Fenomenologia

Destarte, enquanto os computadores analógicos operam com quantidades contínuas, todos os computadores digitais são máquinas de função descontínua. Como estabelece A. M. Turing, famoso por suas definições a respeito da essência de um computador digital: (As máquinas de função descontínua) movem-se aos saltos ou a cliques, de um estado bem definido para outro. Esses estados são suficientemente diferentes para que se ignore a possibilidade de confusão entre si. Rigorosamente falando, não (…)

O termo de Heidegger para o aspecto receptivo do modo de ser do Dasein, onde ele justamente descobre coisas e maneiras de agir importando a ele, é Befindlichkeit. Esta não é uma palavra em alemão comum, mas é construída de uma saudação diária, «Wie befinden Sie sich?», que literalmente pergunta «como te encontras?» — algo como nossa saudação «como vai?». Para traduzir este termo certamente não podemos certamente usar o termo dos tradutores em inglês, «state-of-mind», que sugere, pelo menos (…)

Original
4. Detachment and Objectivity. From the Greeks we inherit not only our assumption that we can obtain theoretical knowledge of every domain, even human activities, but also our assumption that the detached theoretical viewpoint is superior to the involved practical viewpoint. According to the philosophical tradition, whether rationalist or empiricist, it is only by means of detached contemplation that we discover reality. From Plato’s theoretical dialectic, which turns the mind (…)

Original
At this point someone is sure to object that in spite of his interest in our shared, everyday practices, Heidegger, unlike Wittgenstein, uses very unordinary language. Why does Heidegger need a special, technical language to talk about common sense? The answer is illuminating.
To begin with, Heidegger and Wittgenstein have a very different understanding of the background of everyday activity. Wittgenstein is convinced that the practices that make up the human form of life are a (…)

Original
5. Methodological Individualism. Heidegger follows Wilhelm Dilthey in emphasizing that the meaning and organization of a culture must be taken as the basic given in the social sciences and philosophy and cannot be traced back to the activity of individual subjects. Thus Heidegger rejects the methodological individualism that extends from Descartes to Husserl to existentialists such as the pre-Marxist Sartre and many contemporary American social philosophers. In his emphasis on the (…)

This commentary has been circulating in gradually changing versions for over twenty years. It started in 1968 as a set of “Fybate Lecture Notes” transcribed from my course on Being and Time at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1975 I started circulating my updated lecture notes to students and anyone else who was interested. For a decade thereafter I revised the notes each year, incorporating and responding to what I learned from my students and teaching assistants. By 1985 there (…)

Original
3. Theoretical Holism. Plato’s view that everything human beings do that makes any sense at all is based on an implicit theory, combined with the Descartes/Husserl view that this theory is represented in our minds as intentional states and rules for relating them, leads to the view that even if a background of shared practices is necessary for intelligibility, one can rest assured that one will be able to analyze that background in terms of further mental states. Insofar as (…)

1. Explicitness. Western thinkers from Socrates to Kant to Jürgen Habermas have assumed that we know and act by applying principles and have concluded that we should get clear about these presuppositions so that we can gain enlightened control of our lives. Heidegger questions both the possibility and the desirability of making our everyday understanding totally explicit. He introduces the idea that the shared everyday skills, discriminations, and practices into which we are socialized (…)

2. Mental Representation. To the classic assumption that beliefs and desires underlie and explain human behavior, Descartes adds that in order for us to perceive, act, and, in general, relate to objects, there must be some content in our minds — some internal representation — that enables us to direct our minds toward each object. This "intentional content" of consciousness has been investigated in the first half of this century by Husserl and more recently by John Searle.
Heidegger (…)

Tenho diante de mim uma laranja e, apesar de parecer supérfluo, pergunto: o que é a laranja?
Um botânico, um agrônomo, provavelmente técnico da EMATER ou de O Globo Rural (!!), responde-me algo mais ou menos assim: "é um fruto da espécie citrus sinensis, com a forma de uma grande baga esférica, dividida em vários septos ou gomos e cuja casca é de um amarelo dourado (cor de laranja!) no estado de maturação". Surpreende-me que, para o sitiante que a planta e a cultiva, assim como para o (…)