Some Good News
Heidegger has some interesting points about our, well, existence and life. Except when he's talking about existence, he says 'Dasein,' which in english means 'being-there.' So when he says Dasein, just think 'Man' or 'Humans'. And for 'life,' he says 'being-with-one-another.' Here's what it means to 'be there,' that is, to exist:
...Being-with-one-another has the character of distantiality... But this distantiality which belongs to being-with, is such that Dasein, as everyday being-with-one-another, stands in subjection to Others. It itself is not; its being has been taken away by the Others. Dasein's everday possibilities of Being are for the Others to dispose of as they please. These Others, moreover, are not definite Others. On the contrary, any Other can represent them. What is decisive is just that inconspicuous domination by Others which has already been taken over unawares from Dasein as Being-with. One belongs to the Others oneself and enhances their power. 'The Others' whom one thus designates in order to cover up the fact of one's belonging to them essentially oneself, are those who proximally and for the most part 'are there' in everyday Being-with-one-another. The "who" is not this one, not that one, not oneself, not some people, and not the sum of them all. The 'who' is the neuter, the "they" [das "Man"].
... In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of 'the Others', in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the "they" is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as they shrink back; we find 'shocking' what they find shocking. The they, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness.
...It 'was' always the "they" who did it, and yet it can be said that it has been 'no one.'...
... Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. ...
Good stuff, huh?
...Being-with-one-another has the character of distantiality... But this distantiality which belongs to being-with, is such that Dasein, as everyday being-with-one-another, stands in subjection to Others. It itself is not; its being has been taken away by the Others. Dasein's everday possibilities of Being are for the Others to dispose of as they please. These Others, moreover, are not definite Others. On the contrary, any Other can represent them. What is decisive is just that inconspicuous domination by Others which has already been taken over unawares from Dasein as Being-with. One belongs to the Others oneself and enhances their power. 'The Others' whom one thus designates in order to cover up the fact of one's belonging to them essentially oneself, are those who proximally and for the most part 'are there' in everyday Being-with-one-another. The "who" is not this one, not that one, not oneself, not some people, and not the sum of them all. The 'who' is the neuter, the "they" [das "Man"].
... In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of 'the Others', in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the "they" is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as they shrink back; we find 'shocking' what they find shocking. The they, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness.
...It 'was' always the "they" who did it, and yet it can be said that it has been 'no one.'...
... Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. ...
Good stuff, huh?
posted by Tongue-tied Lightning at 2:17 PM
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