Heidegger+Questions?

Being (big B) metaphors: Fields, space/time, existence

Very helpful link! (Thanks Jessica) [|http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/b_and_t_glossary.html#d]

How to handle the Heidegger/Nazi question?

I feel there are some underlying assumptions to this question that I feel are problematic and that reflect a "positivistic" world view that is different from my own. Namely, the logic behind the question goes as follows. Heidegger developed brought forth an idea of hermenuetic phenomenology, which was infleunced from Husserl and Hegel's phenomenology. Heidegger was a Nazi or at least sympathizer. Therefore, the methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology allows one who practices that methodology to behave malevolently, or even more the tenets of phenomenological inquiry cuase horrible events like the Holocaust. Why don't we ask the same question of scientist who hold to the tenets of natural science? Those tenets were shaped by readers of Darwin and evolutionary theories to develop theories of Social Darwinism, which I feel has a more direct link to how Nazism becomes operationalized into genocide. Don't get me started on Behaviorism and it's role in research about that same time. Moreover and more importantly, the question removes my agency, and responsibility, as a reader/interpreter of Heidegger's text. Somehow, I have no agency about reshaping and transforming some of Heidegger ideas about how we should go about inquiry in the world. Instead of the "devil made me do it", it is "the text made me do it." How then can we transform ideas to help construct a more understanding and compassionate world when we don't have agency to transform ideas and relate them to how we experience the world now? The question also assumes Heidegger "owns" or possesses authorship on any of his ideas.

After reading the handy-dandy link Jessica found, my interpretation of Dasein (my own awareness of my own existence and being in the world) is very different to how Jessica summarized Melissa Landa's interpretation (although I do agree that when we start using nominals like "things", language can begin to dehumanize or de-sentientize other beings to our experience), which doesn't mean, however, that hers is any less valid than mine. It just means that we have come to different "truths" to how my-being-in-the world comes to be (hah!) for me.I am fine with that because I don't subscribe to the tenets of objective or idealistic ontology that there is one truth.