Rick Roderick on Heidegger - The Rejection of Humanism [full length]

Our

uh second lecture will be on high digger

and the rejection of humanism. uh many

of you uh may know H Highiger by

reputation and I think that it's always

nice in a course on the self in the 20th

century to uh present at least one

lecture uh by a thinker who's extremely

profound and raises the issue of the

self in the modern era and also happens

to be a

fascist

and again I always have to put in these

disclaimers this is not an endorsement

of fascism

But but uh in a way I almost regret that

I had to start with that snotty remark

because H Highdigger's account of

finding meaning in the 20th century is

one of the most

profound and powerful that we get in the

20th century. Uh before I proceed to it,

I'd like to say though just a few brief

summary remarks about the rather

scattered out first lecture. uh what

what I was the basic point that I wanted

to set up for the for the rest of the

course uh so that we can now proceed to

look at various narratives about what

the self might be or how it might be

constructed in the 20th century

uh was to point out that the self is

under the siege of two different sorts

of factors. One are the famous cultural

critiques of uh that were produced in

the 19th century and this doesn't mean

that that just a handful of pedants got

us

confused. The critiques launched by

Nietze and Marx are certainly products

of the profound changes in the 19th

century so on and similarly with Freud's

uh uh project. So in a certain way what

we're looking at are the problems that

were that have been thrust upon us by

modernity by modern life and arguably uh

since we're speaking and will be

speaking about what this means to us in

the late 20th century about the uh the

problems of postmodern life. In any

case, I wanted to show that their

challenge cut to the heart of one

traditional way of understanding the

self and that was the self in relation

to God.

But it cuts another way too. It cuts in

regard to the self's understanding of

the self. In other words, it also shows

us that what we think we know about

ourselves may be driven by economic

motives of which we're unaware

consciously by the motives of desire of

which we are unaware

consciously but they appear

systematically in certain contexts. We

may be pushed by a certain resentment, a

certain kind of deformed will that is

the product of a culture of which we are

not largely conscious. In any case, I

wanted to present this dark side of

modernity as the kind of suspicion under

which the self becomes problematic. I

also wanted to to present it in

conjunction with some of the obvious

changes. The huge and increasing flow of

information, the incredible uh uh change

in the complexity of social systems. The

enormous and still ill understood

changes in the relation between

people's, cultures, men, women and the

planet and so on. And these changes uh

which now here in the late 20th century

have reached a magnitude of of uh of

complexity that I think uh leaves us

stunned in our attempts to build some

small uh place within which our self our

if you will authentic self since we'll

be discussing H high digger in this

lecture might dwell

uh H high digger's uh account of the

human situation

begins by rejecting. And I mean I mean

before I've said he's a fascist so now I

guess all of you aren't going to listen

to me. No. See that would be a a

philosophical fallacy. People who make

terribly tragic political decisions and

even very evil people can hold views

that

are interesting and can say things that

are true. We call this the ad homonym

fallacy. It doesn't work just to go,

well, that must be wrong because the

ACLU is for it. That will only work with

Jesse Helms. In that case, the ad

homonym is not a fallacy. But otherwise,

it is. And in H Highigger's case, I I

want you to withhold judgment just

because, you know, he has this for a

while. I'd like for you to play along

and and uh follow this narrative. I'm

going to attempt to do it in 45 minutes.

Now for highdigger scholars this is an

obscinity but I mean we're trying to

cover a lot of material a short while

and we're also trying to cover it in a

way where uh what you might call the

nonfootnoting public. I don't want to

call them non-scolarly because many

people read many more books than

academics. Academics when they're

through with their meetings don't have

time to

read, you know, let alone teach. I mean

I don't know very many people that teach

anymore. Uh, and so, uh, I'm talking

about the non-footnoting public, you

know, people who haven't footnoted every

article on Highdigger. We're going to

try to make the account popular in that

sense. I have no problem with that. I

also want it to be as accurate as I can.

Haidiger attempts to recast and he's

he's he's very aware that the very term

that I've used for my lecture is no

longer adequate namely the self the

human. So in his most famous work being

in time Haidiger recasts it as an

interpretation of what he calls in

German

doine and I'm going to translate that

now into West Texas English. That's

something like human being there in the

world. Something like

that. Now, why does he coin this in

German? It's a it's a very ordinary

term. It means being there. We made a

movie over here about it. You know, it's

based on a novel being there. Why did he

want to uh reject the language of self?

because he wanted to get rid of all the

baggage that I've just discussed that

has come under the mark of suspicion and

give a new narrative. And if you you'll

have to forgive me for not using dosign

throughout the lecture and instead

talking about the self because what

Haidiger is trying to do is give a new

narrative of the self but without using

that term so that he can distance

himself from the philosophical tradition

at least the modern one in order to give

an account of the human subject.

Well, uh, H Highdigger's account has

influenced, uh, I think it's been in in

some ways the most influential account

all the way up to the late 20th century.

You may and I will be talking about

later the French philosopher Dereda for

whom H Highiger is the most influential

figure. H Highdigger is a very

influential figure for Sartra and many

others. So, uh, we we have to spend a

little time with his uh with his

position.

uh in terms of his position and uh

philosophy H highaidiger is the one who

introduces the term the deconstruction

of

philosophy by it he doesn't mean to uh

the kind of deflationary remarks I made

in the first lecture to deflate

philosophy no he wants as it were to

destroy its project in the way that one

would sort of destroy a mound of junk in

order to dig down to what might be

called its sort of archaeological roots

to find out if there's anything there

that will help us in this project of

understanding what it means to be in the

world. Okay. And I think I have uh uh

some remarks about that that I would

like to make

here. High digger begins with in in a

very odd way for philosophers.

uh most philosophers begin by ensuring

their knowledge with some kind of uh

method or fiat you know they they begin

in a way uh by assuring you they won't

fall into

error but along with Hegel Haidiger

believes that this fear of falling into

error is error itself so he does

something very odd for philosopher he

begins by beginning and he just he

starts writing and I think that's very

us. He doesn't begin with a series of

methods that will give us the single and

and correct interpretation of the self,

which is sort of an obsession that I

think only philosophers really have. And

I don't want to I mean, hell, it's what

I used to do for a living, so I

shouldn't rag on it too much, but it's a

kind of obsession. I mean, it's an

obsession with being right all the time.

And one nice thing about H Highiger's

account is is that what he offers us is

what he calls a hermeneutic of dustine.

And now I'll use the English equivalent

which means something like a story or a

narrative of the self a kind of story

about the self. Now the nice thing about

a story as opposed to a method is that

you don't approach them the same way.

You don't for example about the

someone's life story if it is powerful

interesting and it grabs you and you can

find meaning in it. It's not the best

question to ask about a narrative. Is it

true or

false? That's the best question to ask

about an argument. But believe me, I'm

from Texas and when you hear a good

story, you don't go, "Is that true?"

Because that takes all the fun out of

it. I mean the story that H Highigger

has to tell has a lot of the the power

in

it. Well, H Highigger is and again I'm

going to try to summarize being in time

here now in about 30 minutes. In being

in time, Haidiger wants to look at what

the self is in its structure as a being

that lives through a period of

time and a being as opposed to being

because one of High Digger's central

points is one that I've already been

through in terms of the masters of

suspicion. Classically in philosophy,

there was a distinction drawn between

being with a capital B

which is a phil philosophical way of

writing the word God or fundamental

entity being big

B and beings

entities like one among which is

doine h high digger however and I don't

want to mislead you here because many

readers have been misled is no

humanist H highiger looks around for

what entity what being would be the best

being to interrogate on the issue of

daine on human being in the world. So uh

the being that he chooses to interrogate

turns out to be a sort of obvious

selection. He wants to interrogate or

interpret that being that

raises the question of

being and that happens to be us. We we

do that. Salamanders don't go what does

it all mean? Why should there be

something rather than nothing? What am I

about? So he go instead of investigating

salamanders nes or analytic philosophers

he tries to investigate human

beings. I think that's a good you know

that's sort of a reasonable place to to

start.

uh his uh

account

is

fascinating and and I I can advise you

to read it. I'm going to try to go

through it very

quickly. You take the three-fold

structure of dosai won't surprise any of

you and it's not particularly profound.

The three-fold structure of of the self

in time is that you have a

past and a

present and a future that is struct when

I've said this I've made a structural

remark you follow me that's the

structure the temporal structure of how

we tell our lives we tell about our past

our present about our plans and so

on for high digger

It is care and this is the early

highdigger. I won't go into the what he

thought later but for the early

highdigger it is the word care and many

of you will like this word

care. Concern is another word that could

be used here. The German is sar s o r

ge.

Care is what uh H Highigger interprets

as what is fundamental to the being of

dasine. So for example or the self. So

for example, if you want to know what

was interesting to a culture, what they

cared about, I'll use my example. I got

the chance to go to Florence, Italy.

Okay? It's a great place to get a chance

to go to. I got to see

Florence and you can see the how

powerful his interpretation is when you

visit a place like that because you can

see what it is that those selves those

designs cared about by what they built.

You go,

"Wow, they didn't care that their malls

aren't still

open." You know, they don't care that

the Ponttovecio is now run. Arno is all

green and mucky and the Ponttovecio is

just a little gold shop. They don't

care. I mean, they've got the efi,

they've got the devid. They just that's

what they care about. That shows their

care, their concern, the structure of

their being and so on. Uh, and you can,

and this is not a bad interpretation of

humans beings in the world. You can look

at what people construct, what they

build, what they make, what they

cherish. And this is supposed to be and

I think it's not an unreasonable

interpretation of human

being in terms of the

past care reveals something that you all

already

know. By the time that you showed up

here today, you were already a being in

the world. It's an interesting

structural feature of all of you. you

were, you know, barring the possibility,

which we will reach by the time these

lectures are over, that at least some of

you are

replicants, cyborgs, that that's

possible. I mean, it's even, I think,

technically possible. But in any case,

barring that last little note of

suspicion,

uh the the human structure as uncovered

by H Highigger is care. And it in terms

of the past it shows that we are beings

already in the world. Which means that

the philosophical project of starting

without

prejudices, starting without biases,

starting without

interpretations would be as stupid as to

have someone start speaking Shakespeare

without having a language.

In a way, the the deep and powerful blow

that that highdigger lays against the

against philosophy is as a discipline

that can start from scratch and tell us

who we are. That can just start with a

clean slate and build it up. No. The way

we experience our lives is we wake up

and hell, we're already here. We are, in

his phrase, thrown into the world.

You were born somewhere, some when, some

race, some class, some gender, and all

of that's already comes along. And from

the minute you begin to speak a language

and learn a culture and learning a

culture, contrary to what analytic

philosophers say, is not like learning

to pick out patches of blue or being

sure that this is your hand.

Learning a culture to live in. It is

more like learning how to dance the

Virginia reel than it is learning how to

pick out patches of blue. Involves many

complex steps before you're in one. And

I mean, even in a crude and vicious

culture like West Texas, that's true.

The one I come from. I mean, there

there's a lot of subtle little mechism

rituals that if you don't know, they

will beat you to

death. You just have to learn them.

They're complex. They're much more

complex than the standard philosophical

examples which are picking out patches

of blues and so on. So Haidiger says

we're in the terms of the past we're

already in a

world in terms of the present care

reveals us as trying to be at home in

the world. See you may notice this home

this sort of homey language of high

diggers. This the fact that he turns out

to be a fascist. This has made me to

this day wary of language that's overly

homey sort of. That's why I don't like

Grand Canyon. It's too homey as a movie.

But anyway, care reveals us that being

at home among or being among or trying

to feel that you're in the right place,

you know, that you belong in a

place. In terms of the

future, we are always according to High

Digger ahead of ourselves. Have you ever

and this is I think another profound

part about the narrative of the self in

a certain way what our plans and

projects are are not a part of our

future but a part of our present we're

always ahead of ourselves and we always

it's like well you know lunch later

let's see what do we want uh Big Mac

Booya base it depends on your class I

guess more than anything else and like

that and even in terms of like college

what what what are my kids going to do

for college? What about my retirement?

This is a characteristic. And again,

what I'm telling you here from High

Digger, remember we just started with a

story about the self and now we're just

telling one and it's supposed to capture

sort of the general features of selfhood

being a

self. And uh so that's that's what he

sees there in that structure.

Dign reveals itself in terms of the past

as being thrown into a world, in terms

of the present as being able to try to

articulate our place within it, and in

terms of the future, in terms of

projecting ourselves

forward and so on.

Now, here's the bad part. Haidiger

realizes that you can't just simply

abandon this old philosophical project

and then just tell this story and hope

to capture its universal features other

words the features that are shared by

dosign wherever we happen to bump into

dosign or to the self or

selves being there type creatures like

us that asks these questions about

being without looking into what he calls

moods it's very interesting hydiger is

one of the few philosophers ers to

discuss something that's very important

to people, moods. I mean, most most

analytic philosophers have no interest

in moods. It's funny. I mean, I think

this is why when you read these

continental philosophers like some that

I'm discussing today, they're they're

considered a bit affeminite because this

mood talk is is not really macho, you

know, like I'm in a bad mood. I I have a

headache

or mood talk is is sort of unsettling to

men.

uh continental philosophy appears even

in the discourse of the profession of

philosophy as being soft and so there's

all these nouns that you know give it a

certain

characteristic but in any case it's

clear to me that uh that mood is an

important characteristic when you

discuss the self what selfhood

is so what and this is I think one of

the most profound parts of the analysis

that the young highdigger gives

the mood that he thinks that reveals

what dosign really is. And if this will

connect with my first lecture about the

masters of suspicion, his

anxiety, that is the mood that will

reveal as it

were the formal existential character of

Dasai, his

anxiety. Anxiety.

Now when I say mood here, you could

easily misunderstand me. All the the

account Haidiger is giving while it's a

story about the human self. This this

account of the anx of the mood of

anxiety I'm about to give you briefly is

not the kind of anxiety for which you

run to the doctor or the psychiatrist

and you take a value or talk it out or

get on a damn 12step program because it

is an anxiety before the fear of

nothingness.

It's an anxiety in the face of

death. Don't want to make it sound, you

know, too scary, but I've already said

it is a democratic institution. It is

something you need to deal with. And

again, we're looking for universal

structures. One of the structures of all

stories about the selves, even the ones

we tell

ourselves, no matter how disconnected

they may be, they end in this rather

interesting institution. Death. very

interesting

institution. Well, he he examines the

mood of anxiety then not as a mere mood

that just comes upon you once in a while

but is an underlying structure of what

it means to be

human. In other words, if you remove

this anxiety, you would also remove the

self. The same view kerkugard holds of

despair. I mean not to we're not

depressing people here. We're not trying

to depress people, but these are

structures of the selves. These aren't

symptoms that Phil Donahue or Oprah

Winfrey can

fix. To be asked to be cured of your

fundamental despair, your anxiety is to

ask to be cured of what little self you

may have. It is a stupid thing to even

want in a way because it is our anxiety

that makes us look at what at at how we

came up from the past. The way that

that's described by H Highigger is that

we were abandoned to the they to Dasman,

the crowd. What does he mean by that?

Well, he means we grew up in a in a

place like West Texas or Cleveland, Ohio

or Bangladesh where the way we grew up

in in the way our past is

structured, we didn't learn our moral

theories from Kant or Mill. We learned

them because our mamas spanked our

butts. said, "Don't steal." Whap. You

know this. We were thrown into that. We

were abandoned to those values as it

were. It's not it's not a scary thing.

That's how we learn. See, this is a way

to try to redirect our attention to the

concretess of being a self as opposed to

giving a philosophical account. This was

H Highigger's attempt. You're abandoned

to to the thy. And the reason I like

that phrase the they is you're all

familiar with remarks like well they say

or they say well that's exactly the

spirit in which h high digger's using

the concept here you know if you if you

violate certain restrictions of your

culture somebody's going to go well but

you know they say that well that's the

way in which high digger sees us

relating to our past anxiety reveals

that to us now why is it anxiety

Well, if we want to make our lives a

project and H Highiger thinks

fundamentally we do thinks that's part

of the structure of

dosign is to want to make your story a

story. A story not just a bunch of

disconnected junk and debris that

happened to happen to you, but a story.

A

project. If that's true, then our

relation to the past is filled with

anxiety because we all started from this

moment of or from this time of

abandonment to the values of others to

they the it's not an evil thing. This is

just means the culture around you means

the opinion of people. Well, you know,

they say that that you know, you're

wearing your hair like that. It's just

and so on. It's not unusual stuff. This

is the common way in which we're brought

up.

Anxiety reveals our present state and H

Highigger doesn't like to talk about

this as either a it's it's a fleeing

away from. Now this is where H

Highdigger brings in the way in which

that we try to fill our life up with

busyiness to flee away from. And and I

admit that this can't I don't think this

can be universalized as an account. Let

me admit that right now. I just think it

is uninteresting. It is an interesting

account. Not the account. There is no

such thing as the account. That's one of

the underlying themes of this course.

But this is an interesting

one. Well, what are we fleeing away from

or falling away from? Well, Haidiger

thinks that and I mean this is sort of

again these have all become general

cultural possessions of people. Haidiger

thinks until we

face nothingness, our own

nothingness, that we tend to fill our

lives with busyness, we flee into this

and flee into that. We fall away from

our own best insights about what we

should be doing and so and so

on. anxiety would reveal about the

future. If you can free yourself from

the thy to a certain extent, you can't

completely. And if you can stop fleeing

from the present and trying to live in

it, you can see why this account was

popular in the 60s, right? You remember

beatnick used to like high digger. Okay?

Well, this is why you try to live in the

present. If you try to do that, the

future will begin to look like a

project, which Haidiger characterizes

being free

for and from. Being free for your

projects and being free

from your sort of attempt to get away

from

yourself.

Okay? And

uh someone during break mentioned this

to me. I think it's true.

Being free in this sense is not an easy

thing to want to

be. Let me let me just say that right

away. I mean, being free from the they

is already a problem for most folks,

right? I mean, how many people want to

live, you know, on in Banebridge Drive

and have the only red, white, and blue

house? I mean, even that tiny little

transgression could make some people

into a nervous wreck.

Not. I mean, sure, some people are

afraid of death and other people are

afraid of being seen carrying People

magazine. I mean, we live in a society

that may be far too superficial for the

account I'm giving. So, I'm hoping to

try to make some sense out of it. I

mean, different things bother different

people. I mean, the culture that really

scares me is the one in which death has

no significance for our projects. That's

the culture that in in which the self is

under siege. As long as High Digger when

he was young could write this narrative

of the self, this rather dramatic

existential narrative about I'm going to

realize that I will die and then I will

choose an authentic project and carry it

out and I will free as many constraints

as I can from the thy. I will stop

fleeing from self. He even has a a a

word in here for what he would probably

call this lecture, which is chatter. You

know, I'm gonna free myself from the

chatter of every day and talk deep

thoughts in the Black Forest.

Well, I' I've sort of sketched the

account for you. And the sad part about

it is it all sounds rather quaint and it

would make a nice miniseries. I mean we

are living in a in a situation where

even these basic accounts of the self

like high diggers have become sort of

ironies. I'm not trying to put it down

too quickly. I'm just trying to

explain why anybody would listen to it

today. You'd listen to it today only

because it is an interesting story from

a period not too long ago. I mean after

all the beatnick the beatnicks love this

account. They they used to say, "Oh, I

I've read High Digger." By which they

meant they had there's a famous little

set of notes where you could pick all

this stuff up without actually reading

being in time. It was quite popular the

book

itself. I I only know a couple of other

people that have read. Who cares, right?

You know, they get it from the

cliffotes. But in any case, uh uh let me

let me give you the uh what I think is

the

powerful account and then it's

criticism. The final sort of punchline

of it with highdigger we choose this we

choose a

project in full awareness that being is

always being towards

death for highdigger this doesn't

our action but it makes us see

that just like if we wanted to write a

beautiful poem we would plan an

incredibly grand

last stanza

or whatever. When we choose a project,

we want to choose one that will make of

our life a complete thing, a thing with

meaning, a connected story, a story

worth telling.

So that's the idea is that the

recognition of one's own

nothingness in one's own death as the

ultimate

possibility. This recognition and

acceptance frees us for our projects. It

allows us for one thing to engage in a

bit of what I consider if you wanted to

sum up the wisdom of the east, you know,

oriental wisdom in a s in in just one

sentence. It might be something like

don't sweat the small stuff. I mean that

that there was a real well-known

Buddhist who told me I could sum up the

Dao and the Gita and all that for you

quickly. It's this. Don't sweat the

small stuff. You westerners, you spend

all your time sweating the small stuff.

Highdigger here says look if you really

internalize as a part of your self story

the knowledge that you too will be dead

gone

nothing that

that will be a freeing and liberating

experience that you have to be able to

like work through it as it were to use a

psychoanalytic phrase to work through

it. Well, what does it allow us to

escape

from? Well, I actually have to say that

this moment in existentialism has

certainly been good for me. I think just

been a healthy thing for me. It cut

short therapy. I I went to a therapist

once. I went three times and on the

third of visit I went, "Oh, by the way,

I have a question. Why are we born to

suffer and

die?" And she

went, that was the end of therapy for

me. figured that if she couldn't help me

with like my fundamental problem, she

wasn't going to do much good on the

trivial problems. I mean, you know, I

had a big problem. Why are we born to

suffer and die? She just

went I mean, you know, she said, "Well,

I could write your prescriptions for

some Valium." And I said, "No thanks. I

drink. Don't need

it. I belong to a large club. I'm a

drunkard." No. Anyway,

uh what it does is

this. It makes you it for me it's it's

made it easier to talk to groups to to

teach classes and to talk to groups of

students and not to be afraid of cameras

and stuff like that because I mean in

the end we're all dead. In the end,

Johnny Carson, his body will like, you

know, turn into dust. And in the end,

the earth will shrivel up like a cinder

and fall into the sun. And in the

end, it's not the big bang anymore. Now

they call it, I think,

I'm going to feel free to engage in my

project without worrying about what they

told me about how I should do

philosophy. So I think there's a moment

of truth or a moment of interest in H

Highigger's account. Also, it's made me

rather short and sharp with small talk.

It It really does. I mean, it makes me

where people go, "Oh, gee, you know, the

weather today is just she it, you know,

I'm sorry, but I prefer conversations

about sex, religion, politics, of

course, being a man, sports, but if it's

not something, you know, grabs me, I I

feel perfectly free to go, well, it's

chatter. I don't want haven't got time

for it. Be dead soon. Can't do it.

Now, the most pathetic example of

fleeing from sort of came up on my way

out of the lecture. I happen to be a

smoker. I don't advocate it for anyone

in here or watching me on uh on the

tape. I don't advise

smoking. We have a culture now where the

most obvious example of fleeing from

death is this utter

obsession with being young until it's

obscenely too late for it.

until it is. This is fleeing from

yourself in such a way that it's

madness. Who wants to be the world's

best looking 111 year old

person? I mean, what is the point in

that for God's sakes? I just, you know,

this is something that I don't

follow. I mean, my grandfather was a

good man. He died at 78. I think that's

good luck and plenty long enough. Suit

the hell out of me. But why do we have

90 year olds running up steps wearing

Nikes and dating 17 year old? I mean,

this is not working. It's not working.

And I'm not telling old people to go

away. Hell, I'm getting there myself.

It's ridiculous. You take 30 year olds,

they're trying to look like 11 year

olds, you know? I mean, it's it it works

all the way up and down the spectrum.

Every 40-year-old housewife wants to

have a baby like Demi Moore, be

beautiful naked with her stomach out to

here. I mean, it's just not working for

us. In a way, it's fleeing from death.

And and what I'd like to say about it is

this. You could eat all the tofu you

want and jog as long as you like. And

compared to geologic time, your life's

going to be gone like that

anyway. Geological times, you know, long

time. And you can jog your butt off and

you're still going to die. That's what I

like about death. It's democratic. It

would irritate me if you could jog and

live forever and I got to, you know, got

stuck here smoking and having a good

time and died over it. No, you'll die,

too. You know, you'll have 34 more years

to run up and down the

stairmaster. Now, what in the world

could be a better example of High

Digger's account of fleeing from our

authentic projects than to imagine some

poor sap who spends three hours a day

running up and down just stairs that are

just

In what kind of culture? This is my

question to you. Is there a human self

left in a culture that produces people

who run in place for hours doing

nothing? Is there is there any reason to

talk about humans like

that? I mean, High Digger is

oldfashioned, I admit. And I certainly I

don't advocate his politics. I think

fascism is a drastic

solution. What it what it sort of steers

you away from this fleeing business,

this stairmaster business to make it a

very contemporary example is an

authentic life. I mean this is for for

high digger what you want to achieve.

You don't want to to you want to achieve

a life with

authenticity and this is the key word

for him.

An authentic life is one in which you

don't flee from your destiny, but one in

which you shape it as far as you can.

And H Highiger's no romantic about it.

He knows that you'll be given certain

historical conditions to deal

with,

limitations that belong to all humans.

But authentic life is one in which you

try as best you

can to make your life at least something

worth talking about in the same sentence

with the word

destiny. And I think my example of the

stairmaster if if if you go compare that

to the uh to Odysius, you know, I mean

that that's a pretty far far gap for

civilization to move, isn't it? from

Odysius, you know, who goes from island

to island and then comes home, kills a

bunch of people, takes his wife back.

Big story. Killed a cyclops and made fun

of gods and did all these tricky

wonderful things that belong to our

western past. And I think it is

interesting. But I bet Odysius wouldn't

have had time to do that if he'd stayed

in shape about four hours a day on that

stairmaster. Just wouldn't have worked

out for him. I mean the very thought

shows you that uh the theory of

evolution may not work in the case of

dosai you know I mean there may be

creatures that uh and I don't mean just

the ones in Jurassic Park there may be

other creatures that are not headed in

the right

direction in any case uh uh this uh this

project is one to try to get away from

empty conformity and to live

authentically.

Now here is its tremendous drawback and

this is the one that becomes obvious in

my remarks about fascism. The trouble

with leaving the account of being human

this abstract. You know we we come from

a culture. We flee from conformity. We

try to get authentic. The trouble with

leaving it that abstract is that you can

be an authentic anything. Follow me? I

mean, turns out that you could be

authentically a member of the Third

Reich, authentically a member of the

Reagan

administration. Just leave those two

together for a while in your

minds. Authentically a friend of Richard

Nixon. No, wait a minute. That's

logically

absurd. No, it isn't. I guess that

that's possible. You could be a The

trouble with the with this authenticity

business is

that trying as hard as he can to give a

more

concrete primordial account of what it

means to be human and trying to

avoid you know the traditional accounts.

He has ended up giving us an abstract

account again at another level. Now

admittedly we've learn I hope we've

learned something from it. I mean, I do

think there are important things in it

about fleeing from

ourselves, but for God's sakes, I mean,

uh, we don't want a narrative about

ourselves that's based merely on

authenticity because I mean, we know too

many authentic swine or at least

semiathentic swine to want that. So

that's that's a I think a powerful

uh

criticism. On the other hand, I'd like

for you to remember at least some of the

positive uh things I've said about

Haidiger. One is that his account of

human being in the world does free us

from the philosophical prejudice that we

just start a project from nowhere

almost and carry it out rationally or

whatever. High Digger has a much more

concrete sense of the world and also a

much more a very important I think

account of what it means to

be fleeing from oneself and I think

that's the important part. So, if you

get a chance to read Being in Time,

which I don't entirely recommend because

it's very long and life is very short

and it might be your kind of

stairmaster, you know. I mean, I don't

know. There's a difference uh difference

sometimes between what uh what bores

some people and what bores others. I

admit that. But in any case, uh uh H

Highdigger uh uh does not succeed in uh

in bringing the self out from under

siege or out out of its problems. But he

does point out at least one thing about

it. So if we're going to be interested

in the self at all, we should be

interested in it in in trying to have

some degree of authenticity. We should

be interested in that in having a

project more interesting than getting

skinny and rich and dying at a as the

best looking 125 year old person on the

block. There ought to be

something not in a strong sense, but

there ought to be something more

interesting to say about your life than

that. I had a nice car and I died as the

best looking 125 year old jogger in

Venice Beach, California. I just I I

hope that there's more to

say. And uh in fact I think there

is being a Texan uh I know uh you know I

think the people that that uh died at

the Alamo I mean they were you know from

the standpoint of some they're

imperialist swine from the standpoint of

others they're heroes but there's one

thing for sure their lives were an

interesting story I mean I mean I don't

want to always rely on the odyssey

Crockett was an interesting guy ran for

Congress you know got inval

about him, then showed up and tried to

steal a lot of land in Texas, ended up,

you know, fighting, and now we remember

it. It would be almost fair to say of

him that he had a

destiny. And as corny as that may

sound, it's not something we're going to

say about David Letterman or Richard

Simmons. Follow me? There's been a

shift. There's been a shift. the self is

under siege. And I've talked about high

digger and his rejection of a certain

form of the older accounts. And I'll

talk about a famous uh uh account of

being human in the next lecture on

Sartra. But uh for now that's all except

uh be sure you know and uh fear death. I

mean that's that's important to being

human. Uh, fear had realized