Is Heidegger's Dasein Just Another Subject?

You can now enrol on my course on Being and Time!

In this video I delve into the question whether Dasein is not just another "subject" and show how that is not the case.

[Lakshyam]

Wow.
'Subjectivity' as human beings being taken as the ground and standing in opposition to objects 🎉
Thank you for this.

[quantummath]

It's an honorable job. I love that I wish you all the best in continuing this path.

[horses]

Outstanding! 11 years into Heidegger and I have never understood the foundations of my own worldview better. Thank you 🙏

[PrometheusMonk]

Thank you! This is the clearest explanation of dasein I've encountered. It really starts to make a lot of Heidegger's thinking click for me.

[Richardwestwood-dpwr]

Great Great Lecture, you articulated in a lucid way the very foundation of Heidegger's fundamental ontology, thanks a million ❤❤❤❤

[kurt]

Man, I am looking forward to this. What a great theme.

Here is a thought.

It is the question, of today, and the one Heidegger academics, wandering the hills, outside should present. It is the divide between modern empirically driven tradition, including modern metaphysics, and Heidegger's attempt to step outside that. I personally think we must defend, a deeper apprehension of who we are, in more open and free way.

Today we live in a world where so many stances need to be taken keeping people to a proposition and predicate, and to some resemblence of rationality. Modern reason includes empiricism, is considered in relation to skepticism and the property of the senses, and scientific apprehension of the world. Our liberties are based on this sane, discussion in reason, and resolving disputes in common sense and forming agreements.

Most people who are against this form of rationalism, involving empiricism, and criticize it as narrow just want a free floating subjectivity, without skepticism. Idealists... And not just philosophical idealists but the utopian. I do not mean to generalize, but this mistaken romanticism, and idealism is one way a theme of the question of being and Dasein, could be appreciated as well, just as much as Heidegger's anti-metaphysics, that is against narrowness of empiricism as well.

I am just gonna say, I think we must be empiricists, in our world, today because that is how our critical thinking works, and convention. We see a world in front of us, and meet in competing descriptive proposition, and tell the truth and resolve things. Post modernism and idealism is dangerous in this sense. But this common sense empiricism should not in some ways cut ourselves off. To forget that the subject does not just "relate" to objects, or to begin to think everything is disemodied mind relating to body, in the usual epistemological and metaphysical frameworks of critical thinking, and subjective idealism, is just forgetting the meaning even of just that word, and custom subject. A custom of individuation is important but in some terms that is secondary, to the freer understanding. As compared to the metaphysics around the mind and subjectivity, and how we perceive the world, and how to classify that, that set of terms itself emerges, and should occasionally present an ontological priority of questioning. Here is to the philosopher who may break the cycle of those entrapping categories of metaphysics...

I think it should be just as customary to reflect a little more deeply, but not end up rationalizing this post modern social criticism stuff that is politicized. People want to escape metaphysics, and then just end up justifying a subject, that is unmoored and relativistic. Then unfortunately this is associated with ontology. I think it is just a fallacy, and people with hard nosed views on critical thought, and reason and empiricism, mostly hold sway, for just keeping our discussions rational.

My amateur conclusion reading Heidegger, might not really deal with the problem, completely but at least it can be seen in a way that would seem obvious. Subjectum, could be considered the latinization, and modernization of hypokeimenon the categorical subject which includes a predicate. Out of this we usually describe, not just in skepticism, but metaphysics, a subject that solely relates to an object. Kitaro Nishida also makes this conclusion, and deals with in his own way. Heidegger's ontic ontological question of Dasein reflects on this.

The framework of thinking and public philosophical discussions, usually terminates in these categories moving forward into opposed positions of subjective idealism, (and pomo politics) and entrenched empiricism, of cartesian skepticism, that by no means is just skeptical. Both are trapped, without any apprehension of what occured, over time and history, and forgetting, in what an ontic-ontological question would be to us. They remain ontic, and generic without any historical structure, dealing with these subject things. Ironically you would call this subject as thing, in Aristotle's categories a substance or thing or hypokeimenon, and yet it passes that nobody would grasp the connection to any depth.

It is fleshed out to some degree, in deeper rationalistic tradition, supposing those deeper traditions are useful entities, and categories and language and sincerely considered in generic terms, to the point that they determine thought and language today, but it takes a better mind to be able to spark these terms, in a way that strikes and kindles people to some philosophical reflection more genuine. To find philosophy not in the tendencies of modern metaphysical disputes, is key. But moreover there is a danger. A Nietzschean danger.

I think the danger of Heidegger is people end up just justifying a free floating subjectivity, or even a more relativistic post modern point of view, and it is just a stance of idealism, rather than getting beyond these interposed and entrapping categories, of language and custom. I end up saying sheesh we should stick to being honest first!

Good luck, and I will enjoy following along what I assume is much better work. Just thought I'd drop a post, from the youtube masses. I have followed the channel and enjoy the work you're doing.

[cyfacrider]

Appreciate the clarification of the translation of dasein. Opens up a richer interpretation to get started on getting a grip on Being and Time. I’ve been reading it on my own as a hobby for ten years!

[aslekay]

I love that you do this...
I will be buying a course soon

[sensennsen]

Agree. Sartre did misunderstand what Being is. Of course, we know that Heidegger has five attacks against the Cartesian dualism, but Sartre made an overlooked account of Being, which led him back to a Cartesian tradition. Well Sartre was already practicing phenomenology when he wrote Nausea.

[titnesovic]

Dasein is a bit clearer now, thank you.

[dominik]

Great Video, thank you very much for your content Johannes.

[dennismatthews]

Dasein is the fertile soil on which authentic being is possible.

[HelsinkiFINketeli_berlin_com]

As a finnish speaker I have never realized how the 'in-der-Welt-sein' actually is not only much more clear term philosophically just as it is in german, literally, i.e. 'in-the-world-being', but the 'being-in-the-world', sounds like a trivial platitude now after your Rechtung, and even more, it is also conceptually something totally different than the german original. I have always had a confused feeling with the common translation, there's been in it, like we finns would put it: 'astian maku'.

[DelandaBaudLacanian]

6:50 "intense mathema sensation of the world" this is a super interesting topic, this seems to describe the minds of deep learning / machine learning engineers. Thank you

[hugovandijk]

Thanks for this very clear explanation of Heidegger's concept of Dasein! Did you already share any thoughts on Heidegger's writings in SuZ on the traditional / skeptical problem of the existence of external reality? I plan to write my master's thesis on the affinities between early Heidegger and later Wittgenstein when it comes to there 'solution' to this problem. I think interesting things could be said about this, especially concerning their similar thoughts / critique concerning the presuppositions of traditional or modern (Cartesian) philosophy / epistemology (the subject-object dichotomy and the representational model of perception). I want to further narrow down my topic by analysing / criticising Herman Philipse's article "Heidegger and Wittgenstein on External World Skepticism". Philipse also wrote an extensive and very critical work on "Heidegger's Philosophy of Being". Already shared any thought on this topic? Or on Philipse's evaluation of Heidegger?

[riccardocuciniello]

Really intresting! Im growing the suspicion that our understanding of life in biology, and in particular, of the "living" (what is that actually lives?) is wholly grounded on the subject. Well, ofc it is - i might be wrong, but doesnt one of the first definitions of the subject appear in hegel's organic physics? (§337 and so on) Even in the gene-centrism of the Modern Synthesis, where the organism is reduced to a merely external phenotype, the gene is understood in every way as "subject", both as actively working subjectivity and as sub-stance. On the contrary, in the more recent biology there s a growing intrest for the idea of the organism as something extended / open - i dare to say it, "à la Dasein" (mutatis mutandis). I hope i can use these reflections of yours for my analyses :))

[clumsydad]

dasein as 'in-the-world-being' as an ontology. and biology is another ontology? yes, and then there are the arguments with the 'dreyfusians', which i don't understand the exact specifics of. his lectures were helpful to me of getting inside some of the mood of heidegger, at least in my confused state at the time. so basically we are born into this faulty presupposition of subject-object, and it's articulated thru heidegger as all is dasein. so to be blunt, in some ways beingness is all a oneness. and dasein itself does not die but we as beings do, hence in our state of being-towards-death which imposes a peculiar awareness in us, possibly producing the angst, that leads us to deeper perceptions and encountering possibilities in 'the world'.

[MrX-cocj]

Moin, 2 Fragen: Verstehe ich es richtig, dass Heidegger der durchrationalisierten Weltvorstellung in Subjekt und Objekt eine andere gegenüberstellt, die der lebendigen Lebensrealität des Menschen gerecht wird und sich mit universalen Fragen des Mensch-Seins (also In-Der-Welt-Seins)befasst? Stellt er damit also etwas auf die Beine, dass wie kein anderes Werk die Fragen, nach dem guten (Zusammen-)Leben fordern, denn welchem Zweck sonst sollten Ideale wie Authentizität oder kontemplative Reflexion dienen, wenn nicht dem guten Leben?

[philosophyofvalue]

Husserl thought Heidegger was too subjective, and it's debatable whether Sartre didn't understand Dasein or made it more explicit. Does Niederhauser clarify anything about Heidegger or just make it even more obscure? Is all this just theology in philosophical language?

[dennismatthews]

What does the mischaracterization of Dasein by Dasein as a Subject tell us about Dasein as thrown, as fallen, as mortal-in-the-world-being, as care? By suspending itself outside the world as an unchanging unity in the temporal flow, Dasein as Subject overcomes death and claims immortality. Dasein ‘mis-conceives’, i.e., has an unarticulated, pre-ontological understanding of care as preservation and freedom from angst rather than authenticity and courage in the face of death.