Winter Quarter Meetings

We will continue to meet every two weeks throughout the winter quarter to finish Division I of Being and Time. We will be sending out an email over the break to figure out our meeting times and days (at least for the first meeting).

If you lack for reading material over the break, you could check out some introductory books on BT. We recommend these:

• Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction
• Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary of Heidegger's Being and Time
• William Blattner, Heidegger's Being and Time: A Reader's Guide
• Mark Wrathall, How to Read Heidegger

Happy Holidays!
Kate and Nate

Autumn, Week 10 Meeting

At this meeting we discussed the world, worldhood and equipment. We began with a restatement of Heidegger's concept of world in plain language: "[A] world is a system of purposes and meanings that organises our activities and our identity, and within which entities can make sense to us" (Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction, p54). We then considered:

1. The four senses of world (§14):

(a) 'World' means a totality of present-at-hand entities. We suggested understanding this sense of 'world' in terms of 'what's there.' We debated what would count as examples of intraworldly entities in this sense, and considered material objects, numbers, spaces and unicorns. While we didn't come to a consensus about them all, we did agree that material objects count as a good example of 'what's there' in this sense of 'world.'

(b) 'World' means the being of intraworldly entities. We suggested understanding this sense of 'world' in terms of 'what could be there.' We glossed this sense in terms of a set of constraints, rules or possibilities for being an entity in the realm or domain in question. We talked about Euclid's axioms as an example of this sense of world, since they give the rules by which we can make sense of, and know about, geometrical entities.

(c) 'World' means that wherein a factical dasein lives. We suggested understanding this sense of 'world' as the 'lived world' or 'lifeworld,' and had an extensive discussion of the 'world of stacking (books in the library)' as an example of this sense of world. We pointed out that this is a world in which entities show up both publicly (a 'we-world,' constituted by social practices) and meaningfully (a world of significance). We noted Heidegger's description of this sense of world as being that which is closest to us, the everyday environment surrounding us. We also noted a parallel between Heidegger's use of 'present-at-hand' in his description of the first sense of 'world' and his use of 'factical' in his description of the third sense of 'world.' On this parallel, 'factical dasein' would seem to mean a dasein that's 'there.' (Note: Heidegger will expound upon this sense of 'there' in I.5.)

(d) 'World' means worldhood, the "a priori character" of any world, in general--what belongs to, or makes sense of, a world, insofar as it is a world.

We noted that Heidegger's use of 'being-in-the-world' as another term for dasein's existence uses 'world' in the third sense. We also went on to discuss the third and fourth senses of 'world' in more detail, as summarized in the numbered points below.


2. We noticed that the phenomenon of the world is usually overlooked because it is so close to us that it's difficult to see, like a pair of glasses. Heidegger's analysis of the world, then, is phenomenological in this sense: it attempts to allow the world, which normally hides itself in its very obviousness, to show itself. Heidegger starts with our closest, everyday world (the environment, an example of the third sense of 'world') and with the entities we encounter in it (equipment, or ready-to-hand entities). (§14, §15) Heidegger describes our life in this world as our "dealings" with the ready-to-hand (and, we noted later, with other people who share this world, too). He refers to such dealings with the term 'concern,' and he calls the sort of understanding by which we can make sense of our world and the entities in it 'circumspection' (a conception of understanding which uses the metaphor of sight, like our phrases 'now I see,' 'see what I mean,' 'point of view,' 'shed light on,' and so on).


3. Using the example of the world of stacking, we considered what it is to be an entity in this world (again, an entity Heidegger calls 'equipment' and 'ready-to-hand'). A book shows up as an entity in the world of stacking by making sense in terms of the activity of stacking (the living of the stacker's way of life, so to speak). Heidegger discusses the being of equipment by pointing out a number of interconnected structures in terms of which the book makes sense as an entity in the world of stacking. The overall name for this structure is the 'in-order-to' structure. The book shows up in the world of stacking because it's used in order to shelve and arrange the library's collection. The in-order-to structure has three related components. (a) The book shows up in terms of the role it plays in the activity of stacking. Heidegger calls this kind of usefulness the 'in-which' of the book's readiness-to-hand. (b) The book shows up as that which the stacker stacks; Heidegger calls this the 'with-which' of the book's readiness-to-hand. We noted that the book itself only makes sense within the larger context of other equipment involved in stacking: the stacks themselves, the stacker, the stacker's co-workers and boss, library browsers, the library's floors and rooms and building, call numbers, carts, etc. Strictly speaking, all these together constitute the with-which element of the in-order-to structure, here. (c) The book shows up as being useful for a certain task, used toward a certain purpose, in this case, keeping the collection organized so browsers can find it. Heidegger calls the purpose of a piece of equipment's role the 'towards-which' of its readiness-to-hand. We noted that the in-order-to structure, particularly when we consider the 'towards-which' element, points to, or refers to (or, Heidegger says, "signifies") further 'in-order-to' structures. For example, the book is useful in order to organize the collection, which itself is in useful in order for, say, the stacker to keep her job and continue to get paid, which is in order to fulfill work-study requirements, in order to keep getting financial aid, in order to stay in college, in order to get a degree, in order to be a chemist. (§15, §16, §18)


4. We noted that this last 'in-order-to' is special, and distinct from the others. Strictly speaking, Heidegger doesn't call it an 'in-order-to' relation; he calls it a 'for-the-sake-of' relation. All the work of stacking ultimately makes sense insofar as it's done for the sake of being able to live in the world in question. In this sense, dasein's existence--while it only makes sense in terms of the world and equipment in which and with which it exists--ultimately makes sense as something for the sake of its ability to be, a possibility of its being (for example, being a stacker, earning money for nourishment, being a chemist). Dasein's 'for-the-sake-of-which' is something like a 'life-project', a way of being around which someone organises his life. One's for-the-sake-of-which will determine, and make sense of, the activities one engages in and the ready-to-hand entities that one encounters (e.g. books, banks, test tubes--which themselves make sense in terms of the in-order-to relation). (§15, §18)


5. The upshot of points (4) and (5) above is that to be a case of dasein is always to use equipment or encounter ready-to-hand entities (equipment), and ready-to-hand entities only make sense with reference to that ability-to-be, for-the-sake-of-which dasein exists. Thus to understand either dasein or intraworldly entities, we have to make reference to both. This is one way in which we can see Heidegger overcoming a Cartesian-style subject / object split, which is a way of thinking about people and entities that simply doesn't illuminate our everyday dealings with entities in the environment (because it doesn't let these phenomena show up intelligibly).


6. Finally, we saw that worldhood (the 'worldly' character of the world, what makes it count as a world) is the structure of all these references or relations. To be a 'world' in the fourth sense, to be worldly or 'world-ish,' is to make sense in terms of the in-order-to and for-the-sake of relations. Heidegger's term for this overall structure, the structure of a world as such, is 'significance.'


7. We noted a few more details about Heidegger's view of equipment. Items of equipment have appropriate and inappropriate uses. Thus a book is used appropriately for stacking, reading and so on, but used inappropriately for hammering. Of course, the book can be used in order to hammer, but this does not make it a hammer. It is a book used inappropriately, as a hammer. (§15) The phenomenon of appropriate and inappropriate uses of equipment shows that in using equipment, we also encounter the public world which determines such appropriate and inappropriate uses. Not only does a piece of equipment only show up by fitting intelligibly into a larger context of equipment all involved in that world, a case of dasein only makes sense of itself as a denizen of its world by encountering other cases of dasein with whom it shares that world (e.g., the boss, other stackers, browsers and borrowers). We need not literally see these other people and entities; rather, they are implied, and so show up for us, insofar as the very activity of stacking books makes sense, at all. (§15). The entities encountered in our dealings with equipment always imply or refer to a larger context of other entities, practices and norms. If this context is different (e.g., purchasing books in a bookstore rather than checking them out of the library), then the item of equipment shows up to us differently, it plays a different role in the in-order-to structure of its world. Items of equipment, or entities that are ready-to-hand, are what they are only in terms of their place in such a context or totality of references. (§15, §16)


8. Finally, Kate suggested that while in the case of the work-world or environment, these references will be the in-order-to and so on, Heidegger's mention of primitive man (§17) implies that there may be worlds where we are not primarily concerned with using things (perhaps: the religious world, the art world, the intellectual world). These will be worlds insofar as they are referential totalities (i.e. have worldhood), but will have different kinds of references than the work-world.

Autumn, Week 8 Meeting

NB: The reading for next time is I.3 (§14-§24). We will focus on §14-18. We will not be talking about the sections on Descartes (§19-21), and will probably not talk about the sections on spatiality (§22-§24) (which are nonetheless well worth reading).

1. We began with the question of method in raising the question of being. The method of ontology is phenomenology (§7c), which is: letting that which shows itself (the phenomenon) be seen from itself in the way in which it shows itself from itself. Phenomenology is a descriptive method, does not make assumptions, and is a special kind of seeing.

We saw that phenomenology is the method appropriate to ontology because being is the phenomenon par excellance – it does not usually show itself since it lies hidden in entities, so it needs to be allowed to show itself. Being shows itself only through entities, and does so particularly in dasein. So phenomenological ontology must begin with the analysis of dasein's being (the existential analytic). This analysis starts with dasein's everydayness (§9, §5) – its ordinary, everyday going about its life – rather than with any special or extraordinary situation.

We discussed the hermeneutic or interpretive character of the existential analytic. How does an interpretation of dasein's being connect to the ordinary understanding of hermeneutics as textual analysis? We did not reach a satisfactory answer. But we did note that in carrying out the existential analytic, we figure out how to proceed as we proceed. So perhaps this issue will become more clear as we read further.


2. We tried to get a sense for what Heidegger means by existence (§9), particularly in relation to dasein's understanding of being and the fact that being is an issue for it. We recognised that only dasein exists, and contrasted existence with presence-at-hand, which is an appropriate term for the being of entities unlike dasein. We suggested that existence may have to do with the activity or the act of be-ing (as opposed to the passivity of the present-at-hand), but worried about the appropriateness of this vocabulary. We noted that existence has to do with ability and possibility, but did not discuss further what 'possibility' means.

Heidegger scholars do not agree on what Heidegger means by 'existence.' We mentioned Kate's preferred reading (that existence is dasein's ek-sistent standing-outside-of-itself in understanding being), and John Haugeland's reading (that existence is the actuality of dasein's being lived by people in each case). We tried to draw a parallel between Heidegger's terms (existence, facticity, (falling)) and the traditional terms 'existentia' (that-being), 'essentia' (what-being) (and 'accident,' how-being). Is such a parallel appropriate? Is Heidegger in some way collapsing the traditional distinction between existentia and essentia?


3. We distinguished dasein in general from cases of dasein, on analogy with tuberculosis. Like tuberculosis, dasein always occurs in particular cases – that is, in each case (je). (The translators are sloppy in including this 'in each case' in their translation.) Cases of dasein are addressed by personal pronouns ('I am', 'you are'), so are probably people. Thus you and I are not daseins, but are cases of dasein. Accordingly, cases of dasein can each say that dasein is 'mine' ("dasein is in each case mine"). As a feature of dasein in general, this is called 'mineness' (Jemeinigkeit) (§9).


4. We saw that dasein can be mine in different ways: authentically or inauthentically (§9). Thus cases of dasein (people) can be authentic or inauthentic. We noted that Heidegger will spend the bulk of the book talking about authenticity and inauthenticity – but lamented his failure to provide examples. By way of rough orientation: Jesus and Socrates are uncontroversially authentic cases of dasein; for inauthenticity we can have in mind someone like 'the man in the suit who buys in to the system.' But need authentic and inauthentic cases of dasein be recognisably different? (Kate recommended Jonathan Lear's recent book, Radical Hope, for a brilliant portrayal of an authentic case of dasein).

We did not discuss much what it takes to be in/authentic, but did note that it has to do with (not) 'winning' or 'choosing' oneself, and suggested that this has to do with taking over or owning up to being dasein. We saw that inauthenticity is not a lesser or lower degree of being than is authenticity – unlike in Plato's Republic, in which the beautiful city is in some sense more real than other cities.


5. We distinguished the fact of dasein's being-present – its facticity – from the factual being-present of present-at-hand entities (§12). Facticity is dasein's concrete determination in each case – the details and particularities that fill out and make up any particular human life. Heidegger's will later say that 'existence is always factical,' which means that dasein's existence always happens or occurs in and as the living of a particular, determinate life. We wondered what it means to say that dasein's 'destiny' is bound up with the being of entities which encounter it in the world, and suggested that this may have to do with the fact that what kind of life you lead and what is possible for you is bound up with what kinds of entities happen to be part of your world.


6. We saw that dasein's basic state of being is being-in-the-world (§12). ('State' is not to be understood as something like a 'mental state,' or as optional or contingent. Rather, being-in-the-world is an aspect of dasein's constitution or structure, its make-up). We discussed the way in which being-in-the-world is an articulated unity (somewhat like an aeroplane), such that its parts can be considered separately but are not actually separable, and so must always be considered in terms of the whole. The following three chapters of Being and Time are organised around an investigation of each of the three aspects of being-in-the-world.

We distinguished being-in as such from a spatial relationship of insideness, illuminating this by way of Heidegger's claim that present-at-hand entities can never 'touch' each other. Only dasein can touch something qua encountering it, since only dasein is in the world in the right way. We further illuminated being-in by considering its basic mode, being-amidst-the-world. (We rejected the translation of bei as 'alongside' on the grounds that it implies a spatial separation, opting for 'amidst' instead). We saw that to be amidst the world is to be absorbed in it, and considered Heidegger's list of examples (having to do with, undertaking, considering, etc.) (SZ, p. 56). This list covers both 'practical' and 'theoretical' activities, which indicates that being-in is supposed to precede and ground the practical-theoretical distinction. But the list does not include perceiving and knowing, which are the traditional ways in which the human being's engagement with the world is expressed. This led us to a discussion of knowing.


7. The standard picture of knowledge (§13) is that it is the relation between a subject and an object which somehow meet up. We saw that Heidegger holds that knowing is possible as a relation to entities only when we hold back from our concernful engagement with them. This holding back allows us to just look at entities, and to see them as merely present-at-hand objects. Heidegger considers traditional epistemology to be grounded in the forgetting of the fact that this mere looking is based on our being-amidst-the-world.

Finally, we mentioned Heidegger's response to the objection that his notion of being-in-the-world presupposes that the knowing subject connects up with the world, and does not explain how this is possible. Heidegger responds by saying that it is not clear that such an explanation is needed at all, and that such an approach is flawed because it is 'constructivist' – it tries to conjoin two items, subject and world, instead of recognising the original unity of dasein and world in dasein's being-in-the-world.

Autumn, Week 6 Meeting

Here's a summary of our discussion from last Thursday:

1. Dasein (§4, §5)

a. By way of review, we recalled that dasein is the entity to be interrogated in asking the question of the meaning of being, since it is the entity that understands both its own being and the being of other entities. We made a list of things that Heidegger says about dasein: it has to do with man or human beings; we are, each of us, dasein; it's the entity that inquires; it has possibilities; it has discourse; it has the potentiality for logos; it's something for whom being is an issue; it relates to its being; it tends to understand its being in terms of the world; it is ontically near but ontologically far; it's not quite the same as what's traditionally called the 'subject' in philosophy.

b. We saw that 'Dasein' is an ordinary German word meaning 'existence,' and literally means 'being (sein) there (da).'

c. We proposed that dasein is distinct from other entities because it reflects on or thinks about itself, how it should live, what it is, and so on. But we worried that understanding this self-relation as 'reflection' or 'thinking' might define dasein in a way that cuts it off from ordinary life and going about in the world. We related this to the idea that dasein's being is an issue for it – that its being is caught up in some kind of questionability.

d. We talked about what it means to say that dasein's being is existence, and noticed that this is different from other statements of the human 'essence.' We did not reach a satisfactory interpretation of what 'existence' means. In particular, we wondered whether the claim that dasein "has its being to be" just means that dasein is, or whether this is an Aristotelian claim that says that dasein must become what it is in the sense of satisfying its function or fully realising its essence. Similarly, we wondered about what it means to say that dasein has the possibility to be itself or not be itself, and tentatively related this to the idea of people existing 'authentically' or 'inauthentically' (without defining these terms). We wondered if this was an ethical or moral claim, or something else entirely.

e. We reached an interpretation of the terms 'existentiell' and 'existential,' deciding that the existential describes ontological questions, investigations and claims about the being of dasein in general, while the existentiell describes cases of Dasein as entities living out their own particular lives in each case. We looked at the following paraphrases of the terms, by re-arranging Heidegger's words at the end of Being and Time, §3: The existential is 'the character of an understanding of the context [Zusammenhang, hanging together] of the structures that constitute existence,' the existentiell is 'the understanding of oneself which leads along the way of deciding one's existence (by taking hold or neglecting).'

f. We acknowledged that dasein's pre-ontological understanding of being is not a set of beliefs, but is embodied in practices. For example, our understanding of what it is to be masculine or feminine is not a set of beliefs so much as the particular ways in which we speak, act, move, and carry out our lives. We talked about the claim that ontology cannot simply take over dasein's pre-ontological understanding, since dasein has a tendency to misunderstand its own being and because its understanding is always filtered through a tradition and that tradition's ways of understanding being, which may not be suitably grounded in the phenomena. So we can't just make assumptions about what it is to be dasein. We saw that this is why the existential analytic – the analysis of dasein's way of being – is necessary for Heidegger's project.


2. Being and Time

We talked about what kind of results Heidegger will come to in this text, and in particular the fact that they will not be free-floating assertions or slogans. We noticed that Heidegger ends the book with a series of questions rather than a set of claims. We related this to his talk of phenomenology, and the idea that what he is trying to do is to make something manifest to us, to show us something.


3. The Phenomenon (§7a)

a. We talked about the phenomenon as the self-showing (that which shows itself in itself and from itself). We wondered whether something might show itself to one person in one way and to another in a different way, and so what the criterion is for a phenomenon showing up adequately, correctly or truthfully. We distinguished the phenomenon from:

i. Semblance, which shows itself, but not as it is in itself. We gave the example of the sun, which seems to move around the earth.
ii. Appearance, which does not show itself but is announced or indicated by something else, which does show itself. We gave the example of the Black Death, which does not show itself but is announced by black lumps, which do show themselves.
iii. Mere appearance, which does not show itself from itself. We mentioned, but did not fully discuss, this.

We noticed that the concept of phenomenon underlies semblance, appearance and mere appearance, since these all involve something showing itself. They are each distinguished from the phenomenon because they lack one of its components (showing itself, in itself, from itself).

b. We worried that under certain descriptions, the example of the sun can demonstrate either semblance or appearance (or even mere appearance). We pointed out that Heidegger is here not so interested in perfectly distinguishing these three from one another (and indeed allows them to overlap), but is trying to distinguish all three from the phenomenon as the self-showing.


4. Logos (§7b)

a. We noted that logos is a kind of telling or discourse. We looked at these four features Heidegger points out about logos: (i) It lets a phenomenon show up, (ii) it lets something show up in a public way, in a way that communicates, (iii) it lets something show up as something, and (iv) it uncovers entities, taking them out of their hiddenness and into the truth.

b. We flagged the fact that while we know that discourse or logos is speaking when it is fully concrete, we don't really know what it is. Heidegger will discuss it fully later.

c. We noticed Heidegger's brief discussion of truth in this section, which describes truth as discovery or making manifest and falsity as deceiving or covering up. We wondered about the criteria for this – how we can be sure that something is made manifest as it is?

d. We mentioned that Heidegger derives the traditional interpretations or translations of 'logos' ('reason,' 'judgment,' 'concept,' 'definition,' 'ground,' 'relationship') from his own interpretation of it as letting something be seen.


5. We did not talk about temporality as the meaning of dasein's being and as the horizon for all understanding of being (§5). We did not talk about the destruction of the history of ontology and why this is necessary for Heidegger's project (§6), although we did note that Heidegger does not get to this portion of the planned text. Finally, we did not put Heidegger's accounts of the phenomenon and of logos together into his concept of phenomenology (§7c), but will talk about this next time.

Dreyfus' Being and Time Course Online

Thanks to a comment from Demographer, I've learned that Hubert Dreyfus is making recordings of his 2007 Heidegger class at Berkeley available online. You can subscribe to the podcast as well as download mp3s of the individual class meetings.

Check it out here.

Autumn, Week 4 Meeting

At Thursday's meeting, we covered a lot of ground, but also went very quickly. Unfortunately, that will probably be the norm for a two-hour, bi-weekly meeting about a lot of difficult text. But the blog is a place to continue the discussion and ask new questions that you didn't get to ask at the meeting, or that have occurred to you since the meeting.

We talked about:

1. The difference between entities (das Seiendes, the things that are) and being (das Sein, that in virtue of which they are as they are, that on the basis of which we understand entities as entities), and why being is not an entity (§2, §3).


2. The difference between ontic inquiry (which asks questions about entities, usually particular ones, e.g., the sciences) and ontological inquiry (which asks questions about the being of those entities) (§3). We further distinguished between regional ontology (which works out the basic concepts of being for entities of a particular sort, for instance, what it means to be a natural entity, or a physical one, or a historical one), on the one hand, and on the other hand, fundamental ontology (which works out the basic concepts of being for any entity whatsoever, asks what it means to be, in general).

We considered several answers to the question, 'What is the relationship between ontological claims and ontic ones?'. We suggested that ontological claims and concepts might have some sort of foundational relationship to ontic claims, grounding them in some way or other (which we didn't work out much further). We also suggested that the ontological claims answer a 'how possible?' question with regard to the ontic claims, explaining how it's possible to be, say, a physical entity, by giving the conceptual framework in terms of which our claims about physical entities are intelligible, make sense to us. We also wondered whether our discoveries at the ontological level, including, but not limited to, conceptual change brought about in a scientific revolution, might influence and change the claims we make on the ontic level, or whether, by contrast, the work we do to clarify and make explicit our ontological concepts is for the sole purpose of bringing us to understand our ontic claims better, even though we already do understand them to some degree (since, for instance, we can do physics, even if we might not have a completely worked out account of the being of physical entities).

This question was left hanging somewhat open, along with a corresponding question about the relationship between claims of fundamental ontology and claims of regional ontology. Is there a similar relationship of founding, making possible or intelligible, influencing or clarifying, between our claims about being in general and our claims about being an entity in a particular region of being?


3. The being question as a question not about semantics, but about what makes the difference between something that is and something that is not – that is, about what is going on when we relate to an entity as something that is. We also discussed (and, to a certain extent, experienced) the being question as a question that needs to be reawakened (Preface, §1).


4. The three dogmas about being – universality, indefinability, self-evidence (§1). These are theses that Heidegger points out to motivate his project of reawakening the question of being. We pointed out that the first two theses are connected, since the universality and indefinability of the notion of being both have to do with the fact that being (according to Heidegger) doesn't admit of analysis or determination by way of a genus and specific difference. Several people asked and tried to answer the difficult question why being is not a genus, a question also posed as, 'Why is being not a property?'. It was difficult to find a knock-down explanation, so this issue was also left somewhat open. We considered that for Aristotle, there are senses of being that have nothing to do with a genus/specific difference analysis, such as being possible vs. actual, being true vs. false, and being essential vs. accidental. If we agree that all these distinctions have something to do with being, then we might feel a philosophical urge to work out an account of what they all have in common with regard to the notion of being in general, as a whole. The issue of genus and specific difference, by contrast, only applies to the sense of being expressed by our use of categories such as number, color, human, quantity, quality, etc. Again, this discussion was interesting and provocative, but left inconclusive in the interest of time.


5. The formal structure of the being question – what is asked about, what is to be found out, that which is to be interrogated, as well as the fact that our seeking is guided beforehand by what is sought (the pre-ontological understanding of being) (§2). We mentioned Heidegger's claim that we ask the question about the meaning of being from within some everyday, pre-ontological way that we already understand what it means to be; in this sense, the question of being is "guided beforehand by what is sought." We made an analogy between a police investigation and the investigation into the meaning of being, in that both can be understood as asking about something, interrogating something and asking after something it seeks to find out. We found places in the text where Heidegger fills out each of those formal aspects for his own investigation into being: What it asks about is being (the being of entities, that in terms of which they are already understood and determined as they entities they are); what it interrogates are entities (especially, some people presaged, the entity called 'dasein,' which we did not discuss much in our meeting); what it asks after and seeks to find out is the meaning of being (we are looking for something that seems to count as a meaning, and for something that shows up in a special way, distinct from the way that entities show up, since – one of the points Heidegger is most adamant about – being is not an entity).


6. We did not discuss the reason that dasein has an ontical, ontological and 'ontico-ontological' priority with respect to the question of being, why dasein is the specific entity we interrogate first when we seek to clarify the meaning of being. That is, we did not discuss why fundamental ontology proceeds through the existential analytic (analysis of existence) (§4). We also did not talk about what dasein is, although this can be vexing and will probably be a live issue throughout the reading group. We also did not distinguish 'existentiell' and 'existential,' nor explain what it means to say that dasein's way of being is 'existence'.

* * *

Anyone is free to ask about or try to give a take on any of the issues left unresolved at the meeting. You can do this through the comments link below. We encourage you to continue discussion with each other outside our meetings on campus, especially through this blog. The best way to make sense of a text, beyond oral discussion, is to write something about it, whether that's by attempting to give an explanation of a term, claim or problem from the text, or simply writing about what confuses you or what doesn't make sense in the text or discussion. We have posted the blog in hopes of encouraging writing about, and thereby developing and refining, our ideas.

(Finally, note that we are changing rooms next meeting. We'll meet from 5:00-7:00 on November 1st in Cobb 102.)

Greek and Latin in the Introduction

I found two helpful pdfs that provide translations for the Greek and Latin terms in Heidegger's introduction. These are done by Dennis Beach of the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University, for his philosophy course on Heidegger. You can find the terms in §1 and §4 here and, for your later reading, the terms in §7 here.

If you want to ask questions or discuss these terms with the group, you can use the comments link at the end of this post.

Organizational Meeting

10/4 Organisational Meeting

1. Introductions


2. Description of the group: the group is not a class; we will not be teaching Being and Time (SZ). Rather, it will be a guided discussion in which we figure it out together and compare different interpretations. You will be expected to have read the assigned text and to be prepared to discuss it. You need not have understood it, but should be able to ask intelligible questions about what you don't understand.


3. Why read SZ? Group discussion. Mentioned: those who Heidegger influenced; the differences between 'early' Heidegger and 'later' Heidegger; the phenomenological method; the incompleteness of SZ (we have 1/3 of the planned text); the topics covered in SZ: tool use, the world, society and conformity, understanding, moods, death, angst, conscience, time; the question of SZ as the question of what it means to be and its relation to time, given that 'to be' is most generally understood as 'to be present'. We also read the preface to SZ aloud.


4. Reading schedule handed out:







5. Translations: Macquarrie and Robinson translation preferred over Stambaugh.