Heidegger’s Critique of Rationalism and Modernity (original) (raw)
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Philosophia (Philippines), 2021
The topic of science was one of the most significant topics in the work of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was not primarily a science methodologist; he could be considered a significant philosopher of science. Heidegger's philosophy of science is often labeled supertemporal. Although Heidegger was interested in reflecting several stages of science, the present article only deals with his philosophical view of modern science. The article does not analyze how Heidegger reflects on particular sciences; it analyses how he reflects on science as a whole, specifically the individual stages of Heidegger's philosophy of science. The basic question of the research is whether his philosophy of science before the "Turn" is in any way different from his philosophy of science after the "Turn," i.e., whether we can speak of two completely different approaches to science, or whether it is possible to find some continuity between them. Besides Heidegger's published works, the paper also reflects on the discovery of an original, unpublished version of his text and looks critically at some interpreters of Heidegger's philosophy of science. The study concludes that despite numerous differences in his reflection on science before and after the Turn, it can be stated that there is substantial continuity between the stages of Heidegger´s philosophy of science.
The Rediscovery of Heidegger's Worldly Subject by Analytic Philosophy of Science
The Monist, 1999
This essay describes similarities between the conception of intentionality expressed in Heidegger's early writings and the conception of propositional attitude psychology expressed in the recent work of William Bechtel and A. A. Abrahamsen. In different ways, these two approaches emphasise the "worldly" character of the intentional subject. There was a time when identifying similarities in view or argument between representatives of the "Analytic" and "Continental" camp was of intrinsic value because few in either camp believed such similarities existed. Fortunately, that time is past and such comparisons will now prove their worth only by being productive, by allowing us to cross-fertilise the views that were thought to be so alien. On the basis of more obvious points of similarity, we can use one model as indicating where the other model might be developed or where it might face unrecognized problems. This paper attempts such an exercise.
What Science Cannot Do: The Question Concerning Science and Heidegger
Open Journal of Philosophy, 2022
This paper revisits Heidegger's views on science and examines the relationship between science and thinking. Science, dominated by metaphysical subject-object thinking, understands beings (Seiende) as an object while forgetting the Being (Sein), and for Heidegger, this lack of understanding of Being is the lynchpin to his perception of modern science. This paper reexamines Heidegger's challenge and concludes that while science ignores Being, Heidegger's assessment of science is not a critique of science per se, but rather a critique of the danger the scientific way of thinking poses to our life world. It suggests that our unrestricted use of scientific thinking makes the meaning of Being in our own lifeworld become lost. What Heidegger implies is not that "science does not think," but that human beings who living in the metaphysical and scientifical thinking do not think.
“On Hegel’s Confrontation with the Sciences in ‘Observing Reason’: Notes for a Discussion”
The aim of this paper, delivered at the 2007 conference of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, is to contribute to the current debate about nature’s recalcitrance to full rational determination from the standpoint of its inexhaustibility, stressed in Hegel’s analysis of the scientific description and classification of natural things in the Phenomenology. It supports the claim that in “Observing Reason” Hegel reconstructs the genesis and functions of scientific theories within shapes of consciousness which are also necessary and irreplaceable advances toward the concept of absolute knowing, casting light on the presupposition of the systematic Philosophy of Nature. By referring to a series of examples drawn from Hegel’s treatment of mechanics, chemistry and electricity based on first-hand research in Jena libraries, and focusing on the investigation of the pure conditions of the empirical laws of nature, the paper points out the awareness of working scientists about experiments and documents Hegel’s view on the inversion of consciousness’s initial standpoint, which took experience and observation as the sole source of truth. It shows how it emerges for rational self-consciousness itself that the truth of the laws of nature lies in the concept, accounting for the explanatory completeness of the essential, inward and stable significance of the sensuous external transitory being of the natural things. The paper concludes that from the real to the ideal side in the course of the advancements in natural sciences we have experienced the transformation of the external (mind-independent) being of the immense realm of phenomena into a being-that-is-thought as their truth, whereas from the ideal to the real side modern scientific knowledge of nature have experienced the transformation of the internal (mind-dependent) thought from a formal way of reducing multiplicity to unities by abstraction and subsumption, into categorial thinking determining the true objectivity of the sensuous particulars.
Die Wissenschaft denkt (nicht). Heidegger, Conrad-Martius and the Ontology of Science
This talk proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I characterize the being of science according to Conrad-Martius and Heidegger. Secondly, I discuss how both authors see phenomenology as being able to transcend or undercut these limitations, setting up their ontological vision against that of scientists. Thirdly, I consider the question of what sense there is in philosophically commenting on, or intervening in, an epistemic practice so far removed from one’s own. And vice versa, what do Conrad-Martius and Heidegger hope to learn from these interventions? Talk held at the 7th CEESP conference, 13th September 2022
"Philosophy, Science, and the Possibility of Thinking: Some possibilities for a Heideggerian philosophy of science While Heidegger’s work often appears critical of science and scientific thinking, especially in light of its connection to technology and its inability to arrive at its own essence, it is notable that in the Country Path Conversations (GA 77, Feldweg-Gespräche ) it is the Scientist who both leads the force of investigation and simultaneously is first to recognize the character of releasement (Gelassenheit) and the understanding of the open-region associated with meditative thinking. While Heidegger is deeply critical of the dangers and effects of modern science and representational, or technological and scientific, thinking, the question remains what a Heideggerian philosophy of science might look like and whether or not there can be a positive account of science within Heidegger’s thought. The purpose of my paper is to examine those positive assertions of science in light of the possibility of thinking, particularly with regards to Heidegger’s later work that could be drawn from his work. In order to demonstrate this, I will examine both what Heidegger understands by authentic thinking (meditative or essential thinking) as well as how the scientist, rather than modern science itself, might properly understand in genuine thinking. While it is clear that for Heidegger, modern science is characterized by calculative, measuring, and conceptualizing thinking which is juxtaposed to the thinking accomplished by ‘releasement’ and ‘heartfelt’ thinking, which Heidegger takes to be more authentic and essential. In order to explore an authentic Heideggerian philosophy of science I will draw not only from Heidegger’s work in the Country Path Conversations but also from his important later reflections on thinking in the Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking (GA 79, Grundsätze des Denkens) as well as What is Called Thinking? (GA 8, Was Heisst Denken?). The aim of my paper will be to not only situate the importance that science plays for Heidegger’s thought but to also offer up the possibility of a positive account of a Heideggerian philosophy of science in light of his central project of authentic thinking. "
Walking in Place since Descartes: Heidegger on Science in the Age of the World Picture
This paper aims to ground and evaluate Heidegger's diagnosis of an essentially inert modern science. Heidegger´s work on science and technology is an attractor for philosophy of science, continental philosophy and the philosophy of technology and as such worthy of analysis. Others have highlighted the significance of science for Heidegger (Glazebrook, Dreyfus) and of Heidegger for understanding science (Rouse, Glazebrook). My analysis centers on the essay The Age of the World-Picture where Heidegger gives a phenomenological (ontological/metaphysical) account of the modern age focusing on the distinctive phenomenon of modern science. I offer a close reading of that work, articulate Heidegger´s view of science as research and compare this to Kuhn´s notion of normal science. I conclude that the two accounts operate at different levels, Heidegger describing the acceptio while Kuhn the suppositio of science. The paper further assesses the claim of Heidegger that modern science has been " walking in place " since Descartes, supplementing this analysis with a view of the importance of Keppler´s optics for Descartes´s notion of a subject, meshing in a circle the interdependencies between science and philosophy (of science).
Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science: Interpreting Nature, Reading Laboratory Science
Hermeneutics is usually defined as the scholarly and rigorous and so “scientific” interpretation of texts in the historical context of their transmission. In consequence, it tends to be assumed that hermeneutic philosophy of science involves the interpretation of scientific texts (research notes and reports, scholarly articles, text books, popular science accounts) or else the philosophical reflection on such interpretations, sometimes defined as a double hermeneutic or (scientific) interpretation of (scientific) interpretation. Such a double hermeneutic requires yet another doubling in the case of science, whether that of the many natural sciences or indeed the various social sciences, inasmuch as the above text-limited schematism overlooks the reference of empirical scientific practice to the interpretation of nature itself corresponding as well in the case of the social or human sciences to the human subject in both cases in addition to thematic reflection on scientific practice as such, both current and historical. These “objective” references are key for the hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophers of science Patrick Aidan Heelan and Joseph J. Kockelmans as well as Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Dmitri Ginev, and Babette Babich among others and in addition to Martin Heidegger, who first adverted to the hermeneutic phenomenological orientation to nature and scientific observation in the scientist’s laboratory practice in addition to the scientist’s own reflective theoretical expressions, in this latter case following Edmund Husserl. Ergo the Heidegger of Being and Time (1927) begins with an explicitly methodological reflection on hermeneutic phenomenology as articulating the regions or fields of inquiry of the specific individual sciences as that within which that which is to be investigated can be explored.