Being

[steve_bakr]

Descartes describes the human being as res cogitans, the "thinking thing." In other words, we are in essence a "substance" which can exist or be thought of independently of the world.

Heidegger, on the other hand, describes the human being as "being-in-the-world." In his view, our in-the-worldness--our dealings with the world--describe who we are. A free-floating entity without "world" would be meaningless.

Whose view is right? And what does this say about 'soul'?

 

[Received]

I lean toward Heidegger even though 1) I have no idea what he's saying 99.94% of the time, and 2) I'm a Christian, which means I'm historically pressured to a substance view of human existence.

Well. Maybe not. I think it's a post-Cartesian error to think that we are just a substance, such as a soul, whether you define this soul's highest activity as thinking or whatever. Kierkegaard defined the human being as "spirit", which he considered synonymous with the self. Spirit here refers not to a substance, something passive, but *the active life of individual freedom*. As Sartre said, we *are* our freedom. Which makes sense (remember, Sartre was an atheist, didn't believe in the soul): anything like a soul, a mind, a body, whatever, are all *givens*, and as such can't really be the person, who stands above and beyond givens by definition. The person is what he does with these givens -- emphasis on "doing". A life of aesthetic passivity is not an active life, and therefore the person in this general mode of existence can only minimally be called a self. But the person who lives for meaning, who constantly chooses the good (for himself, for others), who in a word *acts*, can be said to be more fully a self. And Kierkegaard held the highest form of selfhood to be a life of faith -- that is, a life of continual and repeated fulfillment of God's command for one's life. Drastically different than the useful theological conceptions running around today. So we could say that the post-Cartesian error is mistaking the self for one of its building blocks or substances.

So I would say that, although we're constituted in a sense by substances (which might be a misuse of the term), we are what we do with these substances (body, mind, soul, whatever depending on your ontology). The self (which shouldn't be confused with the soul, which is but one important component or substance of the self according to theistic ontology) is fully itself only when it's acting on the substances that constitute it. So we're more fundamentally "being-in-the-world", I'd say, but we still have substances.

 

[dumpsterdiver45]

Reducing human existence as far as I can imagine it, I see humans as quality--or value fragmented--energy things. The 'thing' part isn't necessarily substance, it can be matter or energy or something else, but without the quality part there is no soul. 'Energized quality' of the sort humans are is something other higher animals lack. Morality is just a word we use that describes our perception of the tension and resistance between corruption in quality, or the falsification of the highest qualitative state, the true. The fragmentation of quality into true and false 'elements' is the language of substance, but that's only normal as we currently spend our time in matter. On this view, I'd see Heidegger's "being-in-the-world" as a qualitatively fragmented thing currently presiding in matter.

On the other hand, I'm getting old and in rereading the above, I could be high on pot if I smoke the stuff....but can't remember if I do or not. Dang it.

 

[Received]

Well, at least you'll have a lower chance of getting lung cancer than people who don't smoke at all. Boom.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Heidegger, on the other hand, describes the human being as "being-in-the-world." In his view, our in-the-worldness--our dealings with the world--describe who we are. A free-floating entity without "world" would be meaningless.

Whose view is right? And what does this say about 'soul'?

I much prefer Heidegger on that point. I'm not certain what it says about the 'soul', in large part because I'm not sure what that is really supposed to be other than an escape pod of personality.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Paradoxum]

I don't understand Heidegger's view... can anyone help me? I'd say Descartes is wrong because animals are thinking things too, so at most it would define a 'being' rather than a 'human being'.

What do you mean when you use the term 'human being'? Does it refer to the physical (a homosapian), the mental (a person), or both (a being which happens to be human)? Or are you asking what the term should refer to?

 

[steve_bakr]

I don't understand Heidegger's view... can anyone help me? I'd say Descartes is wrong because animals are thinking things too, so at most it would define a 'being' rather than a 'human being'.

What do you mean when you use the term 'human being'? Does it refer to the physical (a homosapian), the mental (a person), or both (a being which happens to be human)? Or are you asking what the term should refer to?

Perhaps it would be best to use Heidegger's term, which is Dasein: the human person in her existence primarily between birth and death.

To Heidegger, Dasein is what it is based on its involvement with the world of entities, which provide meaning in the context of what it chooses to do about its possibility-of-being--i.e. an artist utilizes her talents and the tools of art.

Dasein is described as care, which makes it either caring, interested, indifferent or contemptuous of others. Dasein is not only a being-in-the-world but also a being-in-time. Heidegger says that the meaning of care is temporality. Being can only be described in the context of time; hence the title of his 1927 work, Being and Time.

But I'm only on my fourth reading of it; some read it a dozen times or more. It is a difficult work.