Cassirer And Heidegger

Cassirer

Heideger

Working Castalia
May 1977

I was happy to be a kitchen cleaner. I worked 6:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.,
and attended a class on Ernst Cassirer after work. My class was good, but we
weren't really studying mythology—the title of the class. Instead,
three days a week, we studied Cassirer's investigations into the
meaning and origin of mythology. I guess the short answer here,
concerning Cassirer's message, was that somehow the creation of
mythology helped us to better understand the "real world." In fact,
according to Cassirer, even though myth didn't begin with much of a
connection to the real world, without it, science probably wouldn't
exist today. Science, like myth, depends on constructs that make
reality visible. Cassirer's take on mythology was that its creation
(along with art and language) helped develop the metal skills that
eventually would lead to scientific thinking. I'm not "a believer" in
this guy's philosophy yet. (The class was half over when I started.)
All I can say for sure right now is that I have never read anything
like it before. I guess that's a good sign.

CMU hired a new person to teach Existentialism. As soon as I finished
sitting in on Dr. Gill's class I made arrangements to do an
independent study on Martin Heidegger with Dr. Ausbaugh. Heidegger was
the same guy another one of my professors (now long departed from CMU)
called "the most important philosopher of our time." What follows is
a sample of my directed study with Dr. Ausbaugh. Heidegger was
difficult, so I was happy with my B grade. From a personal standpoint,
I found reading Heidegger more rewarding than reading Sartre.


Martin Heidegger


"For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use
the expression "being." We, however, who used to think we understood
it, have now become perplexed." --so begins the book Being And Time.
Heidegger goes on to tell us that we have lost sight of the meaning of
being, and uncovering that meaning is what he tries to do in his book.
His investigation starts with immediate experience, which he calls
Dasein. Dasein gets translated as "being there," and second, as
"understanding." Dasein represents "being" with a capital B, but
that's only after it achieves authenticity, after it realizes its own
Being-in-the-world.

Dasein runs deep for Heidegger, but it is discovered in what Heidegger
calls the They part of itself. In whatever particular Dasein is there,
so is the world in its thrownness. The subject, for Heidegger, can no
longer be described as worldless entity ala Descartes' cogito ergo
sum; rather, it becomes "a knowing Being-in-the-world." Because
Being-in-the-world knows only through some particular Dasein, whatever
gets known is never enough. Dasein, always desperate for more,
experiences what is in the world in the most desolate sense. Heidegger
describes this desolate sense as falling through the "here and yonder
of the They." Dasein continues to fall until it encounters turbulence,
but before I describe turbulence, I need to describe Dasein's other
characteristics, the characteristics that comprise Dasein as
Being-in-the-world.