Friday, April 17, 2009

For Tuesday

This text needs to be read slowly and thoughtfully, but what Heidegger is getting at is something we are all intimately familiar with at the level of our own personal experience—what Heidegger calls the "existentiell."According to Heidegger, the possibility of authenticity lies in the the "call of conscience," something each of us has the capacity to hear from within him or herself as the individual person we are. He says in the first sentence, "What we are seeking is an authentic potentiality-for-Being of Dasein. . ." His seeking takes the form of a phenomenological description of how conscience "happens" to us, namely, as a "call." But he tries to do this at the level of the universal by means of fundamental ontology. In other words he tries to gives us a notion of how the call of conscience exists for all of us (how it IS [in Being]), yet is given to each of us (as beings), such that by participating in it, heeding its call, we become who we are(achieve authenticity).* Does his saying - showing of the call of conscience at the universal existential level also ring true to your own experience of conscience at an individual level? Quite a philosophical feat if it does! Before getting to this question, however, it would be helpful to try to put your understanding of Heidegger's notions of authenticity and conscience into your own words, as suggested in class.

*You might remember at the beginning of our study of Heidegger, we (especially Richardson) spoke of a fundamental assumption of Heidegger's, that beings (us) are in Being. For those interested in thinking further about that, Heidegger's chapter (and hopefully my post) give some hints (in what it says and shows!?)

Have a nice weekend.

No comments:

Post a Comment