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Dasein & Pop Culture

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Aphoric
 
Reply Thu 30 Apr, 2009 04:26 pm
I'm actually not sure why I felt like sharing this, but I'm reading this fabulous introductory book for Martin Heidegger, and it's gotten to a point where he talks about Dasein in relation to "pop culture." It's at a point where the book talks about Dasein becoming no longer a certain individual in the face of publicness, but the public in general. This is what it says:

His They is not simply "the mass"; nor is Dasein "the individual". But the rhetorical pattern is the same: absorption of unique ("my own") Dasein into the They, is a debilitating condition.

But what precisely was so threatening about das Man? Heidegger lays out the case.

Publicness (Offentlichkeit): identification with the faceless "public" is a letting-go of one's being.
"Thus the particular Dasein in it's everydayness is disburdened by the they

Averageness, mediocrity (Durchschnittlichkeit): Heidegger rails against "levelling down".

[SIZE="2"]"The They prescribes what can and may be ventured, it keeps watch over everything exceptional. Every kind of supremacy gets silently suppressed. Overnight, everything that is original gets glossed over as something long well-known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something to be manipulated. Every mystery loses its force. This averageness reveals an essential tendency of Dasein: the 'levelling down' of all possibilities of being."[/SIZE]

That is the most depressing thing I've heard in awhile. Just wanted to get other people's thoughts on this.

I was also wondering if someone could articulate what Dasein really stands for, because the book's definitions are imprecise (it just kinda tells me what it might mean, but that's not helping me too much).

By the way, who else went :perplexed: when they saw "Durchschnittlichkeit"?
 
Saint Michael
 
Reply Tue 5 May, 2009 08:12 am
@Aphoric,
Dasein

Anyways, if you want to be or excel in the world of philosophy, don't buy books. Especially books about philosophical debates. No, bad, you just wasted your money when you for the most part could have figured out everything that idiot Martin was trying to say on your own. You see society makes you feel like you need others to answer everything for you, when in reality you can answer everything (for the most part... unless it's math:lol:) for your own sake.
 
Didymos Thomas
 
Reply Tue 5 May, 2009 04:39 pm
@Saint Michael,
Saint Michael wrote:

Anyways, if you want to be or excel in the world of philosophy, don't buy books.


That's awful advice, my friend. If you neglect reading a philosopher's work, you have neglected the best way of coming to understand the philosopher.

Saint Michael wrote:
No, bad, you just wasted your money when you for the most part could have figured out everything that idiot Martin was trying to say on your own.


Whatever your opinion of Heidegger might be, if you want to understand his philosophy, you need to read his work. Otherwise, you do not know what he has to say.

Saint Michael wrote:
You see society makes you feel like you need others to answer everything for you, when in reality you can answer everything for your own sake.


Reading the work of others is not simply about looking for answers in someone else's thought, but rather the point is to study those answers. It isn't simply taking another's answer, but using their thoughts to further your own contemplation.
 
jgweed
 
Reply Sat 6 Jun, 2009 01:16 pm
@Aphoric,
What Heidegger means by Dasein is more often than not dependent upon the context in which it is discussed. And it is Heidegger's way to let the meaning of a word or concept gradually unfold and deepen to the reader as he thinks through the work alongside the philosopher, so it is difficult to provide ONE meaning for Dasein (as if it necessarily needs to have ONE definition).
It would be hard to comment on a commentary without knowing its title or author, especially when he begins to discuss something like "pop culture" in relation to Heidegger's writings.

Every philosopher attempts to give an account of the world, and his positions add yet another perspective (or, way of seeing or way of looking at the world). When we learn to see it, in a thoughtful and sympathetic way, from a viewpoint different from our own (limited and dependent upon our own situation), our normal world changes in subtle ways, becoming more problematic and deeper than before. We should not be dismissive of other thinking, nor cling to preconceptions, for that is ignor-ance.
"Convictions are prisons."
Regards,
John
 
FireWalkWithMe
 
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 02:07 pm
@Saint Michael,
Saint Michael;61401 wrote:
Anyways, if you want to be or excel in the world of philosophy, don't buy books.


If you meant this seriously, I must seriously disagree with you. The ideas of these deceased philosophers are in their writings. To say that we could have come up with what they came up with is, yes, true. But they also have ideas that you might NOT have come up with.

PS: You don't have to purchase the books. You can trade books or even go to the library, if your disagreement is with the "wasting of money." (PS2: If purchased online, often you don't even have to pay retail price!)

Another point: having read about philosophers who have excelled (have become known) I know that they have purchased and read other philosophers. Maybe with the exception of the earliest philosophers, before there was such a thing as books.
 
 

 
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