Modern European Intellectual History

1. Modern EuropeanIntellectual History Lecture 21 Modernism and Existentialism: Martin Heidegger

2. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

3. outline • I. Intro • II. Being and Time (1927): An Overview of “Being-in-the-World” • A. The Search for the Proper Aim of Philosophy • B. The (Tyrannical) Priority of Society • C. Freedom and Finitude — in Time • D. The Search for Authenticity • III. Heidegger’s Nazism • IV. Conclusion

4. the book • Heidegger’s background and career • Being and Time (1927)

5. A. The Search for the Proper Aim of Philosophy • Heidegger’s Official Justification for the Study of Human Existence • - “the question of being” (Seinsfrage) • - from the question of being to the analysis of human being (Dasein) • “Being-in-the-world” as Prior to Knowing • -the self as practical agent rather than theoretical knower • -“care” (Sorge) or tacit involvement • -humans as tool users rather than knowers • -the example of the hammer • -the world as the totality of useful things

6. The Rejection of an Epistemological Definition of Philosophy • -modern philosophy as a quest for epistemological certainty • -the posteriority of the subject-object split • “Subject and object are not the same as Dasein and world” (60). • “the question of the kind of being of this knowing subject is completely omitted” (60). • “the meaning of the sum” • -the origins of the modern bias for theory • “In order for knowing to be possible …., there must first be a deficiency of having to do with the world and taking care of it” (61). • - two kinds of attitude to the world • “handiness” or “readiness-to-hand” (Zuhandenheit) • “presence-before-hand” (Vorhandenheit) • -the example of tying shoes

7. critique of positivism • -the distinction between Dasein and things • “Dasein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings.” • -the positivist error as the reduction of the self to a thing

8. B. The (Tyrannical) Priority of Society • -meaning as contextual, and therefore local, social, and historical • -subjectivity as therefore social or intersubjective by definition • - beginning point: thrownness (Geworfenheit) in the world • -thrownness as the condition of the possibility of meaning and identity • - the “they” or “one” (das Man) and the “chatter” of “idle talk” • -identity at the expense of freedom and dependent on confusion

9. “inauthenticity” • “… as everyday being-with-one-another, Dasein stands in subservience to the others. It itself is not; the others have taken its being away from it. The everyday possibilities of being of Dasein are at the disposal of the whims of the others … One belongs to the others oneself, and entrenches their power” (126). • “[T]he way in which things have been publicly interpreted holds fast to Dasein in its falling prey [Verfallen]. Idle talk …, having-seen-everything and having-understood-everything, develop the supposition that the disclosedness of Dasein thus available and prevalent could guarantee to Dasein the certainty, genuineness, and fullness of all the possibilities of its being. In the self-certainty and decisiveness of the they, it gets spread abroad increasingly that there is no need of authentic, attuned understanding. The supposition of the they that one is leading and sustaining a full and genuine ‘life’ brings a tranquilization to Dasein, for which everything is in ‘the best order’ and for whom all doors are open. Entangled being-in-the-world, tempting itself, is at the same time tranquilizing” (177). • “The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self which we distinguish from the authentic self, the self which has explicitly grasped itself. As the they-self, Dasein is dispersed in the they and must first find itself” (129). • -the critique of inauthenticity as a modernist rejection of conformity

10. C. Freedom and Finitude — in Time • -the phenomenological analysis of anxiety • “not being at home in the world” -freedom as the motive for inauthenticity • -fixed character as rooted in inauthenticity • -morality as rooted in inauthenticity

11. Cont’d • -the problem of death “being-towards-death” • -the possibility of  an existential psychoanalysis • -passivity as rooted in inauthenticity Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, Jean-Paul Sartre • -temporality • “The meaning of the Being of that being we call Dasein proves to be temporality.”

12. D. The Search for Authenticity • -what does it mean to be authentic? • -the discovery of finitude as ultimately a potentially liberatory experience • -“epiphanies” as shaking the anxious comfort of inauthenticity • “What is characteristic about authentic … being-toward-death can be summarized as follows: Anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face-to-face with the possibility to be itself … to be itself in passionate anxious freedom toward death which is free of the illusions of the they…” (266).

13. Cont’d • -no voluntarism, no individualism • -authentic resolve or resoluteness (existential decisionism) (Entschluss and Entschlossenheit) • -historicity or historicality (Geschichtlichkeit) • “Only being free for death gives Dasein its absolute goal and knocks existence back into its finitude. The finitude of existence thus seized upon tears one back out of  endless multiplicity of possibilities offering themselves nearest by — those of comfort, shirking, and taking things easy — and brings Dasein to the simplicity of its fate. This is how we designate the primordial occurrence of Dasein that lies in authentic resoluteness in which it hands itself down to itself, free for death, in a possibility that it inherited as yet has chosen. … [I]n battle the power of destiny first becomes free. The fateful destiny of Dasein in and with its “generation” constitutes the complete, authentic occurrence of Dasein” (384-5). • -from fallen to redeemed sociality

14. Heidegger’s Nazism • “The Self-Assertion of the German University” (1933)

15. conclusion • -is culmination of modernism “useless freedom”? • -ambiguous liberation into a freedom without a purpose • -Heidegger’s Nazism and “reactionary modernism” as inauthentic escape • -but if so, it leaves the question he mistakenly answered: how to achieve authenticity? • -is the fragility and multiplicity that freedom seems to require possible? (and worth it?)