The Daily Heideggerian

“He’s baaaack!” No, I’m not referring to PT; we’re as in the dark about his return as you are (all two of you, as a result of yet another unacceptable hiatus on our part). But be sure to welcome, again, Martin Heidegger. As a result of February’s rapid-fire account of fundamentally ontological applications of his work, Jeremiah suggested that we change our name to The Daily Heideggerian. For now we’ll continue slowly on that path, though if Congress forces us to relinquish our naming rights, we at least have a backup plan.

The G-20 is winding things down in London after a couple days of annoying, though at this point common, announcements of pressing agendas. Mostly, it was a series of derivations on the same question: how does the free world respond to the failures of capitalism? Despite conservatives’ (real conservatives, Mr. Sarkozy) all-too-easy repudiation of the general question as misleading and factually wrong (I, for one, find it conceptually confusing that “housing market” and “capitalism” mean the same thing now), there were more institutional proposals offered yesterday than post-less Wednesdays the past two months (we need you, PT).

Heidegger is, of course, concerned with Dasein (like a human being, but stripped of everything save his ontological status), as well as Dasein’s concern (we are always entangled with the world, taking care of and concerning ourselves with “things”). Part of the fundamental ontology involves the concept of “being-with,” or Dasein’s relationship with and visibility of the “they” (das Man):

By “Others” we do not mean everyone else but me – those over against whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself – those among whom one is too (Heidegger, Being and Time).

There is a sense that we are ontologically intimate with others, and “being-with” is the action that describes it. There is a lot that Heidegger says about authenticity (there is a lot that any existentialist says about authenticity; see Sartre, Jean-Paul), and this is a big one: how is it that we behave authentically toward other Dasein?

There are, in fact, two kinds of concern: leaping in and leaping ahead. To leap in is to take the other’s “care” away from him – one can find another hammering on a shoe and take both the hammer and the shoe away from him, cobbling until completion and handing him back a finished shoe. Leaping in is concerning oneself with removing the concern from others, disburdening them of their own projects (whether in totality or in measure). There is a creation of dependence in this relation, which is inauthentic. It is the most prevalent form of concern there is.

To leap ahead gives care back to the other: Mit-dasein are allowed to do things for themselves. In a sense, we can help make this so by freeing the other for his care in transparency. This opens up their possibilities of being, allows them to exist in a more authentic manner, and represents an authentic form of concern for Dasein himself.

What does this have to do with G-20? I think you can figure that out on your own.