What is Dasein?

Just out of curiosity: In what sense? :wink:

Also, just for the hell of it, what is your own take on Dasein and/or dasein? :-k

And don’t forget, this is the philosophy forum. You know, whatever that means. Here for example. :sunglasses:

If you do say so yourself? :wink:

I’m certainly not selling hard determinism here. I should have been clearer. I am speaking of influences or instincts which could potentially impact our behavior. Let’s say that George is walking down the street, minding his own business like he always does, and he encounters a dog that is unleashed. The dog, whose name is Skippy by the way, approaches George in all innocence and barks at him playfully (which is a dog’s prerogative I’m told). Suddenly, George produces a pistol and instantaneously puts a round right through the hapless creature’s head with the intention of killing it, which he does. Now, say our good friend George had been attacked by a dog as a child. Is it not possible that had George not had this traumatic experience as a child he might have acted differently? If we recognize this possibility, can we honestly consider George’s act to be one of pure free will? No, we cannot. Mind you, I’m not saying that George is not responsible for poor old Skippy’s death, which he most certainly is (nor am I advocating the killing of dogs willy-nilly). Please note: I’m not posing this question with an eye towards ethics, morality or law.

But I do pose the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above as revolving around ethics, morality and the law.

In judging George’s action there are facts that can be demonstrated/established. Objective truths embedded in his life predisposing him to shoot the dog.

Mitigating circumstances they might be called if it were ever to become a matter of the law.

Dasein as I understand it is largely moot here. There are facts about “I” which are not really open to dispute. Where was “I” born"? When was “I” born? What are “I’s” genetic/biological components? Who were part of “I’s” family? “I’s” community? What was “I” indoctrinated to believe about particular moral and political issues as a child? What was “I” indoctrinated to believe about God and religion as a child. These are facts that may or may not be conclusively established. Facts that objectively are true for all of us. Why? Because they are in fact true.

It’s just that even in the either/or world only an omniscient God would have access to all of the facts. Facts going all the way back to an understanding of existence itself.

But human interactions with dogs varies down through the ages. And they produce conflicting cultural/individual narratives. For some dogs are part of their diet, for others they are raised to fight other dogs; or, for others still, they are trained to be performers or drug detectors or killers.

The dasein part [as I understand it] revolves around our personal reactions to these behaviors — behaviors construed to be either moral or immoral. As then construed to be bahaviors that ought or ought not to be proscribed.

In other words, philosophers/ethicists do not appear [to me] to have at their disposal the tools necessary to resolve these conflicting narratives/values/behaviors.

How are rational men and women obligated to treat dogs?

And the crucial factor embedded in the determinism debate revolves around establishing the extent to which all human behaviors are only ever as they could have been.

No less so in human beings than as in dogs. As in termites. It’s just that our own species has acquired the illusion that “I” chooses these things with at least some measure of actual autonomy.

Hiedegger’s Dasien (“existence” or “being-there”) is a rather interesting concept. There is no such thing as detached reflection for Heidegger, to his credit. His is a world of flesh and bone, and it is through angst that the totality of human existence is revealed to us. Rejecting abstract and theoretical approaches, i.e., the traditional metaphysics of presence, to investigate the "questions of being (Seinsfrage), Heidegger is quite correct in grounding Dasien in concrete human situations (hence, Dasien’s “average everydayness”) - the proper starting point when considering the nature of Being (i.e., Being-for-itself). Rather than focusing on the foreground, and bypassing the (traditional) subject-object model, Heidegger looks to the background conditions against which entities appear intelligible to us (“disclosedness”). It is Dasien’s “pre-ontological understanding” which makes this possible. That is to say Dasien (somehow) has a prior understanding of Being (I smell Metaphysics). This a priori (I’m unsure as to the applicability of the term) knowledge, embedded (or grounded) in everyday activities, opens a “clearing” before which entities show up. The idea of Being creating a “historically unfolding clearing” (a unique concept, I would argue) is intriguing. Dasien is always “ahead of itself,” it always “runs ahead.” Heidegger posits three existentials (which I take to be the main characteristics of Being). The first, or starting point, is throwness (an excellent concept). That is to say a Being’s “facticity” - the fact that it exists; Being is not self-generating (causa sui). Being is “at issue” with itself (I would argue that facticity “haunts” Being). As Sartre puts it: “I am responsible for everything except my own responsibility.” Next, is projection: Dasien always (necessarily) takes a position on its life through concrete action. Finally, Dasien is “discourse.” As such, its articulates (i.e., addresses or discusses) entities. Being that thinks about being".] Heidegger argues that the “resolute confrontation of death” (the culmination of our possibilities) is necessary for “authentic existence.” I agree that Dasien is Being-toward-death (that is, future directed). Being is “authentic” when it accepts its responsibility for its life as a totality; not simply a sum of choices, but as the “happening” of a life. That is to say, a life “stretched out between life and death.” In other words, “Becoming.” I agree that Being is not “fixed.” It follows then, that inauthenticity (a natural tendency) is Being’s flight before itself in the face of its own finitude. Heidegger argues that this tendency results from our existence as “they” (das Man), i.e., participants in the “historically constituted happening of a people” or Volk. I’m not quite sure where I stand on this point in the light of certain historical events.

Number 6, yours are interesting points.
I have parsed them into ‘chewable’ bits.

I have given up discussing with you re your “da-sein” which is all over the place.

Number 6 [see above] has presented a reasonable summary of da-sein within Being and Time [BT]. Of course there are more details than that.

It will be more effective for you to present your views re da-sein within that kind of framework [or similar] so that your ideas do not fly everywhere.

Thus for every of your point presented you need to refer to one of those points or a new point within an acceptable framework of BT or your own explained view showing how it agree or deviate from Being and Time.

At present I am trying to go through Being and Time [plus later Heidegger’s articles] with a fine-toothed comb to understand [not necessary agree] the philosophy of Heidegger.

Noted. And with your own comforting and consoling objectivist narrative still intact. Good for you.

His wall of words portrayal of Heidegger’s wall of words Dasein cannot possibly be further removed from my own efforts here to take intellectual contraptions of this sort down out of the scholastic clouds of definitions and deductions; to then situate them out in the world of actual conflicted human interactions. My framework revolves precisely around the existential relationship between the values I’ve held and the life that I’ve actually lived:

Re abortion, here for example:

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

Now, when you or Number six or some other Heidegger scholar is willing to integrate their own wall of words philosophical assessment of Dasein into an actual flesh and blood context that revolves around a value judgment of their own choosing, come back around.

The only reason that your own ideas don’t “fly everywhere” is because their meaning starts with the assumption that your own definitions and deductions [as a serious philosopher] are by default the only viable stepping stone into the moral future.

Well, if you wish to be thought of as “one of us”.

This may be an inane idea, but we could start from the very beginning and try to arrive at a common understanding of what we mean by “exist” (then “existence,” “I exist,” and so forth) before ultimately taking a look at Dasein or any other so-called “existential” concept. I know this could easily go awry.

Your points are everywhere and groundless.

Unless you have invented your own framework & system and recognized [not necessary all agree] by the philosophical community, you have no choice by to rely on the existing recognized frameworks & system.

For example, if we rely on the recognized Scientific Framework & System, we have no choice but comply with its principles. For example if you talk of anything scientific, you cannot insist on the principles of mysticism, religion, creationism, and other supernatural views.

Now since you are discussing your views within the concept of da-sein, i.e. Heidegger’s and not some others, you will have to comply with Heidegger’s Framework and System re Dasein.

If you want to present da-sein as different from Heidegger’s Framework, then you will have to argue for your case first, at least refer to Heidegger’s view as the base and from there present why it is different from Heidegger.

What you have been talking about so far re da-sein is all over the place without any specific reference to Heidegger as a reference point.

Btw, have you read Heidegger’s Being and Time [BT].
Perhaps if you read the following in BT;

Part One- Division One - Chapter V
B. The Everyday Being of the There and the Falling Prey of Da-sein
38. Falling Prey and Thrownness 164

you may get a semblance and be able to get an idea why and how you have ‘fallen prey’ into the ‘inauthentic’ ontic hole you dug yourself.

Any view on this?

Sure, and in grappling to pin down the precise definition and meaning of “exist”, our own “epistemologists” here can go on post after post after post after post and not once make any actual substantive reference to the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein out in the world of conflicted human behaviors revolving around the trajectory I noted above. An intertwining of value judgments rooted in the life that I lived over the years — the actual experiences that shaped and molded them. That shaped and molded my thinking about them.

Instead, prismatic is really only interested in exchanging intellectual contraptions with you. And then once you accept his technologically sound premises regarding “progressive” behaviors, you may or may not live long enough to experience a “future” in which he is shown to in fact be The Last Objectivist Standing.

Starting with, for example, chattel slavery. :wink:

No, my points are grounded in the actual existential trajectory of my own personal value judgments with regard to abortion; and in how those experiences then reconfigured my thinking about it over the years. And then how in particular my thinking there reconconfigured from an objectivisist frame of mind to one revolving around what I construe to be the components of moral nihilism.

While even here I acknowledge this reflects only what I have come to believe “in my head” “here and now”. I have no capacity to demonstrate that others are obligated to think like me if they wish to be construed as rational human beings.

Sure, fall back on this if you must. Only when the epistemologists among us are all in argeement regarding the one and the only optimal “intellectual framework and system” for discussing the distinctiction I make between that which is applicable to all of us objectively in either/or world and that which comes to be embodied subjectively/subjunctively in conflicting moral and political values in the the is/ought world, is such an attempt even to be made.

RM/AO? VO? One of your own Capital Letter Contraptions?

You really, really, really would like it to be like this, wouldn’t you?

Instead, I turn it around. I encompass my own understanding of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Then I ask the Heidegger scholars to note how this is not in sync with Martin’s own eminently more scholastic rendition of Dasein.

Then I challenge them to bring their intellectual contraptions out into the world of actual human interactions in conflict. Where I can then note the components of my own intellectual contraption – identity, values and political power – by situating them in an actual existential trajectory as I did above re abortion. Where they can then do the same regarding their components.

Oh, yeah. It was assigned by either Dr. Rene DeBrabander or Dr Walt Fuchs at TSU here in Baltimore many years ago. Didn’t finish it though.

Note to others:

He’s really pinned me to the mat with this, right?

I am not saying there must be one ideal “intellectual framework and system” to work on.
This is a philosophical forum and the discussion can only be efficient when we start with some kind of rational “intellectual framework and system,” e.g. Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, etc. or your own.

So far what you have presented your views are everywhere and groundless, thus cannot qualify as a reasonable Framework and System.
Since you mentioned ‘da-sein’ most of the time in presenting your view, then it would be more efficient to use Heidegger’s thesis as a base and then you explain if you are deviating from Heidegger views.

That is not the way with your
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529.
First you must present what you understand what Heidegger’s view of da-sein is, then you explain why you agree with some of it and how you come up with your different views.

This is why I am taking the trouble to understanding Heidegger more fully.
Based on what I have read of Heidegger’s BT [50%] so far [still a long way to go - months] I believe you have misunderstood Heidegger and took the wrong turn and dropped into a whirlpool.

For Philosophical sake, I believe this is a rational and fair approach.
You need to understand Heidegger’s da-sein in BT and elsewhere thoroughly before you use his concept of da-sein to form your own.

My point though revolves around the intersection of rational thought and moral behavior. Out in the world of actual human interactions in conflict.

Are folks like Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, you and I able to construct the optimal or the only rational argument such that human interactions embedded out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially are able to be determined as constituting “progressive” behavior in regards to chattel slavery, abortion, gender roles, separation of church and state, just war or any other well known and much discussed/debated “conflicting goods”?

Now, I’m not arguing that this can’t be done. I’m only suggesting that each of us as individuals construct and reconstruct particular arguments embedded in the manner in which my “I” construes the meaning of dasein above.

There either are or are not limitations imposed on the tools of philosophy once the discussion shifts from the either/or world to the is/ought world.

Yet even here I acknowledge that my own narrative is no less an existential contraption. That, in other words, in order for “I” to be fully cognizant of the moral obligation of rational men and women, “I” must have an objective understanding of Existence itself. And to be able to note that re the is/ought world truths can be demonstrated in much the same manner that they can re the either/or world.

I merely insist that such demonstrations be brought down out of the scholastic clouds and situated in particular contexts we might all be familiar with.

So, sure give it a go:

Note how “it would be more efficient to use Heidegger’s thesis as a base” for doing so.

To wit:

Let’s suppose I don’t understand precisely what Heidegger’s view is here. Let’s suppoose that you [or others] do. Okay, take that view and situate it out in the world of conflicting goods. Illustrate the text by noting the manner in which Heidegger actually did defend one set of behaviors rather than another in the course of noting his own particular conflicting interactions with others.

Or [when push comes to shove] was Martin in turn just one more of Durant’s “epistemologists”.

Let’s explore his take on Dasein as it might be relevant to, say, Adolph Hitler’s moral and political agenda.

Again, what disturbs the objectivists regarding my own narrative here is that while they insist fascism either is or is not a rational frame of mind, I speculate that it can only ever be a particular existential contraption rooted in a particular set of political prejudices rooted in a particular set of assumptions regarding the “human condition”.

It is always that they know what “the truth” is here, not whatever the truth may or may not be argued to be, that propels the psychology of objectivism.

More than anything they need to keep from tumbling down into the hole that I am in re human morality in a No God world.

No God, no objective morality. So, sure, all along the moral/philosophical/political spectrum it has to be invented.

Human history is veritably bursting at the seams with them, right?!

The point [mine] isn’t whether I understand or misunderstand Heidegger’s philosophy, but the extent to which that philosophy [correctly understood] can be demonstrated/defended as entirely in sync with the moral obligations of rational human beings.

That’s my challenge.

Yes… and probably for a reason.
Anyway, after a quick and superficial glance to the other posts, I guess you received no answer on what Heidegger means with Dasein. So… I give it a try.

No. That’s about Being, not Dasein (“being there”).
The starting point of Being and Time is “the question of Being”, or “the question of the meaning of Being” (which «must be formulated»).
Here Being is not a being, an entity, because «the Being of entities is not itself an entity». Hence:

Yet, if you want to know what Being means, you can hardly avoid looking at entities:

So, after establishing that in order to know what the Being of beings means we have to interrogate a being, the problem is a bout picking a ‘good’ being.

And this is how we (Heidegger) get to Dasein:

That’s clear, isn’t it? If it is possible to summarize this any further, one may say (maybe) that Heidegger uses the term to denote an entity, namely the entity that inquires and specifically the one which might inquire about its Being and ‘get its essential character’ from that. (Note that ‘essential character’ means ‘mode of being’).

And that it is very important, because:

And in case you feel you might use some clarification, fear not, the man is going to do that:

If you enjoyed this, you can have a lot more if you read Being and Time, which is available online (and where the quotes come from).

If Heidegger was a ‘confirmed atheist’ would depend hugely on your definition for that - and on your definition of God.

Finally, I guess you could be a young man, so allow me a word of advice: don’t do this to yourself.

What does it mean “to exist”…

Or, rather, how on earth can this be wholly/fully grasped until an ontological understanding of Existence itself is within reach? And only then can we grapple with discovering the extent to which there is [or is not] a teleological component to Existence. Which most folks call God.

The bottom line here is that [to the best of my own knowledge] we are not privy to the extent to which the human brain/mind is even capable of answering such questions as, “why does something exist rather than nothing at all?” or, “why does this something exist rather than another something?”

Cue, among other things, Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”.

Then there are the quandaries embedded in solipsism, cartesan demons and sim worlds.

Or the enigmatic nature of human choice in a wholly determined universe.

What’s crucial for me though regarding Dasein/dasein is that whatever it means for any particular “I” to exist, it exists here and not there, now and not then.

And, going back to the biological birth of any particular “I”, what does it mean to have been born “here and now” rather than “there and then”? How are historical, cultural and experiential memes relevant in understanding that particular value judgments “I” comes to embody on a particular [and profoundly unique] existential sojourn from the cradle to the grave?

What can be communicated to others regarding “I” that reflects an objective description of what is in fact true? True for all of us. And what is instead rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

And, most important of all, how are the technical arguments derived here by “serious philosophers” intertwined in actual human interactions that do come into conflict over value judgments?

Just came in to read a few posts.
I was away doing some serious readings and research on Heidegger’s Being and Time.
I have just finished reading one round of the complete book with a fine-tooth comb but that is just a preliminary rough understanding of the book. Looks like I need to read the book more than 5 times or more together with references to various secondary sources and the writings of the later-Heidegger.

Since you are using the term ‘Dasein’ or ‘dasein’ you need to understand Heidegger’s Being and Time [BT] fully and thoroughly otherwise you are very intellectually dishonest on this issue.

If you have understood Heidegger’s BT you would not have presented your philosophy in terms of Dasein in such a bastardized manner, sick and perverted way you do.

Within the framework of BT, you are living the inauthentic existence of the ontic world which in your case is so messy that it is concealing the true essence of dasein and preventing it from termporalizing temporality ontologically to realize existence’s true potentials and possibilities of positiveness.

I am not going to waste time discussing with you on this. You have to read Heidegger’s Being and Time and understand it fully and thoroughly especially on those very nuanced elements related to ‘death’.

Thanks and noted your points and link.

Since the OP I have now ventured to read Heidegger’s Being and Time [BT] [Joan Stambaugh’s translation converted to a Word file]* more seriously with a fine-tooth comb. I have just finished reading the whole book one round [highlighting and compiling notes] and I believe I have to read it a few more times, >5 times? or more? and hopefully not the 50 times I read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to grasp the philosophy of the book reasonably.

  • also have the Macquarie and Johnson in PDF format.

To understand BT fully is really tough going due to the voluminous quantity of new concepts, perspectives and ideas introduced and their ‘gymnastic’ combinations.

Okay, after you have accomplished this task please come back and note for us the extent to which your new understanding of both Heidegger and Dasein has impacted the life that you actually live.

In particular relating to two things:

1] the manner in which your new understanding impacted any particular behaviors you had involving conflicting value judgments as this relates to what you construe “here and now” to be “progressive” behaviors.

2] the manner in which you imagine Heidegger himself might react to the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

All I ask here is that you bring your assessment down to earth. As it pertains to a context that most are likely to be familiar with. As this relates to 1] identity 2] conflicting goods and 3] the role of power [politics] in human interaction.

Power embodied in “might makes right” agendas, “right makes might” agendas and/or “moderation, negotiation and compromise” agendas.

Also, how has your reading to date had any practical consequences regarding the manner in which you choose to live your life? Any possibility [in the interim] that you might be willing to focus the beam on actual existential conflicts that you have had, or have come upon “in the news”?

Admittedly, I’m not an authority on the German language but to the best of my knowledge Martin didn’t invent the word “dasein”. He merely insisted on capitalizing it in order to ascribe an “ontic/ontological” meaning “technically” [to a being in time] as a “serious philosopher” in a “philosophical tome”. That infamous didactic/scholastic distinction between the en-soi and the pour-soi. Going all the way back to Plato’s noumenal/phenomenal contraptions.

Also, as I noted above, my interest here revolves around the willingness of those who do claim to “fully and thoroughly” understand what he meant by it, to bring that meaning “out into the world” of actual conflicting human behaviors.

As with Karpel Tunnel on another thread…
[b]
This is bordering on “huffing and puffing”. Making me the issue. You level these charges against me but my chief concern is still the same: bringing your own “epistemology” down to earth and testing it “out in the world” of actual conflicting behaviors.

Instead, you are slipping more and more into a subjunctive reaction that exposes much more about you than about me. Why the sudden outburst of chagrin? Why do you feel it necessary to reconfigure the discussion into an attack on me?[/b]

Why don’t we take this to another thread. Maybe in the “rant” forum? :wink:

As for this…

…I’ll leave it to others to decide for themselves the extent to which my arguments here may or may not be deconstructing the Intellectual Contraption that you yourself have constructed “in your head” over the years.

Though, like me, in your own No God world, you still have oblivion to look forward to.

So what’s the point then, to make sure that even after your own particular “I” is on its way back to “star stuff”, you will have created your own collection of Capital Letter Words that will be around long after you – the flesh and blood you – has been obliterated.

Most folks deal with this through God and religion. They “live on” “soulfully” in one or another rendition of the afterlife. But you and I don’t have access to that. So I suspect that psychologically this quest to truly grasp the meaning of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time [on this side of the grave] revolves around…around what exactly?

In German, all nouns are capitalized. So MH wasn’t “insisting” on anything by capitalizing “Dasein”.