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

what did descartes know for certain

that he's a thinking thing a cogito

but what does it mean to think

descartes does list a few modes

of thinking he says doubting

affirming denying understanding

awareness of ignorance willingness

imagination and sensory perception

but this he says is all he knows

for sure it's the foundation that

all other philosophy and science should

be built

upon what we have here in descartes

is the beginning of a philosophy of

mind philosophers of mind asked

questions

like how can we schematize the mind draw

it out

how do we analyze its parts and think

clearly about how they relate to one

another

the 20th century german philosopher

martin heidegger

embarks upon a similar project to

descartes

what he asks is the fundamental nature

of our experience of our existence

heidegger has many agreements with

descartes

if we want to live life well he says

we need to be clear about its most

fundamental

component he is though more

interested than descartes about how we

live

in the world how we relate to the things

around us the descartes approach to

philosophy can be summarized by his

famous phrase cogito ergo sum

which translates as thinking therefore

being for heidegger descartes has it the

wrong

way round though he thinks that

descartes has neglected

the sun the being what is it

he asks to be something

now i don't want to delve too deeply

into the complicated foundations of

heidegger's thoughts

but simply he says first

we are beings in the world

to explain this heidige begins in a

similar way to descartes

in a short commentary on descartes

heidegger asks the reader

what does descartes care about

like he cares about knowledge

science mathematics skepticism

atheism catholicism and other

worldly things he has motivations

he seeks he's looking for truth

and he has care for these things he

cares about them

before he is certain that he's a

thinking thing before he's certain that

he's thinking about them that

is so this care about these things is

more foundational to thought to his mind

heidegger writes down science facticity

is such that its being in the world has

always dispersed itself or even split

itself

up into definite ways of being

in the multiplicity of these is

indicated by the following examples

having to

do with something producing something

attending to something and looking after

it

making use of something giving something

up

and letting it go undertaking

accomplishing

convincing interrogating considering

discussing

determining care then at its most

foundational

is like focus it's like intentionality

we all focus on certain things in the

world

and so it's a fundamental existential

mode

of being but we can go further

why do we care like let's think about

descartes most frequent mode of thinking

dating it's meant to be purely res

cogitans that is not physical

something we only think but

what are we doing when we are doubting

when we're caring about doubting

we're taking an object of thought

a belief a sensory perception a feeling

and we're questioning it we're

performing

some kind of action on a distinct object

of thought is it true that the cat is

sat on the mat

for example but what are we questioning

about it what does it mean to question

something

why question in the first place there

are a number of routes we could take it

we might think about needing reliable

information about the world

predictability to being able to interact

efficiently

with the world with our knowledge about

it we

might think we do it to follow our

drives and to

satiate our hungers and thirsts or

our need for shelter in short

we care about the validity of our

propositions

the truthfulness of them in the moment

dependent on our goals in time

we care about their authenticity

heidegger also points towards our

experience

in time we care about the validity

of having an entity present before us

and understanding our relationship to it

here the cat is sat on the mat for

example

but we also care about the repeatability

the memorialization the verifiability of

the idea that the cat

was sat on the mat so we can

add all of these phenomena that

heidegger looks into

and there are many many more to the list

of things that we know

for certain to summarize though we are

beings in the world not beings

and the world heidegger says for example

that when descartes is analyzing his

famous

wax he's not a passive spectator

he's interacting with it moving it

around

tapping it placing it into the fire

he's questioning something that is

present

at hand which leads us to another

of heidegger's observations one that

begins to draw out the

existentialism in his thoughts now

descartes is doing a lot of doubting a

lot of

questioning a lot of denying and

searching

and i have some experience in this area

because

if you spend a lot of time reading

people like descartes

or the ancient skeptics or the

postmoderns

the thinkers who spend a lot of time

trying to understand the foundational

essence of something like

truthfulness you spontaneously

begin to do a lot of doubting yourself

now this is great of course

criticizing analyzing questioning

interpreting

noticing things but it can also

be unhelpful you don't want to have to

constantly be asking what is that

or why is that or what if that

you can become too hesitant to unsure

too doubtful of everything in yourself

if heidegger says we are meant to be

beings in the world

and the hyphens here are meant to

signify the oneness

of our experience with the world then

there are times when we

can as descartes does become

separated from the world the world

becomes

a question mark distinct from us

and ultimately unknowable it can lead to

heidegger's interpretation

of anxiety heidegger sees that

if as descartes says doubt is a

fundamental foundation of our being

then anxiety is too we contain

an unavoidable existential angst within

us

this is what leads to heidegger's

existentialism

and what i think heidegger would argue

makes descartes a proto

existentialist he says that descartes

is threatened by the possibility of

impossibility that all and everything is

false

that he's mistaken that there is a demon

that he's asleep or mad a constant

searching for oneself but we do live

with the possibility of arriving at

satisfactory conclusions

too however temporary they might be

what heidegger calls an end situation

we are entities with a capacity for

self-perfection

descartes thought he'd found the certain

knowledge that cured his

existential doubt so in conclusion here

i want to add that

heidegger is not necessarily

anti-cartesian

his relationship with descartes is much

more nuanced than that

but i think he does provide the best

attempt to overcome the idea of a

mind-body duality

that we've largely inherited from

descartes

antonio dimazio who we looked at last

time

writes that this is descartes error

the abysmal separation between body and

mind

between the sizeable dimensioned

mechanically operated

infinitely divisible body stuff on the

one hand

and the unsizable undimensioned

unpushed pullable non-divisible mind

stuff

on the other and why is it important to

get this stuff right

because it guides our thinking in many

many other areas whether it's ideas like

the mind being similar to a computer

application

or how advances in mental health and

psychiatry occur

so what can we add to descartes

philosophy of mind his

list of certainties that we talked about

at the beginning

this has been a brief overview of a

heideggerian critique

and one that's nowhere near exhaustive

beam and time is a very very long and

complicated work

but today cart's rationalism we might

add a few concepts like

being in the world care time

authenticity present at handedness

and anxiety

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