References for Theme: Dreyfus
- Dreyfus, Hubert L
- "Between Technē and Technology: The Ambiguous Place of Equipment in Being and Time" (1984)
(p.25) Heidegger, however, never works out a history of the being of equipment, so we will have to construct it from hints. The most important of these hints are Heidegger's discussion of the Greek notion of techne at the beginning of our history and his remark in "Science and Reflection" that, in the technological understanding of the being, subject and object no longer stand in a relation of representation but are both absorbed into a total systematic ordering. ("Both subject and object are sucked up as standing-reserve.") (QCT.173). It follows that opposing the Cartesian subject/object distinction in terms of an account...
- "Between Technē and Technology: The Ambiguous Place of Equipment in Being and Time" (1984)
(p.32) The idea that in the technological world equipment more and more comes to fit together in one single totality is already a step from the relatively autonomous and autochthonous workshop of the craftsman towards the uprooted interconnectedness of industrial mass production. Its final achievement would be a world system under the feedback control of cybernetics. Heidegger makes a similar point in The Question Concering Technology, when he criticizes Hegel's definition of the machine as an autonomous tool and contrasts the autonomous tools of the craftsman with the total ordering characteristic of the technological machine
- "Between Technē and Technology: The Ambiguous Place of Equipment in Being and Time" (1984)
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.129) [...] each tool has a specific place in a workshop. Here again the whole determines what counts as the parts. The workshop as a region makes possible places for the saw, the lathe, the work bench, etc.
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.185) We have a skilled, everyday mastery of equipment and of ourselves. We know how to hammer and the point of our hammering. More generally, each of us knows how to be that particular for-the-sake-of-which each of us is-father, professor, etc. We are skilled at existing. "In understanding, as an existentiale, that which we have such competence over is not a 'what,' but being as existing" (183) [143] . Moreover, we are such skills. "Dasein is not something occurrent which possesses its competence for something by way of an extra; it is primarily its ability to be. Dasein is in every...
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.228) But even the authentic self that is in touch with itself "must forget itself if, lost in the world of equipment, it is to be able 'actually' to go to work and manipulate something" (405)[354]. Heidegger, therefore, needs some way of distinguishing the general structure of absorption from the kind of absorption that yields to the general structure in such a way as to turn away from itself.l He calls succumbing to the pull and thereby being closed-off, fascination.
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.32) Husserl says that phenomenology should study only what can be made fully evident. Heidegger reverses Husserl's understanding of phenomenology on this point. Husserl's method, which aims at adequate evidence and complete freedom from prejudice, cannot be used when we wish to understand the background upon which all our understanding takes place. Our understanding of being is so pervasive in everything we think and do that we can never arrive at a clear presentation of it. Moreover, since it is not a belief system but is embodied in our skills, it is not the sort of thing we could ever get...
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.70) Although he concentrates on the special case of breakdown, Heidegger's basic point should be that mental content arises whenever the situation requires deliberate attention. As Searle puts it when discussing the place of intentional content, "Intentionality rises to the level of skill." The switch to deliberation is evoked by any situation in which absorbed coping is no longer possible-any situation that, as Heidegger puts it, requires "a more precise kind of circumspection, such as 'inspecting,' checking up on what has been attained, [etc.]" (409) [358]. Deliberate attention and thus thematic intentional consciousness can also be present, for example, in curiosity,...
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.93) Heidegger would object to traditional accounts of everyday activity such as those found in Aristotle's discussion of the practical syllo-gism and in contemporary philosophies of action such as Donald Davidson's, which hold that we must explain an action as caused by the desire to reach some goal. Heidegger, as we have seen, would also reject John Searle's claim that even where there is no desire, we must have in mind conditions of satisfaction, so that the experience of acting contains within itself a representation of the goal of the action. According to Heidegger, to explain everyday transparent coping we do...
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.97) In laying out world, Heidegger seems to shift without explanation from speaking of the workshop, to the referential whole (Verweisungsganzheit), to the equipmental whole (Zeugganzes), to the involvement whole (Bewandtnisganzheit), to the phenomenon of world, to worldliness. The equipmental whole, I take it, describes the interrelated equipment; the referential whole its interrelations; and the involvement whole adds human purposiveness. The workshop is a specific example of all these wholes; the phenomenon of world is the special way the world manifests itself; and worldliness is the way of being of the world and of all its subworlds.
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
(p.99) The world, i.e., the interlocking practices, equipment, and skills for using them, which provides the basis for using specific items of equipment, is hidden. It is not disguised, but it is undiscovered. So, like the available, the world has to be revealed by a special tech-nique.12 Since we ineluctably dwell in the world, we can get at the world only by shifting our attention to it while at the same time staying involved in it. Luckily for the phenomenologist, there are special situations in which the phenomenon of world is forced upon our awareness: -"To the everydayness of being-in-the-world there...
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (1991)
- Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, División I (1991)
(p.190) If Heidegger's carpenter sees that it is lunch time, it is logically possible for him to eat rocks, and physically possible for him to eat acorns. He could also arbitrarily choose not to eat at all and go fishing. However, given his cultural background, his current mood of, let's say, professional seriousness ("By way of having a mood, Dasein 'sees' possibilities, in terms of which it is" (188) [148]), and his current involvement in his work, only a certain range of possibilities, say knackwurst or bratwurst, are actually available to him. Or, to take a case closer to home, if...
- "Heidegger on gaining a free relation to technology" (1997)
(p.25) The difficulty in locating just where Heidegger stands on technology is no accident. Heidegger has not always been clear about what distinguishes his approach from a romantic reaction to the domination of nature, and when he does finally arrive at a clear formulation of his own original view, it is so radical that everyone is tempted to translate it into conventional platitudes about the evils of technology. Thus Heidegger’s ontological concerns are mistakenly assimilated to humanistic worries about the devastation of nature.
- "Heidegger on gaining a free relation to technology" (1997)
(p.26) Heidegger’s concern is the human distress caused by the technological understanding of being, rather than the destruction caused by specific technologies. Consequently, Heidegger distinguishes the current problems caused by technology—ecological destruction, nuclear danger, consumerism, et cetera—from the devastation that would result if technology solved all our problems.
- "Heidegger on gaining a free relation to technology" (1997)
(p.31) Just preserving pre-technical practices, even if we could do it, would not give us what we need. The pre-technological practices no longer add up to a shared sense of reality and one cannot legislate a new understanding of being. For such practices to give meaning to our lives, and unite us in a community, they would have to be focused and held up to the practitioners. This function, which later Heidegger calls ‘‘truth setting itself to work,’’ can be performed by what he calls a work of art. Heidegger takes the Greek temple as his illustration of an artwork working....
- "Heidegger on gaining a free relation to technology" (1997)
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