Heideggerian terminology
Martin Heidegger, the 20th-century German philosopher, produced a large body of work that intended a profound change of direction for philosophy.
(Ancient Greek: ἀλήθεια) Heidegger's idea of aletheia, or disclosure (Erschlossenheit), was an attempt to make sense of how things in the world appear to human beings as part of an opening in intelligibility, as "unclosedness" or "unconcealedness".
)[1] It is closely related to the notion of world disclosure, the way in which things get their sense as part of a holistically structured, pre-interpreted background of meaning.
For instance, "The President is on vacation", and, "Salt is Sodium Chloride" are sentences that, because of their apophantic character, can easily be picked up and repeated in news and gossip by 'The They.'
[2] (German: Sein-zum-Tode) Being-toward-death is not an orientation that brings Dasein closer to its end, in terms of clinical death, but is rather a way of being.
The "they-self" talks about it in a fugitive manner, passes it off as something that occurs at some time but is not yet "present-at-hand" as an actuality, and hides its character as one's ownmost possibility, presenting it as belonging to no one in particular.
Heidegger states that Authentic being-toward-death calls Dasein's individual self out of its "they-self", and frees it to re-evaluate life from the standpoint of finitude.
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, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, determining....[10]All these ways of Being-in have concern (Sorge, care) as their kind of Being.
[13] Founded in the work of Martin Luther,[14] Heidegger conceptualises philosophy as the task of destroying ontological concepts, including ordinary everyday meanings of words like time, history, being, theory, death, mind, body, matter, logic etc.
Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial 'sources' from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn.
On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself toward the past; its criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology.
But to bury the past in nullity (Nichtigkeit) is not the purpose of this destruction; its aim is positive; its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect.
(Being and Time, p. 44)In his effort to redefine man, Heidegger introduces a statement: 'the ownmost of Dasein consists in its existence'.
The verbal form of German term wesen comes closer to the Indian root vasati, which means dwelling, living, growing, maturing, moving etc.
Thus, this verbal dynamic character implied in the word wesen is to be kept in mind to understand the nuance of the Heideggerian usage of 'existence'.
(German: Erschlossenheit) Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa write that: "According to Heidegger our nature is to be world disclosers.
That is, by means of our equipment and coordinated practices we human beings open coherent, distinct contexts or worlds in which we perceive, feel, act, and think.
"[18] Heidegger scholar Nikolas Kompridis writes: "World disclosure refers, with deliberate ambiguity, to a process which actually occurs at two different levels.
(German: Rede) The ontological-existential structure of Dasein consists of "thrownness" (Geworfenheit), "projection" (Entwurf), and "being-along-with"/"engagement" (Sein-bei).
"[34] Rather, the threat is the essence because "the rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.
[39] The 1935 Introduction to Metaphysics "clearly shows the shift" to language from a previous emphasis on Dasein in Being and Time eight years earlier, according to Brian Bard's 1993 essay titled "Heidegger's Reading of Heraclitus".
[37][44][45] (This aspect, in particular the 1951 essay "Building, Dwelling Thinking", influenced several notable architectural theorists, including Christian Norberg-Schulz, Dalibor Vesely, Joseph Rykwert, and Daniel Libeskind.
As evidence for this view, Wrathall sees a consistency of purpose in Heidegger's life-long pursuit and refinement of his notion of "unconcealment".
[49][50] While ontology deals with the entire world in broad and abstract terms, metontology concerns concrete topics; Heidegger offers the examples of sexual differences and ethics.
(German: ontologisch) As opposed to "ontic" (ontisch), ontological is used when the nature, or meaningful structure of existence is at issue.
In seeing an entity as present-at-hand, the beholder is concerned only with the bare facts of a thing or a concept, as they are present and in order to theorize about it.
Heidegger outlines three manners of unreadiness-to-hand: Conspicuous (damaged; e.g., a lamp's wiring has broken), Obtrusive (a part is missing which is required for the entity to function; e.g., we find the bulb is missing), Obstinate (when the entity is a hindrance to us in pursuing a project; e.g., the lamp blocks my view of the computer screen).
Importantly, the ready-to-hand only emerges from the prior attitude in which we care about what is going on and we see the hammer in a context or world of equipment that is handy or remote, and that is there "in order to" do something.
Thus, das Man is not a proper or measurable entity, but rather an amorphous part of social reality that functions effectively in the manner that it does through this intangibility.
To give examples: when one makes an appeal to what is commonly known, one says "one does not do such a thing"; When one sits in a car or bus or reads a newspaper, one is participating in the world of 'the They'.
