Speaker A
The video is titled "What is Dasein? The ultimate guide to Heidegger for normal people." Oh, oh, nightmare.
A clear, modern guide explaining Heidegger's concept of Dasein and Being, making complex philosophy accessible for all.
Key Takeaways
- Dasein is Heidegger's term for human existence, emphasizing lived experience and temporality.
- Heidegger distinguishes between 'Being' (the process of existence) and 'beings' (individual entities).
- Philosophy should focus on the present moment and the individual's engagement with the world.
- Traditional rationalist philosophy is critiqued for ignoring the importance of existence and death.
- Understanding 'to be' is central to grasping the meaning of Being in Heidegger’s thought.
What the video covers
- The video introduces Heidegger's concept of Dasein and its central role in his philosophy 'Being and Time'.
- It contrasts Heidegger's approach with Cartesian rationalism and highlights the importance of lived experience.
- The distinction between 'Being' (ontological) and 'beings' (ontic) is explained with examples.
- Heidegger's critique of traditional philosophy and emphasis on the present moment and existence is discussed.
- The video uses accessible language and modern terms to simplify Heidegger’s complex ideas.
- It explores the relationship between phenomena, existence, and the process of 'Being'.
- The concept of solipsism is addressed and refuted through Heidegger’s view of the world as a macro-being.
- The video touches on Heidegger’s influences, including Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Hegel, and some controversial historical notes.
- The importance of temporality and being-toward-death in understanding Dasein is highlighted.
- Philosophical parallels with Eastern thought like Dzogchen and Tibetan Buddhism are briefly mentioned.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Dasein and Heidegger
- 01:30Philosophical Context: Nietzsche and Rationalism Critique
- 02:35Understanding Beings and Ontic Level
- 03:53The Vastness of the Universe and Solipsism Refuted
- 05:11Being as the Process of Existence
- 06:16The Problem of Defining Being
- 07:32Phenomena, Beingness, and First-Person Experience
- 11:07Temporality, Being-toward-Death, and Dasein’s Uniqueness
- 19:04Philosophical Influences and Controversies
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Let's watch. Yeah, hello, death-maniacs. I'm blogger Kershtein. Funny videos will be here soon, but I decided to finish what I started. It's a matter of principle, so I... The best thing, you know, the greatest thing in zoomer bloggers' videos is the
Speaker A
footage they insert in the background when they have some conversational video. That is, today I'll perform a deadly trick. Yes, as the philosopher said, it makes the girls swoon as if I'd done a backflip.
Speaker A
So I will try to tell you what Dasein is and why the hell it’s even needed, why Heidegger introduces it and why he places it at the center of his philosophy in Being and Time. I will try to speak clearly, avoiding those
Speaker A
heavy formulations and that, yeah, you better try, unbearable language of authenticity that Heidegger uses. I will sort of speak in modern terms, perhaps even oversimplifying in places, but if it’s still unclear to you, there are already two additional explanatory
Speaker A
videos on Boosty. And Heidegger’s philosophy, it goes far beyond the fourth wall. It crawls right out of your monitor. Heidegger tries to include in his philosophy not some abstract observer or subject, like Descartes, but you specifically—the one who turned on and is watching this
Speaker A
video right now. Because you, your life, your destiny, and your death are important elements of the world that previous philosophers missed because they were blinded by Descartes’ rationalism. The main element of Heidegger’s philosophy is, well, it’s as if it were synonymous
Speaker A
with what Nietzsche wrote about. It’s what’s happening, because Nietzsche stood against the pan-logical dissection of reality and against the dictatorship of rationalists. And, in principle, this is also characteristic of philosophers of the Dark Enlightenment and neo-reactionary paradigm, because they
Speaker A
are also all against rationalism, against the cult of ratio as a pillar of the Enlightenment.
Speaker A
Is happening right now. Right now. You, that is, from Nietzsche's point of view, starting from Plato and Socrates, philosophy took a wrong turn somewhere, and Descartes is largely just a consequence of that. You are watching this video and you are in some place.
Speaker A
And I will call this place, which currently surrounds you, Between Descartes and Hume, you should choose Hume, your room. Let’s start with the fact that Heidegger strictly separates Being and beings.
Speaker A
Between the first or the third wave of positivism, you should choose the second. This is called the ontological difference, or the difference be- between empiricists and rationalists, choose the empiricists.
Speaker A
To beings, he assigns the word "ontic." Speaking of beings, we are talking about the ontic. When we speak of Being, we are talking about the ontological.
Speaker A
Let's clarify both of these terms, that is, Being and beings. And why it is necessary to distinguish between them.
Speaker A
Let's start with beings. Beings are, generally speaking, anything at all. Everything we talk about, everything we see, and everything we think about—these are all things, all sensations, we ourselves, all of this is beings.
Speaker A
Beings consist of individual phenomena. For example, a table, the feeling of the ground under your feet, and the sound of your breath—these are all equivalent phenomena. And phenomena occupy themselves with existing. But for Heidegger, existence is something that happens only here and now. Yes, in
Speaker A
the present moment. The present moment is a keyhole through which beings show themselves to you. Right now, you hear my voice. And as long as my voice sounds, it is being realized, it exists, because it is manifested as a
Speaker A
phenomenon. When you turn off this video, but why do we use the comparison of a keyhole through which we are shown something, if beings are literally everything that surrounds us, so to speak, and so on.
Speaker A
My voice will cease to exist, and it will be replaced by other beings. For example, you will see your refrigerator, you will feel, as if we are the key inside this keyhole.
Speaker A
The taste of food on your tongue, and before sleep, anxious thoughts about tomorrow's work at the office will visit you. Everything I have listed is just as much a phenomenon of beings as my voice. Beings are everything that is
Speaker A
happening to you now, and the largest and most complex being is the whole world. You are in the world right now, aren't you? And this is the ulti- Wait, but the whole world isn't really given to us as phenomena, is it? That
Speaker A
is, if we are talking about beings as a space of phenomena or our ideas about certain things, then the Universe seems too vast for us to perceive it in any way, or, well, okay, fine, an individual phenomenon. There is
Speaker A
nowhere further to expand, because the world is already not contained in anything, right. Ah, yes, this looks like solipsism, but solipsism is only possible when your personality stands at the center of the world. I close my eyes, and the world disappears. At the
Speaker A
same time, my personality remains, after all. Well, no. Well, how can it be solipsism if we recognize the universe as, essentially, a macro-being.
Speaker A
I close my eyes, yes, I blink, I have some thoughts there. For Heidegger, all your thoughts, your feelings, your personality, and generally all the circumstances you are currently in, are dissolved in the stream of beings. They are inseparable from the rest of the
Speaker A
world. Your entire personality, all the content of your personality, is just as much a part of your room as the wallpaper on the walls. And where there is no person, there cannot be solipsism either. Determining the case, Heidegger
Speaker A
breaks something here. Well, actually, it makes sense. The fourth wall, capturing in his philosophy the snapshot of your life, experienced in the first person. He will speak precisely about it, about this snapshot. We’ve sorted out "beings," right? We were just talking
Speaker A
about the ontic level. "Being" is a bit more complicated. "Being" is generally a somewhat religious term. Previously, being was understood as the most general concept, a synonym for the word universe, for the totality of things.
Speaker A
For Heidegger, being is the process of existing. That is, the very process of the existence of beings is being. My voice, it’s starting to sound like Dzogchen, to be honest.
Speaker A
Is currently engaged in being, because you hear it. It is sounding, it is manifest to you. My voice is being-in-time. Being is not some static crap in a vacuum; it is not something in itself. Being is always the being of
Speaker A
some entity. Can we say that being is the process of perceiving an existing entity?
Speaker A
However, being itself is not a phenomenon of an entity, like my voice, nor is it the totality of all entities.
Speaker A
Heidegger writes that being is something... of nothing. And actually, this phrase is very similar to a Zen koan. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness. Yes, "Sein ist Nichts" is how it translates into German. And being should not be looked for among
Speaker A
other things in the world. So, what is it then? And for Heidegger, this is the main question of philosophy. He poses it and attempts to answer it. And the meaning of the word "being" is the meaning of the verb "to be." Yes, to
Speaker A
exist is to be. By understanding what the word "to be" means, we will understand what "being" means. If we try to define being and say that being is something, we will make a mistake.
Speaker A
Why will we make a mistake? Because for such a definition, we use the word "is," a form of the verb "to be." And in the end, we define being through being and arrive at a vicious cycle in the
Speaker A
definition. I mean, we are inserting the word "to be" into the definition of the word "to be." That shouldn't be the case.
Speaker A
But if we say "being" is... that is, being is impossible to define. However, when we say that the sky was blue yesterday, we understand the meaning of the phrase. That is, we understand what the word "was" means, which means we somehow already, in
Speaker A
advance... No, wait. It’s clear that
Speaker A
And for Heidegger, this is inseparable from language. But it seems that when we speak and postulate that the sky was blue yesterday, we seem to be talking about something that does not, after all, go beyond the limits of being.
Speaker A
Because the color of the sky and the existence of the sky itself, yes, the fact that we contemplate it as a phenomenon, is still part of being. And so, it would be understandable here, let's say, if we contrasted the nature
Speaker A
of being with beings from the Dzogchen perspective, where we have the Dzogchen mirror and what is reflected in it. And regardless of what is reflected in it, the mirror itself remains unchanged. Or , for example, a screen, a white screen
Speaker A
in a cinema, where various images are projected onto it. And so we can say that those images being displayed are, as it were, beings, while the screen itself is being. Right. If it worked something like that, well then, yes, we
Speaker A
could contrast these concepts. Although maybe it is understood that way, who knows. Heidegger has different interpreters, but using the example " the sky was blue yesterday," it seems that in this case, this nature of being does not go beyond the limits of beings
Speaker A
as such. Which is incorrect according to the premise of the task, because at a fundamental level, these concepts are contrasted.
Speaker A
We intuitively understand the meaning of the verb "to be" when we speak. We use the verb "to be" constantly. We have no problems with its meaning. Yes.
Speaker A
Yes. That is why language is the house of being. And that is why the meaning of being is somehow accessible to us through language. But how do we manage to grasp this meaning? By the way, regarding "grasping." In German, the
Speaker A
word for "grasping" and "understanding" is the same word, the verb "fassen." So where do we get our understanding of the meaning of being, if we cannot even define it? For instance, how do we understand the meaning of the word "red
Speaker A
"? Well, not from a definition of red, surely. I don't even think there is a sensible definition of red such that a person could just read it and go, "Ah, yes, well, that's red." Yes, now I understand what red is. No, to reveal
Speaker A
the meaning of the word "red" or the verb "to be red," we must point to something red among the phenomena of beings. And the red color we perceive is the meaning of the word "red" itself . What is the meaning of the word "red"
Speaker A
? There it is in the picture, yes, I'm showing it to you. We grasped it, we understood it, which are the same thing . We point a finger at something red and understand what it means. But what, then, must we point a finger at to
Speaker A
understand the meaning of being? Yes. What can we point a finger at to understand what it means to be? Let's try to take the process of perceiving an entity, based on what was said in the video earlier, your room, which is around you right
Speaker A
now. That is, entities are phenomena, and the process of perceiving these phenomena is beingness. Well, at the very least, such an opinion might form based on the premises that were voiced.
Speaker A
What happens is finding such a case and pointing to it. All the things in your room surrounding you, they all exist equally at this moment in time.
Speaker A
So, but that doesn't make much sense, because then it turns out that being is just the most general property of all things, about which nothing can really be said. And every individual moment of your room is a snap-
Speaker A
regarding the fact that there is no being here, but beingness is the process of perceiving this entire room.
Speaker A
Everything we see is, as it were, entity, entity, entity, but the fact that we see it, that is beingness, based on what was in the video earlier.
Speaker A
shot photograph of an entity. Well, or this is simply an incorrect description of Heidegger's philosophy from the start.
Speaker A
And, as we found out, it is not an entity. So we need an entity that we can point our finger at to "be" in a special way. Look again carefully at your room. Your room is a kind of
Speaker A
linear corridor of entities through which time carries you. This corridor consists of By the way, what is time in this system ?
Speaker A
your voice, your thoughts, tables, sensations, things, sounds, and so on. But besides all this, there is someone in the room. Yes, someone's ghostly presence always looms over the room.
Speaker A
Well, it’s kind of you as the observer. At the center of it all stands a silent and anonymous observer. Don't you think ? This is something that resem- is this observer you, or is it someone else, perhaps a soul? And whatever
Speaker A
happens to you, whatever you do, and whatever you experience amidst this cycle of rooms around you, there will always be that which you call "I." You will always be there. And you are not your body, not your feelings, and not
Speaker A
your thoughts. You do not fill the moment with yourself. Every moment of the world is given in the first person.
Speaker A
You are nothing more than this first person in the world. You are the bare fact of an observer's existence in every frame, stripped of qualities.
Speaker A
I'm telling you, this Dasein thing is what's happening to us here. That's what's called Dasein, right?
Speaker A
Dasein translates as being-here, being-there, or presence. Dasein is that kind of being which, damn it, I mean, Heidegger didn't invent anything; he just took this Dzogchen philosophy and translated it into language, into German. So Heidegger is like Schopenhauer, yes, in
Speaker A
that regard. Only Schopenhauer had the Upanishads and Buddhism, while Heidegger had Dzogchen. [ __ ]. I mean, all those guys who, say, in the West, claim that Heidegger's philosophy is inherently quite Eurocentric. Everyone who denies Asian philosophy the right
Speaker A
to be called philosophy, while at the same time obsessing over Heidegger. I mean, in theory, they just don't understand the source of all these brilliant insights. Well, at least if we assume that within this video, this philosophy's origins, premises, and
Speaker A
main tenets are adequately demonstrated . In any situation, you are always looking at your hand, right? But your hand is not you, because your hand is your hand. You are thinking about something, but your thought is not you,
Speaker A
because your thought is your thought. And besides all these phenomena, there is also this is just a retreat on Dzogchen practice. Now we are hearing you are at the very center, which is not anything you are used to thinking
Speaker A
about yourself. Dasein has no visible properties, yet it is present in every moment of your life. And if you look inside yourself, you will find it without a problem, because Da, yes, that is what is called Dzogchen sein threads the needle of existence.
Speaker A
This is just [ __ ] plagiarism. And Heidegger was brainwashing people with this [ __ ], sort of the outcome is your fate.
Speaker A
Truly, everything new is just well-forgotten old. And I thought it was closer to Taoism, the other way around, right? But Hegelianism is actually closer to Taoism. Well, in principle, Hegel's philosophy is one of the original foundations of Heidegger's
Speaker A
own philosophy, yes. And so Heidegger wrote his famous two-volume work on Being and Time. But this is more, yes, more like Schopenhauer, actually, because Schopenhauer was also under the very strong influence of Buddhism. Your biography and the entire phenomenal
Speaker A
world in general. And the sequence of individual moments of your life is threaded onto Dasein, forming linear time within it. Dasein is not a personality; it is an anonymous continuity of flow. Dasein is factual and objective, if you like. Dasein is
Speaker A
an objective motive. Moreover, by the way, in Dzogchen, it is called exactly that: a flow. I mean, they didn't even, damn it, really change the terminology much in your subjectivity. But how can we point a finger? Well, Dasein
Speaker A
he just stupidly translated it into German, to understand its meaning, if it has no properties. It does have one property, after all. All we can say about Dasein is that it is temporal. It's roughly as if Schopenhauer called Nirvana in a
Speaker A
German way something like "Das Nirvannen". What is "Das Nir"? We can't say anything definite about "Das Nirvannen". We can only reason about " Das Nirvannen" apophatically, as it were. That "Das Nirva" is neither this nor that, not a state, not a thing, not
Speaker A
any kind of thing. And then, when Schopenhauer croaked, the researchers of his philosophy would have interpreted it in a thousand different ways. What is this notorious, strange " Das Nirvannen" that Schopenhauer wrote about? He truly is some kind of
Speaker A
complicated esoteric philosopher. Yes. Everything else that exists, that is not Dasein, changes over time.
Speaker A
However, at every moment in time, you remain yourself from birth. And until This is plagiarism, damn it. It is plagiarism. death. You are always one and the same. Dasein, you are you. And in the changing flow of being, Dasein
Speaker A
remains equal. Well yes, you are you. A Lacanian mirror in which different phenomena are reflected, but the mirror remains unchanged in itself. It is static and immutable.
Speaker A
This is where its temporality lies. Yes , temporality means existence. And Heidegger will also have something about reincarnation, about the fact that, in principle, anything can be reflected in this Lacanian mirror. like , today some human personality is
Speaker A
reflected, and tomorrow, damn it, some other [ __ ] will be reflected. Not quite timeless, if you're simplifying.
Speaker A
That is, not just experience, but as the sum of perceived experience, which is associated with the ego, self, personality, consciousness, or some other crap.
Speaker A
You can only grasp Dasein because there is time in the room, which is simply a bundle of experience.
Speaker A
Imagine that time has completely stopped. Now the whole world is a static background without thought, events, or movement. And when we talk about what happens after death, we usually imagine a black screen frozen in time, where nothing happens, and
Speaker A
that is terrifying. Right, yes. Death is the stopping of time. Death is a cessation.
Speaker A
Death is a space outside of experience, primarily of the being of entities. Death is Nothing with a capital N, as the negation of the entire totality of being. Ah, Dasein is homeless in the world. It doesn’t matter what city or
Speaker A
apartment you live in, because yes, birth casts you into nothingness, and you will always be a ghostly guest.
Speaker A
Even in your own home. Meaning, Dasein is the only thing in this world that truly dies from a first-person perspective. That is another way to grasp it, yes, through being-toward-death. Therefore, Dasein is not just a being, well, this is where the Tibetan Book of
Speaker A
the Dead begins, it exists like other phenomena, yes, it existentiates. And about the Bardo state, Dasein, it exists ontologically. While all other beings are merely ontic.
Speaker A
In short, the German non-classical philosophers just stole everything from the Hindus, in short, and the Chinese, they just translated it. Into German.
Speaker A
Everyone, starting with Schopenhauer, also belongs to this sphere. That is, first Buddhist phenomenology in Schopenhauer with a fixation on the Upanishads. Then Nietzsche, who is, of course, more militant and grandiose, closer to some kind of paganism, but at
Speaker A
the same time fully inheriting Schopenhauer's phenomenology. And then, damn it, Heidegger, who just, damn it, [ __ ], stole everything from Dzogchen philosophy.
Speaker A
A being, nonetheless, exists ontologically. Dasein is a being that possesses a unique connection with being and time. My hunger will soon fade as a phenomenon and disappear, but your Dasein will remain in place, right where it has always been, and will
Speaker A
continue to slowly die, no matter what happens. So, you’ve outed yourself as a Buddhist. And a new explanation for why he saw Dzogchen in Heidegger. No, but apparently, yes, apparently that’s how it works. It’s like a Rorschach test, it’s shown to you, and you’re
Speaker A
like: "Oh, it’s all clear, it’s obviously Dzogchen." Well, that means it’s because you’re a Buddhist that you saw that in it. But a Christian, he would say like: "That’s a cross, damn it, that’s what I see." Jesus. Jesus,
Speaker A
Jesus has taken flight, in short, catch him. Well, look, in principle, Buddhism is interesting, but I don’t like Buddhist ethics. I mean, if there were a type of Buddhism where you didn't have to reach nirvana, for example, and
Speaker A
the goal was to be reborn as an Asura or a Deva. Now, that’s, in principle, a good Buddhism. Meaning, where you don’t exit the wheel of rebirth, but are born again and again, because that’s awesome. And you don’t
Speaker A
strive to exit the wheel of rebirth, because suffering isn’t actually a problem. That is why we point our finger specifically at Dasein if we are questioning the meaning of being, yes, just like pointing at the color red. To
Speaker A
simplify greatly, can we say that time is the same thing as being, right? Because the flow of phenomena in time is the entity in its being. Let's just assume for now that being is roughly equal to time. And that is, essentially
Speaker A
, what the book*Being and Time*is about , right? Possessing temporality and death, Dasein becomes the only position from which one can even ask the question about the meaning of being and the meaning of time, while standing, as it were, in an external position
Speaker A
relative to it. It is precisely the temporality, the finitude, and the mortality of your Dasein that is the source of your intuitive understanding of the meaning of the verb "to be." The being of such an entity as Dasein. Yes,
Speaker A
once again. The being of such an entity , anyway, Schopenhauer screwed...Oh, god, Schopenhauer. Heidegger screwed the Nazis, in short. I mean, he just sold them a certain number of ideas borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism, just with the terminology translated into German. And
Speaker A
in the end, they were like: "Oh, wow, what a hell of a philosophy." But on the other hand, maybe that's why he liked the Nazis, because they had things like swastikas and were also flirting with some kind of
Speaker A
Indo-European folklore, some sort of... Heidegger calls Dasein by the word* existenz*. From it comes the word " existential." In the whole world, you are existing right now, here.
Speaker A
So, if they strive to get out of the wheel, then maybe it's better there than in the wheel. But the binary opposition of better or worse doesn't work regarding this particular consideration.
Speaker A
Only you, hence the quote about God existing but not "existing"(*existieren *). Yes, God is simply one of the phenomena of beings. But if we raise a more global question about the meaning of being, something more philosophical, then only you are existing. And you
Speaker A
don't need God at all to answer that question. Wait, if God is a phenomenon of beings, is God a feeling of God, or what is meant? Or is he flying around the universe substantially somewhere?
Speaker A
Although "Being," yes, with a capital letter, they even write it in a church-like way. It is itself suitable for the role of a new God, though not a Christian one, but a philosophical one.
Speaker A
I think Heidegger had something about gods in the plural there. What Aristotle? Isn't it? The three pillars upon which Heidegger's philosophy stands are, in fact, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Hegel. Isn't it? Yes, I allowed myself a rather rude lack of
Speaker A
tact a couple of times. I, well, at least that's how it was explained to us.
Speaker A
Regarding our holy word "Dasein," I allowed myself to use the word "my" or "your." I said "my Dasein" or "your Dasein,""our Dasein." People don't really say it like that, right? I mean, it's roughly clear what I meant, but to
Speaker A
Dasein it... Well, it’s also inapplicable there. It’s more like we should say "Dasein is," although even that might be incorrect, because it’s largely just obsessive linguistic formulas. Meaning, it's like sorcery. Basically, if you mispronounce the spell, the miracle
Speaker A
won't happen. " Mine" or "yours" is inapplicable there; it's simply meaningless, because "mine" or "yours" is already an intra-worldly ontic division.
Speaker A
Yeah, because Dasein is literally a Lacanian mirror, so it can't be mine or yours, as it were, because that mirror doesn't give a damn what it's reflecting; regardless of what is reflected in it, the mirror itself remains unchanged.
Speaker A
It exists as if in the light of Dasein. Dasein makes the division of beings into "mine" or "yours" possible, while Dasein itself is anonymous and doesn't belong to anyone. And further along in the text, as if pointing a finger at
Speaker A
Dasein, it’s more of a universal thing, like in the case we will analyze regarding the meaning of the verb "to be," the meaning of being, Heidegger engages in...
Speaker A
The only thing is, I still haven't understood in what capacity God exists there, the existential analytic of Dasein. And how does he do that? How can such an elementary and anonymous thing as a first-person perspective in a frame
Speaker A
even have any existentials? The point is that the first-person perspective brings with it into this room a certain life situation, a plot, yeah, a mood.
Speaker A
And this plot imbues things with their momentary meaning. It actually forms the structure of the world. And that is why one can speak quite substantively about Dasein. And time, yes, time in the present moment, the past, present, and future, they are interconnected
Speaker A
through the existentials of Dasein, through, let me see, the existential of discourse, understanding, and state-of-mind, yes, thrownness into the world. But I will probably talk about them on Boosty, about the existentials.
Speaker A
Unless this video goes viral and... Oh, a Roerich painting, holy [ __ ]! Gets a lot of likes and views.
Speaker A
It’s as if the author of this video understands which way the wind blows and where things come from, because this is literally Tibet, as if from the paintings of Roerich the elder.
Speaker A
Because that’s quite... The founders of the Roerich Society and , therefore, the founders of Agni Yoga.
Speaker A
A kind of niche topic for nerds; those interested will watch, and even if you didn't understand but wanted to, or if this topic interested you, subscribe to Boosty. Watch the videos on Heidegger that have already been released. Don't
Speaker A
forget to leave a big fat like, and remember, I'm not a baby. There. An unexpected punchline. y
Topics:HeideggerDaseinBeing and TimephilosophyexistenceontologyNietzscherationalismphenomenatemporality
