by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
The part where Heidegger is construed to be an existentialist while Descartes is construed to be anything but. It's not what you are but always the potential to become something other than what others might perceive you to be. The possibilities that one can choose if one did not "believe that all material bodies, including the human body, are machines that operate by mechanical principles". Especially when this machine is also a "devout Christian".The “person” example works in the same way, as does any response you could give, any simple ascription of a “whatness” onto your being. This is why Descartes misses Dasein when he thinks himself as “a thinking substance”. Dasein’s being is not answerable to a whatness, to an essence, that precedes it, but, rather, its essence lies in its existence, through which it makes various choices about what its whatness is and will be, not by contemplating, but by realizing them through living: “The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself.” (Heidegger, 2008, p.33) In other words, Dasein chooses what it will be, and this is its essence. Or, more accurately, it is its possibilities, which open it up onto the future, and its activity of choosing, and doing, one or the other as ways of being.
Similar to Sartre's "existence precedes essence". And for some his "Hell is other people". Why? Because they do attempt to objectify you. To turn you into a "whatness". Not only that, but turning themselves into a "whatness" as well. Whatness, in the is/ought world, I call the moral cand political objectivists.
Over and again: that's the basic existential scaffolding that we all carry around with us day in and day out. We all ask ourselves that. The Nazis asked themselves that back when Heidegger was around, as did the Jews. In other words, like this is some extraordinary insight!“The essence of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibited in this entity are not ‘properties’ present-at-hand of some entity which ‘looks’ so and so and is itself present-at-hand; they are in each case possible ways for it to be, and no more than that” Heidegger
Thus, its being is always an issue for it, because it is always confronted with the question “what shall I be today, tomorrow, next year?”
Though I suppose for those who predicated everything that they thought, felt, said and did on one or another God or one or another political ideology or one or another "school of philosophy", it might actually be.
But for me it couldn't possibly be more obvious: here I am, what shall I do next?
Instead, the far more interesting question revolves around those situations in which you choose to say or do something and someone else objects to it. That's the part where my own dasein comes into play. Sure, you can go through your day and choose to do any number of things that have absolutely no impact on anyone other than yourself. But when it does impact others enough to piss them off then you're confronted with conflicting assessments of the "right thing to do". What of philosophy and ethics and political science then?
Yeah, but how many of us are confronted with literal life and death situations from day to day? Now, in Ukraine it's a whole other story. Or if you're riding the subway in Brooklyn.Furthermore, its being is always an issue for it in the survival-instinct “don’t launch me into the sun!” kind of way as well, because it is also confronted with the question “Will I be tomorrow, next year, etc?”
The closest many of us have come to this is in regard to the covid pandemic. According to the worldometer site, 1,013,044 Americans have died from it. And over 6,000,000 around the globe. Life and death down to the bone.
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529