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0:00
I hope you have slept well. After our our class on, Sartre. And although some insomnia would be in order, grave despair and severe depressions would be too much. What? Because, mind you, Sartre insisted that existentialism is a humanism, true humanism even. And final words of the pamphlet existentialism is a humanism. It is a optimism.
0:34
It is a positive answer to nihilism. That is what Sartre's work is all about, considered from the nihilism which is our current human condition. Freedom means that we are condemned to be free. Freedom taken seriously means that there is no bargaining possible. The world is jampacked with nothingness and we can add new nothingness over and over again. We are condemned to this intentionality. According to Sartre, there is no bargaining, no escapes, no refuge in the day or in bad faith.
1:17
Bad faith means using the freedom that you are
1:22
to deny this freedom, to find excuses,
1:26
mitigating circumstances, not realizing that it is us who call these circumstances mitigating. That is our responsibility, our freedom.
1:42
So we are responsible for labeling these
1:46
circumstances as mitigating, as we are responsible for the way we label anything. Sartre urges us to take our responsibility really seriously.
1:59
We should turn every state of affairs to the objective, the way the things are, according to the they, to science, whatever, to a situation of individual choice and responsibility. Sartre writes crude words. Everything that happens to me is mine. There are no accidents in life. That sounds very weird. There are no accidents in life. What Sartre means is that it is us up to us to say when we are in an accident, state of affairs, accidents happen.
2:37
Why me? Or this must be a punishment for all I've done, or I am a victim. Or also possible embracing Nietzsche's famous words.
2:54
What does not kill me makes me stronger. I know many people who had a terrible accident in their life, and eventually interpreted it as a life changing moment. Also, in a positive sense, this is what Sartre means when he says there are no accidents in life. It is up to us to interpret these happenings to one to say what they mean to us.
3:24
Then there is Sartre's extreme extreme. But he would say, I'm just doing phenomenology. I'm just describing what shows itself, his extreme take on into subjectivity. Some might say this is a deeper truth that hide it, that Sartre addresses. Some might say this is just one ontological dimension of into subjectivity. We will come to that in the class on Levinas,
3:49
Sartre says, we are constantly reducing the other
3:55
to objects of our interpretation, objects of our perceptions. Now, Sartre addressed this in a very personal, individualistic sense. But after Sartre, this phenomena of the gaze, the disregard, the look in which you reduce the other has been, very fruitfully elaborate it on in, for instance, critical theory, feminist theory, the male gaze or the,
4:27
the white gaze or the imperial gaze of the colonial gaze, but also Foucault has made very, very good sociological studies on the medical gaze,
4:42
the way that you are when you enter a hospital, you're reduced to a patient. He, examined the, penitentiary system where the gaze in the panopticon. You don't even need a guard. As long as all the prisoners have the idea that someone is looking at them, they will behave. So the gaze is something of phenomena that Sartre has addressed. And no matter how crude we may think it is, it is indeed something to really keep on thinking about, to really keep on
5:16
thinking about how often don't you do this, reducing the other and others to your own perceptions without. Without questioning your own presuppositions. Without challenging your own presuppositions. There's a lot of tasks to be done there in the future. So Sartre is not that group. There's no doubt that it's important to be that Sartre whisper in your ear all your life, not scream in your ear. Then you go mad. Just whisper.
6:05
Welcome back to First Philosophy. I'm sorry. Your shits. I'm not smarter than. And we're back. So, Heidegger finally rejoice. Finally back to Heidegger. It only took us to episode two episodes. He has been. It has been a long time. But finally, we're back to, the familiar ground. This time is going to be a different Heidegger. Yeah, it will be a very different Heidegger.
6:32
Not. Well, still rooted in the same soil. I'd hope so. I'd hope so. But it will. It is interesting to see where this goes now, let's not say too much about it. Let's just have it unwind as it is. Yeah. Yeah. You know, as one of the more influential, lyricists of our time, I was once asked, do you believe in live after being in time?
7:01
And Heidegger sure did. And.
7:06
No. Yeah, he definitely did. He definitely did. Yeah. And now we will see it because it was such an ambitious project. It was a gigantic one. Really? Yeah. But as I will explain, he's had a turn
7:24
the same as Kira. And to thinking really a lot about technology and if you like, if this is your first encounter with philosophy and you've listened to the Heidegger episodes and you're kind of worried that it is again, all about being and the structure of design, this Heidegger that you will be introduced to is the Heidegger that is hugely influential in the philosophy of technology. And, the eco philosophy in general. This is this is a really interesting and really new approach
8:03
that you're going to see. So if you've listened to the past episodes, you're kind of hesitant going in it. This will be, definitely something different. And I think magnificent, you know, and one more, philosopher got the name dropped and the intro, of course.
8:23
Foucault. Whose name? Everybody, I presume. Almost everybody has heard of. There is one philosopher you probably have heard of. I kind of think it's Foucault. I don't know, I think it's, had a very big influence. We're not going to say much about it. But, as always, encourage you to read it. Beware of falling into a trap of, of reading, the history of madness and, deciding that, psychology is a hoax, so control everyone. That's not what Foucault no was trying to say, I believe.
9:01
Which has often been misunderstood by two eager first year bachelor students. Yeah. But it is. It is, the history of madness is specifically a book that I would generally really recommend because when it ties into what the medical gaze was. Yeah.
9:18
And it just the sense that you can view madness very differently and, and also not medically or not like medically set is something that is very important and very, very interesting to, to engage with. Yeah. And this is also very much at Chekhov's gun on something that will come up, as we already were alluding, how the gaze is quite important for a vase. Practices or philosophy specifically. So once again, something to look forward to. But for now, that's us.
9:54
Let's turn to Avi and let's turn to our turns. Heidegger. Yeah.
10:03
So today's class is well, in Sartre, in terms it may be depicted as an exploration in the technological and framing gaze,
10:15
which is dedicated to Heidegger after being in time. So we will address the notorious and much discussed turn the key era in Heidegger's path of thinking. In Being in Time, Heidegger rethought the history of Western philosophy as a perpetual forgetfulness of being, and he launched his existential analytics, focusing on the being of design, the being of individual existence as a throne project. So Being in time addresses the temporality of our being in the world. Now the turn in Heidegger's
10:53
thinking entails addressing the temporality of being itself, which was the original plan of being in time, which
11:03
Heidegger did not come to in this book. But, mind you, the question of being maybe the oldest. But it is also the most difficult question in the history of Western thought. As I mentioned earlier, Hegel calls being the most general concept the in determinable immediate, because everything being is, is every being is. But that is so vague. And Hegel says, you can't really you can't really say anything more about it. But Heidegger says that because it is such an obscure concept, it asks for us
11:48
who are most scrupulous attention.
11:52
But indeed there is a great severe difficulty in thinking about general concepts and while especially thinking about being. In one of his lectures, Heidegger quotes a wonderful anecdote by Hegel A man walks into a greengrocer's shop
12:13
and he asks for fruit. Well, my good man, the greengrocer replies, you've come to the right place. What do you want? Apples pears cherries grapes, bananas, you name it. No, the man replies. I want to buy fruit now. I hope you got the gist and drift of this anecdote.
12:40
There is Hegel shows no such thing as fruit. There's nowhere on the greengrocer shelves. Is fruit now fruit, no matter how abstract it may be, is still it still refers to certain beings. But it's a even a much more difficult predicament when it comes to being. Because being is not being is not something being is the occurrence, the events, the happening, the eventuality of beings, the aliveness, the happiness. In my terms. We earlier addressed this as the ontological difference.
13:25
Heidegger's most crucial discovery, perhaps
13:30
in Being in Time, Heidegger approaches the question of being through an exposé of design and the pre ontological understanding of being that we all have in everyday experience. The sky is blue, today is Thursday, etc. this was a revolutionary approach, starting off from everyday experience, but not without grave difficulties. And one of the reasons why the project of being in time was aborted by Heidegger. He just stopped writing it. Only the first half was published.
14:03
Enough, however, to stir up the landscape of philosophy, but still, why did Heidegger change his way of thinking?
14:15
What caused the turn to care in his thinking? Existential and analytic still appears to be a contribution to philosophical anthropology. It doesn't want to be, but it appears to be such. Heidegger is describing the enduring structures of human existence, and during structures he uses the word enduring so he doesn't use the word essential, which means timeless.
14:46
But this is a this. This may be considered semantics. It's so. It's not the essentials. Being in the world and being towards death and thrown is they're not essentials because the essence of my being lies in my existence. But they are, Heidegger insists, enduring structures. Well, how general and how enduring are these structures in the years and even decades after being in time? As a very funny thing happened, a flood of books was written about design, but then addressed to this, described
15:25
within the context of different parts of the world. With that, in the context of different cultures.
15:33
So a true series of downtown books Gauthier takes in Dutch flooded the books, bookstores design in Africa, Design in Peru, Da zine in Tibet, da zine in Japan. And these studies are real fun to read. Real fun to read. And in fact, they should be considered to be contributions to cultural philosophical anthropology or existential anthropology.
16:05
But still, the very occurrence of these books is significant. It shows that in other cultures, different nuances of existential analytics are presented. That is something to think about. Being in time was meant to be as the impression that it's about design all over the world. And still, although are there being towards death in every culture, but still the some of the.
16:36
The structures Heidegger names are quite, quite differently understood in other parts of the world. Second, what happened to the question of being? This was, after all, the starting point of being in time. The focus on design seems to have led Heidegger astray. So how to go from existential analytics back to the question of being is another problem being in time? Also, there is the problem of the sedimentology of the day and being in time for many, including Sartre,
17:14
there was a hidden ethics in being in time. The choice between being authentic and being inauthentic is not just an existential description, but there is a hidden ethics. And you feel this also when you read Being in Time, Heidegger insists that, to be inauthentic is a positive choice, a positive choice. It just doesn't convince his readers.
17:44
And after being in time and still we read all these books, caused by Heidegger, on authenticity, you have all these books on lifestyle and the art of living, and even schools where everybody wants to be authentic to, to to realize yourself. Self-Realization, which was the goal of even Maslow's entire psychology, which was influenced by Heidegger. But he didn't understand it. We all want to be ourselves.
18:17
Someone says, I'm not myself, that, oh, that's not good. I want to be myself. But Heidegger had a bigger problem because a philosophy of authenticity is just another misunderstanding of being in time. In fact, trying to be authentic, to be authentic, to remain authentic is, as such, inauthentic. It denies your temporality. You can never be authentic. You might be authentic. Just for a moment, but you'll never find a life style of authenticity ridiculous. Ridiculous. Not just philosophically.
18:54
When you'll find out it never works.
18:58
Heidegger's bigger problem was whether the day can actually be broken, whether it can actually be traversed by individual design in its susceptibility to anxiety and the courage of being towards death.
19:14
Can this really be done? Heidegger asked himself.
19:19
And is. It's only a matter of individual design and more poignantly put,
19:26
is this all 1st May expect from philosophy describing existential structures,
19:33
structures of possibility with which the reader can start exploring living his or her life
19:44
already in the early lectures. So before publishing Being in Time, Heidegger calls philosophy gegen ruin and translated Counter Fallen. This
19:57
philosophy as such is against fallenness. He is raging against the tendency to fall in the sciences, in philosophy,
20:08
against remaining entangled in the common sense of the day with its fixed set of opinions and self-indulgence.
20:19
And then, remarkably, two years after being in time, Heidegger gives an entire course on boredom.
20:28
Not anxiety was the fundamental disposition in being in time the most crucial disposition. There are many moods boredom, happiness sadness depression. There are many, many moments. But anxiety, according to Heidegger, which he takes from Kierkegaard, is the most crucial a mood because anxiety confronts us with nothingness and with being towards death. Now all of a sudden, two years later, he gives this entire course on boredom. This focus on boredom is furthermore remarkable
21:05
because this was 1929, which is the year some of you may know of the Wall Street crash, Black Tuesday,
21:15
which hit Germany more ferociously, ferociously than most other European countries because Germany had also pay a restitution, money for the calamities that, World War One brought to the world. Unemployment and poverty were catastrophic in Germany
21:40
in the idiom of being in time. However, Heidegger writes here is all around, but there is no room for anxiety. That's still a bit of being in time. And he proceeds. Our whole existence is devoted to problem solving and crisis management. All we do is to alleviate our material worries and economic strains and pains. And the fight against poverty is all around. Everything and everybody is directed towards one goal. Heidegger writes, to regain a carefree life.
22:18
Now, maybe some of you extremely clever ones will have some
22:24
sudden association. What's happening here? A carefree life. Why is that a very important word in the context of Heidegger's philosophy? There's the word care in carefree. And Heidegger said, the being of design, our existence. All Heidegger's terms are they all mean the same. Design means existence, means resigned, means being in the world means it's all the same. And then he also uses the word zorgo care. Care is our project projected, thrown us?
23:01
Are thrown. Projected. This sort of, being usually untangled in the day. Everybody wants a carefree life. All the hustle and bustle of our lives is about fighting poverty and regaining wealth. But Heidegger asks to what ultimate aim? And he answers to end up in a new poverty,
23:25
in a new need.
23:28
And he calls this the need of needless this. There are no there are no those guys. So everybody who's worried about money and wealth and trying to get this wealth ends up entangled in a very peculiar need, the need of needless ness, indeed a peculiar need. But Heidegger says we will only end up in the profound boredom of perpetually manage, of managing the manageable. That is what we're what it's all about, what we're doing.
23:58
But by doing so, we become oblivious to the predicament that true poverty, true poverty, is not the lack of food, shelter, and comfort through poverty is the lack of being, is the lack of being a real being there, the destitution of being. Zines are much. Heidegger even repeated this in 1945.
24:23
Germany was completely in ruins, completely in ruins. And Heidegger writes, true poverty is the poverty that we have no being anymore. Therefore, Heidegger writes, philosophy must stir up, shake up and provoke the focus on management and problem solving.
24:48
It must provoke the attempt to improve our material conditions. Everything must. Fulton Heidegger writes, as so others in the Sunken Garden, philosophy must agitate and frighten us in order to force our design to rise to the occasion of our being there to understand its own projected this instead of misunderstanding it as a homo economicus being in poverty or being in wealth that is one dimensional man, as Marcuse would describe it later.
25:24
Well, to many critics, this line of reasoning was just in line with Heidegger's being short but be assured, lasting. But he did it, affiliation with the National Socialist Movement. Heidegger was also fascinated with Hitler's
25:41
agitating speeches, where there's something very weird and tacky about this whole thing. But the more important thing is that Heidegger says philosophy has to do more. Philosophy is not about describing reality. It's not describing, our being in the world philosophy has to do with also what is happening to us now, what is happening to us now, this poverty of being that we're only trying and this is what we're still doing all the time. This is what this class is really all about, that we only in
26:11
one dimension of of prosperity or either, Poverty. We try to be on the side of wealth. We try to be on the side of a nice, happy here, good guardian esthetic life. This is, in fact, what we're all doing. So Heidegger is questioning his own time now.
26:32
So Heidegger, this is the important thing, is rethinking.
26:38
Being in time by focusing on epochal temporality, no longer on existential temporality. So what is happening? Instead of existential analytics, which was about individual being in the world, Heidegger explores the possibility of an epochal analytics. This comes from the word epoch, a new era, not to be confused with the phenomenological epoch of Husserl. That's a Greek word which means refraining from judgment. That's knowledge. It's epoch. It's from era,
27:16
a time in ordinary language. Heidegger tries, it seems, to try to depict the spirit of his time.
27:23
He tries to find out what the zeitgeist is, the tightest, but to avoid existential analysis. And he doesn't want to give a diagnosis or count symptoms. That's not that's not what Heidegger is all about. This is true philosophy. So Heidegger speaks of the the way that being reveals itself in our time. He asks who, what constellation of being and mankind is happening to us. Something is happening to us. How can we think this? How can we even approach it? What? What does this mean?
28:04
So it's a new line of questioning, asking about our own constellation of being in time. Foucault, who is deeply influenced by Heidegger, would later coined the idiom of an ontology of the present. So philosophy should be an ontology of the present. And if you're an academic schooled in academics, that was the time that everybody said as they did. I said, that's ridiculous. That's stupid. That can't be. Ontology is about lasting, essential structures of being. That is what ontology is all about.
28:40
How could there be an ontology of the present? That is an impossible thing, but it may be impossible academically speaking, but it's something we have to try to do.
28:58
There is a big elephant in the room. Once again, the elephant has been periodically returning into the room and then walking out, and we've been kind of addressing him a little bit. But of course, there's, a mention of National Socialism. Yeah. It's not a secret of, Heidegger's, much discussed engagement. And we once again, I think, mutually ask for your patience. Dear, dear listener, because we once again are not really going to go, too deep into it
29:31
for the sake of trying to allow, his philosophy to breathe. Yeah. And to try to engage with it sincerely before, before engaging with the historical facts, which is very necessary. So yeah. And for now, I think what could be interesting to mention is,
29:52
it to mention explicitly that it has not been ignored. There is a big part of, scholarship on Heidegger, and books upon books and articles are being written specifically trying to think through Heidegger's, association with, the National Socialist Party. Yeah. And, just how separable or inseparable both the foundations of his philosophy are from that. So before discussing it more, which just so that maybe it's a good thing
30:31
to give you the context about just how just how lively this discussion is. Yeah. And how many, you know, bright Minds are engaging with it currently. Very, very actively. Yeah. People take this very seriously as they should. Yeah, yes I should. We will come back to this in a future episode. However, for now, we've decided to let the philosophy as it is. Breathe. Yeah, but it is, you know, the next episode. It is the next episode. Yeah, yeah.
31:02
And sort of, you know, it ties to this, a little bit of a, highlights that's, Well, a part of the motivation for the turn is this realization, that came up about, does I and really being understood differently all around the world and this universality that he strive for actually, I'm kind of crumbling a little bit and also it making it more close to therefore making it closer to philosophical anthropology that. Yeah, trying to just study the human now.
31:40
Well, what Heidegger is doing or attempts to do inside insight and be enzyme as so to actually start asking the question of being and from there asking the genuine question of being, I think there is another or more an elephant in the room, but definitely something that is remarkable. Well, that really that really catches the ear to say, yeah, I agree. The Heidegger's definition of true poverty, which is not the lack of shelter or food, but the lack of being. Yeah.
32:14
I think we, we instinctively we both had a very different reaction. Yeah, I do this. Yeah. And I think, because I'm less of a Heidegger scholar, I dare to say my is probably a more a more common reaction. It's a crazy thing to hear. Yeah. Right. That's, you know, the least charitable way of interpreting it is, of course, you know, to, to, to come across kind of as well, you come across immediately as being extremely detached from the realities of material hardship. Yeah. Because, you know,
32:57
saying that, you know, true horrors is not when you are unhoused. It's or you don't know what if you can eat dinner today, it's really it's still it's the lack of being which sounds crazy, but I also we've discussed this I know this is not the way to read it. No, that's not how I read it. And I don't I don't think that is meant that way. I mean, me neither, but this is very difficult to not go. No, I yeah, I understand, and I,
33:26
a few years ago for, student magazine, I was writing a very short using a piece on housing. And I use the text by Heidegger. Yeah. A building dwelling thinking in which, he also expands on that there, there was a housing crisis and he said, well, the real housing crisis is not the lack of housing, but we kind of forgot how to, like, dwell. Yeah. It had a built and and then also, I think that in that short piece I also wrote a sentence according to the lines of the this is clearly,
33:58
written by someone who lives very, very comfortably. Yeah. Like this is not someone who is desperately looking for us. Yeah. At the time, I was living at my partner's place because I was homeless. Yeah yeah. So so I was kind of frustrated with that. Well, you know, this is not the problem. The problem is that we don't know how to how to how to dwell. Yeah. And there is a, there is this there's a first gut instinct that says come on. But actually the, the, the thing that, that ties
34:27
this all together is a lot of things that Heidegger says, which are provocative in nature, like if you really follow his line of thinking and you understand what he really means and what, what he, what he's trying to move towards, that is really interesting. And that is, that is really fundamental. Because if it is about dwelling but living somewhere, residing in a house, the the thing is that you also have to build places that are actually built with the people and the surroundings
35:01
in the back of your mind, not just crude, just dump some shelter somewhere in a field and see who salutes it. It's it's really about trying to to think through how to build. Yeah. And how to build places that are meant for people to dwell in. And this is the same about with being, you could argue and this is how I would read it. I'm not sure if this is the correct or the supposed way to read it, but if the true poverty of not understanding being,
35:35
then everything you'll be decides to do is a build on quicksand. Yeah, because we have never really thoroughly worked through the foundations. And so when you can and you can try to solve everything with, with the solution to the problem, that you the, the quick solution that you see to the problem before you, or you can really try to think through
36:01
the question that is asked if maybe the roots are, are they are part of the problem or is rooted in some part of the problem? Yeah. And in that sense, the entire way of thinking about being needs to be altered before the, before this true poverty, the symptoms of the poverty can be thoroughly solved. I mean, it is undoubtably that, a
36:37
the structure, like, you know, it's difficult to argue with the thing that the foundations and the structures must change before, you know, to securely in this materialistic self sense,
36:51
resolve the, the, the things that keep coming up with the, of course, the homelessness crisis and that that the housing crisis in general. But of course, it's also. Sometimes can be quite difficult to accept such a non-material way of, of some image immaterial way of, of thinking about it. Sure. Yeah. No. Yeah. But in any case, even though it's difficult, you know, I was lately I've been thinking a lot about. And you know, this, about how we don't.
37:24
But, you know that I've been thinking about this. How we, don't read enough fascists, and that is actually. No. Yeah. No. And how it is a bad thing. Actually, no, I agree, it's it's it's very I, I've always had a guttural reaction to just really not engage with it by acquainting myself with it. You know what. What? But,
37:46
I think it's very clear the world we live in and,
37:52
I was thinking, I've been thinking a lot about Carl Schmitt.
37:56
A Nazi like, way less ambiguous than Heidegger, which we'll talk about Heidegger way less ambiguous. Schmitt was, you know, I was like a straightforward ideologue. But there is so much to learn from him, from his thinking on sovereignty. Precisely. The other thing that I think we might be lacking because of, because we don't engage with it. So, this is just to try to convince, maybe any listeners who are also finding themselves to feel in a more stubborn way. I feel you and I am,
38:28
and I've been, and I have that strong instinct as well, but I, I hope you can be convinced to open, open your mind to seeing what you can get from it. Yeah. And also in general, I think
38:45
if such a sentence like the true poverty is poverty of being, sometimes people just say straight out offensive things and then that you can take them as offensive things. But if you find certain of these sentences like very provoking or almost offensive in nature, but it's not immediately clear why. Yeah, SAT is the perfect place to start to in philosophy. Yeah. Because what's what's the problem with this and what is meant? What is the problem and why do you disagree.
39:16
That is a if you do that thoroughly and with patience, you are doing philosophy. I like these kind of polemic sentences. Anyway, the those who said that if you are close to a screen you're also almost close to the philosophy. There you go, there you go.
39:36
Thank you. Digital. Yeah. And but depends on getting hung. Yeah. And I guess with that, now that we've, once again defended and as much as we can and went on our little tangent, it's time to, go back and learn about the Epoch Analytics.
40:03
To reach this epoch epoch analytics, because he doesn't just want to write about his own time, he does a different thing. He tries to destructure Western philosophy. He already did that in Being in Time by, reminding of the
40:23
battle of the Giants concerning being in pre-Socratic philosophy, which has waned still, since then. He these the three prejudices concerning the question of being so he already did this in being in time, but he's now doing it
40:42
towards the entire history of Western philosophy. I will give two different approaches of Heidegger's epoch and analytics. First, in what is philosophy?
40:53
In 1950, Heidegger contemplates on the different fundamental achievements, moods, dispositions of Western philosophy itself. This is a very strange approach. Writing the history of philosophy is usually just describing the positions of all these different philosophers. That's that's what we do in academics. It's very boring. But this is what we do. Heidegger says, no, there is a something else going on. There are different achievements, moods, dispositions.
41:26
He already wrote about this in being in time on an individual scale. Every individual does and is always in a certain mood. The world is always is closed in certain moods and anxiety. The world, it falls apart in boredom. The world is just a massive gray color list. Significant and unknown thing. In in happiness, the world is full, full of colors and opportunities. So the world appears in many different ways, in different attunement, in different dispositions.
42:04
But this also goes for the history of philosophy. Furthermore, the history of philosophy shows a discontinuous, not teleological, discontinuous. And you will I will show you this. It's quite convincing what Heidegger's doing, a discontinuous succession of moods. And so we may be in one mood. Now, this is the great question that we have. The ontology of the present. What is our current mood? And also, and this is very important, if you're young and you're
42:37
going to you're going to hopefully I will be dead by then. But you may be coming in that there will be moods, future moods that we don't even know about. Completely different moods. I hope so, because I don't really like the mood that we're in. Well, let's make it technical. Now
42:54
let's look at the Greek philosophy. Let's look at Greek culture. What was the fundamental mood of Greek thinking? What was the mood? What what made them? What was the attunement? What what made them think? You can find it in Plato. You can find it in Aristotle's. I'm not making this up. Philosophy Greek philosophy is in the mood of wonder. Plato says literally, philosophy begins with wonder. Aristotle agrees. Philosophy begins with wonder, and he adds the joys of perception. So wonder
43:32
now then we ask, okay, if you ask if you're in wonder what is truth? If you are in wonder, this is difficult, so I'll give the answer. According to Heidegger, I think I said I don't have to ask what is truth? The Greek gave me the word, the Greek word for truth. And this is crucial for this entire course. The Greek word for truth is are the tire,
43:55
the tires or preventive alpha? The tire letter is the river of forgetfulness, of death, of hiddenness. The tire is a word I've already use under concealment. That's excellent translation of Aletheia. Truth is, concealment to the Greeks and the world. To the Greeks. Things in Greek philosophy appear as
44:28
a variety of, concealment. Reality is a patchwork of, concealment. Of course, Plato tried to solve that problem by positing the ideal world, but
44:42
our world, the world we live in, is a configuration of and concealment. And it's very important this that the Greek used the word for aletheia. This is why Heidegger says only the Greeks and the Germans can think. Because what did the Romans do? They translated Alitalia with.
45:05
Veritas.
45:08
And just by choosing that word, they lost everything. That's when everything went wrong. They showed the Romans could just because they changed that word. They did choose that word lost the sensibility for what truth is really about. Truth is about, consumer. Now, I'm not saying maybe I'm a bit. I'm a bit too Heidegger, you know, because it would be stupid and wrong. This would be thinking in terms of, originality and ultimate things.
45:41
That would be metaphysics that the Greeks have really done the only right thing. That's not 100. I shouldn't say that. I think it, but I shouldn't say it. It's enough to say that there was some time when we were susceptible that when we were talking about truth, that we would consider truth to be, concealment for us. Now, truth is the art of classical intellectuals today. Truth is the correspondence or the adequacy, adequacy of our thoughts with reality. This is all science.
46:14
Science has made truth to become something very narrow, something which only counts for propositions. We've lost the enormous wealth of what truth is about. And in fact, in normal languages, we still use the word true in truth in a very nonscientific sense, which in fact surpasses science and tells us that science is not really doing the important thing. I hope that you will all, each and every one of you will find true love.
46:44
Now, true love is not the other class. Your intellect. Who's art right? It's real. There's some. It's the concealment of your love. So there's something happening in Greek thinking. But let's make it simple. This is just what happened in a certain epoch of Greek culture,
47:05
where wonder was the fundamental disposition, where truth was Alitalia, and where reality was a configuration of things. And then we ended up making some jumps. But in the Middle Ages, Christian philosophy, in Christian philosophy and Christian thinking, Christian culture, just imagine and hope. You don't even have to imagine being religious, being religious. What is truth? If you are, what brings you truth? If you're religious? You go to revelation.
47:40
Faith and revelation. So what is the world? What are things? If you're religious to a religious person, what are things? It's just a configuration of unconcealed. Let's.
47:55
Know the world is in creating.
48:00
The world is created by God. Everything is created by God. Okay, I'm not giving you a sermon. You have. I found out myself sounding like I'm doing a sermon.
48:11
This is. Well, this is one way of looking at the reality, which is a very respectable way of looking at reality. In faith. You have a revelation, and then you find out that the whole world is not a patchwork of un concealment. It is Khartoum made by God. But then in modernity we have Descartes, and now becomes very difficult, because there cuts mood, you might say, is doubt,
48:35
doubting everything. That is the moon. And Heidegger says, no, that's not true. If you read the card very well. He knew exactly before he started his meditations. He knew exactly where he would end up. He knew exactly what would happen. He never really doubted anything. He knew that when he was doubting, he would realize the absolute convincing situation of being in doubt, thinking.
49:02
And ending up with the cogito ergo sum, the fundamental mood of modernity. Our time, or the beginning of our time. Because we are in postmodern times. But modernity, the fundamental mode is trust,
49:16
self-confidence, even trust, self-confidence and trust that we can understand the world. So because what is truth?
49:28
In our not in in our time, in modernity, what is true? What when do we call something? When do we think we can speak of truth? When it is there in the sense that's the thoughts itself, when it certain truth is certainty. This is what you are, all that is what you're teaching right now. This is what Erasmus University is telling you. Truth is certainty. Certain knowledge. It's not revelation. You think it's a revelation. Better stop your studies if you think it's all the idea. Oh
50:05
no. No room for you. Here at Erasmus we have different values
50:11
which all boil down to that. We believe in certainty and things are only things if they are measurable, if we can, be absolutely clear and certain about them. So certain the world is not. And creating the world is uncertain. And it takes a rather a, nuanced person who would say, well, I consider this a progress. I would say so there's wonder and there's faith. And then completely unexpected. There's solid trust.
50:50
And then we come to our age and Heidegger struggles. Heidegger asks in what disposition, in what attunement do we find ourselves today?
51:08
Okay, so after I think
51:12
five lectures and also for us, 11 episodes,
51:18
I think it's an interesting revelation, maybe that it's finally the origins of, concealment. Are properly explained. Yeah. And concealment has been invoked. Yes. And since the first episode and I in the first lecture. But I think
51:40
you don't need this explanation to understand what it has been throughout. So it's not like, oh, finally we now get it. Yeah, but it is. I really enjoyed listening back to these lectures and now really seeing Alitalia, the and Greek word for concealment, which replaces the idea of truth as veritas, as something static. That is true. I really enjoy like listening back to this and kind of realizing, I think this is the first proper introduction
52:14
of this phrase that has been used throughout the lectures,
52:18
which it's been the Greeks all along. It's been the Greeks all along. But what I really like about this is that both you see how it could have been applied throughout the lectures. Anyway, it also kind of prepares anyone that engages with these lectures to, to already have a, have, an understanding of what it is building towards, because you have seen multiple examples of Alitalia like the field. We've talked about the different ways and so in which the field can be experience, it can be seen
52:55
the different modes of concealment. It's, it's it's nice to have a to have a podcast special completely like this. Like it's rounded off like we have now. It has been introduced and now we also know. Yeah, it's kind of like whenever first mentioned throughout the lecture, the phrase first philosophy. Yeah. Big moment. Yeah. Big moment. No. But without that, without making too much fun of about it, it's a really, really I think this is one of the, the most interesting ideas
53:26
that I picked up on when I was a first year student. I think this really, really stuck with me the other day. I think that I could never have written my my bachelor thesis if this didn't really stick out for me during these lectures. Okay, but that is that the the fact that the poets can also bring forth into, concealment, the that which is around us in a completely different way than science does, that really put me on the path that I, I'm still walking down. Yeah.
54:01
Another path that Heidegger has paved or maybe started as, of course, an interesting word. Destructuring has been invoked, which is painfully close to something that once again, everyone maybe, the most used and well-known and misused and misused concept from. Yeah, postmodern philosophy, arcade deconstruction, famously coined by Derrida. But of course, deconstruction, destructuring. There is a clear link here. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, deconstruction, one of was first used by
54:37
Derrida was merely a translation of the German destruction. The destruction? Yeah, by Heidegger and Derrida. The concept definitely developed over time and became something that is distinct from what Heidegger was doing. But the the the destruction, not in the sense of destroying or annihilating, but the picking apart the strands and, yeah,
55:07
retracing the structure and also retracing the meanings that that something did have. Yeah. And now no longer carry with or maybe carry with which we are not. No. We are no longer attuned to. Yeah. Genealogy. As for Covid. Yeah yeah. Another thinker greatly influenced by this line of thinking. It is an interesting path to see that happening here.
55:32
And as already mentioned, it was already present in in zine sites, but it becomes more present throughout his work I think. Yeah. Talking about annihilate him. So yeah, I really wanted to so we haven't really, I've, he hasn't invoked him yet, but we're going to talk about Nietzsche a little bit. And once again, you know, this is only taking a little part of the lecture does not mean that Nietzsche is not Uber influential, but I think a very good a very good thing to keep in mind,
56:07
when one is trying to engage with Nietzsche, is I think he is one of the most misappropriated, misunderstood, misinterpreted philosophers. Famously was extremely, opposed to, Hitler and ideology and then eventually completely appropriated by the ideology for its own sake. Yeah. And this is something in a less extreme way, maybe. But I think this is something that still keeps being, regurgitated, I think doesn't do it.
56:46
But, of course, Nietzsche is invoked with, with nihilism here. And the common way of, misrepresenting, I think are misreading or not engaging with his work enough is to, read Nietzsche as being, an apologist or a promoter of nihilism or or being an A-list himself. And I think it's good to keep in mind that he wasn't he was he criticized. He is a thinker of nihilism, but he is not in the list. Anyway, he diagnosed. Yeah, our culture with nihilism. Yeah.
57:21
It's the same way of saying that your doctor who diagnoses you with cancer is pro that cancer. Exactly. Wild. Okay. Yeah. And I think if you have already decided or framed in that Nietzsche is a nihilist,
57:46
that would be incorrect. But if you have done so, everything you read of him could be viewed in that light. Absolutely. And if you are aware of it and and that is why we now treat it before of a talking about Nietzsche, if you're aware that that Nietzsche is not in favor of nihilism, or arguing for nihilism, then his philosophy becomes something more but more interesting, more rich, and also more challenging. With one of, when I try to some of them,
58:22
sometimes people don't even accept the fact that he was not the nihilists. If you have like a conversation, this is usually a conversation is past midnight. So, I remember someone finding out you study philosophy and then harming you. Yeah. Yeah, with, hounding you with, the need for clarifications about a plethora of topics. Or, as I said, what's your philosophy? What's your philosophy? And then. No, but Nietzsche was not. That's right. No, no. He wasn't. No. Well, but he was. No, no.
58:54
And there is this, there's this, aphorism and, and the decay science in which he said something according to the lines of you cannot destroy anything without creating something else. You have to create something to put in its place. Yeah. You, you you can, like, do your things down and build things up. Fine. But you cannot just destroy, know
59:17
which I think is a good thing to keep in mind when it comes to Nietzsche and nihilism. Yeah absolutely. So just a small primer before, we have a text, a floor. Yeah. And, we talk about Heidegger and Nietzsche.
59:36
what is our disposition? Heidegger hesitates. He says, I don't know. I'm in this disposition. Even Foucault addresses that the ontology of the present is a very difficult. Even Hegel knew this. He says, philosophy is, is is it's time captured in thoughts. He doesn't use the word concepts. This is very technical. You don't have to remember this. But for we philosophers are honest enough to realize it, it's very difficult to write about your own time.
1:00:06
It's very difficult of you because you're involved in it
1:00:10
completely and entangled in it. But Heidegger, I ask him questions. Is it anxiety he address that in in being in time? And then there might be good reasons to say it's anxiety, because Heidegger uses anxiety as a fundamental disposition. But in Nietzsche's, The madman, the fragment of the, the gay science, it's the experience of nihilism. God is dead. There is the that is a very desperate experience. If you if you read the text and it's you've studied it and I believe in the,
1:00:46
seminars, aren't, aren't we are perpetually falling backward. Sideward sideward forward in all directions. Yeah. With what water could we purify ourselves? It's a direct, awful experience. Nihilism. So you might say, if we're living in the era of nihilism, we are living in the era of deep anxiety. But you might also argue, I would, that we were living in the era of boredom.
1:01:14
We are living in a strange era where all we want is a nice, happy life. Think of Kierkegaard's esthetic, stage, which is not about enjoyment, only is about success. It's about fame. It's about attention. It's about acknowledgment. That's all we want. That's all we want. But is there really, really something happening? John Lennon once said, there's always something happening, but nothing going on. And with happening, he doesn't mean the event of the year, Agnes.
1:01:45
But there's always something happening, something that we pay all these his attention. This is what Heidegger called the curiosity to know. We're always going from this news to that news that every day there's a new thing that we're so completely, worried about or enthusiastic about. And then it fades away. That's just Nietzsche. Nietzsche spoke of us. Nietzsche spoke of us in love, spoke Jared Schuster, and he calls us the last men and women.
1:02:15
And of course, every gender choice in between and beyond that, we are the last men and women. And this is what I have to say, right? I tell you, one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you, you still have chaos in yourself. Alas, 1860s and there comes a time when man will no longer give birth to any star. There comes a time of the most despicable man and woman who can no longer despise himself. That's us. I show you the last man. What is love?
1:02:56
What is creation? What is longing? What is the star? And so I, the last man. And he blinks. Bow. He blinks. The earth has become small and on it hopes. The last man who makes everything small. His species is irrevocable. As the flea. The last man lives longest. We have discovered happiness, say the last man. And they blink a little poison now and then. That makes for pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end. For a pleasant death.
1:03:36
They have their little pleasures for the day and their little pleasures for the night. But they have a regard for health. We have discovered happiness, say the last man. And they blink.
1:03:50
So this might be one way of dangling this question. And I'm not saying that boredom is our fundamental disposition. It made me anxiety. It made me boredom. It may be something else. It's very difficult to say so, but we're thinking we're approaching a new field of phenomenology here, trying to describe what shows itself to to ourselves.
1:04:15
Also. And in many ways, because boredom and anxiety are just moods that are there, but still and in an extreme way, we are still attuned by a firm and solid trust in our search for certainty, control, efficiency. Yeah, this is still the way we think. We are still partly modern. We still believe in the enlightenment. We still believe in rationality. We believe in science. We believe that we should always strive for certainty, for control, for efficiency. This is our paradigm.
1:04:51
In fact, this idiom of, Cooley, on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions paradigm. He got this from Heidegger's Epochal and Analytics, where, Heidegger describes certain modes of thinking in which a certain mood and a certain concept of truth is, is there. And then it's for reasons that are very difficult to really trace or explain. It goes to another paradigm or another epochal understanding of Foucault would later occur in this epistemic.
1:05:25
So many thinkers are doing this, trying to understand Western history not as a suggest secession of different positions, but as a shift in moods, shift of dispositions, a shift of paradigms, epistemic. And it's you will come to this during your study in many, many other classes. So we are still in this paradigm of the search for certainty. At the same time, we don't really know what certainty is. And there's also this nagging mood of anxiety, of of despair, of boredom, which is also there.
1:06:01
So there's something this is one way of doing epochal analytics. The other one is the second strategy is based exactly on this idiom of Nietzsche. In the fragment on the madman, an article on color called I by Heidegger called Nietzsche's word God is dead.
1:06:20
And in this, essay, Heidegger says, well,
1:06:25
Nietzsche has shown that most Western philosophies are untold theologies. There are metaphysics, and Nietzsche proclaims himself to be the end of all these metaphysical positions.
1:06:40
And even Nietzsche himself said there is a successive decrease in the status and the imagery and the metaphysical status of this
1:06:52
ideal absolute world, and how the true world became a fable. But Heidegger follows Nietzsche here, and let's let's just look at it. It's very remarkable. There's something strange happening, although there's something even stranger happening as well. This is a strange. No, I'm not strange. Plato came with the world of ideas. Absolutely. Just strange to us. It's the world of ideas. Is the true world. Then Aristotle coined as the most fundamental being, the unmoved mover.
1:07:27
I hope you feel a little bit not really, that we're getting closer to ourselves. Unmoved mover. You know, I don't know the address, but an unmoved mover that that brings more bells to me than an an ideal world, which is absolutely, shut off for, for me, because as long as I live, I will never have any connection to that real world. Then the unmoved mover turned into into metaphysical thinking to God,
1:07:57
which is also our father, our creator, which is you feel what's happening. We're getting closer to ourselves because after it, the authority of God. And I don't mean this in the misdemeanor anyway. There's the authority of the church. The church is what really is the highest entity. And when the enlightenment really struck
1:08:25
I and lightning struck lightning. I like that there was reason. Reason is the highest order of of ontology, not the world of ideas. I don't know, we're not done, not church reason
1:08:41
and after reason. The first man, the last man are already born, now not reborn. But they were coming.
1:08:52
It's happiness. Personal happiness. You said utilitarianism. Very important. We don't like to admit that is really is what we're all doing. Utilitarianism. Socialism,
1:09:05
liberalism capitalism. These are the the religious of today.
1:09:13
And then there's nihilism. The last man. The world's become flat. Flat? Yeah. Something else happening. The real thing is the real thing to realize, Heidegger says,
1:09:27
isn't that any realism is not, as Nietzsche said, the end of metaphysics.
1:09:36
We all would say that that's the end of metaphysics. For all ages there was metaphysics and know.
1:09:43
Nihilism was always there from the start. Nietzsche regime has always been there. We've only have denied it all we have been doing is denying nihilism and escaping nihilism by inventing a supernatural world. Plato invented the supernatural world of the ideas because he wanted to fight the sophists around him or whatever, whatever was in his mind when he did it. And I think he was quite sincere. I even believe that I'm convinced that Plato would,
1:10:20
would really if I would talk to Plato now, he would say, no, no, no, this is not your my, my conviction that I will. This is really true. Just like the country would say no to Covid. No reason that's real. Really. In the highest instance, no nihilism is the hidden, hidden
1:10:38
ground of the entire history of Western philosophy. Franz Kafka. Some of his books are also on my list. He wrote. For many, many ages, metaphysics has mercifully painted and decorated the empty sky.
1:10:59
But now for us today, the paint has corroded, flaked and withered. So here we are now, in a world with no ultimate because a lot of little goals, no ultimate meaning, no ultimate truth. Nothing forever. Nothingness. Forever. As Nietzsche said it, the heel ism is the experience that our world is just an insignificant speck
1:11:26
in an indifferent universe. This is a Nietzsche. Try to think this through. And he came with the intuition that the all there is is will to power, which is in fact only there are only colliding forces. Reality is just. There's nothing more than this. With no meaning, with no intention, no goal. Nothing is just forces colliding. He called this will to power. Not very. It sounds a bit metaphysical. Will to power as if power is the highest instance.
1:11:56
Heidegger's all this in Nietzsche, he said Nietzsche is still a metaphysical thinking thinker because Nietzsche said, I'm an type of black Plato. I'm the reversal of Plato. Well, if you're the reverse of Plato, Heidegger says you're still tied to it. You're still tied to what you if you're anti something, you're still tied to it. An atheist is always very much connected to religion and God.
1:12:21
So Nietzsche is struggling. He speaks about the eternal recurrence of the same. This is what happens, the eternal recurrence of the same. There's no progress. Nothing is getting better. But he also says we must attempt a reevaluation of all values. You've got to worry better and still utopian thoughts all about the one about it still values. Values is a metaphysical concept, and Nietzsche tries to talk about the ubermensch, a kind of people that are really capable of embracing their fate.
1:12:56
There are more for them. It's a utopian anthropological thought, Heidegger says. There's a bit too much metaphysics still in Nietzsche. I'm going, but I'm going to do something else, he said. And I'm not saying that Heidegger's right. Nietzsche is wrong. Not at all.
1:13:11
Heidegger says, what if we would consider the eternal recurrence of the same to be the perpetual manifestation and manipulation of all beings in the era of technology? What if that would be the eternal recurrence of the same that Nietzsche has proclaimed and predicted that all we are doing in the era of technology, because this is so not the ontology of the present, really gets a name. Here we are in the era of technology, modern technology. We are in the era of technology.
1:13:42
Heidegger says, in which every thing we do is to manipulate beings technologically. Eternal occurrence of the same. There's no real goal. Heidegger even says technology is nihilism in practice, so he's trying to make very tangible what Nietzsche is talking about. Here we enter the question of whether Heidegger is a philosopher of technology. He is not. But for philosophy of technology, Heidegger is one of the most important inspirations, no matter how difficult his text is.
1:14:17
But I'll guide you through it. He is one of the most important players. Scharf and Dusek, who wrote about it, published a huge, huge book with all the most important primary texts on technology. In their introduction, they say Heidegger is the single most influential position in the field. So take this to build up some encouragement and some courage, because after the break, we're going to read the question concerning technology, which is seems
1:14:50
a very difficult text, but is in fact not that hard. And it is very, very important.
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