Our being is really a process of becoming. We are pulled ahead of ourselves in tasks that we need to fulfil. The human being is always projected ahead of himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRm6dElRZqQ
Saturday, 9 April 2011
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Video on Heidegger's structure of being-in-the-world
(Lawrence Cahoone) Dasein is a being that is thrown into and open to the world. The structure of existence is being-in-the-world. Dasein is in the world by definition. Heidegger calls this the worldhood which we constantly project as we move through our experience. The core phenomenon of being-in-the-world, apart from worldhood, is being-in. Only Dasein is in the world having experiences (being open to it and disclosing it). A person, as Dasein, is like a clearing in the woods. We have capacity to experience, in other words, things get revealed. As we move around, things get revealed around us. Heidegger is reinterpreting notions of experience and consciousness through this notion of clearing, or lichtung.
Human beings always understand things - that's how we experience the world. We carry around with us and project around us a network of meanings in which the objects of experience are revealed. For example, we can understand a chair in terms of what can be done with it. Possibilities have to do with the future. Understanding is oriented to the context of possiblities that point towards possible actions.
Facticity: we are thrown into the world, open and vulnerable to it. Dasein is always already characterised by a state of mind or mood. We are in some state or another at every moment. We carry that mood (from the past) into the next moment of experience.
Falling: the inauthentic identification of Dasein with things within the world. Dasein typically understands itself through present objects and people in the world. In falling, we submerge ourselves into what Heidegger called 'das Man', translated as the 'they self'. In everyday existence, we are overwhelmed by what 'they' think, whatever the newspapers say, and the objects of desire (money, for instance). Most of us live according to the they, rather than our own authentic phenomena of existence. Dasein flees into the they-self, with absorption in entities.
Dasein wants to avoid angst or anxiety. Angst is the proper response to the finite open-ended nature of human existence. It's only when we feel it that we begin to recognise the truth of human existence.
Sorge (care): the fundamental truth about everyday human being is that we are 'care'. Dasein existentially cares - it cannot not care. To care is to be anxious. In care, Dasein is 'ahead-of-itself, in always being-already-in-the-world, as being-alongside entities.'
For authentic Dasein, facticity and understanding are reconceived as follows.
Future (understanding): Dasein is the only being that knows it is going to die. Recognition that my being is always moving towards a finite end.
Past (facticity): Dasein has the potential to be guilty, or 'recognising what I am not'. This is an awareness of a kind of existential guilt. It is not just about feeling guilty about acts you've done, but also that I am full of 'nots' or absences - what I haven't been and won't be. This can lead to 'anticipatory resoluteness', an acceptance of my guilt in the anticipation of my death. In hearing the call of authentic existence, Dasein is no longer falling.
Temporality unifies the whole structure of being. Time is the authentic self coming towards itself as always already having been there. One recognises it has always been there in the act of making entities present.
Human beings always understand things - that's how we experience the world. We carry around with us and project around us a network of meanings in which the objects of experience are revealed. For example, we can understand a chair in terms of what can be done with it. Possibilities have to do with the future. Understanding is oriented to the context of possiblities that point towards possible actions.
Facticity: we are thrown into the world, open and vulnerable to it. Dasein is always already characterised by a state of mind or mood. We are in some state or another at every moment. We carry that mood (from the past) into the next moment of experience.
Falling: the inauthentic identification of Dasein with things within the world. Dasein typically understands itself through present objects and people in the world. In falling, we submerge ourselves into what Heidegger called 'das Man', translated as the 'they self'. In everyday existence, we are overwhelmed by what 'they' think, whatever the newspapers say, and the objects of desire (money, for instance). Most of us live according to the they, rather than our own authentic phenomena of existence. Dasein flees into the they-self, with absorption in entities.
Dasein wants to avoid angst or anxiety. Angst is the proper response to the finite open-ended nature of human existence. It's only when we feel it that we begin to recognise the truth of human existence.
Sorge (care): the fundamental truth about everyday human being is that we are 'care'. Dasein existentially cares - it cannot not care. To care is to be anxious. In care, Dasein is 'ahead-of-itself, in always being-already-in-the-world, as being-alongside entities.'
For authentic Dasein, facticity and understanding are reconceived as follows.
Future (understanding): Dasein is the only being that knows it is going to die. Recognition that my being is always moving towards a finite end.
Past (facticity): Dasein has the potential to be guilty, or 'recognising what I am not'. This is an awareness of a kind of existential guilt. It is not just about feeling guilty about acts you've done, but also that I am full of 'nots' or absences - what I haven't been and won't be. This can lead to 'anticipatory resoluteness', an acceptance of my guilt in the anticipation of my death. In hearing the call of authentic existence, Dasein is no longer falling.
Temporality unifies the whole structure of being. Time is the authentic self coming towards itself as always already having been there. One recognises it has always been there in the act of making entities present.
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