Summer Session 2008: Later Heidegger

We are planning a very busy summer session for the Discussion Group in Second Life.

The focus will be Later Heidegger. We will use both printed reading material and audio lectures from past courses given by Bert Dreyfus (see right side panel under Webcasts). Please join us!

* May 31 What is Metaphysics? and On the Essence of Truth
* June 7 The Origin of the Work of Art
* June 14 Letter on Humanism
* June 21 Basic Questions of Philosophy
* June 28 The Age of the World Picture
* July 5 The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics
* July 12 The Question Concerning Technology
* July 19 The Thing
* July 26 Building Dwelling Thinking and What Calls for Thinking
* August 2 Language and The Way to Language
* August 9 Contributions to Philosophy
* August 16 The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking

There is more info at the wiki. You will want to check out the Summer Session Chart for week by week details.

This should be useful for the summer study course:
Hubert Dreyfus and Ken Goldberg, Spring 2006
Questioning Efficiency: Human Factors and Existential Phenomenology
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dilanm/ieor/
Audio lectures by Dreyfus on "The Age Of The World Picture", "The Question Concerning Technology", "The Thing", as well as on Borgmann and focal practices, and Foucault and
docile bodies.

Notes: Conclusion to Philosophy 7

Inspired by Dreyfus' concluding lecture to his Phil 7 Existentialism in Film and Literature course, I made this set of diagrams. They attempt to show my take on the way in which the following four (or five if you count the two Christian Existential stories separately) contrasting world views (the ones which everyone in class voted their preference for on the last day) and how they would interpret the significance of themselves and each other:

• Traditional Christianity (Onto-theology) 9 votes


• Liberal Enlightenment (Science, Progress) 9 votes


• Christian Existentialism (Kierkegaard & Dostoevsky) 8+1(Dreyfus) votes for K & 43 votes for D


• Atheistic Existentialism (Nietzsche) 16 votes

In this last lecture, Dreyfus described how, to followers of one strand of existentialism, another strand looks like it is in error and doomed, even though they share many of the same approaches, such as the five he listed:

1. There is no human nature ("custom is our nature" -Pascal "the undetermined animal" -Nietzsche)


2. We can change human nature - History is the story of changing human natures


3. The Individual is higher than the Universal ("suspension of the ethical" - Kierkegaard)


4. The Involved point of view is better than Detached ("truth is subjectivity" -Kierkegaard "perspectivism" - Nietzsche)


5. Against Onto-Theology but retain The Sacred: they reject the view that One Creator God grounds all meaning ("calling without a caller" -Kierkegaard "connectedness of all beings" -Dostoevsky "we are all gods" -Nietzsche)

The chart tries to graphically represent the Heideggerian concepts of world disclosing (open circle), world collapse (x mark) and the revitalization of marginal practices (dotted lines). This is me reaching for what I think the class is really about: how these three examplars of early existentialism set up Heidegger, and ultimately, Dreyfus.

(click on the diagram below to enlarge it)



Anybody care to take a stab at how Heidegger/Dreyfus would construct such a diagram?

Here's my cut: