On Being and Time

Heidegger isn’t as unpleasant as I anticipated. I admit he is mostly unintelligible, but he does have his moments of clarity. I think I like his unintelligible style; it lets me more easily come to my own opinions about what he's saying. What really strikes me is the elegance of his ideas in Being and Time. The impression I got from Heidegger’s description of the world is a transforming yet undiminished and non-growing world. I think Nietzsche is angling at a similar idea when he talks about the eternal world in The Will to Power. Except that Heidegger's way of saying it is prettier and less condescending. Just sayin’, Nietzch.

What makes Heidegger’s philosophy pretty is the transience of virtue (am I allowed to talk about virtue in Heidegger? Let’s say yes—it’s my commentary and I’m interpreting him). I got this picture of a roving mass of roiling. A mound of brownness, leveling and turning, perpetually buzzing at a lazy pace. Every so often, a lighter spot may be seen. The mass just bunches at a further end to reveal a place in which a tiny spec--the individual--starts to brighten. For a glimmering moment, the individual has an explicit grasp on his or her identity. But as soon as that shine is realized, the mass has already commenced re-bunching, shrouding the individual and effectively removing the shine, returning everything to brown. Maybe that’s a weird picture. Anyway, the romance of the idea comes from the brittle, diminishing character of Da-sein in the midst of das Man. Da-sein is the single good thing in the world, but it’s nearly impossible to achieve, and definitely impossible to sustain. The most tragic thing is the anonymity of it. Most don’t recognize the possibility to even begin to realize Da-sein, and even when an individual does begin to realize it, thrownness takes over and it's forgotten, lost in the eddy back to tranquilization. Geeze. Someone needs to make a movie with these themes. It would be amazing. I’d watch it.

An aspect of Heidegger's philosophy that I feel was inaccurately interpreted in class was the “others.” I felt like a hostility and manipulation was read into the others and it wasn’t right. I think Heidegger is very specific in that he says “others” does NOT mean “everybody else but me,” but those whom I neglect to distinguish myself from. An example could be when I’m with my family, or in class, just not thinking about social status or being self-conscious. Just any time I’m unconsciously in a group, anytime I’m standing in a group and NOT going, “I don’t belong with these yahoos.” I feel like the sense of manipulation and hostility read into the others was an inaccurate reading. Not that I get to talk about interpretations, me with my roving mound of das Man and shimmering moments. I just stand by my conviction that there isn’t virtue in being condescending to others, not even being condescending to the herd.

An aspect of Heidegger's philosophy I don't understand is his meaning of "care." The impression I get is that he means “care” in the sense of “participating,” almost. Heidegger specifies that care doesn’t mean worry, but being-in-the-world. He more or less says that “being together” with things is “taking care.” In contemporary language, I think that means care is “being present,” or attending to what’s going on.

An aspect of Heidegger's philosophy I find interesting is the alienation inherent to entanglement. He says that alienation drives the authentic self to self-dissection, in which the self tries out different characterizations and types. Furthermore, he mysteriously says that self-dissection is a legitimate way to be, even if it’s unauthentic. I wonder what he means by that. It could mean that Heidegger merely acknowledges that a person doesn’t pop out of existence when he or she becomes authentic. Or it could mean that he doesn’t place values on authenticity and inauthenticity, as was claimed in class. All in all, I enjoyed reading Heidegger, too, and I might look for more of his work to read.