Hubert Dreyfus on Husserl and Heidegger: Section 1

[spot5]

Also, I would love to know what philosophers would have to say about those people out there who DO have desires about tables and other objects. Like the woman who supposedly "married" the Eiffel tower.

[spot5]

To the things themselves!

[capgurken]

I was listening to a lecture series on AI theory and was thinking hmmm I wonder if this Hubert Dreyfus is the same guy I watched all those phenomenology on youtube videos.....nah. But wow it turns out it was. What a guy writing existentialism and also critiquing the thinking computer for the RAND Corporation. So much for anyone who says phenomenology is irrelevant. I was thinking hmmm some of this does sound like phenomenology like the periphery of our field of consciousness.

[2TheThingsThemselves]

To the Things Themselves!

[TheDavid2222]

Bryan Magee is such an incredible human being. He really is.

[SkormFlinxingGlock]

The colour scheme of Hubert Dreyfus' wardrobe IS Existentialism.

[carlo88moe]

@SkormFlinxingGlock i'd say more postmodern, but hey, that's me

[meanlittledog]

bryan is probably the best at expaining philosophy. you could read a commentary on husserl, or just talk to bryan for 5 minutes

[Enersha27]

Dreyfus is the man

[OrisLover]

Dr. Dreyfus kind of looks like a thinner, groovier Homer Simpson.

[Xenostrobe]

"If I've seen farther, deeper, than others it is because I have really thick lenses in my spectacles"

Bryan Magee

[mrfatd]

I dont understand dreyfus's dislike of sartre.

in many ways, sartre was more profound than heidegger. sartre's thought was more embracing, heidegger's dasein is a boring asexual being, sartre makes gender distinctions, heidegger says nothing about diseases and disorders, sartre has theories on psychoanalysis, phobias, perversions and love. heidegger did not have a coherent political theory, sartre did, and obviously sartre wrote literary works and was a literary critic

[tbarjify]

@mrfatd Well, Sartre's "Existential Psychoanalysis" gets no attention these days. Dasein is supposed to a be asexual--its structure is/was supposed to hold true for all humans everywhere. It's pre-gender, pre-sexual. It's supposed to be. I think it's both to his credit and detriment that Heidegger is so general. Post-Heideggerian thought is blooming and has bloomed already--Foucault, Derrida, Sartre, Dreyfus himself, Camus, Tillich--the list continues A very diverse crowd. Part of the allure.

[carlo88moe]

@tbarjify well the crowd is diverse BC Heidegger was so...Sartre stems from Heidegger for a completely different reason than, say, Foucault....the only ones still blooming perhaps are the postmodernists, existentialism is kinda dead, save for some bourgeois effeteness every now and again

[LooksAeterna]

0:52 - 0:59 highly doubtful. Many are fooled by grammar here.

[idic5]

what yr did this conversartion take place? also, what is the name of the first speaker? pls cite in the description. thanks for posting this.

[firstarkfan]

philosophy is beyond me. but do you know what? i've favourited all the philosophy videos. lol. isn't that weird? :]

[Poconnor82803]

@firstarkfan  No.

[bozellandbuckley]

What is the music at the beginning?

[TheFriedLiverAttack]

thou shalt not what sense does that make that means your stronger than god becasue you can deni him...

[LiberalVichy]

Yeah, because people are retarded.

[seekfears]

google Doe's Account.

[et6yEhzxexzhrz]

mmm.. Shostakovich at the beginning

[techriot]

haha this is great, dreyfus is so excited

[AlephNeil]

I'm impressed that they're managing to talk about a character (whether fictional or real) called 'Heidegger' who said intelligible things.

[MrKarlWilliams]

@AlephNeil  I lol'd

[MeMovieFreak]

Fantastic!

[Sconz32]

I'm sure he's a nice person but Dreyfus looks like everyone's dodgy uncle you never let the kids alone with here.

[jonny909]

This is great. You can't imagine this kind of thing being broadcast now.

[Sconz32]

@jonny909 I know, it's a shame. I wish all tv was like this.

[Baustrophedonic]

"Wunderbar Phenomena" was actually one of Husserl's lesser known works.

[CainMeadows]

I think I saw this couch in a porno..

[jaocheu]

I saw Hubert's mustache, hair and suit in it too.

[carlo88moe]

@CainMeadows was bryan in it??? "i do say, that's a very delightful pussy, would it agree with you if i punctured it repetitiously in rapid succession?"

[thebloads]

I dont understand why they must always have the irritating shostakovich playing in the background.

[mrfatd]

husserl is the most obscure philosopher ever

[archdeaconj]

You obviously haven't read Hegel!

[TripolarProductions]

Hubert is beautifully colour co-ordinated with his immediate surroundings. Bryan, on the other hand, is evidently his own boss with those strident, idiocyncratic hues. I love philosophy.

[soursourapples]

so iidiocyncratic that it is the exact colour scheme of the front cover of the sixth edition fontana masters series on Karl Popper.

Coincidence?

[hughwrang]

my word, you're right! I like Bryan Magee - there's a cool book he did for a TV series (this?) with los of philosophy and intellectualism in it. So much better than Braggian broadcasting style.

[soursourapples]

i agree, he genuinely wants to make these ideas accessable to everyone. I am a big fan of Magee.

[ofcoursehesthefarmer]

@TripolarProductions Sir, I am sitting in front of my computer wearing only my dun-coloured underpants and I have to say that I resent your implication that a 'hue' is in some sense indicative of personality - and therefore moral worth. On the contrary! My very moral worth lies in the fact that I have eschewed the petty conventions of dress and elected to lead the life of the mind. Good day to you.

[BlindBlannche]

@ofcoursehesthefarmer but is the life of the mind really devoid of free unprecedented personal expression? can you not be active, exude your Self, and not be overtaken by superficial materiality, rather than be lazy and repress your spirits. For instance, Tibetan Buddhist Robes tend to be extremely colorful. If you are living a life of the mind you are caged within the petty convention of the material body. come outside, it is lovely out.

[dedbusted]

Sartre is vastly over-rated; a puny liberal-Marxist punk.

[mrfatd]

sartre a punk? what r u smokin

[dedbusted]

Yup. Nietzsche would kick his French ass into outerspace.

[mrfatd]

hahahah

[soursourapples]

this is so true i want to punch the screen

[hughwrang]

...indubitably certain, you mean?

(to the disco tune) "Do the Hussle!"

[bonajab]

If the objects of our consciousness don't exist independently of our consciousness then we are all super geniuses. The sciences of physics, math, biology, etc. of our universe, even if imaginary, are fantastically complex and elegant. On top of that love, pleasure, asthetic beauty all are brilliant too.

[TangYingKai]

bonajab- That's not actually a logical argument against the idea. It may make it fantastical when considered with regard to our experience of the world, but does not defeat it. I think it would be better to attack the notion of the mind as a single or even corporate entity. "The Mind" is concieved of here in a simplistic fashion - it is presupposed that it necessarily exists, which assumes that thoughts must come from somewhere and are not capable of thinking about each other.

[TangYingKai]

In fact, the mind need not be presupposed, nor need conciousness. If consiousness did not exist we would be unable to be consious of that fact. As quantum mechanics and other branches of physics suggest, it is almost (if not entirely) impossible to understand some things which we take to be truths about our universe. Simply because something is beyond comprehension does not make it impossible. If you have a chance look up the "two slits" experiment (in relation to quantum mechanics).

[bonajab]

I'm not sure what you are saying.

[TangYingKai]

I mean that the "indupitable certainty" of "our own concious awareness" can be doubted. We need to explored precisely what we mean by consiousness, but the assertion is that it exists in an objective fashion - we cannot doubt it. Yet we can - our own conciousness may not be consiousness at all, but rather a phantasmogorical fiction, in the style of Descartes' demon. All that may be said is that there is an appearance of conciousness, which need not be consious of itself.

[jkqd14]

If consciousness did not exist, then we would necessarily not be conscious of anything. Since we are conscious of things, to say that consciousness does not exist is nonsensical. Consciousness does not mean complete comprehension; I can be conscious of light's behavior as a particle/wave (to use your example) without fully understanding it.

I am conscious of a thing in that I recognize that it exists (or appears to exist to me, which when we 'bracket' it, has the same consequences).

[TangYingKai]

jkqd - Conciousness need not be an absolute. I could suppose a partial conciousness, in which I am concious of only a fraction of sensual or perceptual events. I need not be concious of nothing to flaw the absolute truth value of conciousness. As you said, consiousness is not in ignorance or knowledge, but in perception. But what if can only partially percieve of process an object? What if I unconciously percieve it in some unenumerated facet?

[jkqd14]

If that were true, this "facet" would be impossible to detect and we would be unable to be conscious of it, by the definition of consciousness. Since this is such a bizarre logical extraneity, it would require extraordinary, or at least some shred, of evidence. Though Kant & Leibniz did differentiate conscious perception from unconscious perception (like when you look at the Milky Way, you unconsciously perceive the distant stars), that doesn't mean that the consciousness is called into question

[jkqd14]

Concepts of complexity, elegance, etc. only have meaning in contrast to concepts of simplicity, ugliness, etc.

You have to understand that if EVERYTHING we are conscious of is contingent on our consciousness, then there are no concepts outside of that; and so what you view as "complex" is simply complex in relation to the simpler things you are conscious of. Objectively, the universe is neither simple nor complex; it is what it is, and we cannot have concepts that are not realized in it.

[AnonymousWhitePerson]

Heidegger was an accursed fool.

[chaniwie]

these videos are awesome man!!

[b1nphk66]

aww what a neo-hippie.

LOVE him.

[dasglasperlenspiel10]

Thank you so much for posting this. I have been a fan of Magee's very fine explanations of complex philosophical ideas for many years.  They have often led me to better understanding of the original texts. I have always wondered what his BBC presentations were like. THANK YOU!

[olduvaisampson]

A pity that Whitehead always gets left out of these discussions. he has more in common with Husserl that might be apparent on a cursory reading.

Heidegger was a Nazi bastard who doesn't deserve to be mentioned.

[LiberalVichy]

Adolf Hitler thought that internal combustion engines worked. Should we dismiss internal combustion because people you dislike would accept its propositions? Leave your genetic fallacies at the door.

[pakk82]

@LiberalVichy but heidegger was himself a nazi, it would be such a lie if you say you don't understand why people feel somewhat of hostility in him

[mayakronfeld]

lol in what sense can a show on philosophy be fraudulent?

[xytoplazm]

You, sir, are fraudulent.

[mrfiggins]

Read Anathem by Neal Stephenson (if you haven't already). Great fiction about Husserl's take on our being, and others ideas about the cosmos and poly-cosmos. Highly recommended.

[Lion117]

Dreyfus =~ Kermit

[tiamattiamatre]

I am doing my degree about Heidegger and Junger and I REALLY HATE ASSOCIATING HEIDEGGER WITH EXISTENTIALISM!!!!!!

[nile577]

Have you read Michael Zimmerman's book "Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art"? If not, I would recommend it. It focusses on Junger and Heidegger and their "conceptions" of technological thinking in relation to war, fascism, ecology etc.

[tiamattiamatre]

ya, it is a good book. 10x:). but unfortunately Junger`s uber die Linie it is hard to find and it is not translated even in English :((( I wonder why such a titan like Junger is very poorly studied...

[mayakronfeld]

Yeah, it seems anachronistic, doesn't it. Was this all Sartre's doing (appropriation of Heidegger?)Or who is the first to talk about "existentialism?"

[notonewhit]

Either Blaise Pascal or Kierkegaard is typically cited as the first existentialist.

Sartre came up with the often cited definition of existentialism: "Existence precedes essence."

[pro8GRAM]

that couch is hideous

[nile577]

Sayeed,

I recommend Graham Parke's article "A Review of Heidegger and Asian Thought."This piece shows that Heidegger's readings and translations of Taoist philosophy are typically idiosyncratic (like his reading of Husserl's phenomenology in the methodological introduction of Being and Time). I think it bad form to attempt to "slander" Heidegger on every youtube video (if this was your intent). The parallels are interesting but hardly plagiarism.

[nile577]

Addendum - I meant to say "A review of" the Parkes' book on the evans-experientialism website. The review is called "Being-in-the-Way," but does not seem to list an author. Sorry for the confusion.

[womet9]

I felt compelled to reply to sayeed's comments as, coincidently, I read Alan Watts' Way of Zen recently and am now into Being and Time. I also felt a lot of similarities, but the more I read, especially concerning death and authenticity, the more I feel Heidegger is starting from and going towards a different direction. My two cents.

[milestonedd]

would you really call them existentialists? I thought they were always with the phenomenological school of thought...

[olafode]

Hubert Dreyfus and Brian Magee are to be commended for this excellent introduction.

[birthistragic]

I believe Heidegger said he wished he'd have read Dogen's Shobogenzo before he'd written Being and Time. It's small wonder he's so little regarded in Anglo - American culture. It's a culture that is at a loss with the idea being as opposed to having.

[fedeman2]

think you can get it in sync?

[sayeed0011]

hey people. heidegger has nothing to do with husserl, aristotle or kierkegard. heidegger is all taoism (there i said it). "skill and flow" "being in the world" ecology, etc. are all from taoism. if you find heidegger jargons confusing just read alan watts. theyre all there right down to current environmentalism fad. pleas dont turn heidegger into a thoreau or somebody gentle and lovely like that.

[muhjaheed]

that's not true, it was only later in his life where he encountered these eastern traditions

[sayeed0011]

i wont insist as i am in no mood to argue but make up your mind, with these evidences.

heideggers "being in the world" is from a book called the book of tea by okakura kakuzo which was publshed long beofre being and time. and his themes-technology, nature, skill and flow, letting be are all mysteriously suspiciously ridiculously similar to taoism. just search google or google books or something similar.

or see an alan watts video from youtube-just mysteriously similar. make up your mind.

[CianEyeTube]

::// I hadn't heard of the Book of Tea, but I'll check it out (I do like tea). There is amazing similarites between H and eastern philosophy, I know that much. But B&T is just so very descriptive. Some of H's concepts are also astonishingly similar to concepts in Zen, but he describes them in such a detailed phenomenology and ontology that his work just cannot have been lifted from some other philosophy. Even if the core is roughly the same, it's the detail, I argue, is what makes it. (?) \\:: |

[sayeed0011]

my belief is that heideggers understanding of taoism goes beyond mere influence or even appropriation. there is something essential he had gotten from taoism, such as "what shows up" must be coupled with "what doesnt show up" in even eveyday activities. i dont think he could have answered husserl quite in this way without knowledge of taoism. i read being and time first and then taoism. maybe the connection would be clearer this way, or maybe not. but the connection in my view is evident.

[sayeed0011]

there is already a book by may and parkes, "heideggers hidden sources" that details textual evidences that heidegger knew and then used taoist texts translated in german to an extent far more extensive than we were led to believe.

but this kind of book doesnt seem to bother heidegger fans, certainly it would not bother someone like hubert dreyfus who thinks heidegger is the greatest philosopher in human history. they would more likely consider it a slander.

[CianEyeTube]

LOL, these are all interesting books you cite, i'll check them out. I'm interested in this topic.

[sayeed0011]

whatever my opinions and grudges, the tone of my responses has been unacceptable. i owe professor dreyfus and others an apology

[nile577]

Heidegger's understanding of "being-in-the-world" has been radically developed from its occurrence in The Book of Tea, belying the notion that it is merely lifted, brazenly "from" there.

[nile577]

To clarify: I dont mean to imply that the Tao Te Ching was unimportant to Heidegger. I am sure that it influenced his thinking profoundly. I think we must be careful, though, of reading the Tao Te Ching through "Heideggerian" glasses.

[Krelianx]

The argument is weak. Heidegger's philosophical ouevre departs from a critique of Western philosophy itself, through a hemeneutic assessment of its crucial concepts. Even if there are similar concepts, they constitute responses to different texts. Being and Time, alone, is not quite understandable as anything but an obscure inquiry into a platitude called 'being'.

[sacrificialtotem]

way to dismiss Heidegger's ideas with out even backing up your statement.

why did u post this just to be read or something . you don't even say anything with this

[Krelianx]

Huh? Heidegger's thought is impossibly important and definitive. I'm not dismissing Heidegger, i'm dismissing Dreyfus' focus on readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit) as geared towards an explanation of the transparent coping of individuals it misses the truly subversive substitution of the equipmental-whole to the subject-object relation. The former does not pressupose an agent being transparently directed as Dreyfus suggests; there is, ontologically, no 'subject' as such, just as there is no tool.

[xytoplazm]

Totem's right. You didn't even say anything with this. I suggest you focus on making yourself understandable instead of trying to sound smart with your platitudes and ouevres.

[Krelianx]

I am strongly attached to Heidegger; I oppose Wittgensteinean readings like Dreyfus' in virtue of emphasizing the critique of Cartesianism as pivotal. For Heidegger this was just a stopgap in the ardous task of asking about the sense of being (or in the psot-Kehre Heidegger, about the 'truth' of being). This line is present in Dreyfus' work all throughout, down to his latest lectures on Heidegger.

[soundmuseum99]

I think you are responding to what is essentially an excerpt of Dreyfus' interpretation and Heidegger's thought. Dreyfus agrees that there is no subject and when everything is working well, no tool. What you're leaving out is breakdown cases. When the hammer stops working as a hammer or is in some way deficient it appears as an object. Dreyfus is one of the best in the world on Heidegger he certainly doesn't miss something as basic as the equipmental whole or the referential totality.

[CianEyeTube]

ah yes, the 'ol "table and chairs" debate

[smackator]

haha yes...it's always tables and chairs that are used as examples in philosophy! i think it's because generally these discussions take place in classrooms or similar settings.

[theinternetscholar]

At the end, so most of what we do is subconsciously . . we are very disconnected from what we are doing and what we are thinking about

[suren1946]

does anyone know much about Husserl's fourth logical investigation??

[EmmaCharlotteStubbs]

The Ideal Scaffolding of Language: Husserl's Fourth Logical Investigation in the Light of Cognitive Linguistics by Peer F Bungaard is available as a pdf..just spent the last 50minutes reading it..i can't give you a good summation as i don't understand what's being said

[VirusSyndicate]

The irony is that Heidegger, while at one time an advocate of facism, adduced through his Zollekon Seminars, a view of Dasein as quintessentially imeasurable. A view at odds with the health facism found, especially in the bio-medical model of psychiatry, some times reffered to as the "psy-complex".

[mrfatd]

i find husserl a lot more vague, obscure and difficult than heidegger

[trashdawg]

Dreyfus is without question one of the foremost expositors of Heidegger in the English speaking. However, take his remarks about *Husserl* with a pinch of salt, especially those concerning Husserl's alleged Cartesianism.

[trashdawg]

"It is naturally a ludicrous, though unfortunately common misunderstanding, to seek to attack transcendental phenomenology as 'Cartesianism,' as if its ego cogito were a premise or set of premises from the which rest of knowledge . . . was to be deduced [deduzieren], absolutely 'secured' [absoluter 'Sicherung']. The point is not to secure [sichern] objectivity, but to understand [verstehen] it"

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Hua VI, 193)

[mrfatd]

well, husserl treated minds as self-suffucient substances with inner representations, and he used the object/subject distinction a lot, so he is a total cartesian

[trashdawg]

Husserl certainly treats as basic the subject/objection distinction that Heidegger rejects as a description of Dasein's basic way of existing. But allegiance to the subject/object distinction alone does not make one a Cartesian. Most of Western philosophy would be Cartesian by that criterion. That said, I would never deny that there are Cartesian elements to Husserl's thought. He did name one of his works Cartesian Meditations after all.

[trashdawg]

But to call Husserl a "total Cartesian" is misleading, for to do so ignores the many respects in which Husserl departed from central aspects of Descartes's philosophy. For example, Husserl does not treat the mind, or better, transcendental subjectivity, as a substance. Husserl explicitly criticizes this view, seeing it as symptomatic of the naturalism that he rejected. Husserl also rejects the indirect realism endorsed by Descartes.

[trashdawg]

For representations are always founded on presentations, as he argues in Logical Investigations, and to treat perceptual consciousness as the consciousness of representations is a phenomenological confusion, as he argues in Ideas I. And finally, despite Dreyfus's allusions to the contrary in the above clip, Husserl is not interested in the type of foundationalist epistemological project that one finds in The Meditations.

[mayakronfeld]

I actually don't think it's a stretch to say that most of Western philosophy IS Cartesian, in the sense of inheriting the subject/object split. In Descartes there seems to be both an ontological split between subject and object(his substance dualism), and an epistemic split b/w subject and object (i can be sure of the existence of consciousness, but i can't be sure of the existence of bodies).

[sssswwwsssss]

This is a little misleading. The 'grounding', which Dreyfus speaks of, is not realized in some standardly construed Cartesian subject-object relation as he habitually supposes (see also his Berkeley lectures). There is, for Husserl, no table to meaningfully individuate as given, because meaning is already distilled in the intentionality or directedness of the act itself i.e. in what Husserl calls the noesis-noema correlation.

[sssswwwsssss]

And the condition of possibility, which Dreyfus describes as a grounding, is rather what a constitutive reduction or phenomenological epoche yields, in virtue of which the world of objects can be "put under parentheses". Finally, all this occurs in the constitutive phenomenology of the 'Ideas' (1913). The 'Logical Investigations' itself has a much weaker metaphysical stance to bear i.e. it amounts to an eidetic, and not a maximally constitutive reduction.

[sssswwwsssss]

Many scholars have put a realist,

though essentialist, gloss on this work, though Husserl, as he wrote in his letters, always had in mind the kind of transcendental turn that was latter to become the 'Ideas'. I've not once found Dreyfus talking in introductory terms about this earlier picture. And, while he remains a laudible commentator/interpretater of Heidegger,

[sssswwwsssss]

I'm not quite sure how well he knows Husserl - remarks like "arch-cartesian" are deeply troubling. If anyone is approaching Husserl for the first time, and is interested in what he might have to say, commentary by others, say, J. N. Mohanty, David Woodruff will provide some much needed sophistication.

[sssswwwsssss]

: David Woodruff Smith

[muhjaheed]

what is "essentialism" to you? Husserl is essentialist in the sense that he regards the telos of humanity to be the self-disclosing meaning of Man to Man (i.e, he believes that human nature is innately, 'essentially' rational).

[sssswwwsssss]

Essentialism, as I use it above, has to do with his weak platonism (of the Logical Investigations). e.g

"In its ideally graspable essence, however, the content is independent; this essence by itself, i.e. considered in a priori fashion, requires no other essence to be interwoven with it." (LI, vol. 2, p. 9)

[rootberg]

Thanks a lot! But I have to say that the sound is out of sync for me.

[flame0430]

The rest is on it's way!

[RapidAssassin]

Great. I've been struggling with Husserl for a while and these videos are always helpful. Godel felt that his philosophy was the correct approach.

[Huesos138]

I despise Heidegger and Husserl, but I am also grateful for all these videos, thank you.

[CianEyeTube]

What year is this, anyone?

[ReelChange]

It's one of fifteen dialogues first broadcast on the BBC in 1987. Revised transcripts of these programmes are available in Bryan Magee's excellent book The Great Philosophers, which was published by BBC Books in the same year. Great series.

[husserlreid]

I can't adequately express how grateful I am to you for posting these videos, especially this discussion of Husserl and Heidegger. Where and how in the heck did you find these programs, flame? They're phenomenal.

[jkqd14]

Phenomenological, more like!!!!

P.S. Does your name refer to Scottish "common sense" philosopher Thomas Reid?

[husserlreid]

Yup, that's right.

[jkqd14]

You should check out a book called "Scottish Common Sense in Germany 1768 - 1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy" by Manfred Kuehn. He's a Kant scholar (and my professor) who offers an interesting account of how Reid's reaction to Berkeley and Hume stirred up debates in Germany about perception and sensation that ultimately (in part) led to Kant's transcendental deductions. It's a short and easy read, and it's a vindication of Reid's philosophical legacy.

Check! It! OUT!!!

[ExMachine]

This is really invaluable. I'm copying these Magee videos for future reference and possible duplication on Youtube or Google Video. I find it so trying to wait for the rest... hurry flame0430!

Thank you.

[michelesato]

Thank you for this excellent tool! It certainly will help me on my activities (i am phenomenologist, teacher and researcher)

cheers

*

[think2mucho]

Thanks for the video! Are you going to upload the rest?