What is Dasein?

design is an ordinary German word it

means something like existence or more

literally being there but it's also the

heart of one of the most interesting and

problematic works of modern philosophy

ever written Martin Heidegger is being

in time what I want to do is just take

you through some of what he might have

meant by that time and why we should

care about it the first question we got

to work out is who or what is design so

John Hoagland the great American

philosopher suggested that on hiding his

picture pretty much anything could be

design he said it could be people

Cincinnati or General Motors any kind of

large-scale complex human structure more

recently however scholars have tend to

think that sets things a little too

broad that design is really heidegger's

name for individual humans and the

distinctive situation we find ourselves

in now why do you need a new word for

that after all it's not as if individual

humans in our testing situation is

something no one's ever thought of

before right the easiest way to approach

this is in terms of remark from Delta so

do tow was worried about what he called

the Bloodless subject of traditional

philosophy and the thought here is that

the way the subject is presented by

people like Kant and others in some

sense misses the nature of human

experience the visser ality the

complexity the personal dimension this

is the Bloodless idea you know if you

read the first critique you read

cancerous critique it tends to suggest

that most of human existence is spent

devising Newtonian theorems or making

course or judgments and obviously there

is going to be some of that but one of

the key ideas of modern philosophy is

there's this whole other swathe of human

life from sexuality to emotion to social

roles which was good being left out I'm

part of what hiding is trying to do with

the I do design is to bring that back in

then we could pick out three features

that are important within that the first

is the social dimension so design for

Heidegger is always understanding

self in terms of a certain social role

you're not just blank subject you're a

lesbian or a carpenter or both or

neither or all of the above and none of

the above you're seeing yourself in a

certain way in a certain Society that's

pushing certain pressures on you that's

telling you certain goals that you're

reacting to you're trying to make sense

of yourself in this ongoing complex

social situation the subject is always a

social subject idea second thing he

wants to bring in is mood or emotion

it's very important for him that the

subject is always in a certain mood

you're bored you're depressed you're

anxious you're excited you nervous and

that these moods inflect and alter the

rest of our experience so if you think

for example of your experience of time

when you're really excited versus your

experience of time when you're

incredibly bored the phenomenology of

those two cases differs radically some

moves he thought were particularly

important for the sophoclean they were

the kind of royal road to understanding

who we really are and in characteristic

existentialist fashion he had a soft

spot for anxiety if you focus on anxiety

and on the experience there you'll learn

a bit about who we really are and what

the real nature of the human situation

is the third feature of design that's

very important to him is death we're

finite mortal subjects and he's

interested in a sense in which people

either face up to that fact or dodge it

and duck it you can see how this links

into a topic covered elsewhere in these

videos the city of authenticity or

inauthenticity authentic agents were

highly yet except they're finite you'd

accept that they're going to die and

live their life in the light of that

fact inauthentic agents talk around it

ignore it pretend it's not going to

happen or to be someone else I'll

probably be okay so you can see here how

this links in with those ideas of

authenticity or inauthenticity do you

face up to who you really are

so those are some of the changes that

hiding who wants to introduce with the

so do design it's very much a subject

with blood in its veins a subject in a

particular society doing particular

things seeing itself in a particular

with moods emotions and only perhaps a

few short years to live it's very

different from say County and a

perception how does this new model of

the subject relate to the classic for

the so vocal problems well let me give

you two examples so the first is

skepticism hiding has this kind of

classically Heidegger in mind just both

incredibly beautiful and utterly

frustrating way says that the the

scandal of philosophy so Kant talked

about he said it was a scandal of

philosophy that we hadn't yet proved the

existence of the external world and how

he says the real scandal is not that we

haven't proved the existence of the

external world it's that people keep

asking about it so if a Hydra give a

scandal is not that we haven't dealt

with kept situm is that we think

skepticism needs dealing with so part of

what's happening with design is

supposedly when you understand the

nature of design and its relationship to

the world around it what heidi calls

being in the world you'll see that the

old skeptical problems just fall away

that they're in some sense incoherent or

secondary or distorted it's usually kind

of vic and stein ian themes coming in

here you don't answer the skeptic

directly you show that he or she has

misunderstood the basic framework in

which they're asking the question the

second classic philosophical issue that

comes up very strongly is what you might

call the transcendental structure so how

do get emphasizes history a great deal

much more than someone that can he talks

about the way in which our understanding

changes through history changes through

social change but on the other hand it

often looks like he's trying to come up

with a general a historical theory of

historical change and the way in which

our understanding switches as our

society does so you've got this tussle

that you see really starting with Hegel

on words how philosophy in history going

to go together can you have a general

theory of historical change can you say

general philosophical things about the

way in which our self understanding our

self conception alters through time or

do you to take a position the Foucault

sometimes toys with

need to forget about universals

altogether forget about the idea of a

subject even a historicized subject and

just talk about individual historical

periods and their pictures of themselves

in the world so what we've got so far as

design as a certain way of thinking

about humanity and as I'm making some

classic philosophical problems how do

you like to sum all this up in terms of

being the problem he thought was that

would fail to grasp our own being the

distinctive nature of who we are what

happens after hiding it well let me give

you let me mention two points one is a

number of authors within the

phenomenological tradition become

worried that hiding himself as

ironically overlooked the key thing

which is of course that we're not

disembodied subjects that we're subjects

with blood in our veins flesh on our

bones subjects with very much a physical

place in the world and that that

physicality needs to be captured and

understood and the way it differs for

example between one person and another

and so you get the kind of tradition you

see running to people at merleau-ponty

to really understand the subject we need

to understand the body and that's the

body that for all Heidegger's emphasis

on concrete everyday life he doesn't say

much about another development or

another in some ways another blind spot

in early Heidegger is the question of

animals to frame this idea of design

what's distinctive about humans

he sets a very very hard line between

humans rational animals as you might

call them and non rational animals dogs

cats giraffes chimpanzees dolphins you

can see it starts to get a bit

problematic for Heidegger is a very

sharp line we are design whatever they

are they're definitely not and that

leads some people for example john gray

the political theorist to talk about

Heidegger is having an essentially

theological orientation still the humans

are special in some way made in in the

image of some kind of God distinct from

the rest of the animal kingdom now part

of what's happening here is hiding his

channel in the latent Antin

realism that you find in a lot of

phenomenology part of what's happening

though is because he wants to focus on

what's so special and distinctive about

human beings he's come up with this

category that to some degree isolates

them from what you might think of very

similar entities how much difference

really is there for the sovereignty

between the kind of capacities that we

have to use tools and the kind of

capacities the sophisticated animals

does Gazzo mizzen tempt to articulate

what's distinctive about us but the

worry is that it in doing so it severs

us from the broader context in which we

need to be understood