Apply-Degger: A Podcast with Simon Critchley | Episode 9: Reality

Apply-Degger: Reality with Simon Critchley

Apply-degger is a long-form, deep dive into the most important philosophical book of the last 100 years. Each episode of this podcast series will present one of the key concepts in Heidegger’s philosophy. Taken together, the episodes will lay out the entirety of Heidegger project for people who are curious, serious and interested, but who simply don’t have the time to sit down and read the 437 densely-written pages of the book. It is our hope that this series will show how Heidegger’s thinking might be applied to one’s life in ways which are illuminating, elevating and beneficial. We are asking the listener to slow down, take their time, open their ears and think deeply. What is said in these episodes will hopefully be clear and helpful, but not easy. We are not interested in easy. Let’s try something else for once.

“Apply-degger is not intended for everyone. I am not seeking to make philosophy simple or offer patronizing banalities about life. These are not Ted talks. In many ways, they are the opposite. They are slow, clear and intimate explorations of Heidegger’s ideas in Being and Time. It is my conviction that genuine philosophy can be explained simply and clearly. But it takes the time that it takes. And that can’t be rushed.” – Simon Critchley

Episode Nine - Reality
Four incorrect theses on reality - Empirical idealism (Berkeley) - Transcendental realism (from Plato to Meillassoux) - Empirical realism (Samuel Johnson kicks a stone) - Transcendental idealism (Kant) – Why the question of reality is the wrong question – Why Kant is wrong (about the subject, representation, and the priority of the present-at-hand – Heidegger’s existential deepening of Kant – The scandal of philosophy is expecting that reality requires proof – Being-in-the-world is prior to both proof and faith – Epistemology is a symptom of Dasein’s falling – Both realism and idealism are consistent with being-in-the-world and both wrong – The wrinkle in the fabric of Heidegger’s argument: the Real – The hard core to reality: physical nature, matter, the earth – A possible dualism of reality and the Real: doesn’t this split the phenomenon?

Introductory music: “Esse” by Zenon Marko. © 2019 Disreality. Included with permission.