Episode #100 - Heidegger Pt. 1 - Phenomenology and Dasein
Episode #100 - Heidegger Pt. 1 - Phenomenology and Dasein
This episode begins with a humorous philosophical anecdote—Plato’s definition of a human being as a “featherless biped” and Diogenes’ infamous rebuttal with a plucked chicken—introducing ontology: the study of existence and what it means to “be.” From there, the discussion traces the development of ontological inquiry through Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, a method focused not on the external world, but on the structures of human consciousness and how we experience reality. Husserl’s goal was to reach certainty by “bracketing” assumptions and identifying the essence of experiences. However, his student, Martin Heidegger, found phenomenology lacking for failing to address existence itself. Heidegger reorients philosophy around the concept of Dasein—“being there”—arguing that we are not detached observers of the world but beings fundamentally embedded in it. This ontological shift challenges the long-standing subject-object framework of Western thought and suggests that many global and philosophical issues stem from neglecting these foundational questions. Heidegger insists that understanding what it means to be is not esoteric but vital, as it underpins every other question we ask about the world.
Further reading:
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology by Martin Heidegger (1982)
Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology by Edmund Husserl (1960)
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger (1927)
See the full transcript here.
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