**Peter Trawny: Why Heidegger's Being and Time? — Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/peter-trawny-heidegger-being-and-time/ Peter Trawny lectures in Ljubljana on Heidegger's Being and Time ahead of its 2027 centenary, examining why the work still matters and its historical context. ## Key Takeaways - Being and Time is best understood as a product of its historical and biographical moment, not only as abstract theory. - Canons are formed retrospectively and can be critically reassessed, yet they still reflect the history that produced them. - Philosophical reception is closely tied to contemporaneous events, as Habermas's comparison of Heidegger's book to the Berlin Wall era illustrates. - Consciousness-centered philosophy has a lineage running from Descartes through La Mettrie to contemporary questions about artificial minds. ## What the video covers - Peter Trawny opens with thanks to the Inštitut Nove Revije in Ljubljana, framing the talk as anticipating the 2027 centenary of Heidegger's Being and Time. - He critiques a ChatGPT overview of Slovenian philosophy, arguing it overemphasizes Slavoj Žižek and the Slovenian School of Psychoanalysis while neglecting other Slovenian thinkers. - Trawny praises Dean Komel as a philosopher of European significance and recalls his own long-standing relationships with Nova revija figures such as Ivan Urbančič, Niko Grafenauer and Tine Hribar. - He questions whether psychoanalysis, and Lacan in particular, still offers serious philosophical resources today. - The talk asks what made certain books, such as Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, exceptional beyond their authors' biographies. - Trawny argues that Being and Time condenses its era, shaped by the Great War, nihilism, the youth movement, and Heidegger's personal and political commitments. - He cites Jürgen Habermas, who in 1989 called Being and Time a deep turning point in German philosophy comparable to Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Lukács' History and Class Consciousness. - The discussion moves to the history of mechanism and machine thinking, referencing Descartes, La Mettrie, and Günther's cybernetic logic, and asking whether consciousness-centered thinking shapes ideas of thinking machines. - Q&A segments explore Dasein, transcendence, Aristotle on friendship, reflexivity, and the autonomy of the subject, touching on contemporary automation and drones. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction and thanks 2. 04:00 Critique of ChatGPT's overview of Slovenian philosophy 3. 08:00 Why revisit Being and Time: canon and historical condensation 4. 18:00 Habermas, Heidegger's biography and the 2027 centenary 5. 30:00 Dasein, transcendence and existential analysis 6. 40:00 Machines, mechanism and cybernetics 7. 50:00 Audience discussion on subjectivity and friendship 8. 70:00 Automation, drones and closing remarks Answers ## Questions about this video Why does Trawny say Being and Time should be revisited in 2027? Trawny notes that 2027 marks the 100th anniversary of Being and Time, which will likely be hailed as a key work of 20th-century philosophy. He argues the centenary invites renewed reading and study of the book's continuing relevance. What criticism does Trawny make of Slovenian philosophy as described by ChatGPT? He argues the overview overemphasizes Slavoj Žižek and the Slovenian School of Psychoanalysis while ignoring other thinkers. He points to Dean Komel and Nova revija figures as more substantial philosophical contributors. How does Trawny connect Heidegger's biography to his philosophy? Trawny suggests Being and Time condenses its era, reflecting Heidegger's Catholic peasant background, the Great War's consequences, nihilistic influences, and his political and personal commitments, including his support for the Third Reich. ## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown 00:12 Speaker A Peter, thank you. Thank you for visiting Ljubljana again. And it was a lecture on Heidegger's Being and Time, 100 years later. 00:27 Speaker A Mhm. Okay. So, I pass to... Yeah. Um, it's good weather. So, we should, um, we should hurry to get outside and drink something. 00:49 Speaker A But well, nevertheless, we will listen a little bit to my, to my, um, to my paper. 00:56 Speaker A Great events are often foreshadowed before they occur. Anyone familiar with the history of philosophy knows that next year will be the anniversary of Heidegger's Being and Time. 01:11 Speaker A My lecture anticipates this anniversary. But before I ask why Heidegger's Being and Time again, I will address you briefly with a short preface. After that, I will turn to the actual topic, or rather, what is the actual topic. 01:30 Speaker A So, I asked ChatGPT to give me an overview of philosophy in Slovenia. She, well, ChatGPT called herself "they." 01:44 Speaker A Well, I call her "she." But it's suspicious that she calls herself "they." Whatever. So, she mentioned the Slovenian School of Psychoanalysis, which supposedly reached its climax in the 1980s. 02:04 Speaker A Its leading figure is the great Slavoj Žižek, whom everyone outside Slovenia already knows simply because of his constant presence on social media. 02:16 Speaker A Somehow people outside Slovenia still seem to think that Slovenia is only home to Žižek and his two or three followers, whose names neither want to nor need to be mentioned. 02:31 Speaker A That's what ChatGPT told me. I've been coming to Slovenia since 1997, and my perspective is quite different from hers. 02:44 Speaker A I've met representatives of Nova revija, such as Ivan Urbančič, Niko Grafenauer, and Tine Hribar, and have maintained a long-term relationship with two of them in particular, two of these representatives of Nova revija, a relationship I can truly call 03:04 Speaker A friendship. I know the path Dean Komel has taken since then, and it's remarkable on a European scale. 03:13 Speaker A Here is a philosopher who has been thinking for decades. A philosopher whose path, much like mine, was touched by the German city of Wuppertal and by studies with the phenomenologist Klaus Held. 03:28 Speaker A I also know the followers of Slavoj Žižek and cannot say that my contact with them has been particularly philosophical. 03:38 Speaker A On the contrary, they bask in the reflected glory of their son, that is, the great Slavoj, receive international invitations in this light, for instance, from the European Graduate School and other social media institutions. 03:56 Speaker A And otherwise have little to contribute to philosophy. What does psychoanalysis still have to say to us in a serious way? 04:06 Speaker A It's possible that some of its bold theories might still excite us. But is that a theory to be taken seriously? 04:16 Speaker A Is Lacan still a possible reference? As someone who knows Slovenia from the outside and also little from the inside, I feel entitled to make that observation. 04:30 Speaker A The world of philosophy is not one of justice. Not one of the good and the evil. 04:41 Speaker A How often have we neutralized this formulation and spoken of good and evil as if there were a neutral evil and a neutral good. So, I pre- pre- I, um, propose to speak of the good and the evil. 05:01 Speaker A Of punishment and reward. It probably shares this with all other worlds: that the world of philosophy is not one of justice. 05:13 Speaker A And yet, there are traditions of thought whose paths in the world take strange turns. Among them is the path of Martin Heidegger and that of Being and Time. 05:25 Speaker A What tradition of thought founded this work? And what path did the philosophers of the 20th and the 21st centuries take? 05:34 Speaker A Did they know what it was about? Do we know where the Slovenian School of Psychoanalysis truly belongs? 05:43 Speaker A Does it really have anything to say? Or were we in the West simply happy to have heard, if not a story of resistance, then at least one of subversiveness, which has long since lost its magic. 06:00 Speaker A So much so that ChatGPT knows that the climax of this magic was almost 50 years ago. 06:11 Speaker A I come to my topic. Why still Heidegger's Being and Time? Books don't just write history. 06:22 Speaker A History also writes books. It certainly seems that the genesis of philosophical masterpieces, or, to put it another way, of key books of a particular time, even an entire epoch, cannot be grasped solely through biography. 06:40 Speaker A What made Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, or even Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra those works that were something other than just the book of an author known somewhere or other? 06:58 Speaker A Something was inscribed and wrote itself in them without the author being able to control it. 07:06 Speaker A Certainly, the reception of a book contributes to its exceptional status. There are works that are only discovered after the author's death. This is true for Nietzsche and especially for Hölderlin, whose reception essentially only began in the 20th century. 07:21 Speaker A The formation of a canon always occurs as an addendum. This is also because the initial popularity of an author proves to be opaque. 07:33 Speaker A The chaff must first be separated from the wheat, and the canon is necessarily one of the wheat, or better yet, of the bread from which the ever-ancient spirit lives. 07:45 Speaker A But we are familiar with the debate surrounding the canon and have witnessed its post- and decolonial dismantling. 07:51 Speaker A Perhaps the celebrations of a book anniversary have something old-fashioned about them, like laying a wreath at a colonial monument. 08:02 Speaker A Yet even a dismantled canon remains a testament to a history that, even in the moment of its fall, still radiates some of its initial brilliance. 08:13 Speaker A Quite apart from the question of what should take the place of these demolished monuments after this fall. 08:21 Speaker A The notion that books are condensations of their time may belong to the past. However, in order to be reasonably prepared for the future, it is certainly appropriate to revisit that view. 08:35 Speaker A It was Jürgen Habermas who, after initial interest in Heidegger's thought, was decidedly adverse to it, and who in 1989 described Being and Time as a new beginning and probably the deepest turning point in German philosophy since Hegel. 08:54 Speaker A Thus, he compared the book to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Lukács' History and Class Consciousness. This is surprising, especially regarding the second book. However, it demonstrates how closely the reception of philosophical texts is tied to their time. 09:10 Speaker A Wasn't the Berlin Wall falling at that very moment? Even from today's perspective, it should be clear that all three books stand on the same historical experiences, albeit incorporating them in different ways. 09:28 Speaker A Heidegger's Being and Time, which for a long time appeared as a special edition of the Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Sonderdruck, whatever, edited by Edmund Husserl, with a simultaneously disappointing and promising subtitle, first half is a condensation of its time. It comes 09:51 Speaker A from an author who experienced the Great War, if only peripherally, then nonetheless in its national consequences, who came from a Catholic peasant background and sensed the terrible beginnings of modernity, who in the youth movement, Jugendbewegung, freed himself from the restrictions of 10:15 Speaker A his faith and soon agreed with the pronouncements of nihilism by Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, who, Heidegger, who as a teacher possessed a charisma that manifested itself in his life in at least three ways: in his commitment to the Third Reich, 10:34 Speaker A in his many erotic relationships with his female admirers, and in the creation of a rather orthodox Heideggerian community, which has since almost completely dissolved. 10:49 Speaker A It would not be too daring to want to rediscover all of this in Being and Time, even though such a hermeneutics could by no means do without assumptions or even suspicions. 11:02 Speaker A The year 2027 marks the 100th anniversary of Being and Time, and despite all possible postcolonial or, of course, political objections, it will be hailed as a key work of 20th-century philosophy. 11:24 Speaker A At the same time, claims will arise, such as that the book still has much to say to us today, that we can learn from it, and that it therefore must be read, indeed studied. 11:36 Speaker A Certainly, it is 11:51 Speaker A Thus, philosophers, especially those who wish to play a role in the public sphere, tailor philosophy to current needs and thereby demonstrate that it's that it is still worthwhile to engage with it. 12:05 Speaker A In this way, they want to demonstrate that philosophy, as Horkheimer says, has a function for society. 12:14 Speaker A And yes, this anniversary year will bring us the real realization that Heidegger, despite all the political problems, even if he is increasingly appropriated by the right wing, is, at least in Being and Time, still a mind to be reckoned with. 12:33 Speaker A But what, one must then ask, does Being and Time still have to tell us, in a more precise sense? 12:41 Speaker A What is relevant about the work so that one can confidently say, "Tolle, lege," like Saint Augustine? 12:50 Speaker A Even though I actually reject the this question, because it would be absurd to measure the significance of texts like those of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Zohar, or the Duino Elegies, according to their relevantness, because the significance of a text could 13:10 Speaker A consist precisely in its being entirely unrelevant, I want to attempt to answer it in this lecture, as it were, experimentally. 13:21 Speaker A Experimental means that an answer to the question of the relevantness of Being and Time must be aware that this book, like all significant books, never intended to be relevant and never was. 13:36 Speaker A And yet, one cannot entirely deny that books have their time and place, even when they are able to transcend this conditionally. 13:45 Speaker A Therefore, I should probably note as the at the very beginning of my remarks that precisely what would prove Being and Time to be current or timely, zeitgemäß, is precisely what would deprive it of all currently. 14:03 Speaker A This probably applies to everything old that we still read, see, and hear today in this godforsaken age. 14:11 Speaker A A novel by Dostoevsky, a painting by Botticelli, a symphony by Gustav Mahler, all these works had their time. But what they possessed in their time, they still possess today and perhaps will possess in the future. 14:24 Speaker A What exactly? Hard to say. Just as it's hard to say how far back we can go with this idea. Does the same apply to the tragedies of Aeschylus? 14:35 Speaker A We may assume so. This makes the whole thing even more difficult. Or am I celebrating here that canon whose destruction we can witness today? 14:45 Speaker A We know that there was supposedly a text of this name by Polykleitos, by the name Canon, that great sculptor. 14:56 Speaker A Moreover, he is said to have created a sculpture according to the specifications of this text, Canon, namely means standard. 15:07 Speaker A All these only further suggests that we are probably already living off the ruin value that has been realized in all these books. 15:19 Speaker A Ruin value. Ruinenwert. I begin by addressing one of those formulations that made the book Being and Time legendary, particularly in its idiom. 15:32 Speaker A The essence of Dasein consists in that it has to be its being as its own. So, here I have always to uh to read that also in German because you have to hear to listen the idiom of this language also in 15:53 Speaker A German to to know what what is happening there. Das Wesen des Daseins bestehe darin, dass es je sein Sein als seiniges zu sein hat. 16:05 Speaker A Those familiar with the book will immediately point out that this is the definition of existence. 16:11 Speaker A That is, of course, correct. However, my primary concern here is not the concept of existence, but rather this peculiar way of speaking that Dasein has to be its being as its own. 16:24 Speaker A Sein Sein als seiniges zu sein habe. More precisely, what does it mean that something, this being, as it is also called, has to be, that is, not only to be, but to have to be? 16:40 Speaker A We know that the language of philosophy is based on the irreplaceability of idioms. A word like spirit, Geist, can be explained, but its idiom cannot be replaced. 16:55 Speaker A We do not assume that a word is not identical with what it denotes, that is, with the thing indicated by the word. 17:03 Speaker A The Greco-Roman conception of language offers the possibility that words are only language. The phrase to have to be, zu sein haben, is hardly trans- This is, of course, due to the word being, sein, which, as we know, especially from Heidegger, cannot be 17:24 Speaker A represented by any other word. Naturally, we all think first of life at this point. 17:32 Speaker A And in Heidegger's philosophical development, it can probably be said that the word Dasein arose from the formulation of the facticity of life. 17:40 Speaker A But precisely because Heidegger, with the support of Plato and Aristotle, was able to leave behind the language of the philosophy of life, we can say that we must remain with to have to be. Zu sein haben. 17:55 Speaker A One more thing. I have my own being to be. Ich habe mein eigenes Sein zu sein. 18:03 Speaker A Is not everyday German. You are probably familiar with that. The formulation is likely to cause a certain amount of confusion for most Germans because, as is so often the case with Heidegger, it seems to express something very simple in a highly complex way. 18:21 Speaker A It seems to express something very simple because a simple remark containing that complexity essentially doesn't exist. 18:29 Speaker A Accordingly, the meaning of those words reveals itself more in a kind of state of being, which brings us back to being and time. Indeed, all understanding is situated, and every state of being opens or closes the world to us. 18:44 Speaker A Yet, the language of such situated understanding is hardly familiar to us. That Heidegger's thought later becomes more or less solely an esoteric interpretation of Hölderlin's poetry is foreshadowed in this problem. 18:58 Speaker A Dasein has its being to be its own, Sein Sein als Seiniges zu sein. Without a doubt, this refers to the mine-ness, Jemeinigkeit, or in this case, the being its own resonates with the meaning that Heidegger must have heard. 19:18 Speaker A Be that as it may, Dasein is always something of its own, something that must ascribe its being to itself, inevitably must ascribe to itself, for there is no Dasein without this self-reference. 19:33 Speaker A But beware, a problem lurks here that will occupy us later. Dasein is its being. It has its being to be. 19:46 Speaker A Heidegger also calls this having to be zu sein haben thrownness Geworfenheit. We have to be without being asked. "I never agreed to be." sings Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan in Barrel of a Gun video by Anton Corbijn, only to add "You holy one." 20:07 Speaker A Such a holy one doesn't exist in Being and Time, something we all know, of course, and usually acknowledge with a certain boredom, but which is perhaps more important than we assume. For Heidegger speaks only once in Being and 20:19 Speaker A Time of the despair of suicide, and that in reverence to the skeptic who in the despair of suicide has extinguished Dasein and thus truth. 20:33 Speaker A According to this view, whoever is supposed to be their own being and takes it on This is also a recurring phrase, that Dasein can resolutely take on the being that it already is. 20:49 Speaker A Which implies that it can refuse this takeover, which on the one hand leads to the issue of skepticism and on the other hand, as you all know, to the they das Man. 21:02 Speaker A But I don't want to follow this that line of reasoning here. My My is rather that there might be more to having to be than to the concept of thrownness and its take over, but what? 21:13 Speaker A Certainly the formulation having to be to sein haben contains a necessity even a certain compulsion or perhaps a command. You have to be. 21:28 Speaker A This necessity necessity is inscribed into being into its temporal unfolding into its Zeitigung as I Heidegger says. 21:37 Speaker A For to be one's own one's being means to experience oneself as a Dasein that has its time more precisely that is in time and space or place as odd. 21:50 Speaker A But note this temporal unfolding of existence is one that takes place within my being itself. I'm not needed for it. 21:58 Speaker A I'm exposed to it precisely because I have to be. I have to be my being ich habe and I know full well that this will come to an end. 22:11 Speaker A We all know that not only human being but essentially all being as far as we know it is finite. 22:19 Speaker A At least if we concede that being is a human invention and nothing more. And yet even this is not precisely what Heidegger suggests in Being and Time. In relation to the finitude of Dasein it is not about knowledge and cognition but 22:33 Speaker A about anxiety. Knowledge and cognition are explicitly described as an inauthentic inauthentic approach to the finitude of Dasein. 22:44 Speaker A In other words Heidegger maintains that Dasein even in relation to its finitude must be a kind of suspension or if you prefer a taking over. 22:54 Speaker A To return once more I already stated that having to be cannot be understood as life. Life offers us a wealth of meanings which with which we could grasp more concretely the being we are meant to be from bodily vitality 23:10 Speaker A to the individual life story which incidentally is always connected to that bodily vitality and its eventual decline. 23:20 Speaker A The richness of this concept is evident in the magnificent ending of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption. 23:28 Speaker A I quote, "But where do the wings of the gate open? You do not know? 23:38 Speaker A Into life." This is the This is These are the last words of the Star of Redemption, into life. 23:49 Speaker A A final like Mahler's Second Symphony, one could say. Rosenzweig's new thinking works towards the self-transcendence of philosophy into life. 23:59 Speaker A It could never be into being. For Hegel, being means indeter- indeterminate immediacy or in the science of logic, nothingness. 24:16 Speaker A Heidegger grappled with this and criticized Hegel. I will leave aside this undoubtedly very important confrontation between Hegel and Heidegger. Nevertheless, the observation that being hardly possesses any meaning compared to the concept of life is noteworthy. 24:31 Speaker A Heidegger also expressed this in Being and Time. He describes being guilty of Dasein as the null being the basis of a nullity in German, "nichtiges Grund sein einer Nichtigkeit". 24:47 Speaker A Dasein is the null basis of its own nullity, "der nichtige Grund seiner eigenen Nichtigkeit". 24:56 Speaker A From this nullity, from this nothingness Nichtigkeit conscience must then arise by willing itself. But even this is not the decisive point here. 25:06 Speaker A More importantly, Dasein finds nothing in its being but the null basis, nothing basis. Later, Heidegger says abyss of nothingness. 25:21 Speaker A Having to be, zu sein haben, thus has something to do with and during this null zero basis of its own nullity, der nichtige Grund seiner eigenen Nichtigkeit or to put it another way, with taking it on. 25:39 Speaker A With with uh Übernehmen dieses dieser Nichtigkeit. Dasein is therefore an exposure to nothingness unfolding in time or later to the annihilating nothingness, nichtende nichts. 25:56 Speaker A What is happening here? Is Heidegger a parrot of Ecclesiastes and his ha kol havel? 26:05 Speaker A Everything is breath, wind, ergo nothingness or nullity? While the translations with everything is meaningless in Ecclesiastes are certainly incorrect, Heidegger has nothing to do with the denigration of Dasein compared to the eternal. 26:22 Speaker A Or does he? Heidegger methodologically liberated Being and Time from all theology and religion. Even when he frequently addresses theological or Christian ideas, etc., he always limits their meanings. 26:38 Speaker A This also applies to the concept of eternity, to which Heidegger is generally allergic. Until later, when he makes some rather obscure, but therefore not unimportant remarks on it. 26:49 Speaker A How could one speak of eternity without obscurity? Yet, although Heidegger avoids methodological problems regarding the religious dimension of thought, he remains at the beginning of the 20th century a disciple of Nietzsche and a apprentice of nihilism. 27:08 Speaker A I concede that this is perhaps too far-reaching a thesis, one that cannot be verified by Being and Time itself. 27:15 Speaker A Perhaps one could understand the ontological grounding of a concept of conscience as a reaction to Nietzsche's diagnosis of nil nihilism, which Heidegger undoubtedly otherwise acknowledges. But, I do not wish to elaborate on that here. 27:30 Speaker A Perhaps only one thing. I would like to recall Nietzsche's rejection of the classical consciousness paradigm, Bewusstseins Paradigma, and place it in the context of his analysis of nihilism. I quote, "There is neither spirit, nor reason, nor thought, nor consciousness, nor 27:55 Speaker A soul, nor will, nor truth. All fictions that are useless." I know that these negations originate from a context from his later writings in which Nietzsche tended toward naturalistic simplifications, which need not be wrong. 28:14 Speaker A My concern is solely with Nietzsche's rejection of the subject as self-determining through reason. And indeed, for Nietzsche, even consciousness, Bewusstseins, or awareness, perishes perishes in the death of God. 28:32 Speaker A Personal perfection. I quote, it's Nietzsche, "Personal perfection as conditioned by will, by consciousness, as reason with dialectics, is a caricature, one of self-contradiction. 28:46 Speaker A Why? Because consciousness can never be perfection. For the Ubermensch, consciousness is not the substance of humanity. I concede that this has little or nothing to do with Heidegger's Dasein. 29:00 Speaker A The Ubermensch is something else, and yet Dasein is not consciousness. In his last manuscript, The Legacy of the Question of Being from the '70s of the last century, Heidegger speaks of consciousness several times. Human beings sink, he says, into their own machinations, 29:21 Speaker A into the machinations of their consciousness, which they pass off as being. No, the focus is on the history of being. Turn. 29:33 Speaker A Only in earnestness in Being and Time does Being and Time does the turning point become possible and skillfully necessary. Never, however, as long as one remains stuck in consciousness and allows those values to serve as standards. 29:48 Speaker A In all this, the poverty of the age of the world manifests itself. It concerns the meaning of what is also called Dasein loses consciousness. 30:02 Speaker A So, we have the problem Dasein versus consciousness coming out from Being and Time. Is this the great epochal problem that Heidegger addresses once again in his final thoughts? 30:18 Speaker A The fact that the very elderly Heidegger emphasized this point again at the end of his life gives one pause. 30:25 Speaker A Had we taken the concept of Dasein too lightly and considered its its opposition to consciousness a perhaps exaggerated idiosyncrasy of the thinker? 30:36 Speaker A How can one distance oneself from consciousness? And what is the machination of consciousness supposed to be? 30:45 Speaker A The word "Bewusstsein", consciousness, is relatively new to the German language. Christian Wolff coined it in uh 1720. 30:57 Speaker A Today, it is part of everyday language. The word "Dasein" is also part part of everyday language, but probably not in Heidegger's sense, probably because it is not entirely clear how it is used. 31:10 Speaker A Certainly however we use the word "Bewusstsein" without being aware that two philosophers are involved. And indeed, the difference lies in the fact that Heidegger did not invent the word "Dasein". 31:23 Speaker A It is well known that consciousness and self-consciousness have enjoyed a distinguished career in the history of philosophy following Wolff. From Descartes through Kant to Fichte and Hegel and into the 20th century, where even great academic thinkers like Dieter 31:38 Speaker A Henrich placed themselves emphasis immense emphasis on it. Transcendentalism has become a genre in its own right. 31:47 Speaker A It is at least plausible that in the transcendental reflexivity of thought, we recognize a characteristic that seems to originate from the very heart of philosophy. 31:57 Speaker A How else can one think without thinking about thinking? And this presupposes self-consciousness. Moreover, Heidegger understood all of psychology, including psychoanalysis, not as an attack on the paradigm of consciousness, but as a moment of that transcendentalism. 32:17 Speaker A He considered Freud's unconscious to be a part of consciousness. Was he unaware of the meta-psychological model of id, superego, and ego? 32:28 Speaker A That Heidegger understood the id as a moment of the ego and not the other way around is strange, but not entirely incomprehensible. 32:37 Speaker A His existential analysis as a response to psychoanalysis flanked by Freud's students Binswanger and Boss still seems to convince some people today. 32:48 Speaker A Since Descartes's concept of the fundamentum absolutum in concussum, i.e. as a subject even though Descartes doesn't use the term often, consciousness has endowed itself with all sorts of faculties, thought, the soul reason understanding will and then as Heidegger suggests with values, 33:08 Speaker A etc. It has been pointed out that Heidegger with Dasein and the existentials is doing structurally the same thing as Kant essentially does everywhere. 33:17 Speaker A This observation is supposedly historically confirmed by the obvious fact that Heidegger engaged extensively and intensively with Kant during the genesis of Being and Time. 33:29 Speaker A This is undoubtedly true, but what is the observation meant to prove? The mere existence of existentials does not in itself transform Dasein into consciousness. 33:41 Speaker A Incidentally, I don't want to address here the question of whether Being and Time has a transcendental starting point or not. Heidegger himself later said a great deal about this and clearly criticized himself on the matter. 33:52 Speaker A My friend and colleague Alexander Schnell recently argued in a commentary on Being and Time that the book belongs to transcendental philosophy. 34:00 Speaker A I don't want to intervene in that discussion here. Such questions about whether and why something can be called phenomenology or not are not something I'm particularly interested in. 34:11 Speaker A Of course, I see it answers factual questions that have a lot to do with the respective philosophical approach, but I don't feel comfortable in such discussions, be that as it may. 34:23 Speaker A At this point in my lecture, there's a kind of scene change. The curtain briefly falls and then rises again. 34:33 Speaker A We see not only Descartes sitting in his armchair by the fireplace, but also Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the enfant terrible of the early 18th century, standing by the fire. 34:48 Speaker A The physician admires the his teacher, so it may not have been easy for him to grasp what he attempts to explain in L'homme Machine. 34:59 Speaker A The fact that Descartes conceived of res extensa mechanistically as a machine is immediately clear to the physician. 35:08 Speaker A Let's remember that this idea, of course, represented a milestone in the history of medicine, that the the human body is a machine. 35:17 Speaker A Even today, so-called conventional medicine views the body as a mechanism and not as an organism in the Kantian sense, for example. 35:25 Speaker A What La Mettrie doesn't understand, however, is that Descartes, in the form of res cogitans, is attempting to save the soul. 35:33 Speaker A La Mettrie disagrees with this because, as it is said, toutes les facultés de l'âme dépendent tellement de la propre organisation du cerveau et de tout le corps qu'elles ne sont visiblement que euh l'organisation même. 35:51 Speaker A And he adds, "Voilà une machine bien éclairée." The soul, he says, euh to express this briefly, the soul is actually the brain. 36:06 Speaker A I believe this passage in L'homme Machine is philosophically un- underestimated. From a scholastic perspective, one could probably point to precursors as far back as antiquity, but La La Mettrie, uh that that philosophers speak of the brain, but La Mettrie belongs to a specific 36:24 Speaker A history that has little to do with antiquity. Of course, this connection between soul and brain, or rather between consciousness and brain, has far-reaching consequences. 36:36 Speaker A However, the fact that that La Mettrie initially faced the outrage of theologians is more or less the least significant consequence. 36:45 Speaker A For this identification of consciousness and brain, which, incidentally, Freud also initially based his work on, unfolded a peculiar history beneath the surface of other philosophical discussions. Today, we are confronted with one of its results, and what a result it is. 37:07 Speaker A The word thinking machine first appears in Jean Paul's Jean Paul Richter's satirical work, Selection from the Devil's Papers, along with a necessary warning from the Jew Mendel, from uh uh 189, the year of the French Revolution. Jean Paul 37:36 Speaker A turns to the inventions of Wolfgang von Kempelen, who in the uh 1780s had invented both a playing machine, the so-called mechanical Turk, which is not particularly important in the history of technology, and the speaking machine, which is nevertheless 37:53 Speaker A important in the history of technology. Jean Paul takes up this ironically and satirically asking, "Before the end of our performance, I quote, we, ladies and players alike, pose the important questions uh question to Herrn Mr. von Kempele, whether he wouldn't have been better off 38:15 Speaker A in terms of honor and virtue if, instead of sitting down and fervently hatching language and gaming machines that would suddenly deprive a thousand of his comrades of sustenance. 38:27 Speaker A We had truly reflected on the matter and actually come up with thinking machines. For since very few make a profession of thinking he could have caused little or no harm, especially since the few who would have seemed to have starved to death due to 38:44 Speaker A the rivalry of the thinking machines would certainly have died of hunger even without these machines. 38:52 Speaker A Without a doubt, a very witty remark. So, actually he asks uh well, there are thinking machines, but do we think? 39:03 Speaker A Maybe not. Without a doubt, a very witty remark, which however already contains a problem with which we must grapple even more today. Okay, the machines do not think, but are we all ourselves thinking? 39:16 Speaker A Thinking is not a biological or mechanical ability. The development of cybernetics has become part of this ongoing history which began with LaMettrie. From the outset, cybernetics has taken seriously the very mechanical notion that one could construct a thinking 39:34 Speaker A machine. I need only recall Gotthard Günther's 1900 and 57 text The consciousness of machines. 39:46 Speaker A A metaphysics of cybernetics. There Günther, who's special position in the history of philosophy due to his trivalent logic, I will not consider, speaks of a first and a second machine. 39:58 Speaker A The first machine is the Archimedean, the human body with its movable movable limbs. In the age of the electrical transformer or the transistor developed a few years ago by Bell Laboratories however, one can go beyond the Archimedean machine. For humans possesses an organ 40:17 Speaker A that does not function classically and mecha- mechanically with moving parts like the heart for example, but in a very different way according to transclassical principles. This is the brain. 40:32 Speaker A And then uh Günther says, "The working method of the classical machine follows the model of the working arm including hand. The idea of the transclassical machine, however, arises from the technical requirements to develop a mechanism that works according 40:50 Speaker A to the analogy of the human brain." And a few pages later it says, "Thus, the problem of the non-Archimedean machine focuses on that of the mechanical brain, that is, mechanical consciousness." I maintain that Günther is formulating the problem of artificial intelligence 41:13 Speaker A here, provided that the language of artificial intelligence and also the problems themselves have shifted somewhat in the meantime. 41:21 Speaker A Günther, by the way, doubts that a full human self-consciousness can be designed as a robot brain. 41:29 Speaker A He argues here on the basis of the difference between symbolic logic and metalanguage, claiming that expressions like I, you, or self cannot be represented metalinguistically. 41:42 Speaker A A brain that cannot in principle conceive of the concept of self-consciousness and form it in its language also has no self-consciousness. 41:51 Speaker A I leave that open to debate, but we can see where the view that humans are primarily consciousness or self-consciousness, which is of course what classical philosophy, including Heidegger meant has led in relation to the development of new technologies. 42:08 Speaker A I would like to point out that besides Günther, cyberneticists like Norbert Wiener or the German control engineer Hermann Schmidt foresaw these problems. The problem that the design of a robot was from the outside oriented towards the human brain or, if you will, 42:25 Speaker A towards consciousness. That is that humans wanted to create another human being, in my words. 42:32 Speaker A Heidegger took note of the rise of cybernetics. He He writes, "The leveling of the world and of humanity into the continuous stock of information, cybernetics as preservation ordered in the Gestell." This is what he writes in a later black 42:49 Speaker A notebook. "Philosophy falls into the clutches of cybernetics." Philosophy, mind you, as the theory of consciousness and self-consciousness. 43:00 Speaker A "Likewise, psychol- He He writes, "Likewise psychology psychoanalysis logistics, and cybernetics are all the same in the Gestell." The same because they are all expressions of consciousness. 43:14 Speaker A Except, of course, the Gestell. This somewhat fleeting remark contains a massive assertion. I would like to ask whether the artificial intelligence so widely discussed today is not, at its core, a transcendental project? 43:30 Speaker A Whether only a mindset that considers consciousness and self-awareness the starting point of all being can, and above all, wants to build such a thinking machine? 43:42 Speaker A I maintain that the entire project stemming from cybernetics, a form of intelligence curre- curring- currently emerging in Silicon Silicon Valley, aims to construct and produce that we ourselves are in terms of self-awareness, including our unconscious. 44:00 Speaker A I assert that even in its most rudimentary implementations, the computer was from the very beginning merely the preparation for what is now being promised to us from California with mixed feelings. 44:12 Speaker A And certainly also strong economic expectations, the development of a machine with which we can communicate as if with ourselves. 44:21 Speaker A This is the pinnacle of technology. To technically realize the mysterious purpose of the brain and thereby transcend any notion of a tool. 44:34 Speaker A Certainly, I can picture the experts in the field registering my assertion with an ironic smile pointing out that it sounds like science fiction, the construction of an Android, an artificial human, a golem, if you will. Well, perhaps. 44:51 Speaker A But what might that mean? Günther was a true science fiction fan and I find the various artificial intelligences we've encountered in the history of this genre from Hell to Her, from Roy Batty in Blade Runner to Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, from 45:07 Speaker A Ex Machina to Interstellar, very interesting indeed unsettling. The project of artificial intelligence can intelligence cannot be understood without fantasy. That's what makes it so fascinating. It's not about developing a new vacuum cleaner. 45:27 Speaker A So, uh or to say it like that that uh artificial intelligence is not a giant uh army Swiss knife. 45:37 Speaker A Why read and reflect on Being and Time? I could also uh here and now ask the question, is there an AI of Dasein? 45:50 Speaker A According to Heidegger, no. Intelligence is not a mode of being of Dasein, not an existential. 45:58 Speaker A Intelligence is a characteristic of a living being that possesses consciousness. Beyond this, and I haven't addressed this aspect, Dasein is being in the world. 46:09 Speaker A Thus, characteristics flow into it such as historicity, which for the time being remain beyond the grasp of artificial intelligence. 46:17 Speaker A It is conceivable that an artificial intelligence recognizes its exceptional status in relation to humans and thus in a sense makes history itself. 46:29 Speaker A But does not uh be in itself historical. In Heidegger's Being and Time, therefore, an understanding of humanity is developed that rejects this history of humanity as consciousness and self-consciousness. 46:47 Speaker A And thus, a history of technology that currently culminates in certain conceptions of artificial intelligence. 46:55 Speaker A I'm aware that with the story originating from Descartes and La Mettrie, the dream or nightmare of creating machine or rather of a repeated creation of humankind, I am telling a particular narrative. We will see whether current conceptions of 47:10 Speaker A artificial intelligence corresponds to the true qualities of this technology or whether in a few years we will look back on our time with a mixture of disillusionment and reassuran reassurance. 47:23 Speaker A However, one fact remains. Not only does Heidegger, with his conception of Dasein, point the way differently in this history of European subjectivity, but he also saw quite clearly, more clearly than we might have thought, where this history was headed. 47:41 Speaker A He saw that cybernetics was already preparing to replace philosophy. How much more then must be we aware of this possibility of a farewell to philosophy? 47:56 Speaker A Once again, the curtain falls and rises. The dream of artificial intelligence is not that of a versatile tool. 48:06 Speaker A I said it before, not that of a digital Swiss Army knife. That wouldn't be a dream at all. 48:14 Speaker A But rather the idea of an engineer. It wouldn't even be worth discussing to create a digital Swiss Army knife. 48:25 Speaker A The transcendental dream is that of a human machine, a being whose future is unknown to us. I'm quite sure there's a feeling like when boarding ships that set sail, not knowing which shore they reach or even if they reach any shore at 48:39 Speaker A all. Statements like "This machine won't think. It won't laugh. It won't know what history is. 48:47 Speaker A Won't know what death is. It won't write poetry." are defensive. Like already in an escape room. 49:06 Speaker A Film history has already told us a story in which a machine speaks of its own death. 49:12 Speaker A At the end of the first part of Blade Runner of the first Blade Runner, of course, the Android Roy Batty after duel with Deckard which he actually won, having spared Deckard who incidentally has already fallen in love with the machine 49:28 Speaker A sits down in the rain to die. And in this peculiar, somewhat kitschy atmosphere of the early '80s, this is this artificial intelligence monologues. 49:39 Speaker A "I've seen things you people won't believe, wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. 49:50 Speaker A All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die. 49:59 Speaker A Thank you very much. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is this very good formulated lecture. And now I open the discussion. 50:25 Speaker A So, if there is nobody to So, I can I just can just to jump in just to reformulate my uh claim again. So, from the mainstream of philosophy as transcendental philosophy, Descartes, Kant Hegel and then many philosophers in the 20th 50:51 Speaker A century, the next step is that of creating a machine called artificial intelligence. Because the dream of creating an artificial intelligence refers to that tradition. 51:05 Speaker A Heidegger does not stand in this tradition. So, from Heidegger we could not create a machine like artificial intelligence. 51:15 Speaker A And I claim that Heidegger saw that maybe not in Being and Time, but in his later thought. So, this is my claim. 51:32 Speaker A So, if there is nobody who has the courage to begin, then I will myself will take. 51:40 Speaker A So, this this phrase or this saying that you mentioned at the beginning, There's only somebody who has to be to be. 51:55 Speaker A But when I am saying this word I have to be. There's something strange. That doesn't mean who I am I am, what I am occupied with. 52:12 Speaker A But there is something more. I have to be. We can imagine the situation that we are so confronted with ourself to say I have to be. 52:27 Speaker A I I think there's a one description in Being and Time that the highest highest transcendence includes the deepest individuation. 52:43 Speaker A Individuation. So I mean that this this I have to be means I am sustaining the being as such. 52:56 Speaker A But this is another difficulty. How? But the definition of Dasein doesn't mean that as you showed, this doesn't mean I am unaware of myself and and so on. 53:12 Speaker A But I have to be I have to sustain or This is this is very important, but we in moment and we are saying I have to be. 53:26 Speaker A It is not so simple. It is not uh Yeah, it is not so it is not simple. 53:32 Speaker A Because we we because we like you say, what does it mean I have to be? 53:37 Speaker A Well Heidegger Heidegger is not Of course, you are right. When we speak more closely about exist existence and so on and of mindness and so on. Yeah, you might current. 53:55 Speaker A Then we see that Heidegger of course thinks of a certain individual individual what has his own existence. Of course, he thinks like that. But nevertheless, he comes always back to this I have to be. 54:13 Speaker A And and and this is what Dasein actually is. So But this is some kind of transcendence because I live with you and others. I am Transcendence in what Heidegger understands as transcen- transcendence, yeah. That that I am transcending 54:28 Speaker A beings, you know, I am I'm not a I'm not a chair, I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a desk. 54:34 Speaker A So I'm I'm transcend beings. So I I I'm free of them. I can in a way maybe Well, I cannot live without them, but I can think without them. I can transcend objects, things. The This is what he 54:51 Speaker A thinks of tran- trans- transcendence in in Being and Time. Uh but nevertheless, it's it it it remains the the problem when we say I don't know whether whether you say when you awake in the morning I have to be. 55:10 Speaker A Wait a minute for bus. Yeah, that's right. I have to be. What the what the I have to be? So uh probably not, maybe. But if you would think I have to be, what what How could you replace the word to be in it? 55:24 Speaker A Probably you wouldn't because everything what every word you like I I I I took life, I have to live is is something else. It's not It's not what what being is. So so so it it's it's what how how this works? Yeah, okay. 55:44 Speaker A It works. How? I don't know. Just just uh it just works. So this this is the this is the secret of of of this of this formulation of course, but it's but it's very important to understand what Heidegger calls Dasein and I have to 56:01 Speaker A repeat again that I that I am referring to this uh what he says about of about conscious about the about about Gewissen. 56:10 Speaker A That he that he calls Dasein eine nichtig ja einen nichtigen Grund seiner eigenen Nichtigkeit. 56:19 Speaker A So that actually to be has is actually well the same as well to not be. 56:30 Speaker A Nothing to let nothing happens. It's nothing. It's actually nothingness. So in this sense uh in this sense uh it's it's and and this this is what I want to show. It's definitely definite definitely something else than consciousness or self-awareness. 56:47 Speaker A Because there we have distinct significations. Reflexivity. I can think myself. I can think thinking and so on. 56:57 Speaker A But Heidegger is is is wiping that out in a way. He's erasing that history and he says, "No, just be." And just being is that's the same as nothingness. 57:08 Speaker A Yes, but it's not the nothing comes that I am not doing nothing. Because I have to be I could say I think I do nothing. 57:18 Speaker A Before playing a basketball uh very important basketball player I have something basketball is a is a kind of being of course, but it's not it's it's it is is it's a certain it's a certain interpretation of that. You can Of 57:34 Speaker A course we can we can interpret we can interpret what what it means to be To be or not to be. 57:41 Speaker A This is here the question. No, but the the the the the Nevertheless, this this at on the on the bottom of this the fundamental the funder the fundament of Dasein is simply to be your own being. 57:59 Speaker A What what should that be? But there are very rare moments that I have I say to myself to myself you have to be. 58:09 Speaker A Yeah. Like I said, yeah. Maybe the Heideggerian as that know says that all the time. 58:14 Speaker A When I'm 20 years old and I'm began to study or I don't know this is but this is important because of self-understanding of the human being. 58:27 Speaker A Yeah. Yeah, well, you are right and in everyday language like I said, we are probably not we are not we are not saying very very often oftenly I have to be. 58:40 Speaker A But like I said before, also the German term Bewusstsein is a very modern very very modern world word invented in 1720 so it's not The the Greeks our our good old Greeks, you know, they they don't they don't speak of 59:00 Speaker A Bewusstsein. They don't speak of Selbstbewusstsein. They don't they they they they don't they don't they even don't speak of Wille. They don't need that. Why whyever I don't know. 59:10 Speaker A But somebody has has I just one more thing. It is very hard to translate the word Dasein in other languages. 59:20 Speaker A Yeah, that As Heidegger used it. So in Slovenian we have a word prebivanja which I use for for for the translation and it means to live somewhere and the other meaning here pass the night. 59:38 Speaker A Prebiti noč. Mhm. You know, on Slovene. And it double this double meaning has the the this second meaning is to sustain the being the night. 59:53 Speaker A So, uh this Yes. Um the the discussions has already cleared some topics. I would only remark uh uh as uh a word a verse from Pindar which Heidegger quotes many many times about the Dasein, about existence. Uh you know that that I might mean his 60:21 Speaker A his verse of Pindar which is in English so you should become what you are already is uh but with the addition learning. Genoi, you should become hoios eisi kakor že si but with learning. 60:48 Speaker A Uh what I think is here implied is is uh uh a sort of history, of a sort of becoming. And I think in this sense one could uh uh one should save the Dasein because also being at times and is a question of uh 61:14 Speaker A historicity. historicity Uh in and and truth is always truth in in time. The the sky's in history. 61:27 Speaker A Mhm. Uh that is one point. Another which you uh uh Professor Tony uh accentuated is a sort of this question of the was sign uh consciousness and and subject. 61:48 Speaker A I think that this this word you must have your being reminds me a little on Aristotle's notion uh of uh of philautia self-love. 62:06 Speaker A Uh Slovenian philologist Kajetan Gantar, also translator, has written about this. And I don't like this uh this idea, but it is by Aristotle described in context between in in the context of discussion of friendship. 62:27 Speaker A And he says one must respect other person, but other person is only other ego, other subject. 62:37 Speaker A And if I don't love me as subject, I can't I cannot I really love other subject. 62:48 Speaker A That is the the philautia as idea in Nicomachean Ethics, I think the seventh book. 62:59 Speaker A But I think that philautia cannot be associated with Heidegger's sign. Only this thing that speaks genuine honesty, authenticacy, standardcy. 63:13 Speaker A The the you are often you are open to to the to the to the to the world, so to speak, to the world. 63:23 Speaker A That's That's So, the the word of Sein and Sein is used. Yeah. And on this passage, and this is the first mention of Bewußtsein of consciousness. 63:35 Speaker A So, so I see I see. Yeah. Um I I I I wonder this um I also also um also Nietzsche is referring to this Pindaric uh uh formulation very often. 63:54 Speaker A What I What I always thought about this about this idea that you have to become what you are. 64:01 Speaker A By learning. By learning. Yeah, yeah, but but but but the thing is and this is the interesting thing I cannot I cannot reply here. I cannot I cannot I cannot reply here. 64:13 Speaker A Is the question does he presuppose that that there is a kind of um kind of episteme of who I am for that? 64:29 Speaker A So, you know that that I that I already know who I am, so that I have to can to learn in this sense, or is that what I am uh something what belongs to to to whatever destiny or something like that? 64:48 Speaker A that it belongs to destiny, right? Yeah. Or Pindaric songs, uh history of of a person. 64:56 Speaker A Yeah. And this is a person which is an a an aristocrat from a city which has uh won in this uh competitions in Olympian or Pythian and so on. And what does he make? He make a a long history from from old 65:18 Speaker A times of this family and about all of all possible plus and minus in in this history. 65:29 Speaker A And then one one this hero, so to say, succeeds, and another does not. So, when should I make a reflection? 65:43 Speaker A This competition is also, I would say, more in as in in the sport today is more a fight. It is not It is also uh uh uh an idea uh an impression of of what is going on in 66:06 Speaker A in society in a in writer, for example. So, I I think Okay. Yeah, I see I see. Yeah, that's it's a different it's a different approach uh to find out also actually who I am by my own destiny. 66:21 Speaker A Um I so that it is in the context. Only in in this context. Yeah. 66:26 Speaker A The I never I would I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't No, it is Socratic. Uh self-self-knowledge. 66:31 Speaker A No, no, no, no, no, no. I I I wouldn't I I would refer when we speak about Aristotle. The The point is, of course, you cannot say uh well, in general. You cannot say that Aristotle is uh delivers 66:43 Speaker A uh a theory of the subject in the sense of a a Cartesian Cartesian cogito. But, the point is, of course, when I would ask myself, "Where is itself consciousness in in in in in in uh in Aristotle?" Then I would say, 66:59 Speaker A "Whatever Metaphysics 12." So, I would say, "Noesis noeseos." Yeah. So, that So, that there you have There So will a kind of a thinking figure refer therefore the the encyclo I guess that's the encyclopedia ends with the with this Aristotle. 67:19 Speaker A So so in this sense but but but that's that's that's that's that's divine. The the the Odyssey is divine so I wouldn't I wouldn't say that this is that this is that this is a that this is a real theory of of of subjectivity in 67:37 Speaker A this in this sense. But but of course one one Hegel for instance saw there the model of self-awareness already. He saw that but but of course Hegel's subjectivity is again something else than Kant's subjectivity and so on. 67:55 Speaker A Yeah. Thank you Professor Sallis for your lecture. I'm wondering what would you consider to be the main contribution of the introduction of the notion of Dasein um to the philosophical anthropology? 68:17 Speaker A And then I will I will follow up with a subsequent question. I would say there is none. 68:27 Speaker A None at all? I would say there's none at all, yeah. Well, you know the problem that Heidegger was always always denying that that that there is that there is an anthropology in Being and Time. So so so so in in what I wanted to do 68:45 Speaker A namely to to to confront us with this strange expression. You have to be I would say from this from this what I wanted to do to anthropology I I would say there is I don't I I I don't I don't see a 69:05 Speaker A connection. So, from what I wanted to say, when we when we when you would speak about being in time in more general in a more general perspective, of course, I would I would I would see some some possibilities to 69:21 Speaker A to refer to anthropology. So, this would be my Maybe it could be used as a as an element in some sort of philosophical anthropology which was not created by Heidegger. 69:33 Speaker A I mean, for instance, I do see some perspectives to bridge the two currents of thought, the personal one and the Heideggerian one, let us say. 69:44 Speaker A If one considers um the notion of or reflexivity that the Dasein as developed by um Michel Henry and Wolfgang Fritz, for instance. 69:57 Speaker A I think there is some sort of perspective to to to offer some perspective on the significance of this. 70:07 Speaker A Yeah, but But what what what I of course what I want to show is that this is that this this is this would be this would be a misunderstanding I because I think that that what I wanted to presuppose here is to read Being and 70:21 Speaker A Time as an alternative to to the subjective paradigm. So, that that is what I actually wanted to do. 70:29 Speaker A And and because like I said the transcendental dream of of the human machine is a consequence of the theories of subjectivity. That doesn't mean that they are wrong necessarily, of course. 70:49 Speaker A Of course, I mean But but but they are they are different ways they are diff- different histories of philosophy there. 71:00 Speaker A So, that's that's what I wanted to to show. But, uh yeah, well, in this sense preconsciousness the phenomenon maybe what Heidegger was referring to I don't know. 71:16 Speaker A But, you know that Heidegger was was the the the the whole whole of of his life he he he emphasized. Therefore, it it it it doesn't matter whether this is not translatable translatable the word Dasein. You know that in English texts they just 71:33 Speaker A they don't try to translate it anymore. So, it's Dasein. Everybody says Dasein. Um he he emphasized this his whole life that he thought the human being as Dasein. And and and and and when he when he at the end of his life says, "We have 71:50 Speaker A to overcome consciousness." What I think is strange idea is to overcome consciousness. But, he sees already the whole history of cybernetics and the social use of of psycho- psychology and psychoanalysis he sees this al- already. 72:12 Speaker A Then, we have then then then then we should maybe take that this emphasis in Heidegger maybe for a moment just for a moment seriously. 72:24 Speaker A Like I said, to celebrate being in time. Uh, if we have to celebrate being in time, we could just we can of course we could we could just stop reading it. 72:38 Speaker A I don't care. But, uh or a little bit. But uh but but but uh um yeah, but but but this this idea that that that somebody at the end of his life says, "Yeah, we have to overcome consciousness." That's 72:55 Speaker A That's That's such a strange idea in a way. But I guess in a way we maybe we would live in a different history. So, we wouldn't have the transcendental dream of a of a mechanical brain and of a of of artificial 73:12 Speaker A intelligence. Maybe. Who knows? But I do consider the fact that it is an attempt to to maintain some sort of existence of pre-reflexive consciousness or pre-reflexive element in the consciousness itself. 73:30 Speaker A As an attempt to to go against this tendency of of machine as as mentioned before. And what does it offer, this this paradigm of thought? Is that we stay in the framework of subjectivity, but do not limit ourselves to 73:52 Speaker A subjectivity in terms of autonomy of the subject. You know, we can enlarge the perspective to view the viewpoint um through this notion of cogito existo of the who's that? 74:11 Speaker A And we can um um go all the way back to the Greeks in in in the in an attempt to reactualize the the importance of some not really theories but notions or or expressions of consciousness which existed Mhm. 74:34 Speaker A even before Aristotle. I mean, I remember there is uh a verse in Orestes of Euripides in the variant of the 5th century. 74:48 Speaker A There are words the word syn- synnesis is used which in which later in the Hellenist period was replaced by a synaesthesis, but which actually covers or or at least go in go goes in the same way as consciousness. I mean, 75:08 Speaker A it's not a theory of consciousness, but as a term as an expression, it covers it touches some similarity. 75:17 Speaker A Yeah, I I have a I Well, you you know that Heidegger's thinking has its its flaw its flaws. It's not that I that I want to that I want to fight for for Heidegger, but because we are celebrating Being and Time. I just 75:34 Speaker A want to because I just want to I just want to say some- something about this point. I had a I had a I had a When I was a student, there was a quite famous Kantian in Freiburg who 75:48 Speaker A gave a seminar on Being and Time. And and he said, "Well yeah Dasein well well, that's that's Bewusstsein." And and and I said, "What what what Why why is it Bewusstsein? Heidegger doesn't speak about Bewusstsein." And he said, 76:02 Speaker A "Yeah well what what what do you want to discuss about? Bewusstsein is is where the human being is. There's no human being without Bewusstsein. So, that that there is You cannot think a human being without Bewusstsein. So, it's like 76:16 Speaker A for eternity, yeah, the Bewusstsein is the human being. Period." And I thought, "Well, yeah, of course you can you can say that, but Heidegger Heidegger, like I said, that he he is not interested in eternity eternity. He is not interested in a 76:31 Speaker A priori conditions of of of of of whatever the human being or or something. He he he he he doubts that there is a kind of a anthropological or whatever constant uh stable basis of the human being. He He 76:49 Speaker A doubts that. So, if you if you say "Oh, that's that's nonsense, because as far as as far as we know the human being, or even whatever the dolphin, uh life is is is consciousness." Yeah, of course you can say that, but then you 77:05 Speaker A then then then you just uh then Heidegger is lost, because you because you're just not you are not interested in what he says, that he that he says for the human being there is no eternity. 77:20 Speaker A There for the human being cannot refer to something what is eternal. Even even the being as such is finite at one point. 77:30 Speaker A So, that's So, that's I know that that that that Heinrich and other and Frank would say that that's that's that's nonsense. That's too radical, and so on. Yeah, but well, it's Heidegger. 77:53 Speaker A Some more question? Okay. I would like to to propose a simple question about artificial intelligence. 78:07 Speaker A Yeah, what is the difference between automatism automation in industry and in different different branches of industry, and artificial and drones as as an an army. 78:28 Speaker A Mhm. There are it's a And then we have a artificial check player Mhm. and real real check player. 78:39 Speaker A Mhm. I think that in artificial intelligence is always some some operation of rational what in computer and then and then from an engineer ingegniere uh was constructed uh that different aims uh and all other things I think uh for 79:06 Speaker A for me un- un- un- not understandable. Mhm. Yeah, I I'm like I said like I said that I I do I I I I'm definitely not a specialist of artificial intelligence. 79:20 Speaker A So um Uh so so so so but but I but I but I but I uh I admitted that. I know I I said that au- auto- auto- autom- tization of certain in industrial pro- pro- yeah, processes of of production for instance, I would 79:44 Speaker A say uh here you you you use you use technology as a tool. Uh what I what I'm inherently doubting in this paper, but I don't have an argument for that is that artificial intelligence is not seen as a tool. 80:02 Speaker A I I think that that the that the that the people in Silicon Valley are not interested in engineering a tool. 80:14 Speaker A That's ChatGPT who says that it's a day. What what can you do with that? 80:19 Speaker A I don't think so. I I think that these that these uh these people in Silicon Valley that they that they dream that they have a dream. 80:28 Speaker A And that they that they that they thinking of some- something else than a tool. 80:34 Speaker A Then it is tool of tools. Yeah, well, okay, yeah, tool of tools. There are philosophers who say that language is the tool of tools. So, but uh but uh but um I I don't I I cannot I cannot discuss 80:52 Speaker A about I really when somebody knows artificial intelligence, he would say like I said that you I'm you are you are whatever you are totally wrong The so-called singularity is is this concept where where we don't where we where we will start not to understand 81:08 Speaker A anymore what what happens in the machine. Because we don't know we cannot know what they it he she whatever does. 81:23 Speaker A We we What what what they like I said I said that maybe in a couple of years we would say what a hoax. 81:32 Speaker A Just a just a just just a hoax from Silicon Valley because Elon Musk wants to have another billion. 81:39 Speaker A Maybe. I hope so. But maybe not. Maybe we will talk to a machine and fall in love and what we will we said when it's when when it's when it dies. You know, that people are already said when the car 81:57 Speaker A dies. So, so we will we will we will we will we will know that in the next 10 years probably. 82:05 Speaker A But I but I my claim and I said that it's a claim without an argument. I said that that there is a transcendental dream. 82:15 Speaker A And I and I quoted Gotthard Günther. Well, Gotthard Günther is really one of the key figures of cybernetics when he says that uh that that the that the mechanical brain actually implies consciousness. I would say that's that's a serious that's a 82:28 Speaker A serious idea. This leading figure of cybernetics in the '50s and '60s, then we should then we should take that uh seriously. 82:41 Speaker A Okay, then I will use my natural intellect instead of artificial intelligence and like to thank you Pete Peter and all of you who participated participated and uh Thank you for being here. Topics: Heidegger Being and Time Peter Trawny Dasein Slovenian philosophy Slavoj Žižek Habermas phenomenology canon machine thinking Study this video - [Flashcards from this video](https://sozai.app/tools/ai-flashcard-generator/?from=transcript&id=81975) - [Quiz on this video](https://sozai.app/tools/quiz-generator/?from=transcript&id=81975) Free, made by AI from this transcript. No signup. --- This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/peter-trawny-heidegger-being-and-time/ — the same content, without the markup. Published by SozAI (https://sozai.app). 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