Being-In-The-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being in Time, Division I

I read this book for a graduate seminar on philosophy. Hubert Dreyfus' book helps to illuminate one of the most influential philosophical books of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time," which deconstructs phenomenology. Heidegger's kind of phenomenology has to do with the idea of phenomenon, which means something that appears and shows itself. His criticism of traditional philosophy is that it gets started with categories, concepts, and notions, departing from the way human comprehension of this world first shows itself. This is Aristotelian and Aristotle is an enormous influence on Heidegger. Yet, there is something very radical going on here, and that is the idea of "being" is connected to meaning and negativity. In the history of philosophy, being has a positive concept, something that "is" thus, the opposite of being is none being. Heidegger wants to show how the meaning of being is distorted by this understanding of being as a purely positive concept, as a "thing" a full present entity. For Example, he also very much critiques in modern art, the modern conception of objectivity, the world is transformed into an object independent of art, of its significance, its meaning, or interest in it. This was due in large part because of modern science, and its strong sense of objectification converting nature into a set of mere objects, time, and space that are measurable and analyzable through scientific means. Meaning, importance, and significance for Heidegger equals value; science and nature have none of this as pure objects. Therefore, anything of meaning, and of significance would be transferred into the subject it would be simply the human estimation, nature itself has no meaning or significance in that respect. Heidegger critiques this scientific model. As he says in his phenomenology, "Well how is it that human existence first understands itself? Here he is talking about things that are very ordinary and complex. We are in a world that has significance, it is meaningful to us, it matters to us, it fits into our interests in such a way that we are absorbed into its significance. So, when we come across the world, first and foremost it is not a mere object that is standing apart from us or our mind, but rather it has significant elements of our environment that fit into our lives. Some things are significant, or they are useful, or dangerous, or satisfying, etc. What Heidegger wants to say in his phenomenology is we have to pay attention to this way of being. Therefore, first and foremost he says "being" matters, it matters to us. "Being" is a significance, it is not just a bare object or a bare fact. Heidegger doesn't accept this idea of subject on one side and object on the other side, that means that when humans have their understanding of the world, it is not just a human projection, it is not just a human construction. It is a revealing way of seeing; it is world disclosive. The meaning of th

I have gone through this book at least three times and I find it to be the clearest and most easily understandable companion to Heidegger's magnum opus. One of the things that makes this book so special is that Dreyfus' is giving us his class notes and updating them every year until after some 25 years we have a very refined and distilled product . I have yet to find anyone who can equal the clarity here.

BEING-IN-THE-WORLD : A Commentary on Heidegger's 'Being and Time,' Division I. By Herbert L. Dreyfus. 370 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, Eighth Printing 1999 (1991). ISBN 0-262-54056-8 (pbk.)Anyone who attempts to study Heidegger's commentators will quickly discover that many of them can be even more difficult than Heidegger himself. One notable exception is George Steiner, whose 'Martin Heidegger' (1989) is such an interesting book that one wishes it had been two or three times longer. As a general introduction to Heidegger's life and thought, however, it can only take one so far, and those wishing for a fuller treatment would be well advised to take a look at the present equally lucid and stimulating study by Dreyfus.He explains that he has limited detailed treatment of 'Being and Time' to Division I of Part One (i.e., the first half), because he considers this "the most original and important section of the work, for it is [here] that Heidegger works out his account of being-in-the-world and uses it to ground a profound critique of traditional ontology and epistemology" (p.vii). Division II, though containing important material, is marred by "some errors so serious as to block any consistent reading" (p.viii), though it is taken up in a 57-page Appendix. In his brief but extremely interesting Introduction, Dreyfus sets out to answer the question, 'Why study Heidegger?' If I have understood Dreyfus correctly, what he seems to be saying is that Western thought has been fundamentally in error since the time of Plato : "Plato and our tradition got off on the wrong track by thinking that one could have a theory of everything.... Heidegger is not against theory. He thinks it powerful and important, but limited" (p.2). Heidegger, in other words, although accepting a reasonable use of reason, has seen through the folly of that worship of reason which leads to its unreasonable and excessive use. Dreyfus tells us that Heidegger seeks to clear away five main false assumptions :1. Explicitness. "Heidegger questions both the possibility and desirability of making our everyday understanding explicit" (p.4). There are and always will be many things in life that cannot be made explicit, that cannot be explained, that are not amenable to "critical reflection," things, for example, such as human skills. 2. Mental Representation. "Heidegger questions the view that experience is always and most basically a relation between a self-contained subject with mental content (the inner) and an independent object (the outer)." For him "there is a more fundamental way of being-in-the-world that cannot be understood in subject/object terms" (p.5). 3. Theoretical Holism. Heidegger "insists that we return to the phenomenon of everyday human activity and stop ringing the changes on the traditional oppositions of immanent/transcendent ... subject/ object ... explicit/tacit ... etc." (p.6). 4. Detachment and Objectivity. "From the Gre

I got to this book after reading "Disclosing New Worlds" by Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores, and Hubert L. Dreyfus, a very profound work that tries to recover our abilities to make sense of each of us as historical beings, helping us to "live life at its best."Reading Being-in-the-World has had a great impact on the way I now understand our everyday life in terms of the practices that we pick up -as Heidegger puts it- from the society we are brought up in and not in terms of abstract theories that try to relate our specific actions to mental states. As a management consultant, it guides me away from trying to specify precisely, say, the 'things' a salesman should say and do in a conversation with a client. I'd be better off if I can find another salesman that exhibits the results I'm interested in, and managing a "learning-in-action" program, so that the first salesman learns from the more experienced salesman. As a father, it guides me away from getting my son to hold on to vast amounts of information -the purpose of our modern educational system- but to situating him in an environment where he can pickup successful practices for dealing with diverse situations- including technical and interpersonal problems.Being-in-the-World was not an easy read for me, since my background is in Computer Science and Management (I had to do some research in the philosophical traditions and problemas that Heidegger was attacking). However, Dreyfus' commentary is most relevant to people in Computer Science and Management - guiding them away from the utopias of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems. I recommend this book to anyone willing to make an effort in understanding one of the deepest thinkers on what it means to be a human being "living life at its best."

I am amazed that this book has not been reviewed. For 30-odd years Hubert Dreyfus has been the beloved guide to Heidegger and Continental philosophy for thousands of undergraduate and graduate students, first at MIT and then at Berkeley. This book is constructed from the courses he taught on Heidegger's work, Kierkegaard, and especially that difficult centerpiece of Heidegger's opus, Being and Time. For the beginner and the expert, he opens Heidegger's questions and claims in distinctive, poignant, simple, accessible ways. I cannot imagine attempting to grasp Heidegger's thought without Dreyfus at my side. Dreyfus' account shows Heidegger in the middle of the struggle with those who came before him as he attempts to make sense of the question of what a human being is. I strongly recommend this book as a helpmate. If you are interested in confronting Heidegger's thought and work, get and read Dreyfus.