“Thus where everything that presences exhibits itself in the
light of a cause-effect coherence, even God can, for representational thinking,
lose all that is exalted and holy, the mysteriousness of his distance. In the light of causality, God can sink to the
level of a cause.” (26)
Here Heidegger seems to suggest that our drive to examine
and assess everything will often lead us to misinterpret things. I read this as meaning that we will, when
presented with something with cause and effect, often oversimplify the thing as
only (or at least primarily) notable in that it is the cause (or effect) of
something. We seek out relationships
like this between things in order to understand them. At first, I thought the consequence of this was simply that we
were devaluing things—that we miss some value by only examining such
relationships. We do not see the mystery
or inherent beauty in things, and this is bad for our perception of everything. Reviewing it, though, it seems like Heidegger
takes this further by pointing out that we do not simply view things less Romantically
and lose some value that way, but that we in fact get an incorrect
interpretation of the thing. Our
perception of the thing is actually false.
We can make correct determinations about a thing, but with this, “the
danger can remain that in the midst of all this correct the true will withdraw”
(26). Our drive to measure and analyze can
and does lead us to understand things only in their measurements and analysis,
and not in the truth of them.
For me, it was odd to read that an overly scientific
assessment of things could lead to an incomplete knowledge of things. It is through looking at things closely that
we seem to miss the fuller understanding of things (or in failing to look to
their origins). What do you think about
our scientific way of thinking? Does it
bring us, in your opinion, to full understandings of things, or do we miss the
point in our pursuit of measurements and relationships?
I think that examining things too closely and critically can cause us to misunderstand them further because often times if we are analyzing the different components of something, trying to figure out what it means, we miss the bigger picture. I think this is what Heidegger is trying to say in this reading. Also, in our quest to define everything I think we do lose a lot of perspective of how that thing fits into the world because we are so focused on defining it as an individual piece. This reading reminded me a lot of the readings about studying ecology from multiple perspectives because, like those readings, I think that Heidegger is trying to stress that there are many ways to define or learn about something and by only approaching it from a single scientific perspective, we risk losing all our understanding and all the mysticism of that thing.
ReplyDeleteI too agree that Heidegger would call for us to try to ignore our sense of causation when making observations and inquiring knowledge. Heidegger explained to us that beyond the scientific (cause and effect) perspective of revealing, our surroundings can be appreciated religiously, aesthetically, poetically, etc. The problem with solely focusing on our definition of knowledge through the scientific lens is that it restricts us to seeing the world as only calculable forces which makes us mere calculators destined to keep exploiting reality. Therefore beyond having an enframed mindset, human achievement is seen merely through dominating this reality, which is currently the commodity of nature.
ReplyDeletePurely scientific thinking can definitely remove creativity and worth from conversation and average human interactions. Although Heidegger's suggestion of a constant presence of causes does pose an interesting argument, society cannot be sustained on such a systematic level of thought. Thoughts aside, the beauty of discourse lies in its unpredictability, and if we only speak in predetermined terms then we are failing our gift of language. Our desire to assess and examine things, as Heidegger suggests, is what makes us intelligent and superior beings, and if that desire is removed we are left with a pile of undiscovered ideas and untapped knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI do think that we cannot fully understand things if we only examine them closely and critically. I agree with Heideggar that this way of thinking causes us to misinterpret many things. However, I see a real problem in only looking at the big picture as well. If we only look at how everything works together, we can equally misinterpret how things work and function. I do think that we as a society should move away from thinking that we can only rightly acquire knowledge through scientific means in order to fully understand things around us. I think that Heideggar made a good point that an overemphasis of the scientific point of view leads to us have a superficial value of those things.
ReplyDeleteI think that our scientific way of thinking is what has gotten us in trouble in terms of nature. We focus so much on detail and scientifically proving something or finding out something's usefulness that we do not think about the long term consequences. I find that it is harder for us to look at big pictures today because we get hung up on the small aspects of whatever we study. There needs to be a way to find a balance between details and the overall idea of something. The small details do make up the whole picture and are essential but what would be the point of studying them if we did not have a clear comprehension of the over arching principle.
ReplyDeleteI feel that Heidegger's claim brings up legitimate concerns that our curiosity and growing understanding of causes and effects could potentially lead to misunderstandings, but I think that his scenario possibly is a worst case scenario. Earlier in the semester, we touched on the divide between religion/the mystical unknown and modern sciences, and the conclusion that seems to be the case in today's society is that these two do not like to mix. Both religion and sciences exist apart from each other, for the most part, because people do not like mixing the two together. The reasoning behind this is that since these two philosophies could potentially damage the other, they aren't to be mixed and humanity mostly understands this. So I have to disagree a bit with Heidegger's claim that reason will lead to God as being a cause and effect because this seems to be an extreme situation.
ReplyDeleteHeidegger's claims regarding the truth surrounding scientific inquiry are circuitous and in someways narrowly focused. When reading his writing, I have a sense that he is concerned mostly with technology relating to engineering and less focus is given to medical and health-related advancements. While our true relationship with nature may be tainted by human strives and advances in technology, what of the importance of medical advancements in forwarding humanity and reducing human suffering. For example, Tuberculosis currently infects one-third of the world population. The reason why not all of those people have been identified is because the infection has a latent and active form.
ReplyDeleteOf its active form there averages an 8.8 million case annual incidence rate. In all, TB is the second most common cause of death for infectious pathogens following HIV. Yet because we have such a great understanding of tuberculosis due to modern medical research, humanity has been capable of making achievements in vaccines and treatments. Understanding the two phases of infection occurred through very direct scientific methods but yielded largely successful humanitarian consequences as a whole.
While looking closely at things in science may take away some of the emotional, natural relationships, as a whole scientific inquiry gives humanity a more holistic and proper understanding of the natural world.