Seems Google thinks Heidegger is obscure...

Sounds about right.

This point on Hegel's obscurantism makes perfect sense to me, and may indeed apply to aspects of Heidegger's output.
Terry Pinkard

Too bad Schopenhauer wasn't around. It would be interesting to see if Heidegger really could rival the abstruseness and charlatanry that Schopenhauer ascribed to Hegel, and his utter loathing of the man.

That is an interesting point. I haven't really considered that before.
But if this is indeed the case, it means that the reader has to adjust his world view to fit an obscure philosophy, which seems kind of backward to me (at least at this stage in the thinking process).

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant

Who was very rarely stable.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar

Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume

Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel,

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine

Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.


--Monty Python

Not backward...merely an attempt to think "out of the box" or "get a vantage point" .Can we, as pieces in a chess game, understand what chess is "about" unless we try to get a view from above the board ?

That doesn't strike me as odd at all. Heidegger was a terrible obscurantist, given his personal preference for being mysterious vs. "contradict-able". (Some of his colleagues called him the "the old fox", a nickname that he enjoyed.) Heidegger's career went through a few phases, but they were pretty consistent in that, given his character. That feature, plus his conflation of resemblance and function, along with his insupportable etymologies (as a form of argument), brands him as pretty enthusiastic, if not an expert, obscurantist. His writings contain some valid philosophical points (some neglected by his academic predecessors), mostly (but not completely) drawn from the philosophical predecessors he commented upon; but they tend to be cloaked in a veil of bullshit to protect them from reasonable argument.

The benefit of nonsense is that it is impregnable to reservations.

"Above the board" and "outside the box" are misleading metaphors so long as the " box" and the "board" stand in for reality...in that case, there is no above or outside. "Attempts to think" are then just another word for "illusions", and perhaps "self-motivated delusiosn". If the "box" and "board" represent conventional assumptions, then there might be some truth to that...

The concept of "illusion" is predicated on the concept of "an observer independent reality". Heidegger points out that for a Dasein, "reality" is an aspect of contemplation of the "self within the flow". That is how he defines Existenz and only Daseins have it. Clearly that is a move "off the board" towards "the observation of observation"....(a general issue for contemporary physics BTW).

hmmm...i'm not so sure. It seems to me that "illusion" is equally possible given an observer co-dependent reality and a potentially self-involved observer.

Dasein, even as Heidegger defines it, seems to require nothing besides an observer in the act of observation, whose self awareness implies a recursion, not an systemic exemption. The categories of the object "present to hand" and the object "ready at hand" of Dasein may seem integral to the being of Dasein, but that is not to say the that the being of the objects "present to hand" and the objects "ready at hand" are likewise.

Insert here the differences and relationships between the concepts of Being and the meaning of being, Kant's "in-itself", and the weak anthropic principle.

Dasein may "heirach-alize" its existence, it may highlight and emphasize levels and patterns of efficient processes, but it cannot reasonably except itself from those processes. The inside of the apex of a cone is still part of the cone. Likewise, the outside of the apex of a cone is still part of the same cone; it stands out in so far as it remains a part of the whole...

It's location remains meaningful only in relation...

i'm kind of sorry that this thread has been abandoned...

Obviously, we have very different interpretations of Heidegger, and while our conversation is bound to be adversarial, i am interested in continuing it. Do you prefer Heidegger's writings pre- or post -khere, or do you think that this periodization is meaningless? Do you think that the rhetorical strategies that i attacked are non-existent, philosophically defensible, or even attributable to Heidegger?

i am not opposed to admitting to the philosophical importance of some of Heidegger's essays, i am just interested in challenging his philosophical authority (along with the moral authority that seems to imply), and acknowledging his philosophical shortcomings...a thing many of his adherents seem loath to do.

I tend to follow Rorty in that the early Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein were significant in deconstructing "language" as a philosophical substrate. Rorty argues that Heidegger post-kehre was more concerned with being accepted by the establishment (after his political ostracism) and was less philosophically significant.

Irrespective of his indefensible politics, Heidegger was significant in providing a semantic field for researchers in cognition and perception, like Merleau-Ponty. That significance is underscored by followers of Merleau-Ponty like Varela who have contributed both experimental and philosophical input to "second order cognitive science" and contemporary psychiatric techniques.


I am aware that I have not directly addressed your secondary question...

...because I have not at this point read back through the thread. I may come back to you on that.

Okay, I've now scanned above.

I don't know enough about Heidegger to work out whether he was influenced by constructive epistemologists such as Vico. But the accusation of "obscurantism" does not really stand up since Heidegger seems to be understandable in structuralist terms (Ref.Merleau Ponty). The implication is that "obscurantism" is a concept predicated on logical positivism(or linguistic representationalism). With Wittgenstein's departure from this, Heidegger's "obscurantism" dissolves.

Considering your phrasing, it occurs to me that a reasonable argument could be made that Google thinks Heidegger is not particularly obscure.

"Being obscure"...is a trait of obscurantism and obscurantists. If you are asking about the "worst one in history"...and Heidegger is mentioned first, couldn't that mean that he was the worst at being obscure?

Just wonderin'?

I guess it could mean that.

The reason I posted this was that we had a thread about obscurantism a while back. Revisiting the thread, I decided to google for examples of obscurantism, and when the Heidegger article came up as the first hit it made me laugh.

i should probably preface the following remarks by saying that i haven't read any relevant passages of Rorty's writings regarding Heidegger or Wittgenstein order to make any pointed critical remarks about them. The observations i make regarding the two prior thinkers' philosophical relationship are only my own...:

i don't know that Heidegger made enough of an issue in his early philosophical phases of language's relationship to truth or aletheia. He was much more influenced by Husserl's concentration on experience and phenomena. I think most of those statements regarding Heidegger's concern with language find more matter for discussion during his later periods. Perhaps certain inferences could be made regarding the relationship between "truth" and language, after the khere and about the prior writings, and shed some of the political taintedness of Heidegger's later writings in the process, but i am not sure that they would be reliable.

Heidegger's later writing often used language as a way of denuding contemporary thought of some of its "misconceptions" by tracing the meaning of a word, through its supposed etymology, to its original meaning. By reasserting the "true", original meaning of a word against its current usage, Heidegger tried to set thought upon firmer footing. However, a lot of his etymologies are questionable, not merely in tracing back the original meaning, but also in interpreting its history.

Heidegger also often chose poetry as a subject of his interpretation, adopting the romantic idea that the source from which of language had evolved was (epic) poetry. Taking many later romantic poets as the interlocutors for his ontological muse, Martin often used interpretations of poems as the starting point for his philosophical essays. Whether you would like to regard his interpretations as self-serving or true readings of those poems beyond their authors' knowledge is up to the reader, but it cannot be denied that he often made interpretations of those works that would have been unrecognizable to the poets, the contemporaries of the poets, and of questionable historical and biographical value.

The later Wittgenstein, albeit he did not choose to publish any works besides the "Tractatus" under his own name in his lifetime, seemed to regard language as a "game". Not one concerned with "concepts" so much as the practical exigencies of human existence. Were he so concerned, I think he would have made mincemeat of Heidegger's claim to etymological authority as regards the experience of his contemporaries.

Both philosophers had a high regard for the relationship between truth and language, both mens' philosophies had a significant mystical substrate, and both men had a strange, complicated, yet hostile relationship with Judaism. And yet, I would think it insupportable that each man's philosophy was complicit with the other's beyond these superficial similarities. The semantic field of each does not sufficiently overlap with the other to expect any actual parallel or cooperation. At one point in his notebooks (the comment was later collected into the book Remarks on Colour [with the English spelling , mind you]) Wittgenstein made the remark that: "There is no such thing as phenomenology, but there are indeed phenomenological problems."

What Wittgenstein actually meant should probably be left to better L.W. interpreters than me, but i read them thusly: There might be phenomenological problems but they cannot be worked out purely linguistically. -- You may or may not agree, and i may or may not agree with you, as to my interpretation. But it does seem to strike a cautionary note as to his agreement with any of Heidegger's writings.

i like Merleau-Ponty, what i have read of him at least. But i don't think that his points are strengthened by an association with Heidegger. They were not exactly contemporaries, but they were near-, and they drew much of their water from the same wells. The French "Existentialists" drew a lot of inspiration from Heidegger's example (Sartre most of all, obviously), but Heidegger never respected that connection. If anything he was critical of that group and denied association with it. If nothing else, i think that M.M.-P. had a rigor that i think was lacking in "the fox".

As to Heidegger's "epistemology", he was much more influenced by Dilthy than Vico. But i'd say he did fit a constructivist more than a positivist model, in a fashion. He was certainly an opponent of the latter. However, his particular employment of the "hermenuetic circle" made his epistemology more exclusive than inclusive, more closed than open. He was more prone to mythologizing than de-.

All that being said, i'm not entirely sure that a constructivist epistemology excludes the idea of "illusion" or "obscurantism", if anything it may multiply it many times fold, re: an observer/observed co-dependent reality. If the limit between observer and observed is regarded as dynamic, both breach and closure, then the relationship between observer and observed, and illusion and reality, is dependent upon that limit -- as the "fulcrum" upon which "reality" rests, rather than the sum zero you seem to suggest. Were that understood to be the case, one's epistemology need not be any less constructivist, which is to say global, but also that the status of "truth" is understood to be both global and situational. However, there would still be opportunities for personal and social illusions regarding the relationship between holistic circumstance and personal vantage point.

tl;dr: Heidegger is a bullshit artist with a couple of valid points; Merleau-Ponty (or what i've read of him) and Wittgenstein are both more reliable thinkers and writers. Misunderstandings, in good faith or otherwise, still seem possible within a finite, holistic system, while certainty is not fixed within it.

Also, @ Frank Apisa:



That's a great point, but most obscurantists work in fields that benefit their efforts, at least in the short term. Not to say that philosophy as an academic field doesn't sometimes encourage dishonesty, but philosophy (logic/epistemology/ and "love of wisdom") plus academic rivalry plus long memories plus political discredit might highlight some wildly successful short-term obscurantists. Particularly if it was possible to make an object lesson of them.

I always thought Heidegger was an Australian salutation.

A well written synopsis indeed !
I think things have moved on a little since the possibility of W making mincemeat of H's etymology. If for example you look up Rosch's "prototype theory" it provides framework for semantics based on H's "bringing forth of reality" which has been applied to W's concept of "language games". This point of course begs the question of whether H himself was obscure or not, but cognitive science/philosophy seems to have gleaned something valuable from him.