Heidegger’s Dasein: The Philosophy Everyone Should Know

[@zzzaaayyynnn]

Speaking as an academic with some knowledge of Heidegger, you do a WONDERFUL job of breaking down the basic concepts.

[@millerman]

Thank you

[@tz.i.s.m.t]

i would recommend this channel to anyone, anytime, anywhere, in whatever state they are "being". 💪

[@danruizmd]

Thanks!

[@Cd3]

As someone who has no idea WHEN I subscribed to you, my subscriptions recommended the channel again and I really enjoyed the talk. Thanks

[@2912801821]

I love your videoes and are learning so much on how to percieve the world. Thank you.

[@PaulThronson]

I'm still there 30 minutes in! I love Heidegger because for me he was the first well known thinker and writer to give our emotional state its due and how we create the space for two distinct environments that humans can move in and out of: being in the moment - responding largely to the environment in front of us, and imagining an environment that is not in the moment but constructed through a dialectic of language. Human beings are lords of space-time. Ours is the only soul that can regret the past and worry for the future, imagine a universe a trillion years from now, or a region of space trillions of miles away. These powers are the result of acquiring complex language. I find that traditional philosophy ignores how this happens and its purpose based on what we know of theory of mind and affective neuroscience. Scientifically, we understand that life is part of its environment and we use labels to logically separate the two concepts, but this has limited value when trying to understand the true nature of either. This is why I find philosophy, while useful in creating the academic vernacular to frame discussion, also leads to simplifications that make it mostly irrelevant to explaining the human condition and the universe as we objectively know it today.

[@helnock8885]

I think the penny dropped for me at the 25.08. mark onwards when you said that with an inanimate object it is about being IN the world, spatially, but with Dasein it is about BEING in the world, the modes of being in the world. You explained subtle but crucial difference very well.

[@Chris-z1k7x]

I think the best way to explain this is to go through Husserl first. Once you realize that this is phenomenological description without the bracketing, it is pretty clear

[@Kali-k4z]

I have observed that readers or experts in Heidegger cannot explain him plain. But, this is really a good video that explains in a very clear and authoritative manner the complex concepts of Heidegger .

[@lindenbrook1320]

Really interesting video. I've never read Heidegger but here is my take on what you were trying to explain: Potential and faith (unlimited expectations) are uniquely human and that concept of faith, uniquely human, manifests the potential.

[@mauriciotorrescoach4557]

Thanks for addressing this wonderful subject , from this wonderful thinker-philosopher, I have the Being and time book, standing in my shelf, waiting to being grabbed and read. You help making this towering piece of work more understandable. Keep it up!

[@millerman]

Glad it was helpful!

[@mr_t_green7860]

This is a great talk. Thanks ✌🏻❤

[@millerman]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@kenwatanabe2864]

Heidegger was a big influence on the major figures in Japanese philosophy. Thinkers like Nishitani, Watsuji, Suzuki, and Tanabe were students of Heidegger and they are considered the most significant philosophers of the early-mid 20th century in Japan. Many of them were also practicing Buddhists.

[@jake9674]

Loved this, thank you. I appreciate your effort and courage to try out different approaches to videos, become more vulnerable and open up, while also sharing your expertise. I watched to the end. You might be surprised how many can watch a long video. Especially with good headphones and increasing playback rate its possible to watch a long video and not lose attention.

[@SP-SP-SP]

Being and Time was a life changing read. Thanks for this video!

[@philip1196]

Good job 👏 Michael do more even in contemporary philosophy

[@gwfbagel3811]

Excellent informal approach to explaining philosophical concepts. Good job.

[@johnshaplin]

Roland Barthes concept of the neutral seems to have originated with Heidegger. As Tiphaine Samoyault wrote about Barthes strange clarity: Unlike Blanchot, the neutral in Barthes is neither negative, nor the unspeakable, nor the night. Its positive force lies in the way it reduces intimidation of every kind: arrogance, totality, virility, the definitive judgment. It attenuates without abolishing, calms without lulling completely to sleep, renders expression more subtle and less vain. Herein resides its stranger power of clarification. Instead of displaying thought in the harsh light of an illusory intelligibility, the neutral makes it glitter for a while while as it scatters it in fragments, creating gaps and pauses, times and places that elude meaning.’ Derrida: ‘From where did the singular clarity of Roland Barthes come from? From where did it come to him, since he had to receive it? Without simplifying anything, without doing violence to either the fold or the reserve, it always emanated from a certain point that was not yet a point, remaining invisible it its own way.’ 36:39

[@HankRearden84]

Just subbed. This is excellent content.

[@millerman]

Thank you

[@matsa2620]

If I am not mistaken, also Kant went a bit in this general direction when he pointed out that it is a mistake to think of subjectivity ("subjects") as yet another (special) type of objects, instead of realising that subjectivity is something radically different.

[@markcounseling]

I see a direct connection between the older Dasein of things that Heidegger reconceptualized, and the Buddhist concept of the conventional or relative truth. But the new Dasein doesn’t seem to match the Absolute in Buddhism. The ultimate truth of Emptiness seems to be more akin to Heidegger’s concept of Lichtung? With Heidegger’s Dasein, at least for me at the moment, he seems to be attempting to elucidate aspects of human “becoming”, or relationality, or interdependence. Something like the living _experience_ of emptiness rather than a formal definition of it. Earlier this year in Hamburg I caught an exhibition of Caspar David Friedrich’s works and was a bit stunned by them. He had a series of sketches of a tree that clearly were attempting to demonstrate what are normally hidden aspects of human perspective, distortions that our mind sort of fixes for us to make an actual tree look more like our concept of a tree rather than what we are actually encountering. And then when I saw his famous Wanderer painting, it seemed to me that it might have originated from an experience of nondual presence, which he was trying to paint. Like Heidegger he was interested in being super-precise about what normally are for us hidden elements. I think he achieved something like in-der-Welt-sein, and I wonder now if this might have been an influence on Heidegger’s much later elucidation of that experience?

[@jeff_loveland]

Characteristically excellent.

[@villevanttinen908]

Dasein ( every you and me) is something / or someone who measures his existence in relations to the world via thinking and poetics.

[@user-zy1oh8jk7j]

Thanks for the video.

[@Sebastian-ni4le]

thanks,this was great

[@AIainMConnachie]

Great video as always. Have you considered - just for fun - doing a little critique of Kosinski's novel "Being There"? And or the film version with Peter Sellers?

[@markwarning7305]

Took a lot of notes. Not a ghost monger, H sees humans as Dasein , beings who bring things to light through language, who determine meaning . I guess any summary of H is close to pop. hope I'm getting the idea. Thanks !

[@Arnaud9]

Fascinating. Lessons of Don Juan by Castaneda teach of the Tonal and Nagual, the Objects " named into being through language" and the "empty space" enveloping them. According to the shaman the real action takes place in the " empty" space " which enevelops the world of " named things", the negative space determines the positive form and vice versa.

[@sina8883]

It's interesting that you mention that your dissertation included Rorty as well as Heidegger. I have found comparing and contrasting the two interesting- and puzzling. Rorty listed Heidegger as one of the biggest influences on his thought (along with Dewey and Wittgenstein). And yet he says that we find our meanings of being in the world through imaginatively *creating* our reality and meanings (a la Proust or Nietzsche), not through looking deep and hard at something deeper to find them as an act of discovery. He didn't think there was any pre-existing thing there to find. If we want it, we have to make it ourselves. He said that we should have the mindset of artists or engineers, engaged in imagination and creation, rather than discoverers and scientists looking hard to find something already pre-existing out there. I wonder what he would have thought of Heidegger's seeming insistence that we could find such meaning through looking hard for the "ground of being" somewhere deep- as if it has an existence already and we are just not looking hard enough to see it, or that it is concealed and only exposes itself fleetingly to us through flashes of "Aletheia". In this view, Heidegger's talk of Being may just be chasing after a rainbow or mirage.

[@Plectognath]

I think that is a fundamental intro video to your channel. I’m interested in how other philosophers branch off Heidegger. But I have had one question that has been lurking for sometime: How does Heidegger relate to Plato? Is Heidegger Platonic to some degree? Do they differ more or does Heidegger build on Plato in some way?

[@millerman]

I have a mini-course on Heidegger's interpretation of Plato's cave allegory here: millermanschool.com/p/heidegger-essence-of-truth but yes in short it is important to think about the relationship between Heidegger and Plato and to contrast that with other approaches to Plato in order better to understand what Heidegger's doing and why.

[@edkamp]

"Being-there" is partlly conscience; the mind trying to dethrone-itself towards it's ownmost possibility (thru anticipatory-resolutenes)

[@magouliana32]

Watching now let’s see how close you get.

[@magouliana32]

You did not mention his attempt to destroy meta physics. Plato’s arch Nemesis.

[@martinavaslovik3433]

Okay, I get it :)

[@Canario_27]

Boy oh boy, that's a question for a doctoral thesis

[@lgude]

Really helpful, perhaps because it was impromptu. As a retired college teacher I often found the most effective explanations were spontaneous. I understood Dasein better but retain my preference for Husserl because as opaque and obscure as he can be his work connects to my primary Jungian orientation which is decidedly introverted and mystical and also concerned with bringing us humans into contact with direct experience of reality. Originary experience in Husserel's terms. Primordial experience in Jung's terms. Inceptual thinking is, I believe, Heidegger's term. So I appreciate a little more how Heidegger went deeper too and am beginning to see how in the realm of political thought he can inform both left and right and hopefully take political thought and action beyond the endless cycles political failure and futility. For me it comes back to a practice I can do wholeheartedly and at the level of being and Husserl's Reduction works at that level for me.

[@markcounseling]

You inspire me to read Husserl. Is there a short text or excerpt you would recommend?

[@petervote7914]

Can you recommend a book on Husserl?

[@thescythian321]

Someone smarter than Heideger might say; Who or what you are is not your concern. Becoming who you are is your concern and that does not require "knowing" anything.

[@thescythian321]

@@Impaled_Onion-thatsmine American "philosophers" are very easily influenced. This is caused by a deep and hidden knowledge that they are not particularly clever. They fall for all sorts of garbage because they don't understand it and think it must be clever.

[@bradmodd7856]

A lot of air is blown around, a lot of ink spilled in the name of philosophy. Hegel made some steps, Derrida a couple. Not much has happened since Plato.

[@magouliana32]

Heidegger exists before Plato.

[@jaybeaton9301]

Thank you for this. I find it strange that it took western philosophy millennia to put the human at the core of its thinking. Cheers!

[@rouslanrouslan2677]

This is the aspect of Heidegger that always confuses me. On one hand, he is part of the tradition of phenomenologists who want to break down the subject-object distinction. On the other hand, he seems to be radically re-centering ontology around the subject in an amorphous way. The only way I can begin to think about how this might work is by thinking about the subject, or should I say, Dasein, as being oriented towards, inclined towards, positioned towards, or comporting itself towards the medium of existence, either in general or with something specific in mind. But that probably violates something within the Heideggerian minefield of thought. Always a tricky thinker, that Heidegger.

[@kittenlang333]

I've been doing the gateway process/experience (the why files has a good documentary on its channel) since December, and Heidegger and Dugin both go really great with it. Symbiotic. And there's a Reddit community that would back me up if they knew what and who I was talking about! Hegel and the ones the wef globalists et al adore...the thinking is acidic, or caustic, by comparison. Just saying and helping the algorithm. I can't recommend the gateway enough either but get good headphones. ✌🏼

[@FelixPhil123]

If I see it right, Heidegger changes the meaning of the term Dasein after the period of Being and time ( but i am not totally sure about that). So he probably thinks different about the term Dasein in his later thinking. So the problem here is I think, that the video just focuses on the so called early Heidegger and how he uses the term Dasein in Being and time. But maybe one should consider how the term Dasein is used in Heideggers whole work , for example in his work " Contributions to philosophy" , which is also well known like Being and time. Maybe you know this work too.

[@millerman]

I have a course on the Contributions and several free videos about it on my channel

[@FelixPhil123]

Okay thanks for this information. But do you know if the term Dasein is treatened there ( in the "Contributions") in the same way as in Being and Time? I am not sure about that, as Heidegger changes his thinking after Being and Time​@@millerman

[@nullifye7816]

i have yet to be convinced there is anything to philosophy beyond incoherent ranting

[@markcounseling]

You express quite well the view of the hoi polloi. In some sense, political philosophy aims to address the fact that you hold the majority opinion.

[@kevls5536]

at least he demonstrated that it can be fun staring at a pen on a table ...

[@markcounseling]

@@kevls5536 👌

[@kachmi]

A cat is not being a cat, it is a cat. A tree is not being a tree, it is a tree. However, a Homo sapien is not being a Homo sapien, it is being a human. Dasein is unique to humans because we are both bound to and can reflect upon the past just as we can peer into and effect the future, and we can do this while existing and acting in the moment. No cat or tree will contemplate our existence, yet we will contemplate theirs, so existence and dasein are not comparable terms for the former is purely material while the latter exists in the physical and in the realm of both the conscious and unconscious, the before, the now, and the thereafter.

[@virochanaasura8521]

If these escoteric aspects of man are a reality, then they are important as they have a role various facets of Being and in answering the question 'what is man?' If they do not exist and man is nothing than a chemistry set, it does not matter as all thought is nothing but bio-chemical neurons firing and there is no such thing as value, truth, etc.

[@denniston85]

May be way off the path here, think I fell short of the eureka moment on this vids thesis - using a computer (hardware) as a metaphor to a person: Does a pc not eat (electricity) and metabolize and disperse that energy over multiple organs? It's heat an exhaust of that digested energy. A brain (CPU), circuitry and motherboard like a skeleton and blood vessel/nervous system? Doesn't it 'see' either through webcam or optical/analogue mouse cursor? We even use human centric verbiage like virus, when infected, and when sick if not treated...you wouldn't call that a dead computer? I'm nowhere close to grasping the extent of the main idea discussed in the vid, but I'm less convinced of the human experience being a separate 'uniqueness' from other material 'stuff'. We just found out trees talk and support each other, through subsurface fungi networks. Pretty sure that would be the 'internet' on the vegetative plane. I think all 'things', humans not exempt, are both whole individual bodies themselves, while at the same being a one individual piece, that is part of a larger (usually less/non tangible) body.

[@hews251]

Michael could you please elaborate why heideggers work is fundamental to right wing anti liberalism and whta actual arguments does it propose in the political. Thank you so much.

[@millerman]

Your best bet is to consult my two books or the video I made on Heidegger and political theory. I'll probably do more videos on that topic before too long.

[@jamescastro2037]

To know dasein is in the language of sound, dasign. There is no one word that is sound. Their is know won word that is sound. To break this sound barrier we will have to go faster than the laws of physics applied to language. We need a new plane of thinking to accomplish this. The drag of the pen has limited our velocity. And the lead of the pencil adds too much weight. Leaving us speechless due to the gravity of the words. Who is sound enough to produce a sound that is sound beyond words?

[@thegodofgains]

Dasein sounds and feels like design. The designer is designing the design being you and around you

[@MiloMay]

If you listen to an actual German pronounce it, it would sound like "daa-sighn"

[@thegodofgains]

@@MiloMay I totally get that I understand there's going to be a difference in pronunciation with the German dialect and accent in the tones the vocabulary and the meaning of the words they use. However from my interpretation of Heidegger's works on the dasein, it is not just a stationary one-and-done phenomenon but is malleable and is currently on the process. That's why reading it it felt as if dasein worked like a designer that's designing the design. You or that around you being the designer, the design being you and that around you, and the designing process of which you have a creative element involved and something external to you designing you. The terms I mentioned with design aren't alienated from each other and all of one or the same substance with a different gross matter

[@philoldout7489]

Well maybe. Hard to know how the spectrum of consciousness and reason is distributed across all living things and perhaps even a more diffuse hierarchy. That humans, on a spec, of an iota in a blink of a flash in this river of time and space is so very special after all.

[@stevebashir9330]

Perhaps Heidegger means our consciousness is a certain reflection of the world. In experiencing the world we become a subject. We ARE the world from a certain perspective.

[@MylesNewman-cc1tx]

Man needed to create God before God could create man, i. e., man had to think abstractly before God could have a relationship with him.

[@bernardoohigginsvevo2974]

Bro has been neck maxxing fr

[@gerhardrohne2261]

americans have to ponounce "sein" with a soft z, not a sharp s... (otherwise the word iis distorting its herkunft)

[@petesahad3028]

Dasein means Beinghere, literally.

[@millerman]

That is not much of an answer, though, if you don't understand what Heidegger means by "Beinghere" or why he distinguishes the being of Dasein from the being of everything else.

[@petesahad3028]

@@millerman To which question isn't it an answer? That's the literal meaning of the word in english. Existence is Existenz in German.

[@zardoz7900]

Bergson

[@tnix80]

His preferred hotel chain

[@thelordofgifts5343]

Great channel

[@marcgrant2225]

dasein connotes interaction and interpretation? we are not just “there” ike a pen? we are “being there”?….the pen is just there? what about other living things? we don’t know the extent of their being in the world. it must be something though?

[@markcounseling]

You're right about other living beings. If you throw a pen in a closet, it does not inspect the contents and experience the entirety of the inside of the closet as well as itself. Human being is not like that. From the very beginning and wherever we are, we always experience the entirety of our environment along with ourselves. Our experience of ourselves is inextricably bound with an experience of the entirety of the world as we presently know at moment by moment. Not so with a pen. And it's not just that we are "in" and then can choose to be open "to" the world, we always simultaneously know ourselves and the world, there is no separation.

[@johnruplinger3133]

Plato >>> Heidegger ..... even the most "pure, pristine, beautiful" philosophical inquiry fumbles about in darkness at a fundamental level and fails to see or increasingly conceals what is before us, what is most human.

[@ValentinBrutusBura]

"Conscious"

[@davidhauteville1394]

Assuming an animal would not be Dasein, yet clearly animals can and do find purpose (for instance) in certain objects... what term would be approrpriate for those? Surely here, Heidegger made a mistake. (Understandable for his time). For Heidegger limits himself to say humans are “Being-in-the-World” (Dasein) and that everything else is “In-the-world”. This is surely wrong? Every conscious species, right down to beetles or whatever, is also “Being-in-the-World-For-Themselves”. (Look at how, for instance, a colony of ants might re-purpose an old car. Move into it. Build a nest there. Live in there). In this way, Heidegger needs to be brought up to date. IMVHO.

[@thegodofgains]

I believe in only 1 thing.... the power of the human will" - (guess who)