/lit/ - Literature

>>16117650
He's a modern philosopher of absence rather than presence. Things appear to us only when they fail, as when they are being used they dissappear into the background. Dasein, or human being, does not capture knowledge, or experience the world 'inside' the mind, but is a part of the world. So intentional relation as Husserl says consciousness with directionality towards an object, is the reverse for Heidegger. Intentionality is the withdrawal of everything outside Dasein's care.

Things appear to us only in relation to other things, for instance, an inkwell relates to a pen, which relates to writing, and so on. It is not possible to conceive of 'an equipment' objects are part of a system of relations which cannot be known in its totality. This is the surface level view of "Tool Analysis" which is Heidegger's main contribution to phenomenology.

This does not mean that Heidegger is a monist, arguing that all things are reducible to a substance of equipment, but that things are negatively defined rather than positively understood in their totality. We only recognise the wifi router when it stops working, when things work as expected they fall outside of Dasein's concern. The above is why many dubiously describe Heidegger as a neo-pragmatist. Which while an improvement from the traditional "pseudoanalytic pretentious mystical nonsense" strawman, is still not entirely the case...