I am what I Is

For last monday’s class we read some writers who were unknown to men prior to the readings. These men were Karl Jaspers and Miguel de Unamuno. Unamuno seemed to favor a more subjective stance to truth very similar to Kierkegaard. He favored passion of rationality which is something I have a hard time understanding. To me, when one rejects god it is a rational rejection, but Unamuno insists that the rejection of god is a passionate rejection. While Unamuno’s writing is intriguing it did not leave me with the feeling that perhaps subjective truth is superior to objective truth in the way that Kierkegaard did.

The following reading’s were mainly focused on being. Jaspers for instance, attempts to systematically understand Existenz while Heidegger attempts to explain the Da-sein. Da-sein is the being who understands being. This has led me to believe that the Da-sein is the understanding of the being of a human being, for humans understand that they are “being.” Isn’t this one of the main themes of existentialism; The human analyzing his very existence, his essence, or his being? The Da-sein seems to me to describe the individual self who just “is.” Both of these works seemed to parallel each other as often is seen with these existentialist writers. Heidegger’s explanation of Da-Sein and his conception of the “they” seemed to describe Nietzsche’s herd mentality. As well as his conception of the falling pray being present in Camus’ The Fall. “It has not fallen prey to some being which it first runs into in the course of its being, or perhaps does not but it has fallen prey to the world which itself belongs to its being” (Heidegger, 128). Call me crazy, but I believe this is strikingly similar to Jean’s struggle in The Fall. Apparantly Camus was inspired by Heidegger, as well as Sartre being Heidegger’s pupil which i’m sure we will discuss later on in the semester.

Our class spent a large amount of time trying to understand what Heidegger meant by Da-sein and I’m still left with a feeling of uncertainty. The way in which he describes it is frustrating because he uses the same words to mean different things, but this may be unavoidable with such a complex concept as “being.” I fell in to the same trap earlier in this post trying to explain it. 

We were asked in class if we believe that we are our authentic selves to which I answered “No.” As I understand Heidegger’s claim of authenticity, a Da-sein would fully understand it’s own being, and I cannot confidently say that I fully understand “being.” Sure there are times when I have a heightened sense of being, where perhaps I transcend “averageness” as he calls it, but generally I slip back into the average. I am average no matter how much I would like to think otherwise. The “they” is too enticing for me, because it disburdens me of this struggle to understand myself. I try to be normal and average, because that is what is most comfortable. It’s easy to say I am different than the average or mundane “being” for taking an existentialist class, but there are at least 20 students in that class who share similar thoughts (not to mention in the entire world), so doesn’t that make us beings-among-one-another? “The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has always already surrendered itself, in the being-among-one-another”  (126). It is just far too easy to give up the burden of this existential question of “Who am I?” although I must admit that this question will follow me to my grave, and I know I will ever come up with an answer. Therefore, I must deny that I will ever have an authentic existence and find it highly improbable that anyone could.