Entries tagged with heidegger

tarigwaemir and Anonymous have comments on my Heidegger thread that still merit responses from me, but I'm going to put off responding for the time being. In my Heidegger post I was asking a question of Nietzsche and Heidegger that I've been asking of myself as well, and I've decided that the question will be clearer if I simply ask it of myself, and leave Nietzsche and Heidegger out of it for the time being.

The question is, "What is the importance of the idea of transcendence?" By "transcendence" here I don't simply mean "rising above circumstances" (e.g., "he transcended his militaristic upbringing to become one of the great humanitarians of the age") but rather the demand that - to mix metaphors - one's grounds, causes, or reasons must be absolutely transcendent. That is, one's grounds, causes, or reasons must be so independent of what they ground, cause, or justify that if the latter were to cease existing, the grounds, causes, and reasons would nonetheless remain unchanged. So, by this standard, if my theories are to be grounded in fact, the facts must in no way be dependent on the theories. Get rid of the theories and all that accompany them - including their premises, assumptions, vocabulary - and the facts remain identical to what they were before. (If the standards for transcendence aren't stated so explicitly, nonetheless the feeling is that all the strength or solidity or authority or capacity to shape comes from the grounds-causes-reasons, and none from what is being grounded or caused or justified.)

( What I mean by importance )

Am currently reading Martin Heidegger's "The Word Of Nietzsche" (it's in The Question Concerning Technology And Other Essays, no preview available through Google Books, unfortunately), at the recommendation of Philosophy David 1.* I'm only a few pages into the essay, but I have a question that I think is quite discussable whether one has read the essay or not. Heidegger, elucidating Nietzsche, writes "Metaphysics is history's open space wherein it becomes a destining that the suprasensory world, the Ideas, God, the moral law, the authority of reason, progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, civilization, suffer the loss of their constructive force and become void." My question would be: how important is one's belief or disbelief in "metaphysics" and "the suprasensory world" etc.? What if one had no opinion one way or another? Or one had strong opinions, but those opinions were irrelevant to most of what one actually did in one's life? What force in the world do such beliefs actually have? My impression so far is that Nietzsche, and most likely Heidegger as well, simply assume the importance of such beliefs/disbeliefs. Whereas I don't think we get to do that, to assume their importance rather than gauge their importance. (But then, being only a few pages in, I may be misinterpreting Nietzsche's and Heidegger's assumptions.)

For instance, if one doesn't believe in God, why would one assume that the idea of God necessarily has any constructive force to lose? What Heidegger means by "constructive force" is something like "determining the world from above and without." The idea of God could have social force, in the same way that belief in hell could have social force, but I don't see how it ever could possibly have "constructive force" as Heidegger seems to be using the term.

*It turns out that all philosophers at American colleges and universities are named David. This is to distinguish our philosophy departments from Australian philosophy departments.

Transcendence: So What?

Heidegger 1: Metaphysics So What?