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Being And The Human Being
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- Against “Isms” And Systems
- Implications For Debate
Being And The Human BeingAt the end of the 19th Century, Friederich Nietzsche commented that philosophy had always assumed the truth was “out there’ to be discovered by human beings. Nietzsche argued that truth was an invention rather than a discovery. This controversial declaration would lead many to believe that “truth” is not, in fact, “real.” The common response is usually to merely reassert the objectivity of truth. Heidegger, on the other hand, did not deny the validity of truth, but he did seek to show that ultimately we cannot speak of truth without first understanding that truth has no meaning outside of the human beings which reveal it. Before a truth is revealed and elucidated by humans, it has absolutely no meaning; this is not to imply that it is “untrue,” but only to point out that we are the grounding of truth; it comes to us through us. Those who ignore this basic existential fact will often conceal the most important processes of philosophy, such as the linguistic importance of philosophical statements and the way that what is conceived of as “truth” changes overtime. Statements are always based in some kind of context, some kind of history. When we ignore this, when we hold “truths” to be somehow outside of the same human history that we inherit upon our placement in this world, then we close our minds to the further development of knowledge and the manifold meaning of Being, existence itself. We become comfortable with the systems we’ve invented and we cease to be amazed, like little children, at the very fact of existence itself. Heidegger was afraid that we would lose this sense of wonder about Being, so he posited that the most important questions ought to be faced by thinking individuals without deference to “what everyone else believes,” or what we’ve already been taught. In beginning his examinations in Being and Time with the lone individual, Heidegger emphasized his belief that we find ourselves “alone” in asking many of the most important and personal philosophical questions. But even our “alone-ness” is conditioned by the history we’ve inherited as well as the presence of others, who help us become who we are. So Heidegger’s investigating human walks a thin line: On the one hand, she knows that she must answer the most important questions alone and must sometimes ignore public, majority opinion (because of its leveling off of critical thinking and its tendency to become “average” and ignore radical insights) but on the other hand, she also knows she cannot ever really be “alone.” These sorts of paradoxes may seem strange, and even violate the laws of philosophical rigor; but that’s just the point: Real life is not the same as the logical systems invented by philosophers. Life itself is a contradiction. Simple answers, the positing of “overarching values” and “eternal truths” are ways of escaping, not embracing, the paradox that is human existence. One important explanation: Heidegger calls his thinking, investigating human “Dasein,” German for “there-being,” or a being which is in the world, investigating the world, and who is also herself the subject of Heidegger’s own investigation. (For the purposes of the evidence presented in this section of the handbook, debaters are advised to interpret “Dasein” simply as “human being.”) Against “Isms” And SystemsIf the realm of truth is the unseen which has not yet been revealed to thinking subjects, then what happens when newly revealed truths are simply packed into already-existing philosophical systems? The answer, according to Heidegger, is that these systems destroy the uniqueness of what is revealed. Systems are self-referential; they are closed and exist according to the purposes for which they are designed. But a revealed truth itself has no purpose, until it is assimilated into that already-existing system. Hence, we undermine the meaning of the truth-in-itself and instead simply make that revelation a subset in a mental and linguistic “machine.” For example, many religions are based on the visitations and revelations of other-worldly beings, and these beings are seen as sacred by those who believe in them. But as humans begin to collect the accounts of the visits and revelations of one such being, the collection becomes a “religious system” which is expected to be consistent with itself, and “useful” for practitioners of the religion. Let us suppose that religious system has already been put in place, but then, the being whose visits and revelations inspired the system makes another appearance to the faithful and says things which, taken in themselves, are absolutely unique. Now, after the deity has left this world, for a brief while, the faithful are blissful and possess a sense of wonder about what has been said. But after a time, theologians get together, analyze the revelations like “data” and then plug them into their religious system where they “fit.” According to a Heideggerian analysis, the sacredness and uniqueness of the deity’s words has been lost in a technological placement of the words into a human-invented system. The same, men, would hold true for the discovery of scientific phenomena, or the modifications of political theory, or whatever: The revelation itself has a unique meaning which is lost when it is turned into just another piece of a larger system. Systems, however, are inevitable, as are “-isms,” those systems of thought (such as individualism, collectivism, Marxism, atheism) which are self-consistent lists of human interpretation and belief. It is part of our nature to invent and sustain systems, and it allows us to progress and to solve problems. But Heidegger wants us to at least take a step back and re-examine the amount of trust we place in such thinking. If nothing else, we need to save some room for thinking which does not have a “systematic” goal; we need to contemplate things without having answers already in mind. Implications For DebateIn Heidegger’s works debaters can find two levels of strategy: both “straight-up” answers to various philosophical arguments, and a deeper contribution to the critique’ strategy of questioning the underlying assumptions of value-centered debate (a fuller treatment of this strategy is found in the section on Friederich Nietzsche). Heidegger’s writing provides direct refutation to assertions about both majoritarianism (the assumption that what the majority believes must be accepted) and individualism. Heidegger points out that deference to majority opinion, while not always wrong, does block us from more critical examinations of questions, since the majority must always be concerned about accommodating the beliefs of as many people as possible. Because of this, radical criticism is lost in the rush to find what is “acceptable” to people. What finally results is “average-ness” rather than truth.
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