Dasein, or the transcendental ego, and some existentialism
March 31st 2008 13:33
Following the last post a friend of mine asked for a little explanation on the Heidegger's concept of Dasein, which is mostly the same as Husserl's "transcendental ego".
Normally people tend to think it's a tuff thing to explain, but i bet this example will help us out. Remember Newton and the story of the apple falling in his head? I bet you can't understand now why am i coming with this one, but think again.
To explain the behaviour of the apple Newton had to place it in the world. I mean, to explain why the apple falls we have to study gravity, which is created by the Earth's mass. The apple responds thus to something that is not internal to it, but to stimuli from the reality in which it is emerged. You see, no one would be able to explain why the apple falls just by studing it and not considering the rest.
The same goes for everything. Things are shaped by the reality they are in, and so do us. Studing beings can come to no big conclusion if we don't take into account the reality where they are placed. Thus Dasein (being-there) is the only thing we can study, since men is emerged in reality (history included) since he is born.
This was used by existentialits to explain why men had no essence before existing. Essence in this case is a phylosofical definition, it means the reason, the objective. The essence of a pen is to write, things like this. So they say the men exists, then he has to find out why he is on earth. If he ever finds out, please tell me to come and see me....
Hope this one helps. Go take a look at the Dasein's Wikipedia entry now, you'll understand it better..
cheers.
Normally people tend to think it's a tuff thing to explain, but i bet this example will help us out. Remember Newton and the story of the apple falling in his head? I bet you can't understand now why am i coming with this one, but think again.
To explain the behaviour of the apple Newton had to place it in the world. I mean, to explain why the apple falls we have to study gravity, which is created by the Earth's mass. The apple responds thus to something that is not internal to it, but to stimuli from the reality in which it is emerged. You see, no one would be able to explain why the apple falls just by studing it and not considering the rest.
The same goes for everything. Things are shaped by the reality they are in, and so do us. Studing beings can come to no big conclusion if we don't take into account the reality where they are placed. Thus Dasein (being-there) is the only thing we can study, since men is emerged in reality (history included) since he is born.
This was used by existentialits to explain why men had no essence before existing. Essence in this case is a phylosofical definition, it means the reason, the objective. The essence of a pen is to write, things like this. So they say the men exists, then he has to find out why he is on earth. If he ever finds out, please tell me to come and see me....
Hope this one helps. Go take a look at the Dasein's Wikipedia entry now, you'll understand it better..
cheers.
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