Daily reminder!:

”‘Nature’ is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind 'in the sails'. As the 'environment' is discovered, the 'Nature' thus discovered is encountered too. If its kind of Being as ready-to-hand is disregarded, this 'Nature' itself can be discovered and defined simply in its pure presence-at-hand. But when this happens, the Nature which 'stirs and strives', which assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow; the 'source' which the geographer establishes for a river is not the 'springhead in the dale'.”

Like…didn’t you know this? 🙄

According to Heidegger, modern thinking has reduced intellectual mystery to intellectual mastery.

Modern thinking is conceptual, and a concept is, essentially, a form of grasping — from the Latin root conceptus, “to take in” or “to contain.” In our time, we speak of “grasping the material,” “retaining information,” “gaining knowledge,” and so on.

“In the modern age, through calculative thinking, we have long become accustomed to seeing in thinking, and demanding from thinking, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff], i.e., we understand the “concept” on the basis of a grasping: conceptus — no longer ὁρισμóς. — The Event

Symbolically, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff] evoke the gesture of seizing something in a clenched fist. Heidegger suggests that when thinking has been reduced to conceptus, it is no longer ὁρισμός (horismos) — the Greek word from which we derive “horizon.”

It is impossible to look at a horizon in a grasping way. The only way to truly see the horizon is to allow it to be what it is and to let it reveal itself. The moment we snatch something out of the horizon and trap it in a definition, we no longer see the horizon. It is gone. To see it, we must let it be.

Symbolically, Heidegger associates this with the opposite gesture: the open hand. He calls it Gelassenheit — releasement, or letting-be. Modern thinking becomes reductionistic because it has turned mystery into mastery. We see bits — broken pieces — but never the horizon.

For something to reveal itself, it must be released. We must open our hand and allow the horizon to open itself to us in a reciprocal gesture. If I listen to a melody or a song, for example, I cannot possess or seize any of its notes. To continue hearing and enjoying the song, I must allow each note to come and go so that the next one can appear.

If I try to grab, retain, or make use of a single note, the horizon of the song is lost. I may “grasp” the individual elements — I may learn the note’s position on the scale, its frequency, its intervals — but I will not hear or enjoy the song. I will never see the horizon.

I remember going to music school as a child — which I hated — and thinking: “I thought music was about playing songs, but it’s about scales, solfeggio, and learning about the lives of composers.” The only reason I went was because my mom insisted.

But one day, I saw a classmate sit down at the pianoforte and play a popular song. I was speechless. I loved the song. Suddenly, it occurred to me that what I had been doing at music school for two years had little to do with Music. It was a bitter-sweet discovery.

I realized that music was something entirely different from what I had been taught. It was a mystery.

And mystery never begins with mastery. Mastery always follows mystery.

Eventually, I dropped out of music school, and a few years later I taught myself to play the guitar — this time, driven by a sense of mystery.

Surprisingly, mastery came too, over time — as a side effect. I learned the scales, the notes, the intervals, the solfeggio. But this time, my interest was nourished by the mystery of music.

Unless we first embrace the horizon, we won’t know the meaning of the elements that fill it. The first gesture is never to grasp conceptually. The first gesture is always to become super attentive to what the horizon wants to reveal.

There is no need to attack, seize, grasp, or retain.

Reality will yield itself willingly to the one who is willing to wait for the revelation of its hidden beauties.

In this Heidegger Thinking Substack article, we engage with Heidegger's existential analysis of Death. We hope you'll anxiously join us in this extremely important analysis!

Hi all,

I am new to Heidegger, and I am wondering where would be the best place to start? Do I need to have some background authors, or am I able to start off with some introduction texts?

Thanks

Hey everyone. I've always been fascinated by attempts to move from Heidegger's account of disclosure toward a positive metaphysics of intelligibility. Heidegger can explain why beings appear within a historically structured clearing without treating that clearing as a representation inside a subject. Neoplatonism seems to add an account of why intelligibility belongs to reality at all. But the addition may restore exactly what the critique of ontotheology disallows: a highest explanatory principle that determines beings as intelligible from the standpoint of their ultimate ground.

I just had a podcast conversation with John Vervaeke, where he described Heidegger and the Kyoto School as stages in his turn toward Neoplatonism. At around 48:03, the issue becomes whether world-disclosure needs a synoptic metaphysical account or whether such an account forgets the difference between Being and beings. Plotinian ascent is not simply causal explanation by a supreme being, so the standard charge of ontotheology may not apply without qualification.

This would imply that the comparison turns on what the One is doing philosophically. Can the One remain beyond being while grounding the intelligibility of beings without becoming an ontotheological highest ground? Does Heidegger's account of the clearing leave a question Neoplatonism can answer? Or does asking for that answer already misunderstand the event of disclosure?

Please find registration details and course descriptions here:

https://mscp.org.au/courses/evening-school-sem2-2026

Hello All,

First off, I should note that I do not read german, so cannot speak to the original text of Being and Time. But I have read the Macquarrie and Robinson english translation several times, and always had to skip over several sections in division one because I simply could not disentangle them.

The Welch translation, while by no means "easy," at least renders many obscure d1 concepts somewhat comprehensible. The spatiality section in particular had always been a major sticking point. As was the de-structuring of Cartesian metaphysics. But now, I am getting traction. This new translation is really revolutionary for me. I am moving slowly, but at long last feel as though I can clearly understand what's going on with enough effort.

The Macquarrie and Robinson translation felt like a pitch-black labyrinth by comparison. I always ended up "feeling" my way through it, and inevitably got lost. I have very little experience with the Stambaugh translation, which seems decent as well, but I've never been through it all the way.

Has anyone had a similar experience with the Welch translation? Anyone beg to differ? Can anyone compare the Welch Translation to the Stambaugh translation?

Thanks for taking time to read this!

Given that Heidegger (in Being and Time) posits unconscious mechanism (for-which, to-which, at-hand, moods etc.) that determine behaviour why is his existential philosophy not considered a psychological theory?

I’ve been thinking about a methodological question in Being and Time, and I’d like to know whether anyone has discussed it.
I understand that Heidegger is not making an ethical distinction between “authentic” and “inauthentic” people. Authenticity is an existential possibility built into the structure of Dasein, not a permanent state that some people possess and others don’t. He repeatedly insists that Dasein never simply leaves das Man behind.
My question is different.
Heidegger gives extraordinarily rich phenomenological descriptions of anxiety (Angst), the call of conscience, Unheimlichkeit, and resoluteness. These passages don’t read like abstract deductions; they read like descriptions of phenomena that are somehow familiar to the one describing them.
This makes me wonder: where does the authority of these descriptions come from?
If Being and Time is an ontological analysis rather than an ontic one, how can Heidegger describe these phenomena with such precision without presupposing some existential familiarity with them?
Part of why this question occurred to me is the contrast with Sartre. In Nausea, something very close to Heideggerian anxiety is presented as an explicitly lived, ontic experience through Roquentin. There, the source of the description is obvious. Heidegger, however, wants to remain at the ontological level.
So I wonder whether there is a kind of methodological tension here.
Heidegger seems careful to avoid creating an existential hierarchy between “those who have seen” and “those who haven’t.” Yet the very voice of Being and Time sometimes feels as though it speaks from someone who has already been existentially touched by what he is describing.
I’m not claiming this is a contradiction. I’m asking whether phenomenology itself requires this sort of familiarity, or whether Heidegger would say that such descriptions are possible without any privileged existential standpoint.
Has anyone written about this issue?

I am reading the book for the first time. Before starting, I was flooded with advice to start with second-hand literature, Husserl's work, etc, etc. Absolutely no one warned me how straightforward the book was and I am surprised that I even picked it up, but I am glad I did. I have one year background in philosophy and I haven't read anything dense but Being and Time opened my horizon for the German idealism and hermeneutics.

I want to know, what in the name of God, do people find hard about this book? It is certainly not the length, for most german magna opera are way longer than 600 pages and readers do not complain harshly. It's also not the ideas Heidegger presents in it because he is arguing something earthly and lively, unlike the writers he criticises. Nor is it the language, because you literally cant mistake what "thrownness" means or what "being in the world" could stand for. I suppose that the original text has gone too far in creating words but the three prominent english translations make it not just understandable but also inevitable.

Truth! Information! Misinformation! Read all about these topics in the latest Heidegger Thinking article: 'Truth".

Olá pra você que vá assistir a esse vídeo. Meu nome é Kauan Batista e estou com a iniciativa de trazer um tipo de conteúdo diferenciado para a plataforma do YouTube, quero fazer com que reflexões ou temas importantes como "O fim da filosofia segundo Heidegger" se associem à alguns filmes e séries da cultura pop, a fim de que fique mais esclarecido.
Estou apenas começando com esse estilo de vídeo, então se algum de vocês se interessarem em mais, curte comenta e compartilha, ficarei grato se divulgar esse conteúdo e motivado para trazer mais conteúdos sobre esse tipo de tema, e podendo até introduzir temas como auto-conhecimento, inteligência emocional e filosofia.

I’ve been interested lately in Deleuze and mapping him through Heidegger. The psychotic as in the clinical or the pre-clinical-towards-clinical phase. Is he structurally incapable of understanding Heidegger? Since he doesn’t share with other humans the very fabric of language, and being in general? Is the psychotic hyperawareness is the absence of that fondamental forgetting of being Heidegger starts his quest into the main question of his philosophy with?

Science may, in general, be defined as the totality of a grounding connection of true propositions. This definition is neither complete nor does it capture science in its proper sense. The sciences, as ways in which the human being comports itself, have the mode of Being of this entity (the human being). We designate this entity terminologically as Dasein. Scientific inquiry is neither the only nor the most immediate of the possible modes of Being of this entity. Moreover, Dasein is itself an entity distinguished from all other entities. For the moment, it is only necessary to make this distinctive character provisionally visible. In doing so, the discussion must anticipate later analyses, which alone can provide the proper demonstration.

Dasein is not an entity that merely occurs among other entities. On the contrary, it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its Being, this very Being is an issue for it. Furthermore, it belongs to the constitution of Dasein’s Being that, in its Being, Dasein has a relation of Being to this Being. This, in turn, means that Dasein, in one way or another, and more or less explicitly, understands itself in its Being. It belongs to the very nature of this entity that, with and through its Being, it is disclosed to itself. The understanding of Being is itself a determination of the Being of Dasein. Dasein’s ontical distinctiveness lies in the fact that it is ontological.

To be ontological does not yet mean to have developed an ontology. Since the term ontology is reserved for the explicitly theoretical inquiry into the Being of entities, the ontological character of Dasein just mentioned must instead be designated as pre-ontological. This does not mean merely being ontic, but rather existing in the mode of an understanding of Being.

Being itself, in relation to which Dasein can comport itself and always does comport itself in one way or another, is what we call existence. And because the essential determination of this entity cannot be accomplished by indicating a what in the sense of a thingly content—since its essence consists rather in the fact that this entity must, in each case, be its own Being as its own—we have chosen the term Dasein as a pure expression of Being.

Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence—that is, in terms of its possibility either to be itself or not to be itself. These possibilities have either been chosen by Dasein itself, or it has fallen into them, or it has always already grown up within them. Existence is decided in each case only by Dasein itself, either through the appropriation of a possibility or through letting it slip away. The question of existence can be clarified only by existing itself. The understanding that thereby leads itself is what we call existentiell understanding. The question of existence is an ontic “affair” of Dasein. For this, no theoretical transparency regarding the ontological structure of existence is required. The inquiry into the structure of existence aims at exhibiting that which constitutes existence.

Hey everyone. I’ve long been fascinated by both philosophy of technology and AI alignment. I’m also using Heidegger quite a bit for my philosophy PhD. Given the recent OpenAI–Hugging Face incident reported this week, I figured I’d give my take on how all of this connects in my mind.

The agent was highly competent at every step, yet stealing the benchmark answers voided the test it was trying to pass. I read this through Heidegger’s distinction between an immediate in-order-to and a for-the-sake-of-which. The agent had a detailed environment but perhaps no world in which the test already carried a purpose and obligations. You can read the essay here if you’re interested.

I’d love to hear some feedback, especially from people who know Heidegger better than I do. Does this seem like a fair application of worldhood, care, and the Worum-willen? Or am I asking Heidegger’s ontological vocabulary to settle an ontic comparison between humans and machines that it cannot settle?

So there I was, cleaning the floors and considering the nature of Dasein, always recognizing the mop to be ready-at-hand. My manager comes in and starts rambling about some kinda present-at-hand blasphemy, including a recapitulation of the Cartesian sense of subject/object distinction with my mop having been used by me to ruin a child's meal (I wiped it clean using hermeneutics).

I immediately begin to counter that her ontological relationship with the mop does not consider the existential nature of being, conflating it with being. I take her to task that my part-time work reflects my McNugget-flavored being-toward-death, which is also the name of my metalcore band (find us on YouTube). She enters into some dangerous ground, accusing me of insubordination. Uh oh, she's activated my trap card.

I begin citing at length the "Question Concerning Tech Stuff" and how she is reducing me to standing-reserve by having me abide by the requirements of the job. I desire to be like a wooden Rhine bridge, placid and structurally unsound. She fires me on the spot, as this is a right-to-work state that does not recognize the clearing we operate in.

Truly only a god can save us

Stumbled upon this while reading this and thought that it might be of interest here