Heidegger

Some Remarks on Heidegger: Myth and Reason

In his book “A System of Transcendental Idealism”, F.W.J. Schelling called for a mythology of reason. Schelling wrote this in the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was not until the twentieth century that thinkers took up the challenge of trying to show what a mythology of reason would look like. Such different thinkers as G. Lakoff and C. Jung have tried to show us a mythology of reason. When Schelling called for a mythology of reason, it must be understood he meant the primal thinking- that is the substratum of rationality . Not a collection of stories from a particular geographical region of the world. In this essay we shall call the thinking that underlies rational thought; mythical thinking. To help illustrate, when someone is not thinking rationally, we do not say they are using “unreason” or “inreason”. The fact that there are no such words as these should show there is not an opposite to reason. Instead when a person is not using reason, they are using a more primal term of thinking. Instead we shall say they are thinking mythically. It should be noted Heidegger does not use myth in the above sense. This should become clear as this essay goes on.

The first thing that a reader of “Being and Time” is confronted with is a bizarre terminology. Many thinkers have used an original or striking terminology, but there is something different about Heidegger's choice of words. The reason most thinkers choose unusual words is for precision. To get rid of unwanted meanings and connotations in words that are in common usage. Heidegger seems to be doing the opposite, he picks words that are full of meanings and connotations. This may be the reason everyone seems to find what they want in Heidegger. The real question is: What is Heidegger up to?

The
easiest access to Heidegger's thought is through the question of the existence of the external world. Kant saw it as a scandal that philosophy had no arguments to prove the existence of the external world; Heidegger regarded the question of the existence of the external world as a pseudo-problem. The reason Heidegger regarded this as a pseudo-problem is that Heidegger believed and attempted to show that rational discourse arises out of an initial engagement with the world. That subject and object are originally parts of an original engagement. This engagement with the world and its interpretation he calls Dasein. Heidegger's use of the term “Dasein” and Whitehead's definition of metaphysics are similar: Whitehead defines metaphysics as a general interpretation of experience. Heidegger's initial engagement or fundamental ontology is somewhat analogous to Whitehead's term “prehension”, the primordial feelings things have for each other.

From this primordial engagement arises rationality or abstraction. In other words from the initial pushing, prodding and pulling on objects there arises Newton's laws of physics In the primordial engagement with objects there is a mineness which is lost in abstraction. This is similar to Bradley's insight that feeling and emotion are full of content, but with little clarity, while reason and abstraction have clarity with little content. An example should help make this clear. It should be noted that I can say with a high degree of certainty that Heidegger would not approve of any of the examples I shall use in this essay.

We have all watched documentaries where a group of explorers go to a tribal region of the world. In their travels they meet a local tribesman, and the explorers ask directions form the tribesman to say, a lake. The tribesman then gives a very long and animated expression on how to get to the lake. Then the interpreter/translator of the group of explorers says, “Walk to the top of the hill in front of us, when the trail forks go to the left; and after a short distance there is the lake.”

What has happened in this example is the tribesman gave an account of how he would travel to the lake. This includes whatever spirits he prays to for a safe journey, a description of the terrain and what various features of the terrain mean to him and his tribe; he probably also explains why he goes to the lake when he does go. The interpreter/translator has abstracted out of the account only what the group needs to get to the lake. In Heidegger's terminology the translator has lost the mineness of the tribesman's account. Instead the translator has given directions everyone and anyone can use to get to the lake . We could say the tribesman's thinking is mythical, while the translator's thinking is rational.

According to Heidegger when the mineness is lost we fall into alienation when we use abstraction and reason, we become alienated from our own lives. Thus we are inauthentic. The journey to the lake is the tribesman's journey, not a set of timeless unanchored abstractions that anyone can use.

To understand why time is so important to Heidegger, and how against the current of the western philosophical tradition Heidegger is, we shall go back to the birth of the western philosophical tradition. This is when rational thinking began to take over from mythical thinking. This happened in the classical age of philosophy and is reflected in the lives and writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

In the early dialogues of Plato; Socrates has a question about one of the Greek virtues. He then goes to find an expert to ask. For courage he finds a general, for piety he finds a seer, and so on. The experts answer is always in the form of an example, or better as an account that means the virtue to the expert. Then Socrates destroys the account and everyone is left confused. What is happening is the people that Socrates is questioning are still thinking mythically. An account still has “mineness”, which is one of Heidegger's terms, it is not a definition that everyone can use. When we get to Plato, we find a mixtrue of myth and reason; but the break has been made with mythical thinking. When we get to Plato's latter dialogues that deal with metaphysics such as the “Timaeus” being has become an abstraction. True being only resides in the realm of the forms. The realm of the forms is timeless and can only be accessed through reason. In the philosophy of Aristotle, myth is gene; he reads like a modern textbook. Aristotle starts with definitions and then proceeds to demonstrations and concepts.

This is what Heidegger did not want.

This is why Heidegger emphasized time as the term of Being. Heidegger did not want Being to become a timeless abstraction; instead he wanted Being to be a primal engagement with entities in the world , that can only be shown in time. Heidegger makes what he calls “the One” the enemy of authenticity. By “the One” is meant speaking in the third person, for example: one's car, one's radio, etc .Heidegger felt that in thinking in abstraction, we write ourselves out of our lives. Thus we become inauthentic, and alienated from our own lives. Only by reclaiming that mineness of mythical thinking is it possible to recover our authentic life. This should also make clear why Heidegger regards death as so important. It is very hard to depersonalize one's own death.

Heidegger was trying to answer Schelling's call for a mythology of reason. He wanted to show the primordial thinking that underlies and gives birth to rational thought.