he lives. Human being and world belong
together in an ontologically inseparable sense. But with stones, chairs and
horses it is different. According to Heidegger (cf. GA 29/30) they
are not open to the world. Stones (and other unanimated beings) are not
open to the world cq. ‘have’ no world and are therefore, as Heidegger
calls it, without-world (weltlos). Horses (and animals in general) are
neither fully open to the world. Althought animals can move around
and have the ability of sensory perception and some cognition, they are
still bound-in, i.e. limited to only instinctual behaviour. That is why
Heidegger calls the animal poor-of-world (weltarm). Only a human
being ‘has’ a world in the sense that for humans, beings like stones,
chairs, horses etc. as-such, are public, clear, in the open (oeffentlich);
and this is not the case for animals. But what about the human body ?
Heidegger himself has written little about this subject, but in the
phenomenological tradition he and Husserl inaugurated others have
picked up this question. The first who must be mentioned is the french
philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty with his brillant study _The
Phenomenology of Perception_ (1945), highly recommended. Also
the italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is interesting in this regard,
see his _Homo sacer_ (1995); _L’Aperto: L’uomo e l’animale_ (2002).
Anyway what can be learnt from Heidegger’s SuZ is that the human
body is not something differentiated or separated from the human mind.
Heidegger is very wary of dualisms like body-mind, subject-object,
matter-spirit, mankind-reality, thinking-doing; ratio-emotion, etc. etc.
that are so common and prevalent in positivists thought. For him a
human being as Dasein (i.e who i am) is a unity, a whole of actions,
experiences, feelings, thoughts, abilities and interests, memories and
expectations, hopes and fears, worries and delights etc. ect. From this
holistic conception of human being our body must therefore never be
understood (or studied and treated) as something like a stone, a chair
or a horse. Of course one can fundamentally disagree with Heidegger’s
point of view here, but you will understand that his ideas have some
far-reaching implications for the study of medicine, psychology, art,
economy, sociology and politics.

[snip]

>Since Heidegger doesn’t have a root predicate, I’ll try to translate his
>terminology into language that uses ‘real’ or ‘reality’ as the required
>root predicate.
>
>so, everything that is (in any sense) is real in some sense. stones,
>chairs, etc. have existential reality in that they are physical objects
>that exist.

It is important to take notice of the terminology here, i.e. the words
real, reality, realism. In the traditional philosophical sense “real” means
that what exists independent of human being. In SuZ Heidegger breaks
with this tradition, because for him (1) there is no existence, i.e. being,
thing, phenomenon, that is in any way independent of human being.
Every thing that is, is in the world and only human being is open to and
in the world. If there would be existence independent of human being,
than it would lie outside the world, but human being is being-in-the-
world and all that lies outside the world is per definition unknowable,
unthinkable and unexpercienable for us. Nb. even (the) nothing (das
Nichts), as the deep absence of being, is not something independent of
human being, because absence (of being) is part of the world in sofar
it is (speculatively) expercienced, thought or known. (2) The words
‘exist’, ‘existence’ (cf. existentilia) are by Heidegger solely used for the
mode of being of human being, viz. only a human being exists because
s/he stands out into the full openness of the world. A stone does not
exist, because it is without-world, a stone only is (there for us). A horse
doesn’t exist either, because as a being poor-of-world, a horse is chained
in the closed environment of his ‘programmed’ behaviour.

>souls, minds, beings, spirits, ghosts etc. (if there are any of these at
>all) would be instances of ontological realities (metaphenomenal
>entities that are not physical/existential realities).

Agreed, but i don’t think Heidegger would call them metaphenomenal,
i.e. the phenomena are all that is, a notion of ‘meta’ or a ‘beyond’ does
imo not make sense in the phenomenology of SuZ.

>to complete this inventory of reality types, there is also the category
>of phenomenological reality, any subjective experience (whether or not
>it has a metaphenomenal correlate that is either existential or
>ontological).
>
>in such a vocabulary, it seems that you’re saying that Heidegger is
>assuming that the human individual is an existing entity (the human
>body) without an associated being. however, it is capable of
>experienceing, self-awareness and self-referencing and Heidegger
>believes that the body is trying to ’show itself’ thru phenomena. humans
>are able to experience phenomena and know that they are doing so; and,
>thus pursue phenomenology for any insights it may bring.

Yes, i can generally agree with what you say here, albeit with the
provisio that the human individual must always be understood in the
holistic way i have tried to describe above.

yours,
Jan

Posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 12:35 am
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