Episode 214 - Transcript

So if I wanted to set myself up for failure here today…I’d tell you I was gonna explain ALL of Heidegger to you in about 30 minutes. Luckily I’m too old to make that mistake, and you’re too old to be believing in it anyway.

But one thing I CAN hope to do here today is to tell you something I think is very jarring, and pretty awesome about Heidegger’s work; as well as something that’s significant about it that’ll help you PLACE him in however you think about the history of philosophy. 

Heidegger was one of the most important members of a MOVEMENT in philosophy…that was trying to question METAPHYSICS at a level that had really never been done before. This is around the 1920’s, it’s the beginning of his career, and in MANY ways as a German thinker himself, he’s REACTING to the RIPPLE effect that was created by the work of ANOTHER German thinker that came before him: guy we’ve been talking about lately named Friedrich Nietzsche. 

See if you’ve listened to the last few episodes… then you know Nietzsche thought his work… was the twilight of the idols from the history of philosophy– hence the name of his famous BOOK. And one of the things that was INCLUDED in that list of idols was the long set of traditions that philosophers had built up in the field of metaphysics. 

Nietzsche says we’re gonna STOP all this unverifiable speculation about ideal, otherworldly stuff; he says let’s focus JUST on the here and NOW in the REAL world that we actually have access to– he REALLY thinks his work is moving BEYOND this whole metaphysical tradition. 

But one of the people that came along after that AGREED with Nietsche that we gotta get AWAY from metaphysics, but ultimately said that Nietzsche DIDN’T go far enough…was Martin Heidegger. Because Heidegger makes the claim… that every piece of philosophy that Nietzsche ever wrote…was BUILT on top of a metaphysical foundation that is completely WRONG about the nature of being.  

What is he talking about there? He’s TALKING about the set of assumptions from the history of philosophy that claim that AS human beings… we are primarily SUBJECTS…that are NAVIGATING a world of objects. 

Now trust me…I get that your first RESPONSE to HEARING that might be: well what’s wrong with that…I mean…aren’t we? 

But my GOAL here if I can do ANYTHING in the next 30 minutes is to EXPLAIN to you where Heidegger’s coming from with this critique, how THIS critique from his book Being and Time COMPLETELY changed the way that a LOT of philosophers even THINK about the TASK of philosophy, and how ultimately Heidegger thinks a VERY easy trap for an intelligent person in the modern world to fall into…is to BE someone TRAPPED in Plato’s cave. 

But NOT trapped in Plato’s cave like it’s TYPICALLY said, where all you see are the shadows on the cave wall. The TRAP for a lot of people in the modern world for Heidegger…is to get yourself stuck in the ALLEGORY of the cave…to THINK of yourself as a person that JUST needs to REMOVE the cultural bias… the linguistic or historical BIASES that are IN YOUR WAY…and that if ONLY you can do that FULLY…then you’ll eventually get access to the TRUTH that lies on the other side of all these barriers. Heidegger thinks that this is NONSENSE… and that it fundamentally misunderstands what human existence even is. That just like Nietzsche did: this person gets something important wrong… about the nature of being. 

Should be said: it’s not just Nietzsche that Heidegger thinks is building his philosophy on top of faulty metaphysics…it’s essentially the entire history of philosophy. But IF you’re someone, coming to this episode, that SEES yourself as a subject in a world of objects…one person from the history of philosophy that you can send a THANK you card to for that…is gonna be Rene Descartes. 

CARTESIAN subjectivity as it’s called. I think, therefore I am. The ASSUMPTION is: that THAT’S the STARTING point… of any further analysis that we’re going to be doing. 

I am a self, a subject, a mind…I EXIST in a spatial realm of objects that is OUTSIDE of me. And one of the big tasks of philosophy is going to be then to figure out what the RELATIONSHIP is between ME, AS a subject…to all the OBJECTS out there. To all the other SUBJECTS out there. This is the dualistic set of assumptions that a lot of western thinking is BUILT upon. 

And to SOME people, I get it, that may not seem like an assumption…but Heidegger is going to say…while that MAY BE the level that we normally analyze things at in philosophy or in the sciences…this isn’t the primary way that we experience what it is to be. 

In more philosophical terms what he’s going to make a case for here is that there is something ONTOLOGICALLY PRIOR to any claim that we make about how subjects relate to objects…that ANY CLAIM about how THINGS RELATE to other things…is ultimately a SECONDARY, theoretical abstraction we’re making. 

But again: that there’s something to our existence that comes BEFORE any of this– something that makes ABSTRACTIONS like science or the history of philosophy…even possible.

And to understand what he means here the first thing he wants us to do is to THROW OUT…ALL of the philosophical terms people have used throughout this history…where they’ve tried to DESCRIBE what being IS…without having really TAKEN the question of BEING…AS seriously as they could have.

So out go terms like the subject, consciousness, person, the self as it’s typically been used as a term, mind/body as a distinction…for the sake of understanding where Heidegger’s coming from try as HARD as you can for a minute to FORGET, ANY of these terms that have tried to DESCRIBE what it is to exist as YOU. They’re all bringing in WAY too many assumptions for Heidegger. And what he WANTS to do is to try to OPEN UP OUR MINDS… to the possibility of a different FRAMING…of what human existence is at bottom.

The word Heidegger uses to DESCRIBE our existence…is Dasein. The English translation of this word is being-there, or being-in-the-world, all separated by hyphens that make it into ONE neat, UNIFIED word: being-in-the-world. Said really quickly. 

And just… one FINAL disclaimer here out of respect to you listening: I’m TRYING my best…to open you up to a whole different way of framing what it is to BE. And this is NOT exactly a simple task: I mean it can take YEARS…just for somebody to change their viewpoint on something small, to stop eating so much CANDY or something cause their doctor talks to them. How am I, but a humble podcaster like myself, supposed to take 10 minutes and get you thinking about your whole REALITY differently. Just KNOW this is coming from a friendly place as always on this podcast; I’m just trying my best to give you something that really CHANGED the way a lot of philosophers were THINKING about their work. We’ll talk a little later about how typical philosophical questions like searching for objectivity to knowledge, or meaning at the level of the universe, or free will and determinism, how MANY thinkers moved AWAY from these sorts of questions because under Heidegger’s framing they just sort of dissolve as problems. 

But anyway the FIRST step to this is going to be for me to try to PRESENT you with this different framing…just know that for you to HAVE the experience of these philosophers it may take a bit MORE than what I can do right here.

Now that SAID: THINK of Dasein…NOT as a mind, with a DETACHED material body in the way Descartes and many OTHER philosophers assume…but think of Dasein, as a type of EXISTENCE…that is always spatially SITUATED…IN the world.

If it helps to BEND your mind in this direction a bit more: to use familiar language…think of the substance of what Dasein is as existence itself—though of course, we’re not talking about substance in the usual way, this is just a way to shift your thinking. The substance of Dasein is EXISTENCE. This is an example that Simon Critchley uses in HIS work.

In other words before we EVER identify ourselves as a self…or as a subject…and MORE than that before we EVER start TALKING as scientists or philosophers often do about the RELATIONSHIPS between external things…there’s a more fundamental BEING that is going on that makes ANY of these abstractions even possible. 

That BEING is what Heidegger calls Dasein…and it can be UNDERSTOOD, NOT in terms of studying the atoms that make it up, but in terms of EXISTENTIAL STRUCTURES, that MAKE UP what it IS for this type of existence to BE. Dasein, then, is more of a WHO…than it is a WHAT, to help again to put this into more of this subject/object terminology. 

And Being-in-the-world…with all those hyphens in it…that’s gonna ONE of these existential structures for Heidegger. But should be said: there’s SEVERAL of these, each one of them CONSTITUTING fundamental aspects of the WAY that the being of DASEIN…ENGAGES with BEING. From being-in-the-world, to understanding, temporality, care, thrownness: EACH of these and MORE is an existential structure to the type of BEING that Dasein is. 

But let’s start with being-in-the-world… as a FIRST example to ILLUSTRATE this…and to try to nudge our thinking a little more away from the typical subject/object FRAMING of things. I’ll use the kind of example Heidegger uses in the book…I’ll just try to make it a bit more modern. 

See Heidegger would say: DESPITE how NATURAL… it can SEEM to think of yourself as a detached subject, ANALYZING things that are external to you… this ISN’T the way that you spend MOST of your life interacting with the world. MOST of your time is spent…just…IN the world. 

When you walk across the floor, interacting with the “external world”. You’re not thinking about the floor as some external object with properties for you to study…no, your experience is that you just walk on the floor… to GET somewhere that you need to go…the floor as a theoretical OBJECT that you could potentially study…FADES into the background in a sense. 

ANOTHER example: when you type on a keyboard writing an email to someone…you aren’t THINKING about the keyboard as some external thing…no, the keyboard in your existential experience of it…becomes a type of EQUIPMENT that FADES into the background as you are accomplishing a task that matters to you. The keyboard becomes an EXTENSION… of YOU, not some ABSTRACT THING. 

And to Heidegger: this is the PRIMARY level that we experience the world…being-in-the-world.

Point is: If you were trying to describe what type of BEING we are…we’re NOT these isolated subjects that decide to pay attention to the world and REFLECT on things every now and then. No, Dasein is a TYPE of being… that is always, already IN a world, INVOLVED, immersed in a type of fascination and care FOR the things in that world. In other words it could be said: that in SOME sense…you ARE the world as Dasein. That this is a PIECE of what even CONSTITUTES this type of being that you are. 

That there IS no objective, ultimate metaphysical separation between mind and body, or who YOU are, whatever that MEANS, and what the world is. Being… and the world… are fundamentally UNIFIED. They have never NOT been unified. And SPLITTING mind and body, subject and object as though these things ARE separate…leads to a WHOLE bunch of PROBLEMS in philosophy that, unsurprisingly to Heidegger, the greatest minds haven’t been able to SOLVE for coming up on thousands of years now.

Because consider ANOTHER common way that we categorize things like that keyboard from our example. To Heidegger: WHEN the keyboard is just an EXTENSION of us, when you’re using it to type an email not THINKING of it as a separate object. Heidegger would call that keyboard something that is ready-to-hand. This is the term he uses– it’s the EQUIPMENT of Dasein in the world. 

However, when something HAPPENS to that keyboard, say it breaks or something, and we take a step back, and we SEE that keyboard in more of an abstract, theoretical way as an OBJECT. It’s at THAT moment that the keyboard has become something DIFFERENT to us: something PRESENT-AT-HAND, is the term he uses. It BECOMES part of this category of THINGS that are abstract, theoretical concepts. 

Again, our primary EXPERIENCE of the world are things that are ready-to-hand. The more abstract, theoretical framing of science and classic philosophy, turns the world into a collection of things that are PRESENT-AT-HAND. 

Now NONE of this is saying that LOOKING at things in the world in a detached, theoretical way is a BAD thing. Science and philosophy are ENORMOUSLY good.

Just need to SAY it AGAIN so it’s not misunderstood: NONE of this is saying that we should STOP doing science…and to STOP looking at things in the world and how they relate to each other in an abstract, theoretical way. What Heidegger’s saying is that this is a level of abstraction… that is SECONDARY, that there is something to our BEING that is ONTOLOGICALLY PRIOR, that MAKES important ABSTRACTIONS like this even POSSIBLE. 

And ULTIMATELY what he’s saying is that if we MISTAKE the subject/object framing… as the STARTING point of ANY further analysis we DO of the world…then we ultimately LIMIT ourselves to a scientific FRAMING of reality, that while massively important…CANNOT EVER TELL us about important PIECES of the types of BEINGS that we ARE…and just in PRACTICE when we look at the CONSEQUENCES of seeing things ONLY through this framing: it leads a LOT of people into things like nihilism, it leads them to lives of confusion as they try to find a naturalistic explanation for everything around them, and it LEADS people to end up thinking of themselves and other people in the world around them as though they’re objects to be studied, to be optimized and manipulated for the sake of their own benefit– what Heidegger calls a technological framing to the world. 

We’ll talk more about that here in a second. Let’s BUILD up this DISTINCTION Heidegger’s making here a bit more though. 

The most COMMON way to VIEW things in the world these days if you’re a philosopher or a scientist…is to look for naturalistic explanations for things. If something exists…it’s out there, outside of me. And the best way to understand it is to find it’s ORIGINS in the world of NATURE…and then to EXPLAIN it in terms of how it fits IN to that naturalistic framework. 

But again as important as this is for doing a lot of things…for Heidegger…this IS not the only way to be framing reality. This is not the FINAL WORD…on what reality IS. In his terminology this is always a study of the ONTIC rather than the ONTOLOGICAL. The ONTIC meaning the study of BEINGS… and how they relate to each other, trees, asteroids, volcanoes, etc. The ONTOLOGICAL is the study of BEING in itself. And the mistake that a lot of people will MAKE when they get TOO caught UP in the subject/object framing of the world…is they will try to explain EVERYTHING…through terminology that only makes SENSE in conversations where we’re talking about how THINGS relate to other THINGS, the ONTIC. 

For example: the philosophical problem of free will and determinism…that only really SEEMS like a big problem… when you’re trapped in the FRAMING of reality that EVERYTHING is an OBJECT that needs a causal explanation– and where people are just another one of those objects in a giant science experiment. 

I mean the THINKING goes: if I can tell where a rock is going to be on the other side of the galaxy simply by knowing the position of it and the laws of the universe…then if I HAD total KNOWLEDGE of everything like Laplace’s demon…why SHOULDN’T I be able to predict EVERYTHING somebody is going to do before they actually do it? 

But to Martin Heidegger: this is ultimately a category error. This is kind of like asking how much does the number three weigh? Or what does justice taste like when it’s administered properly?

To Heidegger it’s trying to apply CAUSAL explanations that work at the ONTIC level, to something like Dasein which exists ONTOLOGICALLY. I mean quick aside: he’d actually have a LOT to ASK a person like this about all the assumptions they’re bringing in about causality in the FIRST place. Where they’re talking as though there’s a SINGLE, CAUSAL chain that can’t be broken that’s just constantly moving into the future, like gravity does. That’s a huge assumption. Secondly, just to use the scientific language for a second, is it possible to be totally CAUSED by forces that are THEMSELVES unpredictable in their nature? This obsession with trying to turn human beings into these computers that can be studied and predicted like the position of rocks in the universe…is ultimately something I think he would EXPECT knowing that this framing of reality tends to TREAT people in this way and lead to these sorts of outcomes in our societies. 

Dasein on the other hand, part of what MAKES it the type of being that it is…is that it exists temporally, or in time. Meaning that the TYPE of being that it IS… is one that is first, THROWN into a world NOT of its own creation…it then receives language, culture, a history, things that constitute how Dasein even is able to EXPERIENCE being, and then in RELATION to these things that are outside of its control, it then PROJECTS itself into the FUTURE… based on the possibilities that are available TO it. What this MEANS is: Agency… is literally part of the STRUCTURE of what MAKES Dasein the type of being that it is. Dasein is a type of being that is ALWAYS, intimately tied IN to past present and future.

So of COURSE free will as it’s talked about like you’re this detached subject freely choosing things is delusional. And OF COURSE believing it follows some rigid set of causal rules is just trying DESPERATELY hard to make ALL types of beings conform to the realm of the ONTIC. It’s again a category error trying to EXPLAIN Dasein with terms from a fundamentally DIFFERENT kind of analysis. The problem of free will and determinism, then…dissolves as a problem if Heidegger is successful here…at least in the TRADITIONAL way that this has been framed as a problem. And does this make CAUSAL explanations a waste of time? No it just maybe shows where the subject/object framing…runs into a limit of what it can explain. 

Now the same way AGENCY changes in terms of what the conversation even is…the problem of: how do we derive MEANING from a cold, disinterested UNIVERSE… starts to shift or dissolve here as well. 

Because again to see that as a problem…is to be STARTING your analysis of what the universe is from a place where you’re CAPABLE of FRAMING it as an abstract, cold, disinterested universe…but the ONLY WAY you can ever get to MAKING that kind of judgment about it…REQUIRES you to be EMBEDDED in existential STRUCTURES that make anything intelligible or MEANINGFUL at all. Let me explain this one more. 

The thing to REMEMBER here is that again: we’re not LOOKING at human existence through the same lens that former philosophers have…where I’m a detached subject and the UNIVERSE is something out there… that I can reach out, touch it, get a hold of the OBJECTIVE TRUTH about it, if only I REMOVE my cultural bias.

That type of thinking is just DELUSIONAL to Heidegger. 

No see to him…AS Dasein, when I look out at the world and understand ANYTHING about it…that is not me accessing the TRUTH of the universe…that is BEING, REVEALING itself THROUGH me in some very PARTIAL WAY…where the language, the culture or the historical biases I carry with me… are not BARRIERS that are in the WAY of that process…but they’re the very THINGS that make it POSSIBLE… for me to EXPERIENCE being, in a PARTIAL way, whatsoever. 

Common example that’s used to nudge your thinking in this direction is to compare Dasein to a beam of light being cast into a dark room…partially revealing what’s inside, but also existentially connected…TO what it’s revealing. 

See it’s in THIS sense…that Dasein IS the kind of BEING…that REVEALS a world that is meaningful and significant. Put another way Simon Critchley describes it like this: 

“Dasein is the a priori condition of possibility for the structure of involvements that we call the world. So what characterizes US…IS that we have understanding of the world. The world, AS a world for us… is a world that relies on us...a world we MAKE. The world of material becomes COMPOSED into a world of meaning… THROUGH our activity with it.”

So this quote I think REALLY EMPHASIZES the SHIFT in framing that’s going ON here. We’re no longer looking at the world… as though its even POSSIBLE to be a detached subject getting to the objective truth…no, the way we’re LOOKING at the world NOW…is through PHENOMENOLOGY– or HOW exactly does BEING…REVEAL itself to US as active participants IN it. 

There’s no…VIEW from NOWHERE. Where we can have a PERFECT set of PROTOCOLS and then can GET to objective KNOWLEDGE about stuff. ANY way that BEING is partially REVEALED to Dasein…will require an analysis from the PERSPECTIVE of Dasein. 

This is a SHIFT that’s going on MORE GENERALLY in philosophy from typical questions about EPISTEMOLOGY…to questions of ONTOLOGY. Instead of asking like earlier philosophers may have: how do we KNOW that our KNOWLEDGE here is the OBJECTIVE TRUTH? NOW a lot of philosophers are going to be asking: what is it about someone’s experience that REVEALS the world in this way? What specifically makes THIS… SEEM like it’s the TRUTH to this person?

Because see… Dasein under THIS view…IS the very set of existential conditions…that MAKE the world intelligible or capable of having meaning at all. 

So obviously…if you were to completely BYPASS our existence at this ontological level…and say well, I’m just gonna START from the place where I am a subject, taking a step back, abstract, theoretical, examining a world of objects…then OF COURSE it’s possible for you to reduce things in that world to a collection of cold, meaningless objects. But IS that getting a complete PICTURE of what our existence is? 

See WHAT this NEW way of FRAMING existence is going to get us focusing on more for Heidegger…is NOT the world of theoretical abstractions…the NEW thing that becomes relevant…is average, everyday, LIVED EXPERIENCE, phenomenologically. 

Again, THINK of how RADICAL of a CHANGE this is for philosophy. NOT MANY philosophers have EVER said that where philosophy should BEGIN...is in the everyday lived experience of people– Heidegger’s gonna say that. 

So as you can SEE…this is WHERE he’s going to AGREE with Nietzsche… while simultaneously critiquing his entire project: he DEFINITELY thinks we need to move AWAY from concepts like the ideal. From abstract metaphysical concepts that we BUILD a philosophy on TOP of. 

But he thinks that Nietzsche…in CREATING concepts like the will to power…BUILDS on top of a metaphysics…that BEGINS from this subject/object THINKING, he’s IGNORING what’s ontologically PRIOR to that. 

Now for Heidegger…this is going to lead to some PRETTY predictable outcomes in Nietzsche’s work, as we’ll GET to. But in Heidegger’s work…this turning AWAY from the abstract, theoretical side of things is going to LAND him SMACK dab in the middle of everyday lived EXPERIENCE as his main focus.

And when you FOCUS on LIVED EXPERIENCE it turns out…what you can’t HELP but begin to uncover and notice…are the existential structures of Dasein, that make our specific type of existence…the way that it is. What I MEAN is… you can’t help but STOP doing so much SCIENTIFIC thinking about what life is …and what you START noticing is just HOW IMPORTANT TWO things are to the kind of existence that you’re living everyday: being… and time. Hence the name of the book. These are two concepts that start to become WAY MORE IMPORTANT when you’re THINKING in this different sort of framing. 

See again UNLIKE the mind/body split of Descartes…Dasein is FUNDAMENTALLY a relational being, to Heidegger. It exists CONSTANTLY… within a VAST network of meaning, a referential TOTALITY as it’s sometimes put…and part of what that means for Dasein…is that it’s ALWAYS INVOLVED in a world…that makes SENSE to it, meaning the THINGS in the world AROUND us…are NOT cold and meaningless. We CARE, we have concern, we find ourselves fascinated with things, THIS is more the type of being that we ARE…not some passive subject that has to squint their eyes really hard at something to be concerned about it every ONCE in a while…we’re ALWAYS involved!

In other words: we don’t at the bottom of our existence… perceive ANYTHING out there in a cold, disinterested way. SPACE is a great example of this for Heidegger. ON ONE HAND…when we make an ABSTRACTION out of the world around us…you can VIEW SPACE and distance as though they’re these cold disinterested units that we can calculate…we break things down into feet, centimeters, kilometers, miles. You can DO that.

But on the other hand at this PRE-THEORETICAL level, for Dasein…SPACE becomes something that is ALWAYS, already IMBUED with meaning and significance. 

What I mean is four miles is not always JUST four miles to Dasein. If there was a donut shop, FOUR miles away…6 and a half kilometers for you metric system folks…if DONUTS are not important to you…then there’s NO WAY you’d EVER walk for four miles, it’s too far. But if that donut…was your FAVORITE donut, and they were going out of business and this is the last time you’ll ever get to experience the sprinkles and the chocolatey goodness of the donut…four miles wouldn’t be that far at ALL. 

THAT is the way that Dasein interacts with space…NOT in terms of cold, calculable units. 

When you’re in your living room…and you see all the stuff around you. That stuff isn’t just COLD, meaningless STUFF. That’s YOUR stuff. That’s YOUR living room that YOU MADE in a way that MEANS something to you and the projects that you engage in.

See it’s not UNTIL we MAKE space into an abstract, theoretical…that it can EVER be something we deem to be MEANINGLESS. Under the framing of Dasein though…meaning and purpose…just DISSOLVE as problems at least as they’ve been typically presented throughout the history of philosophy. 

Consider TIME as ANOTHER example of this. Time in one sense is an endless linear progression of seconds that then get grouped into minutes, hours, days. But time in the world of Dasein…actually GROUNDS THE MEANING…of ANYTHING we choose to do. 

TIME is gonna be an IMPORTANT one…when it comes to the TYPE of existence we’re in. 

Heidegger says there’s a lot of OTHER philosophers throughout history… who talk about how someone discovers WHO they really ARE…through something like a confrontation with GOD. 

But in Heidegger's work it’s through a confrontation with TIME…finding the self, whatever that means in this new framing, where it’s NOT the starting point, but an important abstraction, FINDING your authentic self…is ONLY made possible through confronting DEATH… and more IMPORTANTLY the finite nature of the time you HAVE here as a being. 

See it’s MORE than just saying: I get it, I’m gonna die one day. It’s about REALLY coming to terms with death… as an ultimate horizon for the TYPE of existence that you’re always IN. 

You know saying EVERYBODY’S gonna DIE! I’m just ONE of ‘em! Is in a way trying to TURN this into something that’s cold and detached. But it’s only through TRULY, recognizing the temporal nature of Dasein, the TYPE of being that we are…that the events of our lives that otherwise can seem like we’re just killing time…TRULY show their significance… in the network of meaning that we live in.

So anyway: as I STARTED this episode saying: I can’t explain Heidegger in 30 minutes: alright there’s SO much more to Dasein not the LEAST of which is how we are always in relation to other Dasein’s and what THAT means for us. But having DONE the work that we have up until THIS point in the episode…let me TRY to make his point here about this modern trap that it’s easy to fall into for an intelligent person; as well as the trap that he thinks society in GENERAL, HAS fallen into. 

So talking to a particular type of person that may be listening out there– TYING together some of the insights from these last few episodes…I mean you can imagine being born into the world we live in…INHERITING a lot of enlightenment optimism, Christian idealism…BELIEVING that you are a mind that’s inside a body, that there’s ONE way that the universe reveals itself, and that GETTING to that OBJECTIVE truth, should be one of our BIGGEST priorities in life. 

And you can imagine looking around you at who you’re going to take inspiration from in DOING that…who do you see? You see scientists, you see philosophers, you see what SEEMS like the highest level of PEOPLE that are COMMITTED to finding the truth. 

And what do THEY say to do? They say well we gotta study these objects out there and how they RELATE to each other…we gotta find out the BEST ways to KNOW exactly what these objects are…and then how to MANIPULATE these objects to our advantage…because NOT ONLY is this going get us closer to the truth...but it’s ALSO gonna be producing TECHNOLOGY that can do MIRACULOUS STUFF and make people’s lives BETTER, more efficient, more optimized! THIS is what we gotta be DOING!

And you can imagine hearing all that and saying yeah, okay, I’m on board with that! The CORRECT WAY for me to be VIEWING my existence if I want to live in REALITY…is the SCIENTIFIC way of looking at things. I’m gonna work hard to REMOVE my cultural bias, make sure language doesn’t get in the way of that truth, make sure I remove how HISTORY is shading my thinking…if ONLY I can DO all this stuff FULLY…then one day, FINALLY, I’ll get out of Plato’s cave. I’ll be able to see the TRUTH…rather than just the SHADOWS on the cave wall.

But if Heidegger’s RIGHT here…then as spectators from the outside… we can SEE the ways this person is simplifying things…we can SEE how they’re REALLY getting stuck in the ALLEGORY of the cave– that process where they think they’re getting to the truth…and we can probably guess what sort of outcomes this SOLE way of framing things is going to lead to. 

They’ll often struggle with nihilism. Because they’ve BYPASSED the ONTOLOGICAL level and are trying to create MEANING out of these theoretical abstractions. They’ll often live in CONFUSION about subjectivity and how consciousness makes sense or free will and determinism…because they’re ALWAYS committing a category error when trying to describe their being. They’ll always see CULTURE and LANGUAGE as a BARRIER in the way to truth…rather than some of the very things that MAKES their experience of being even possible. 

For the VERY last time on this episode I’m going to say: NONE of this by Heidegger is saying that we SHOULDN’T be VIEWING things in terms of subjects and objects. This isn’t about FINDING some ULTIMATE FRAMING of reality that does EVERYTHING for you. What he’s saying is that maybe having one SINGLE FRAMING like that...is ALWAYS gonna be INCOMPLETE. That maybe there’s certain elements of being…that are described better or worse with DIFFERENT framings. That maybe we need MULTIPLE framings if we want to understand things better. And that if you’re over indexed on any ONE of these…you’re likely gonna run into VERY predictable PROBLEMS…when that FRAMING runs into its limitations. 

So when you LIVE your ENTIRE existence IMMERSED the subject/object framing of things…you are LEFT with what LOOKS like… a cold, disinterested universe filled with objects, that you’re detached from.

And to Heidegger: even if you WERE capable of navigating all this confusion and essentially building a religion for yourself OUT of this world of theoretical abstractions…well WHAT is that system of values going to be BASED in? It’s GOING to be centered around being a subject…that is in a world of OBJECTS…LIKELY centered around SOME variation of the idea… that we need to understand and MANIPULATE these objects in some way that’s beneficial. 

This is why Nietzsche to Heidegger…is the LAST of the great metaphysicians. And he’s saying that as a critique of Nietzsche. 

Remember Nietzsche thought he was BEYOND this stuff. But ultimately through his concepts of the will to power, the ubermensch the transvaluation of all values…to Heidegger he’s OBVIOUSLY just building a moral approach, that is ROOTED in the framing of subject/object. 

Now just for context here: this is why LAST episode when we talked about Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche…Deleuze is in many ways RESCUING Nietzsche’s work from this critique by Heidegger by turning it into a metaphysics of forces, instead of the subject. 

But anyway: THINK of what this CRITIQUE from Heidegger means about the state of the world if it’s true. You know we’ve been talking about capitalism and communism and corporatism and how to construct our societies in a way that is more utilitarian, in a way that MAXIMIZES the well being or the FLOURISHING of the average person. So many cliche words we’ve been throwing around lately.

But if what Heidegger is saying is true: then this WHOLE WAY of FRAMING our world in terms of maximizing OUTCOMES. ANY one of these modes of governing people, WHATEVER it is…is ultimately CORRUPTED…by what he calls a technological enframing of people and society. Technology…is a way of THINKING for Heidegger. We are ALWAYS looking at people and things in the world…as though they are these OBJECTS, present-at hand, things to be understood, controlled, and manipulated… and then optimized for some particular outcome. 

In other words: if a question we’ve been asking is what is the role of Capitalism when it comes to the problems that people are facing in the world? Would the world be a better place if we got RID of capitalism and tried something new? It’s NOT that Heidegger wouldn’t have thoughts on Capitalism or any specific way of doing things…but zoomed OUT enough he would LIKELY see capitalism…as just a SYMPTOM of a larger sickness that we have at the level of being. 

That if you were to REMOVE capitalism and try to replace it with ANOTHER system that we arrived at that was supposed to be better…well that NEW system would be CREATED by people that were overly indexed in the subject/object framing of things as WELL. We’d likely have VERY similar negative OUTCOMES…UNTIL we were capable of VIEWING the people and the world NOT in terms of it being some warehouse of stuff… for us to manipulate. 

So this WHOLE way of thinking that is so common: is most often gonna be leading to very predictable outcomes for Heidegger. Now, couple important things to clarify here. 

By the end of Heidegger’s career…Dasein, and the work he did in Being and Time…is NOT something he views as THE primary WAY we should be LOOKING at our relationship to being. 

If anything…Being and Time, is kind of like a proof of concept. It’s an exercise in REFRAMING what BEING IS in ONE potential way…that by doing the work it can get people loosened up from this GRIP of SEEING things ONLY from the subject/object. 

See by the END of his work he’s much more interested in relating to Being… in a totally different way. You could SAY that: if MOST of us are STARTING in the subject/object way of framing things…and if Being and Time is something that can open us UP to how the nature of being is more complicated than having just that single framing of it…then by the END of his work:  Heidegger has gotten to a place where he accepts how TRULY, MYSTERIOUS certain aspects of Being are– things that are practically impossible to categorize in language or in rational arguments. 

Being is something it turns out…that reveals and conceals itself simultaneously. Being is something that we are a part of in ways that are deeply mysterious when compared to our average everyday experience, though, STARTING with your average everyday experiences is ironically the way to GET to this place he’s talking about. 

But uh…question you could as is…what IS he talking about? I mean if you’re GOING to say that this is a way of experiencing being that is so crazy you can’t even TELL me about it…real question: how am I, as a listener of that, EVER supposed to tell the difference between you making a legitimate point…and needlessly OBSCURING things with a bunch of nonsense just so that you can sound deep? That’s CERTAINLY something you can find TONS of insecure people doing ALL OVER this world if you LOOK for it. 

NEXT episode…we’re going to DIVE IN to this whole sector of being that Heidegger’s talking about. 

IS there REALLY stuff that CAN’T be explained by theoretical abstractions at the level of the subject? Are there REALLY things in this Dionysian side of existence that are so chaotic and emergent…that ANY attempt to place rational parameters around them is ALWAYS DOOMED to fail? Are there experiences human beings can have where they LOSE themselves and discover something deeper about BEING? How would we even TALK about those things…if they DID exist? 

We’re gonna be talking about ONE potential entry point into this are of existence, of which there are many. We’re talking about Mysticism next episode. And I’ll be doing it from the perspective OF one of these skeptical observers from the outside…the hope being, you know artistically, to BALANCE this discussion into something that doesn’t just devolve into a bunch of poetic language.