Heidegger & Descartes: Being-in-the-world, Care, Anxiety & Existentialism

What did Descartes know for certain? That he is a thinking thing, a cogito. But what does it mean to think? Descartes lists a few modes of thinking: Doubting, affirming, denying, understanding.
Heidegger embarks upon a similar project to Descartes. What, he asks, is the fundamental nature of our experience? Of our existence? Heidegger agrees with Descartes. If we want to live life well we need to be clear about its most fundamental components. Descartes answer is summarised by his phrase cogito ergo sum, which translates as thinking, therefore, being.
For Heidegger, Descartes has it the wrong way around. He thinks that Descartes has neglected the sum, the being. What is it to be something? Heidegger’s answer comes in a number of forms: he says as well as being thinking things we have care for things, we have an anxiety about the world, we are existential, but most importantly, we are beings-in-the-world.
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Sources:
Matthew Shockey, Heidegger’s Descartes and Heidegger’s Cartesianism
Heidegger, Being and Time
Stephen Mulhall, Guidebook to Being and Time
Credits:
Heidegger Photo: Willy Pragher, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommon..., via Wikimedia Commons

[@ThenNow]

Support Then & Now: www.patreon.com/thenandnow Sign up to the newsletter: lewwaller.com/newsletter/ Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/lewlewwaller

[@O.G.Rose.Michelle.and.Daniel]

Great as always: I like how you make a convincing case that Heidegger is not a hard Anti-Cartesian (as I think he is often depicted). I never heard Heidegger ask, “What did Descartes care about?” - that really frames the situation nicely. Also, I like your drawing attention to the idea that “I think, therefore I am” still leaves open the question of “how” I am-what kind of “being” is in question-and I like your argument that Heidegger rests his thoughts about Descartes on this point. Thanks as always for the insightful work.

[@thewerepyreking]

I initially found him more anticartesian than postcartesian. Good comment!

[@galek75]

Nah I found him quite anti-Cartesian as well, much like @thewerepyreking.

[@BatOrgilBatsaikhan]

This is great! I like how you are connecting the separate areas sections in my brain for Descartes and Heidegger. Heidegger is such a mental pleasure to understand.

[@bobgreen7143]

Your videos are simply gold.. Never stop 🙏

[@nilanjanaghosh3432]

Simple and comprehensive and comprehendible. Thanks.

[@TheMjsanty]

Fantastic episode. Really thought provoking. I always enjoy hearing about Heidegger’s philosophy of Being.

[@pedroforonda]

Beautiful, thank you for caring!

[@alexsarullo3753]

I was literally writing a paper on this when this was uploaded!!

[@dionysianapollomarx]

This gets into the beginning of representationalism vs anti-representationalism. The conversation there is so multi-faceted, so interesting, and involves several big name philosophers of the 20th and 21st century. Would be cool if you get into that in the future. Now, looking forward to this one.

[@nelsonphillips]

Interestingly this representationalism vs anti-representationalism has now got the stage in science that representation can be started to be understood in a nonrepresentational way. This is this year new. That is, first experiment into the ontology of representationalism or more specifically he feedback in representation.

[@gastonlagaffe9156]

Really great video, please give us more about Heidegger 👍

[@kelvikpineda9923]

Cool vid. Being and TIme is my favorite book, i think :)

[@johnarbuckle2619]

YES, I like where you are going with this.

[@TheGatewayProductions]

Huge thanks for this upload! Anxiety is terrible but we can crush it!

[@StrangeCornersOfThought]

Awesome video as always. You're an inspiration for my own work.

[@arjunsmohan1]

Thank you!!

[@StrangeCornersOfThought]

I was totally about to make a video about this exact topic.

[@growingmelancholy8374]

You shouldn't. Make one about Merleau-Ponty's take on the Cogito

[@johnbevan4684]

FYI - In Latin, "g" is never pronounce as a "j" - it is a hard "g" as in "garden". Therefore, the correct pronunciation of "Cogito ergo sum" is "cogeeto ergo soom", the "e" is pronounced as the "ai" in "air", and the "o" is always a rounded "o" as in "octagon". In the word "cogito", the stress is on the first "o", so "cOgito" and not "cojEEto". And by the way, this video's translation is incorrect. "Cogito" means "I think" and not "thinking" (which is cogitare in Latin). "Sum" means "I am" and not "being" (which in Latin is "quod"). But your video is very good. Thanks.

[@theelderskatesman4417]

what Damasio and others completely ignore is Descartes' Passions of the Soul, which explicitly addresses the unity of Body and Mind.

[@corriemooney9812]

Very good.

[@chrisrosenkreuz23]

you are a great dude

[@jordan7828]

Nice, rothko on the wall.

[@hellucination9905]

"Stimmung", "Gestimmtheit" - we have to relearn to experience atmospheres and think in situations.

[@hellajeff5613]

Wow, somebody managed to discuss Heidegger without saying anything about his politics isn't that something.

[@yohanessaputra9274]

Or about his love affair with Arendt

[@pedroforonda]

I know, being a nazi sucks. It’s like being part of MEGA movement. Not at the same level, of course, but close to it. It will take a few years to realize how fucked up the two movements were. Don’t you think?

[@lucmissoum5721]

@@yohanessaputra9274 No way????

[@anhumblemessengerofthelawo3858]

_you can tell Descartes is totally trolling us. Look at that smirk_

[@gonzogil123]

Yes, beings and the world iff I can register such, but that is preceded by being able to differentiate at a substantive distance from the object, however fast the speed of thought may be, in order to reach that conclusion. I cannot be inorganic matter, and arrive at that same conclusion.

[@thesuperboscar]

I appriciate so much for your attempt to draw the parallels between Descartes and post-romantisicst philosophy, like Heidegger. I have always found that in Descartes philosophy, there are some apperent contradictions in terms of his method and in the way he reaches his doubtfulness about what he can know for certain. I find it hard to understand why exactly his philosophy and rationalism in general gained so much validation compared to his empericist counterpart. Also a thing I find frustrating about Descartes is, whether he is an exponent og metaphysical idealism or metaphysical materialsm? Like which one of the positions does he claim to be fundamental in terms of knowledge or perhaps the evolution of our though?

[@thesuperboscar]

@@thotslayer9914 Yeah but doesnt both metaphysical idealism and metaphysical materialism presuppose an ontological stance with and an underlying epistemology? And what do you mean by an ontological stand? I guess In terms of Heidegger, you can so to say take an isolatede ontological stance by analyzing the conditions and premisses of ontology itself, I just think it will be hard to not produce any epistemological implications of doing that. Maybe im wrong?

[@mattgilbert7347]

What "precedes" the Cogito - what is it that the subject emerges from, is grounded on, rests on (etc). Less than nothing?

[@bearsaremonkeys]

Nice Rothko in the background

[@gonzogil123]

Descartes aim seems to be "what is it that this thing is capable of doubting. If I am able to doubt, if I can carry this out, what will not be able to be exposed to its capacity to not assert itself with such certainty that, "this", thinking-thing, will encounter its limit?"

[@theuncomfortablethrill707]

Not sure if you monitor these comments any more but, I'm dyslexic so my reading can be very average but I'm sure when I was reading the meditations of Descartes and around like the fifth or something from my poor memory also he does end up arguing that we are beings in the world and the separation of mind and body isn't possible. Have I got my wires crossed? That was some years ago that I read it but you still hear a lot on how Descartes was wrong but my understanding of his writings were that he put this cogito ergo sum argument fourth and then kinda went around to dismantle it?

[@jim6929]

Do you know about Owen Barfield?

[@gonzogil123]

18:19min But doctors have, and make progress precisely on the capacity to differentiate between not only other species, and ourselves, but between organs, and functions. Descartes is trying to figure out how one differs from the other: not unlike doctors as Damasio has to know.

[@niklasbirksted8175]

Which translation of Heidegger is it that uses the german concepts over the rather ridiculous "entity" translation of seiendes

[@adaptercrash]

The one you gotta go to school for and finish a program or you end up homeless in a doorway having sex for crack for a years, he is just abstracting what we do and going along with it because it's a waste of time and life expectancy in Mass quantities

[@dumitrascu3398]

i like how he says cogito, its like khajiit o ergo skoom

[@owlnyc666]

Did Descartes critique Heidigger?🤔😉

[@owlnyc666]

I have been told that Neitzche criticized all philosophers. Even himself!

[@adaptercrash]

Ontological dualism they seem to like it

[@Impaled_Onion-thatsmine]

Assemblage thinking within dasein all similar, socialism.

[@gwillsthewizard]

Co-jeeto

[@josephrodriguez3487]

is it co-jeeto or co-gito?

[@hellucination9905]

It's Latin and therefore not co-jeeto.

[@johnbevan4684]

@@josephrodriguez3487 In Latin, "g" is never pronounce as a "j" - it is a hard "g" as in "garden".

[@annahd1669]

What a cutie

[@chardo24]

Existelist philosophy is nonsense Jamboree

[@growingmelancholy8374]

Oh look, more of Heidegger the Nazi. Maybe you can do a video on the Black Notebooks? Still waiting for that video on Merleau-Ponty. You always seem to skirt around his work for some reason or another.

[@hellucination9905]

Yeah, the Black Notebooks are superb! I like his concept of "Verwüstung". It's a hard critique of global capitalism and "jewish" rootlessness.

[@growingmelancholy8374]

@@hellucination9905 Yeah, I like it because it shows how he's a piece of shit and how much of his philosophy was rooted in racist thinking. Thanks for outing yourself. Appreciate it. Signed, a Jew.

[@alexsarullo3753]

Oh look, an ad hominem.

[@growingmelancholy8374]

@@alexsarullo3753 Stating an obvious fact is not an ad hominem attack. If you are reading or "listening" to Heidegger's ideas and not wondering to what extent his ideas are influenced if not developed out of antisemitism and also his relationship to Nazism, then that is either because you are ignorant or you don't care.

[@alexsarullo3753]

@@growingmelancholy8374 theres a difference between being cautious/aware of the ideology of the philosopher while reading their work, and trying to discredit them and remove them from the philosophical dialectic