I recently listened to Hubert Dryfus' audio lectures, on Heidegger's book Being and Time. I've come to the conclusion that it is ultra-radical, extremist, bullshit though. From what I gather so far, Heidegger said there was no such thing as being, but that it is something we create, although it has no properties or entity.
He also said that feelings were not subjective, because there was no such thing as the subjective and objective, and that all feelings are just things that happen to us in the world. He said we were pre-ontological, because we had an understanding of being, but that understanding was a very practical thing, like what we do, rather than what we know. He also said that we are not being, consciousness, or entities, but simply we are what we do. Heidegger supported the Nazis in Germany, and was pro Nazi, and I can see how Heidegger’s philosophy fits in very neatly with Nazism, and with communism too.
Contrary to what Heidegger said, I think there IS such a thing as being, and that it is both pre-existent, has properties, and is an entity, although I accept that to some degree we create it, socially, or psychologically. Some of it is pre-existing, and some of it is created. That's more accurate, well-balanced, and more moderate, than what Heidegger said, which was inaccurate, illogical, and extreme. I think Heidegger's nihilism about the self, is what makes his philosophy, slot into the mass conformity of fascism and totalitarianism, and I see it as ideologically and politically created.
I'm sympathetic to Heidegger's view, that there's no such thing as the subjective and objective, because I think those things are polarised too much in politics, psychology, and philosophy, and there is much that goes beyond those concepts; and exists inbetween, but I don't believe that feelings aren't in any way subjective. I do believe that feelings can be objective, as Heidegger said though, and so I agree with him there, but it seems to me, that to say that feelings are not in any way subjective, denies experience.
Heidegger was saying that experience was objective though, and again I can agree with that up to a point. He was ahead of his time, and his philosophy is similar to mine, on that matter, in that respect. Heidegger's view that understanding is like a skill or what we do, or is something very practical, is also like his view of the self, in that it dehumanises, and omits the importance of various kinds of human relationships. I don't believe that we are what we do. That seems anti-intellectual and anti-emotional to me, and again I think it's crap.
That is a very inaccurate representation of what Heidegger wrote. In fact, it does not seem as much an inaccurate portrayal as it does apparently completely made up. Heidegger did not say that there is no such thing as being (he did say that Being in itself is not an individually given being). He did not simply say that we are what we do. In fact, he defined man (or Da-sein) as a "being that in its being questions its being." For Heidegger, things do exist, and his main goal is to let them reveal themselves as what they are without imposition (Heidegger calls this phenomenological goal, which is derived largely from Husserl, "aletheia").
ReplyDeleteWhile Heidegger's political affiliations of course cannot be defended, it is utterly unfair to say that he "supported" Nazism. He had somewhat odd views about German politics embodying his metaphysical perspective and thought the Nazi party somehow related to these. In his later life, he openly expressed regret over his relationship with the party.
It would be beneficial to actually read Being and Time, along with the continental tradition coming down from Kant, before making public claims that Heidegger's writings are "crap."