>So, what does Heidegger give us that we didn't already have ? ( You don't
>have to mention his politics)
>----------------
>I answer:
>
>The early Heidegger (and Husserl, and phenomenology in general, for that
>matter) don't aim at giving us anything we don't already have. They aim to
>explicate structures of existence/consciousness, depending on whose
>terminology you're using, that are already under everyone's nose but are
>unnoticed.
Well, supposedly Wittgenstein and indeed Hegel and for thatmatter Kant just want to tell us what they think we already know. Remember the owl of Minerva? But they're wrong, we're didn't know it until they told us we did. I read the young Heidegger as a sort of Teutonic pragmatist, a perceptive critic of modern technology-dominated life, a thinker who calls in us to open our lives to non-habitual ways of living, a phenomenbologist of what Marx called alienation. He was very impressed with Marx's explorations of alienation, btw. Incidentally all these things are reasons he was perversely attracted to Nazism.
As Chris says, H is a brilliant exegete: his Nietzsche's amazing, he's awesom on Kant. He illuminated everything he touched: for all his antitechnologicall attitudes, he understood early modern science more deeply than a lot of self-styled philosophers of science, anticipated Kuhn in a lot of ways. The translations don't get it, but his German is beautiful, just gorgeous. If you want an introduction, Charles, get the David Farrel Krell anthology The Basic Writings of Heidegger, and nose around it, you won't be disappointed. Good stuff! And yet he was a Nazi creep.
jks
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