16025
Seminar
WiSe 19/20: The Early Heidegger: World, Dasein and Care
Mihnea Chiujdea
Comments
Heidegger’s life-long aim was that of thematising or tackling the question of being, i.e. what
does it mean for something to be? In Being and Time he arguably failed in this endeavour.
Nonetheless, this text provides insights into questions as diverse as: How is it that we have a
meaningful engagement with other beings? How do beings and action gain meaning? What
does it mean to exist as a self? How does one become who one is and what role does selfunderstanding
play in this? What does it mean to always find oneself emotionally attuned?
What is the nature of intersubjectivity and how can we square freedom with living in a shared
public world? How are we embedded in the world and what is the normative force of using
tools? How is the world around us structured? What is the relation between the structure of our
existence and knowledge? Heidegger not only had a considerable impact on “continental”
philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Foucault, Agamben, etc. Thanks to Heidegger
scholars such as Hubert Dreyfus, his ideas have been proven fruitful in the post-analytic
anglophone setting. In this context, the interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy has been
influenced by the pragmatist tradition. This approach seeks to bring clarity to Heidegger’s
highly complex arguments, while it tends to ignore the themes coming from the "existentialist"
Heidegger (e.g. authenticity, death, anxiety) or the topic of temporality. In doing so, this
reading makes up for an accessible way of approaching Heidegger's philosophy. It is this
pragmatist anglophone reading of Heidegger’s early philosophy that this seminar seeks to
explore. Apart from the pragmatist input from the secondary literature on Heidegger (e.g.
Okrent, Dreyfus, Blattner, etc) we shall also succinctly survey texts belonging to classical
pragmatism (by Peirce, James, and Dewey) in order to assess whether this is a justified reading
of Heidegger. The language of the seminar is English. close
16 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Fri, 2019-10-18 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-10-25 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-11-01 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-11-08 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-11-15 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-11-22 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-11-29 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-12-06 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-12-13 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2019-12-20 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2020-01-10 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2020-01-17 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2020-01-24 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2020-01-31 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2020-02-07 10:00 - 12:00
Fri, 2020-02-14 10:00 - 12:00