Re: [Fis] Realism

Re: [Fis] Realism

From: Michael Leyton <[email protected]>
Date: Mon 03 Jul 2006 - 15:57:56 CEST

Dear Rafael,

Your discussion is very interesting.

I would like to make a comment on Heidegger's
concept of being.

As you know, Heidegger distinguishes between
the being of a physical object in the world,
and the being of a human in the world, Dasein.

However, when one examines carefully Heidegger's
analysis of Dasein, one finds that it is remarkably
similar to that of ordinary physical objects.
In some sense, Heidegger's social constitution
of the human being, by practices, ultimately makes
the human being simply a physically determined object.

I would also like to say: I greatly believe Heidegger is
one of the most intelligent thinkers of all time.
I would say that his extraordinary achievement was
to describe and fully analyze CONFORMITY
- which is what happens when people cease to
be human. His analysis of the human "being",
the Dasein, is in fact an analysis of the foot-soldier,
the individual without a mind. Someone who is
so determined by practices that external social signals
determine the movements of the individual's muscles
without actually going via the brain.

Admirer as I am of Heidegger,
I believe that Heidegger's Dasein is an analysis
of Musil's "Man without qualities",
Sartre's beaurocratic non-entity
-- exactly what it means NOT to
be human in the world.

I would greatly enjoy receiving your opinion on this.

best wishes,

Michael Leyton

Professor Michael Leyton
Center for Discrete Mathematics
& Theoretical Computer Science
Rutgers University, USA

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Received on Mon Jul 3 15:59:17 2006


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