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Continuing our close reading of selections of Being and Time from part one, we come back on a different day without Wes and focus on two parts from the Introduction 2, sec. 7:
- Sec. 5, where Heidegger says why time has to be the focus of the ontological analysis of Dasein (i.e. his description of the essential human condition).
- Part A, on what are phenomena, according to Heidegger. This includes different takes on what the word “appearance” can refer to, and why Heidegger’s phenomena are not “mere appearance” covering up what the world is really like. Instead, for Heidegger phenomena are what what truly appears: what shows itself as itself.
- Part C, where Heidegger describes his phenomenological method. We’re trying to figure out what phenomenology is to him, given that it’s not sitting back a la Descartes and Husserl and describing what’s in front of you right at that moment. Instead, we need to describe Dasein (us) in our “average everydayness,” which requires interpretation (“hermeneutics” is the fancy word here) not of the here and now but retrospectively, thinking about how our lives in general run.
Through all this we try to figure out how Dasein might be distinguished from animals: could they too be Dasein? And we try not to fall into non-Heideggerian language, even though doing so seems essential to actually understanding what he’s talking about.
This close reading will continue with ep. 297, when Wes returns.
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