## Metadata - Author: [[Michael Watts]] - Full Title: Heidegger - Category: #books ## Highlights - He was very much against the idea that there existed ultimate, universal truths that are independent of time and place. In reference to this Heidegger claimed ‘I have no philosophy’, because for him philosophy was not something one has – like a theory or set of principles – but the untiring passionate commitment to a question. ([Location 404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=404)) - Heidegger regards the action of focusing on ‘worthy questions’ as the path to man’s ‘homecoming to the House of Being’. For him, the most worthy of such questions is the question of Being. ([Location 453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=453)) - So it would seem reasonable to conclude that Heidegger’s ‘Why is there something rather than Nothing?’ is not actually a question that is asking for an answer, but rather an expression of sheer astonishment and wonder over the fact of existence. Heidegger claimed that, in the mood of astonishment, the questioner is most receptive to hearing the ‘voice of Being’ – to becoming closely attuned to and aware of the nature of Being. ([Location 461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=461)) - Heidegger’s great passion was asking questions, not providing answers. The purpose of his inquiry was to re-instil the mystery of life that has been receding into oblivion through the passage of time. ([Location 469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=469)) - Western philosophers have traditionally tried to observe ‘objectively’ and understand humanity by ‘lifting’ people out of their world in order to isolate an independent ‘essence’ or ‘pure consciousness’. Heidegger considers this approach as completely erroneous, futile and misleading, for he considers Dasein as being inextricably enmeshed or rooted in the world. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=519)) - The first a priori existential that Heidegger describes, therefore, is Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. What Heidegger means by ‘Being-in’ is our a priori capacity to understand, relate to, care about and concern ourselves with the things in the world around us. ([Location 525](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=525)) - If something is regarded by Dasein as having a useful function for human purposes, then for this Dasein the entity is ready-to-hand, or equipment – a Heideggerian abbreviation meaning the same thing. ([Location 550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=550)) - In contrast to this, present-at-hand is Heidegger’s description of the Being of entities for which we have no use or interest, or alternatively their significance to us may be merely one of detached, objective interest in, or observation of, their physical properties. ([Location 553](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=553)) - To take an example, a screwdriver to a car mechanic who is occupied repairing a car, is without doubt experienced as ready-to-hand, but for a rainforest tribesman the same screwdriver will invariably be seen as being present-at-hand. If, however, the screwdriver is broken, and therefore useless, the mechanic will then experience it as unready-to-hand: Heidegger’s term for the present-at-hand condition of equipment that is broken or rendered unusable. ([Location 560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=560)) - Moods are a primordial part of Dasein’s essential character and way of Being. Dasein is never moodless; it is always in one mood or another. Even apparently moodless states such as indifference are themselves a type of mood. And the dispassionate activity of ‘objective’ scientific investigation is also characterized by a mood – perhaps one of fascination or wonder. Similarly the condition of seemingly ‘moodless’, detached, meditative contemplation or observation, in which everything is ‘flattened out’ to a uniform realm of purposeless objects, is also a type of mood: according to Heidegger, a ‘tranquil dwelling on’. ([Location 707](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=707)) - So to be in a mood is to be ‘tuned into’ life in a certain way, and this influences the nature of our understanding at any given moment. ([Location 724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=724)) - Dasein’s moods arise out of our past and thus disclose our thrownness. This truth is reflected in everyday statements such as ‘I got up on the wrong side of bed this morning’, which refers to the past: to the fact that I find I have been thrown into the world in a particular way that has put me in an overall bad mood. ([Location 728](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=728)) - Dasein possesses a prior understanding of its everyday world, the things in it and how it fits into this world. This includes an innate capacity to recognize tools or equipment for what they are. This is a part of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. According to Heidegger, however, the chief characteristic of understanding is to project or see things in terms of their future possibilities. ([Location 760](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=760)) - Heidegger emphasizes that the primordial meaning of anxiety is to feel not-at-home in the world. Since I no longer feel at-home as the they-self, living according to the superficial values of the they-world, I am forced to focus on my own Being, rather than the they-self. This individualizes me and reveals to me my own possibilities and the fact that my Being-in-the-world is rooted in a fundamental attitude of caring about my existence on all levels. I am now confronted with the choice between an authentic or inauthentic approach to existence. ([Location 833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=833)) - ‘I care therefore I am.’ Though Heidegger did not actually say this, it expresses very appropriately the level of importance that Heidegger attaches to Dasein’s most fundamental feature. For it is care that makes human existence meaningful and makes a person’s life really matter to them, and it is care that ultimately directs us to the mystery of Being itself. ([Location 837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=837)) - Heidegger asserts that all the features that constitute Dasein’s Being-in-the-world in its average everydayness – fallenness (its absorption in the they-world), Being-with (its social context), thrownness (its living past), moods and understanding – are ‘equiprimordial’ and inseparable from one another. In other words, no single feature is a derived or secondary addition. Also, all features are simultaneously present in Dasein’s way of Being; no feature can exist without all the others also being present. But Heidegger points out that, since Dasein’s fundamental state is care, all these features have their roots in, and are unified by, this primordial condition. In other words care embodies Dasein as a whole. It is the ‘constellation’ in which Dasein exists, the basic feature in us that constitutes all our involvements in the world, thus providing us with a sense of existence as an integrated ‘organic’ whole. It is care that potentially provides a cohesive, unifying structure to Dasein’s life, which is necessary for an authentic, autonomous existence. ([Location 840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=840)) - More than any philosopher before him, Heidegger was preoccupied with the overwhelming influence that language exerted on human thought. In one of his later essays, ‘A Dialogue on Language’, he writes: ‘Language is the House of Being. Man dwells in this house ... In language there occurs the revelation of beings ... In the power of language man becomes the witness of Being ... Man is the shepherd of Being.’ It is clear from such statements that Heidegger regarded language as tied up not only with daily human existence, but also with Being, which discloses itself to and in man via language. ([Location 1132](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1132)) - Heidegger sometimes felt forced to pioneer new and strange uses of language because the linguistic means to express his ideas did not exist. A typical and notable example of this occurred in one of his lectures when he declared: ‘As I live in an environment, it signifies to me overall and always, “it worlds” ...’. His listeners were struck by the phrase es weltet, ‘it worlds’ or ‘it is worlding’. Perhaps this suggests that Heidegger was trying to express succinctly and creatively that he experienced the world around him as a constantly changing ‘living’ organism. ([Location 1170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1170)) - Heidegger concluded that: ‘The essence of Being is never conclusively sayable. The most we can do is try to think along with the poet who, hearing what is said in the silent Saying of language, can compose it into a poetry that awakens a renewed experience of the truth of Being.’ ([Location 1228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1228)) - On another occasion he wrote of the ‘resonances’ between the Chinese term Tao and his own notion of Ereignis: the spontaneous arising and interconnectedness of all things in which truth is self-evident. ([Location 1242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1242)) - If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few. (Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind) This fundamental view of the ‘beginner’s mind’ in Zen Buddhism is clearly echoed in a letter written by Heidegger to a former teacher in 1928: ‘Perhaps philosophy shows most forcibly and persistently how much Man is a beginner. Philosophizing ultimately means nothing other than being a beginner.’ ([Location 1270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1270)) - In his search for an understanding of the question of Being, Heidegger turned to the beginnings of philosophy in Greece, whilst searching in the present for the place in which philosophy is always being born anew. ([Location 1275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1275)) - A famous Zen story about the ‘stages’ of enlightenment states: ‘Before enlightenment occurs, mountains are mountains; at the moment of enlightenment, mountains cease being mountains; but then mountains become mountains again.’ The similarity to Heidegger’s thinking seems clear: for Heidegger, prior to living authentically one exists according to everyday practices. When we allow anxiety to reveal that we are ‘Being-towards-death’ – rooted in ‘Nothingness’ – everyday practices slide away into meaninglessness; afterwards, one resumes everyday practices once again, but this time guided by an awareness of our own possibilities rather than by the expectations of the ‘they’. ([Location 1281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1281)) - Like Zen enlightenment, Heidegger’s state of authenticity requires no faith in, or experience of, God. Also, he claims that the mind is more receptive to the ‘astonishing mystery of Being’ whilst it is completely absorbed in the single question ‘What is the meaning of Being?’ This is reminiscent of the Koan approach to enlightenment used in the Rinzai sect of Zen, where the student meditates on a question that has no logical answer, such as ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ ([Location 1286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1286)) - The egocentric attitude of mankind gave rise to the ‘mind-set’ that not only underlies modern technological developments, but which also influences the way we approach virtually every other aspect of our lives. Heidegger called this attitude Gestell, which translates as enframing. Enframing describes our narrow, restricted understanding of ourselves and all things in existence in terms of ‘resources’ to be organized, enhanced and exploited efficiently. This has resulted in our viewing the whole planet and all it contains as merely a vast stockpile of potential products available for extraction and manipulation for the benefit of our desires and goals. This misunderstanding has ruled our development since the time of Plato. ([Location 1344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1344)) - Heidegger describes how this way of thinking has affected all of nature: ‘Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium. Uranium is set upon to yield atomic energy. This setting-upon unlocks and exposes, driving to the maximum yield at minimum expense ... Nature has become a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry.’ ([Location 1358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1358)) - In illustrating our enframing, technological attitude towards the earth, Heidegger describes how ‘the dam across the living stream’ is an ‘enslavement’ of the natural flow of the river in the service of turbines. Flora and fauna go to ruin in the inert reservoir behind the dam. He describes this as ‘uncannily monstrous’: an example of confrontation, forceful coercion and harnessing of nature. In contrast he speaks of rural existence, when it cooperates with nature, as being a ‘donation’ (sowing), an ‘acceptance’ (harvest), a ‘perennial custodianship’ and restoration or ‘renewal’ of the earth. ([Location 1361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1361)) - As Heidegger understands it, because enframing is rooted in Being itself, in this sense it also precedes man; human beings are not the cause of enframing, but rather an indispensable part of its expression. Enframing is clearly not something we do, since it already defines us and the world in which we live. We function within it – our actions are guided by it. Like a kind of destiny, it is happening to us, as a part of the mystery of existence. ([Location 1425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1425)) - In the very fact that the process of enframing is rooted in Being lies the key to dealing with it. Heidegger expressed this in a line by his favourite poet, Hölderlin: ‘Where danger is, grows also that which saves.’ We can see clearly the truth of these words; it is enframing that brings our awareness to the danger of the oblivion of Being, which in turn directs us towards the question of Being. So, paradoxically, in the danger of enframing lies the potential motivation and source of our awareness of Being. ([Location 1437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1437)) - Heidegger considers that seeing technology as a problem for us to fix is yet another example of technological thinking. Instead of direct action, he believes the key to this dilemma may be found through reflective attunement to Being, which ‘lets beings Be’. This ‘letting-be’ involves waiting and listening in an open receptive manner to the ‘voice’ of Being. He believed the answer might also be found in the creative arts, which are related to, and yet fundamentally different from, technology. Via shared roots in techne, he saw art as perhaps capable of revealing a new, more ‘poetic’ form of technology. ([Location 1454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1454)) - Heidegger’s hope is not that we get rid of technology, but that we will achieve a healthier, ‘free’ relationship with it, based on an awareness and embracing of other ways of Being. He suggests that: ‘We let technical devices enter our daily life, and at the same time leave them outside ... as things which are nothing absolute but remain dependent upon something higher.’ ([Location 1464](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1464)) - In Heidegger’s own words: ‘The approaching tide of technological revolution in the atomic age could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted as the only way of thinking.’ ([Location 1485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PWY4ZG4&location=1485))