Heidegger’s Critique of Rationalism and Modernity (original) (raw)
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.
International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technologies, 2021
In the modern intellectual question analysis of the humanitarian fields of scientific knowledge is indicated as an important philosophical problem. The fundamental intentions of the cultural development of the 21st century intersect at this point: on the one hand, there is an awareness of the loss of spirituality, and on the other, the indication of science as the highest human value. Science, entering into the mysteries of space, living matter and the human body, creates rise to acute social, ideological, methodological and humanistic problems concerning the individual and social aspects of man. The large amounts of scientific knowledge development should be combined with humanistic ideals, otherwise it is sure to give rise to further discord to the human condition and the world of culture. Next natural question arises in the problem of humanizing science context: "What should be the peak of scientific knowledge in order to avoid further mismatch between man and nature, society, science and humanitarian ideals?" As a result, the task arose to supplement the analysis of scientific aspects of cognition with an analysis of its synergetic, existential, axiological components. It is necessary to consider cognition not only as discovering the objective truth apart from man or from mankind, and also as part of the human-species, containing valuables that act to determine the human genuineness. With this in view, we will consider how the ideal of science is changing, leading from principle ontology when the most significant value for the cognizing subject is the world in itself, to taking into account the subjective conditions under which principles of new knowledge are gained. The evolution of the paradigm of science and the scientific picture of the world is shown. This evolution goes through three stages: classical, non-classical and post-non-classical.
Sympathy for the Scientist: Re-Calibrating a Heideggerian Critique of Metaphysics
This paper attempts to develop an ethico-aesthetic framework for enriching one's life and ethical outlook. Drawing primarily from Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger, an argument is made that Heidegger's understanding of this issue was mistaken. The ontological crisis of modernity is not the overt influence of mathematics as a worldview over poetics and more traditionally aesthetic approaches. It is the rampant mis-and over-application of abstraction within one's view of the world while denying the material realities of life as we live it. This runaway abstractive worldview leads to the misapplication of mathematics and other sciences which in turn facilitate the dehumanization of life and those within it. When we try to solve the real problems of our material human lives through overly abstractive means, then we arrive at inauthentic arguments that fuel popular disdain for philosophy as irrelevant and nothing more than the purview of the elite. The goal is a recalibration of the argument toward addressing the denial of materiality within Modernism.