So you do understand Heidegger, eh?
(Anyway, this sounds like a precis of what I couldn't make head nor tail of at the time.)
(And it makes him seem understandable.)
(Maybe I should give him another crack.)
Heidegger borrows heavily from the phenomenological school (of his teacher, Husserl), but diverts from it quite a bit. Some people consider his work within a phenomenological epistemology, others don't (it talks about similar but different things, in similar but different ways). I'm unable to explain the differences as I don't understand Heidegger fully. But being-in-the-world is a concept also shared by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and I like to think they're more fundamentally concerned with the physical, embodied and pre-textual (in humans recognizing and naming gestalts), unlike Heidegger who (I've been oversimplifyingly taught) claims everything boils down to the text and its hermeneutics (some sort of post-textual ontology anyways).
wiki said:
Although Heidegger describes his method in Being and Time as phenomenological, the question of its relation to the phenomenology of Husserl is complex. The fact that Heidegger believes that ontology includes an irreducible hermeneutic (interpretative) aspect, for example, might be thought to run counter to Husserl's claim that phenomenological description is capable of a form of scientific positivity. On the other hand, however, several aspects of the approach and method of Being and Time seem to relate more directly to Husserl's work.
The central Husserlian concept of the directedness of all thought—intentionality—for example, while scarcely mentioned in Being and Time, has been identified by some with Heidegger's central notion of "Sorge" (Cura, care or concern). However, for Heidegger, theoretical knowledge represents only one kind of intentional behaviour, and he asserts that it is grounded in more fundamental modes of behaviour and forms of practical engagement with the surrounding world. Whereas a theoretical understanding of things grasps them according to "presence," for example, this may conceal that our first experience of a being may be in terms of its being "ready-to-hand." Thus, for instance, when someone reaches for a tool such as a hammer, their understanding of what a hammer is is not determined by a theoretical understanding of its presence, but by the fact that it is something we need at the moment we wish to do hammering. Only a later understanding might come to contemplate a hammer as an object.
It's complex stuff mang.
That said, the fundamental epistemological approach is similar. If you want to understand what I talked about I suggest you read some Husserl, abridged or not, he's pretty easy to get. (and you didn't read Husserl to begin with? Why? What school has presented Heidegger to you without Husserl or Merleau-Ponty first, WTH)
EDIT: I just stumbled upon that English also has the lifeworld concept in its language, that helps a lot lol.
There are issues, though, regarding whether such a flowing 'being' is still something set insofar as it "being" is concerned (ie if it actually is or is not, or if it is always inherently not here nor there). Eg an argument presented by Socrates (not really having to be his own view, btw) is that "if i am X, for example larger in mass than you, but in the future i am smaller in mass - just due to the other person growing up, etc- then am i something due to there being a quality, or am i something in a flow, tied to any variables or other sets of the same quality?". Cause while it can be seen as relative in any particular case, that may connote any such quality as indistinct in the first place, and 'unreal'.
In general the 'all is flowing', or 'there is no one state, but a dynamic between two or more', Heraklitan views, is quite antithetical to the Parmenidian theory of some reality where qualities actually are set and eternal, but which reality is by definition not to be sensed by humans in the first place.
So the question is (at least in the ancient setting it emerges from) one about there being some external 'reality', or just nothing other than our own human 'reality' which still is bounded by things we cannot ever include or present there. Also tied to the old One vs Many debate, cause if All is One then even humans are 'in reality' in the One, but distinct due to their sense/thinking from the One's reality, etc.
I am more on the Protagorian side of things. Heraklitos is ambiguous enough to potentially include both views, though, and he is always a very impressive figure in philosophy
I think you've read about this, but I'll talk about what I know about.
From Husserl's viewpoint, the lifeworld in all its variances (including your own changing subjectivity) present itself quite elegantly in considering the world's phenomena as morphological structures, not ideal or positivistic structures. Things' qualities as such are
not set and eternal, as their concrete representations do change in form. Such as the morphological structure of the table (or the pen you guys are talking about); it can either be made of wood or iron, it's still objectively a table. As such, phenomenological epistemology is bloody easy to work with: all things are approximations, but still possible as objectivities even if colorfully and variably represented, and that individual things change over time is not an issue either.
Note, of course, that some phenomenologists utilize a default body subjectivity and they have been criticized for not being able to provide a default body (as all bodies are gendered in some way, it's impossible to provide a genderless default) but I'm not sure I buy into that criticism because our human body is just a morphological structure as well.
To me, the gestalt themselves are more important than their "being" being outside of human experience. Like many phenomenologists I think the question is impractical and irrelevant. There is however a very functional concept of phenomenological being that serves to be super awesome as methodology if you want to know stuff.
I think you should read the Sartre and Heidegger books as they talk about being outside our conceptualization of being, of at least shades thereof. While they are perhaps "boring" to you and hard to understand, I'm well aware they serve people that are seriously curious about the problem you state (I'm not myself, I waste enough time procrastinating from my poetry and musical studies). I'm not sure time is well spent with the ancient Greeks if you want a proper answer for your questions. I'm seriously surprised you have studied philosophy without touching on those two books. Personally - and don't take this personally unless it's your actual attitude
- I don't really respect the "but it's boring therefore irrelevant to me" attitude. If you study philosophy and be serious about it, read the books that serve your understanding of philosophy, not those that are funtime. fwiw
).
