Online research in philosophy

This paper analyzes Kierkegaard's Religiousness A sphere of existence, presented in his edifying works, and Heidegger's concept of authenticity, proposed in Being and Time, as responses to modern nihilism. While Kierkegaard argues that Religiousness A is an unsuccessful response to modern nihilism, Heidegger claims that authenticity, a secularized version of Religiousness A, is a successful response. We argue that Heidegger's secularization of Religiousness A is incomplete and unsuccessful, that Heidegger's later work offers a reconsideration of the problem of modern nihilism, and that later Heidegger suggests a way out of nihilism which is compatible with Kierkegaard's Religiousness B sphere of existence.

Frederick Olafson criticizes Hubert Dreyfus’s interpretation of BEING AND TIME on a number of points, including the meaning of being, the nature of intentionality, and especially the role of das Man in Heidegger’s account of social existence. But on the whole Olafson’s critique is unconvincing because it rests on an implausible account of presence and perceptual intuition in Heidegger’s early philosophy, and because Olafson maintains an overly individuated notion of Dasein and consequently a one-sided conception of the role of das Man. Unfortunately, since Dreyfus confines his commentary exclusively to Division I, he in effect forgoes any attempt to explain how das Man might be understood as playing the simultaneously constitutive and destructive role Heidegger evidently envisioned for it. I conclude by arguing that the conformity and the conformism represented by das Man are bound together by Heidegger’s notion of standoffishness (Abständigkeit).

This essay critically engages Dreyfus's widely read interpretation of Heidegger's Being and Time . It argues that Dreyfus's reading is rooted in two primary claims or interpretative principles. The first - the Cartesianism thesis - indicates that Heidegger's objective in Being and Time is to overturn Cartesianism. The second - the hermeneutics of suspicion thesis - claims that Division II is supposed to suspect and throw into question the results of the Division I analysis. These theses contribute to the view that there are two conflicting accounts of inauthenticity that threaten the coherence of Heidegger's notion of authenticity. This view concerning authenticity is mistaken, as are the two theses that support it. The first thesis is incorrect because Heidegger's explicit aim is to investigate the question of the meaning of being not to overturn Cartesianism. The second is incorrect because the analyses of Division I describe the structures of everyday human existence in preparation for a closer examination in Division II of what makes them possible. Division II does not undercut Division I; it carries the analysis deeper. Authenticity, then, is not a negation of everydayness; it is a deepening of the self-understanding expressed in everydayness.

In a recent paper on Heidegger, Frederick Olafson attacks Hubert Dreyfus for prioritizing our “social” existence (under the notion of das Man) over the individual. In a reply, Taylor Carman, defending Dreyfus, criticizes Olafson for his “subjectivist” notion of Dasein. This paper pursues the implication of this disagreement in the context of Heidegger’s theory of space. Dreyfus’ discussion of Heideggerian spatiality nicely displays the tension between the “public” vs. “individual” domains of being, and consistent with his overall approach, Dreyfus claims that public space should be prioritized. Dreyfus concludes, however, that Heidegger is confused and prioritizes individual space. This paper argues that the categories of “public” and “individual” are inappropriate for analyzing Heidegger’s sense of the shared and personal characters of space. Heidegger’s “indexical” theory of space in fact saves both of these domains without raising the question of priority and without presupposing a “subjectivist” Dasein. On this reading, Olafson’s “individualized” account of presence does not commit him to subjectivism. The confusion Dreyfus attributes to Heidegger is cleared up by an indexical account of spatiality in Heidegger’s text.

This is a critique of the interpretation of Heidegger's Being and Time that has been proposed by Hubert Dreyfus. Through an assimilation of much of Heidegger's thought to that of Wittgenstein, Dreyfus treats human being (Dasein) as being principally defined by its embeddedness in ?shared social practices? and claims that the mode of comportment he calls ?coping? is the source of the intelligibility of our world which he also identifies with being as such. Against this, I argue that unless it is brought into much closer contact with Heidegger's ontological account of the kind of entity Dasein is, ?coping? remains an ontic concept that cannot perform the function Dreyfus assigns to it. The thesis that Dasein is distinguished by the fact that it is self?interpreting is also examined and found wanting for much the same reasons; and Dreyfus's conception of the larger design of Being and Time is shown to be seriously flawed by his failure to do justice to Heidegger's central theme ?being as presence. In a final section, Heidegger's account of Das Man is reviewed as is Dreyfus's thesis that this anonymous modality of social existence is the master concept for understanding Dasein. This paradoxical magnification of the role of Das Man within human being is shown to fail because it does not distinguish between skills and social norms, and misses the fact that Das Man is a deformation of our social being (Mitsein), not its highest achievement as Dreyfus apparently supposed it to be.

In his book, Being?in?the?World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I, Hubert Dreyfus argues that Heidegger's concept of authenticity is incomprehensible. He maintains that there are two conflicting accounts of inauthenticity in Being and Time. He elucidates what he calls the ?structural account? of inauthenticity and being?in?the?world in the main body of his work, and then criticizes what he calls the ?motivational account? in an Appendix. Because he overlooks certain textual evidence and underemphasizes fleeing and the role of choice, his interpretation is neither complete nor compelling. I offer an alternative interpretation of authenticity. While Heidegger's notion of authenticity may still be weakened by other flaws, it is not incomprehensible in the sense that Dreyfus contends.

How does everyday, inauthentic Dasein dominated by das Man become authentic? The aim of this article is to answer this and other questions about Dasein's authenticity by carrying out an analysis of the 'call of conscience'. This analysis, in turn, provides insights about Dasein's possibility for ethical existence. We will see that even though there are some puzzling issues in Heidegger's explanation of Dasein in its everydayness and its authenticity, the Heideggerian Existential Analytic is not 'anti-ethical' as some have claimed. We will also see that the Existential Analytic's commitment to the ontic raises doubts about Heidegger's claim that the Analytic is prior to any ethics and examine how reading Being and Time as a project of 'metontology' may dissolve these doubts. Finally, the paper offers a suggestion about the importance of 'authentic historicality' in a factical account of the moral life.

Analyzing the fundamental ontology of Dasein in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, this essay details the essential relation ship between the mood of "anxiety" (Angst) and Dasein's authentic comportment to existence. Although a highly disturbing experience, anxiety holds the potential for enlightenment, as it opens Dasein to the fundamental characteristics of its temporal authenticity. Dasein assents to its Selfhood and enacts its freedom in a "resolute," authentic manner only when it grasps the difficult and burdensome aspects of life revealed by way of Angst's attunement. Thus, I argue that anxiety is the single most important mode of human attunement that Heidegger describes.

In Sein und Zeit , Heidegger claims that (1) das Man is an 'existential' i.e. a necessary feature of Dasein's Being; and (2) Dasein need not always exist in the mode of the Man -self, but can also be eigentlich , which I translate as 'self-owningly'. These apparently contradictory statements have prompted a debate between Hubert Dreyfus, who recommends abandoning (2), and Frederick Olafson, who favors jettisoning (1). I offer an interpretation of the structure of Dasein's Being compatible with both (1) and (2), thus resolving the Dreyfus-Olafson debate. Central to this resolution is the distinction between das Man and the Man -self. Das Man is one of three existential 'horizons', or fields of possibilities; the other two horizons are the world and death. At any time, Dasein encounters entities in one of two basic modes: either by 'expressly seizing' possibilities of the horizon, or by occluding these possibilities. These modes are 'existenti ell ', i.e. features of Dasein's Being that are possible, but not essential. Self-ownership and the Man -self are the two basic existentiell modes of being oneself, i.e. projecting everyday possibilities of oneself appropriated from the horizon of das Man . What differentiates these two modes is the stance one takes to the possibility of death, the existential horizon of being oneself.