Philanthro
Heidegger analyses those structures already at work in our existence. One such is Befindlichkeit, how you find yourself in the world. In Being and Time, he analysed anxiety. In a different work he analysed the mood of boredom, how time becomes slow. This is chapter 1 of this book.
Stimmung. Or attunements/moods in English.
In Chapter 2 Heidegger engages with the question of ’world’.
Umwelt. Environment – the surrounding world.
Jakob von Uexküll, drew on the theme of the environment quite a lot. He is an important pathmark in the history of biology.
In order to answer the question of what the world is Heidegger argues we can take 3 paths. The first path is to think of the essence of the world related to that and a historical enquiry in relation to it.
In the medieval conception of world, Mundus, man has a world given to him by God.
In the context of Being and Time, world is more like a horison of meaning. As human beings we are embedded in this everyday dealing. Whenever we exist we do so in a horison of meaning called world. This is the second type of enquiry, a phenomenological enquiry into the notion of world. We know fundamentally how to do a lot of things in everyday life. This is the factum that Heidegger takes his leap from in order to get to the conception of world as horison.
The third path is comparative examination. It is neither of the two other. Man has world, and is as such both master and servant of it. Do animals also have world? Do things have world?
What does it mean to have world?
Material objects lacks world. Animals are poor in world. And men are are world-forming.
Don’t care too much about Heidegger’s mystical words.
Heidegger does relent that there are more paths to uncovering the world.
The essence of life is essential to the comparative examination of this work.
We start from some preconception of things in order to conceive them better. As such, we are moving in the hermeneutical circle.
Philosophy is supposed to be a clarificatory understanding of the ground on which we always stand. For Heidegger this means philosophy is regressive rather than progressive. Putting together what is already there.
Heidegger is famous for the notion of understanding, interpretation and discursive interpretation. For Heidegger our preunderstanding of the world is Verstehen. He calls this seinverstehen, we are always in a world. When we exist, we are interpreting that already disclosed understanding, this interpretation, or Auslegung.
When we say the animal is poor in world, we are not putting them in a hierarchy.
Human Dasein can do more, there is a higher accessibility to the world for humans.
You need failure to start reflecting on that which is inconspicuous.
World is to have access to what is, to beings.
World is defined as the collection of beings we can deal with
The stone is worldless, it lacks access to anything.
It doesn’t have access to beings as beings.
When Heidegger talks about empathy, he does so critically. Empathy is a term that was used by Husserl. In aesthetics of Einfühling, or empathy, it is similar. In the 5th meditation of Cartesian meditations. But Diego didn’t wanna say it.
Whenever Heidegger says anything, he always has many things mind. He makes a lot of references in every sentence.
In the tradition of hermeneutics, the discipline of interpretation, that originated in biblical texts. Then it became secularised, and was used to interpret difficult texts in general. And then some Germans that started talking about what we are actually doing when we interpret a text: putting ourselves into the inner consciousness of the author, we place ourselves in the shoes of the author.
To them, we place ourselves into the inner life of the author.
Heidegger says nah.
In Cartesian meditations by Husserl, the theme was descartes. Because to descartes you can only be certain of your own consciousness. In the 5th meditation, he comes up with a solution. Diego thinks it’s lame. He starts talking about empathy. What this concept represents is the thing that grants us access to other conscious beings. So in actuality, we do have access to that.
Heidegger argues that this implies that we are first of all an enclosed consciousness that needs to step out of its own consciousness to be with others. From the very beginning, we are always with each other, mitsein, there is no need for the construction of a bridge between ourselves and the world and its inhabitants. We are already there among others in the world, this is the kind of world we’re thrown into.
Do we even get access to other human beings? It seems difficult with stones and lizards.
No we cannot go along with others, because we are always with others. There is no specific moment like this.