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Everyone saw books like “Hegel in 90 Minutes” or “100 Great Philosophers”on the shelves of stores. Why are these books evil?
First, they produce a seamless experience. Problem-free is the confidence that the” essence of ideas ” of a thinker exists separately from the questions that he asked (as if he thought in order to write definitions in a textbook). They teach that all the thinker's ” ideas “have a single point-as if the philosopher needed many” ideas ” to express the same point. In this view, Heidegger is not a thinker who lived a long life, saw and influenced the turning points in the world history of the twentieth century, and repeatedly revised his beliefs (including once radically). Heidegger becomes a name for some statement that you can insert in a conversation to show off your erudition. For example, statements that “the central concept of' Being and Time ' is Dasein.”
Second, they produce syncretism. Syncretism is the belief that all philosophers (sociologists) are doing one big joint thing, and they can be easily combined with each other. They teach that ” philosophy “(or “sociology”) is something like the Sagrada Familia, which is built alternately by different foremen according to a single plan. And that's why the most successful builders manage to work on two construction sites at the same time – for example, Heidegger is “important” for both philosophy and sociology. In this case, it does not matter that there are many ways of sociological thinking for which Heidegger is completely irrelevant or hostile. Or that the concept of “field” was adapted by Pierre Bourdieu from the dynamic psychology of Kurt Lewin, and that the concept of “habitus” directly inherits the “habitualities” of Edmund Husserl.
Third, they produce dogmatism. Dogmatism is the belief that a theory can be learned by reading a summary, rather than by working it out with a theorist. They teach that any philosopher could express everything in much shorter terms if he were not forced to write long books. So all the most important things you need to know about Heidegger will fit in one answer to The Question. And then it will seem extremely strange that Heidegger created a special language, inventing many neologisms to convey the inexpressible by means of ordinary language.
Why is nonproblemism, syncretism, and dogmatism evil for thinking? Martin Heidegger answers: “We get into what is called thinking when we start thinking for ourselves. For such an attempt to succeed, we must be prepared to learn from thought.”
During his philosophical career, Heidegger developed many remarkable ideas. The problem is that there are many different interpretations of them, and depending on the research approach, Heidegger's work (especially later) can take on very different forms. I will try to briefly outline the most important, in my opinion, ideas.
Heidegger, at the time of writing Being and Time, was not satisfied with Husserl's phenomenology, which implied a Cartesian and Kantian dualism of subject / object, consciousness/reality. Heidegger believed that by adopting the vocabulary of the European philosophical tradition, Husserl also accepts all the stereotypes that exist in it. To make the world one, we must go back to the very origins of philosophy, before Descartes split the world into subject / object, start with Being, and not with consciousness cut off from the real world – the Cartesian construct. According to Heidegger, the best way to start this process was to turn to the pre-Socratics.
The central concept of “Being and Time” is Dasein. Dasein is something that can ask philosophical questions, whose existence is based on itself. It is not a” subject “in the Cartesian sense, but rather a”subject-object”. One of the constituent elements of Dasein is being-in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein). Being-in-the-world is interaction with the world, impact on the world, reactions to stimuli of the world, constant habitual behavior, not necessarily “meaningful” or “rational” – just habitual, everyday. This is an absolutely central idea of Heidegger's early philosophy – the primacy and basicity of ordinary, habitual, everyday behavioral practices. All other ways of understanding being are based on these practices. Wittgenstein called this sum of human practices (“background”) “the whole hurly-burly”(something like “all this mess”), and believed that it is impossible to investigate and clearly categorize. Heidegger believed that it is possible, and “Being and Time “is devoted to just this task – the study and structuring of”existential structures of being”.
In this way, he described all aspects of human phenomenology – social interactions (“mood”, Befindlichkeit), space, language and communication, and time. Moreover, in each case, the usual, habitual behavioral level is more basic and provides an opportunity for further disclosure and understanding of the world. It would be too long to tell, but I'll give you one example. When interacting with the world, tools (Zeug) are used. The tool exists in the context of a holistic referential network of practices and meanings, and is therefore familiar and invisible when used. Heidegger called it ” handiness “(Zuhandenheit). But there is another way to look at an instrument – for example, when it is broken and becomes visible – abstractly, as a substance with properties. This is called Vorhandenheit (“present at hand”, but the semantic translation is something like “before your eyes”). Zuhandenheit is more basic and necessary for understanding things like Vorhandenheit. Approximately the same with all other structures of being.
“Understanding” is another important aspect of ” Being and Time.” For Heidegger, understanding the world is its gradual unfolding (Erschlossenheit) by means of a constant, long – term transition from “self” to “world” and back (let me remind you that “I” and “world” – Dasein-are a whole, which is why it is more correct to call it subject-object), and adding context about both. This is the so-called hermeneutical circle-an idea that plays a very important role in all of Heidegger's work.
Why is the behavioral level in any case basic and necessary for further understanding of the world? Because a person is “thrown” (Geworfen, “thrown in” – Geworfenheit) into the world – by definition, he is already in a tradition, in a historical context, in a network of practices and presuppositions, in the “background”. This idea is fundamentally contrary to the philosophy that began with Bacon and Descartes, and especially the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which gave the philosopher or scientist a privileged position that allows an objective view “from the outside”. It also implies the absence of any human essence, “human nature” (another idea of Enlightenment philosophy). Man is thrown in, he is being in a historical context, his essence is his existence, nothing more and nothing less. “Objective” scientific research is idealization and abstraction. The scientist is always in a historical context and can only interpret, but not produce absolute knowledge. This is the central idea of the postmodern understanding of science, which gave rise to such disciplines as the sociology of science. Bruno Latour's books ” Laboratory life “and” We have Never Been Modern” (“Nous n'avons jamais ete modernes”, “We have never been modern”) are among her most popular voice – overs. But it should be noted that this is not exclusively Heidegger's idea. For example, a similar concept of so – called” immanent criticism ” – “criticism from within” – was central to the”critical theory” of the Frankfurt School.
Social philosophy, beginning with Hobbes and Adam Smith, and especially the philosophy of the Enlightenment, implied that a person is an individual agent who has a certain nature. Heidegger showed that this is not so – the essence of man does not exist, the world is complete, and this is the sum of human practices. Based on this understanding of the object of sociological research, as well as on other ideas expressed by Heidegger and his follower Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Bourdieu developed an influential school of sociology. For example, Bourdieu's habitus is in a certain sense synonymous with Sorge and neighboring concepts, and the social field is synonymous with the context of a particular human practice in the referential whole.
The influence of Heidegger's “middle” and “late” (i.e., after the “Turn”, die Kehre) on sociology is not so clear-cut. On the one hand, in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, one can trace early ideas that are important for sociology – in particular, the formation of a referential network of practices, a holistic context around a “work of art” (for example, a temple). But in general, the late Heidegger's penchant for elaborate, carefully chosen terminology (where even the choice of phonemes plays an important role), and, as a result, his explicit anti-Wittgensteinian position – idiosyncratic vocabulary against contextual practices, “language games” – seems to me to say that the late Heidegger did not have any noticeable significance for sociology.
To summarize: Heidegger is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century – in my opinion, the most important (along with Wittgenstein). Heidegger's concepts and even some of his terminology are well established in some disciplines, especially sociology.