Second Paper Assignment
Your final paper is to be approximately ten pages long (printed in the standard fashion). Papers are due Monday, December 18th. You should submit your paper by email, as follows:
- The paper should be formatted in the standard way: one inch margins, double spacing, ten or twelve point font, numbered pages.
- The paper should be in RTF or DOC format only.
- Email me the paper before noon on Monday. If you do not receive a confirmation from me by email by 130 pm, then contact me by email or office phone to confirm. If I do not receive your paper, and you do not confirm with me, then the paper will count as not having been turned in.
Now the fun part: some suggested topics.
- What is the relation in everyday life between the Anyone (the "they") and the Anyone-self? What is the Anyone-self, and how does it relate to the self as such? What does Heidegger mean by saying that, "Proximally, it is not 'I', in the sense of my own Self, that 'am', but rather the Others, whose way is that of the Anyone" (p. 167/129)? (This question does not ask you about the relationship between the owned self and the Anyone.)
- Does Heidegger succeed in section 43a in showing that "the ‘scandal of philosophy’ is not that this proof [of the existence of the external world] has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again" (p. 249/205)?
- What is the pheomenological content of Heidegger's claim that disclosedness is "primordial truth" and more basic than the truth of assertions? Is he right?
- Heidegger characterizes Dasein as "the null basis of a nullity." He elaborates, "It has been released from its basis, not through itself but to itself, so as to be as this basis" (p. 330/285). Does this mean that we can never escape the cultural context in which we are reared, that we must always remain (some variation of) who we have been? (One question to ask to begin thinking about this issue is this: Are these two different worries or just one?)
- Of freedom Heidegger writes, it "… is only in the choice of one possibility – that is, in tolerating one’s not having chosen the others and one’s not being able to choose them" (p. 331/285). What does this mean? What is Heidegger’s vision of freedom? Is it a compelling one? How does it relate to other concerns philosophers sometimes have, when they use the word "freedom?"
- Must resolute Dasein always be an alien in its world, since anxiety has always already disconnected it from the world in which it was reared? In other words, once anxiety has jarred Dasein out of its complacent immersion in the Anyone, how can Dasein return to everyday life and participate in the life of the community?
- Can an owned individual act from moral considerations, or are moral considerations all hopelessly dependent on "idle talk" and the Anyone? (For those of you with some background in existentialism, you’ll recognize this theme from Nietzsche, who demands that the autonomous individual be "supramoral" or "beyond good and evil," and Kierkegaard, whose "Knight of Faith" effects a "teleological suspension of the ethical.")
- If all meaning is public and communal, hence "articulated by the Anyone" (click here for passages), could anything resolute Dasein says (and which truly expresses what matters to him or her) be understood by others? (Think about Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the unintelligibility of Abraham, if you know some Kierkegaard.)
- In section 74, Heidegger asserts that resolute Dasein takes over the possibilities on which it resolves from its "heritage," thus "driving out" every "accidental and 'provisioinal' possibility" (p. 435/383-4). Does this mean that resolute Dasein must always be a traditionalist?
- Design your own topic. In order to do this, you must formulate a clear question and get my approval . In order to get my approval by the 7th, it would be wise to send me the question at least several days before then (by email or in person), so that I can help you tighten it up.