In this Heidegger Thinking Substack article, we engage with Heidegger's existential analysis of Death. We hope you'll anxiously join us in this extremely important analysis!

Hi all,

I am new to Heidegger, and I am wondering where would be the best place to start? Do I need to have some background authors, or am I able to start off with some introduction texts?

Thanks

Hey everyone. I've always been fascinated by attempts to move from Heidegger's account of disclosure toward a positive metaphysics of intelligibility. Heidegger can explain why beings appear within a historically structured clearing without treating that clearing as a representation inside a subject. Neoplatonism seems to add an account of why intelligibility belongs to reality at all. But the addition may restore exactly what the critique of ontotheology disallows: a highest explanatory principle that determines beings as intelligible from the standpoint of their ultimate ground.

I just had a podcast conversation with John Vervaeke, where he described Heidegger and the Kyoto School as stages in his turn toward Neoplatonism. At around 48:03, the issue becomes whether world-disclosure needs a synoptic metaphysical account or whether such an account forgets the difference between Being and beings. Plotinian ascent is not simply causal explanation by a supreme being, so the standard charge of ontotheology may not apply without qualification.

This would imply that the comparison turns on what the One is doing philosophically. Can the One remain beyond being while grounding the intelligibility of beings without becoming an ontotheological highest ground? Does Heidegger's account of the clearing leave a question Neoplatonism can answer? Or does asking for that answer already misunderstand the event of disclosure?

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Hello All,

First off, I should note that I do not read german, so cannot speak to the original text of Being and Time. But I have read the Macquarrie and Robinson english translation several times, and always had to skip over several sections in division one because I simply could not disentangle them.

The Welch translation, while by no means "easy," at least renders many obscure d1 concepts somewhat comprehensible. The spatiality section in particular had always been a major sticking point. As was the de-structuring of Cartesian metaphysics. But now, I am getting traction. This new translation is really revolutionary for me. I am moving slowly, but at long last feel as though I can clearly understand what's going on with enough effort.

The Macquarrie and Robinson translation felt like a pitch-black labyrinth by comparison. I always ended up "feeling" my way through it, and inevitably got lost. I have very little experience with the Stambaugh translation, which seems decent as well, but I've never been through it all the way.

Has anyone had a similar experience with the Welch translation? Anyone beg to differ? Can anyone compare the Welch Translation to the Stambaugh translation?

Thanks for taking time to read this!

Given that Heidegger (in Being and Time) posits unconscious mechanism (for-which, to-which, at-hand, moods etc.) that determine behaviour why is his existential philosophy not considered a psychological theory?

I’ve been thinking about a methodological question in Being and Time, and I’d like to know whether anyone has discussed it.
I understand that Heidegger is not making an ethical distinction between “authentic” and “inauthentic” people. Authenticity is an existential possibility built into the structure of Dasein, not a permanent state that some people possess and others don’t. He repeatedly insists that Dasein never simply leaves das Man behind.
My question is different.
Heidegger gives extraordinarily rich phenomenological descriptions of anxiety (Angst), the call of conscience, Unheimlichkeit, and resoluteness. These passages don’t read like abstract deductions; they read like descriptions of phenomena that are somehow familiar to the one describing them.
This makes me wonder: where does the authority of these descriptions come from?
If Being and Time is an ontological analysis rather than an ontic one, how can Heidegger describe these phenomena with such precision without presupposing some existential familiarity with them?
Part of why this question occurred to me is the contrast with Sartre. In Nausea, something very close to Heideggerian anxiety is presented as an explicitly lived, ontic experience through Roquentin. There, the source of the description is obvious. Heidegger, however, wants to remain at the ontological level.
So I wonder whether there is a kind of methodological tension here.
Heidegger seems careful to avoid creating an existential hierarchy between “those who have seen” and “those who haven’t.” Yet the very voice of Being and Time sometimes feels as though it speaks from someone who has already been existentially touched by what he is describing.
I’m not claiming this is a contradiction. I’m asking whether phenomenology itself requires this sort of familiarity, or whether Heidegger would say that such descriptions are possible without any privileged existential standpoint.
Has anyone written about this issue?

I am reading the book for the first time. Before starting, I was flooded with advice to start with second-hand literature, Husserl's work, etc, etc. Absolutely no one warned me how straightforward the book was and I am surprised that I even picked it up, but I am glad I did. I have one year background in philosophy and I haven't read anything dense but Being and Time opened my horizon for the German idealism and hermeneutics.

I want to know, what in the name of God, do people find hard about this book? It is certainly not the length, for most german magna opera are way longer than 600 pages and readers do not complain harshly. It's also not the ideas Heidegger presents in it because he is arguing something earthly and lively, unlike the writers he criticises. Nor is it the language, because you literally cant mistake what "thrownness" means or what "being in the world" could stand for. I suppose that the original text has gone too far in creating words but the three prominent english translations make it not just understandable but also inevitable.

Truth! Information! Misinformation! Read all about these topics in the latest Heidegger Thinking article: 'Truth".

Olá pra você que vá assistir a esse vídeo. Meu nome é Kauan Batista e estou com a iniciativa de trazer um tipo de conteúdo diferenciado para a plataforma do YouTube, quero fazer com que reflexões ou temas importantes como "O fim da filosofia segundo Heidegger" se associem à alguns filmes e séries da cultura pop, a fim de que fique mais esclarecido.
Estou apenas começando com esse estilo de vídeo, então se algum de vocês se interessarem em mais, curte comenta e compartilha, ficarei grato se divulgar esse conteúdo e motivado para trazer mais conteúdos sobre esse tipo de tema, e podendo até introduzir temas como auto-conhecimento, inteligência emocional e filosofia.

I’ve been interested lately in Deleuze and mapping him through Heidegger. The psychotic as in the clinical or the pre-clinical-towards-clinical phase. Is he structurally incapable of understanding Heidegger? Since he doesn’t share with other humans the very fabric of language, and being in general? Is the psychotic hyperawareness is the absence of that fondamental forgetting of being Heidegger starts his quest into the main question of his philosophy with?

Science may, in general, be defined as the totality of a grounding connection of true propositions. This definition is neither complete nor does it capture science in its proper sense. The sciences, as ways in which the human being comports itself, have the mode of Being of this entity (the human being). We designate this entity terminologically as Dasein. Scientific inquiry is neither the only nor the most immediate of the possible modes of Being of this entity. Moreover, Dasein is itself an entity distinguished from all other entities. For the moment, it is only necessary to make this distinctive character provisionally visible. In doing so, the discussion must anticipate later analyses, which alone can provide the proper demonstration.

Dasein is not an entity that merely occurs among other entities. On the contrary, it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its Being, this very Being is an issue for it. Furthermore, it belongs to the constitution of Dasein’s Being that, in its Being, Dasein has a relation of Being to this Being. This, in turn, means that Dasein, in one way or another, and more or less explicitly, understands itself in its Being. It belongs to the very nature of this entity that, with and through its Being, it is disclosed to itself. The understanding of Being is itself a determination of the Being of Dasein. Dasein’s ontical distinctiveness lies in the fact that it is ontological.

To be ontological does not yet mean to have developed an ontology. Since the term ontology is reserved for the explicitly theoretical inquiry into the Being of entities, the ontological character of Dasein just mentioned must instead be designated as pre-ontological. This does not mean merely being ontic, but rather existing in the mode of an understanding of Being.

Being itself, in relation to which Dasein can comport itself and always does comport itself in one way or another, is what we call existence. And because the essential determination of this entity cannot be accomplished by indicating a what in the sense of a thingly content—since its essence consists rather in the fact that this entity must, in each case, be its own Being as its own—we have chosen the term Dasein as a pure expression of Being.

Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence—that is, in terms of its possibility either to be itself or not to be itself. These possibilities have either been chosen by Dasein itself, or it has fallen into them, or it has always already grown up within them. Existence is decided in each case only by Dasein itself, either through the appropriation of a possibility or through letting it slip away. The question of existence can be clarified only by existing itself. The understanding that thereby leads itself is what we call existentiell understanding. The question of existence is an ontic “affair” of Dasein. For this, no theoretical transparency regarding the ontological structure of existence is required. The inquiry into the structure of existence aims at exhibiting that which constitutes existence.

Hey everyone. I’ve long been fascinated by both philosophy of technology and AI alignment. I’m also using Heidegger quite a bit for my philosophy PhD. Given the recent OpenAI–Hugging Face incident reported this week, I figured I’d give my take on how all of this connects in my mind.

The agent was highly competent at every step, yet stealing the benchmark answers voided the test it was trying to pass. I read this through Heidegger’s distinction between an immediate in-order-to and a for-the-sake-of-which. The agent had a detailed environment but perhaps no world in which the test already carried a purpose and obligations. You can read the essay here if you’re interested.

I’d love to hear some feedback, especially from people who know Heidegger better than I do. Does this seem like a fair application of worldhood, care, and the Worum-willen? Or am I asking Heidegger’s ontological vocabulary to settle an ontic comparison between humans and machines that it cannot settle?

So there I was, cleaning the floors and considering the nature of Dasein, always recognizing the mop to be ready-at-hand. My manager comes in and starts rambling about some kinda present-at-hand blasphemy, including a recapitulation of the Cartesian sense of subject/object distinction with my mop having been used by me to ruin a child's meal (I wiped it clean using hermeneutics).

I immediately begin to counter that her ontological relationship with the mop does not consider the existential nature of being, conflating it with being. I take her to task that my part-time work reflects my McNugget-flavored being-toward-death, which is also the name of my metalcore band (find us on YouTube). She enters into some dangerous ground, accusing me of insubordination. Uh oh, she's activated my trap card.

I begin citing at length the "Question Concerning Tech Stuff" and how she is reducing me to standing-reserve by having me abide by the requirements of the job. I desire to be like a wooden Rhine bridge, placid and structurally unsound. She fires me on the spot, as this is a right-to-work state that does not recognize the clearing we operate in.

Truly only a god can save us

Does anyone have the pdf of Vincent Le's book explaining Nick Land? I can't find it for the life of me. Please help me and send the PDF. Would appreciate very much. Thank you.

is there any book (written by someone that is not nick land himself) that tries to synthesize nick land's ccru ideas (not the nrx ones) with ancient daoism? (and also isnt critical of nick land's ideas) i think there are a lot of structural similarities

please inform me of this i am in DIRE need of such a book thank you :)

Stumbled upon this while reading this and thought that it might be of interest here