Sinds last weekend I’ve been listening to Hubert Dreyfus’ lectures on Heidegger (the lectures only cover the first part of Being and Time). Dreyfus has been giving these lectures for over 20 years, he is sort of the expert on Heidegger but at the same time of course he’s criticized by others because he has his interpretation where others have other interpretations. That’s easy - Heidegger is open for much interpretation (and this is an understatement) because he is so hard to read. I remember reading one paper by Heidegger which had sentences like: “Das Sein seint ins seihen”. Or something, I am bad at German also, which makes it even worse. But Dreyfus gives a nice sort of Californian touch to his explanations that make it a little bit easier to digest.
The thing that struck me however is that - apart from all I am learning from Heidegger and from Dreyfus, which is a lot - is that listening to podcasted lectures (instead of actually attending the lecture or reading a book-based-on-lectures) is a totally new and exciting experience. For one thing, I feel as if I am at three places at the same time. For example, I am riding my bike to work, in morning traffic, Utrecht, Netherlands. I am also listening to Dreyfus organising his notes, discussing something with one of his teaching assistents who sits in the front row of a packed auditorium, Berkeley University, California USA, some time ago, and then what Dreyfus speaks about is the phenomenology of a German philosopher who was living in a forest-house in the Black Woods near Freyburg, Germany, 19 2-something. This is interesting! For instance, I can vividly remember now that when Dreyfus talks about how Marvin Minsky, head of MIT in the seventies, would be arguing with Dreyfus over the possibility of artificial intelligence, Dreyfus arguing that the AI project would fail on the basis of Heidegger’s wood-house writings, I was lying in my bed on my back, head on a pillow, Mirjam already sleeping next to me. But I also recall quite specifically that Dreyfus is making a distinction, just after he handed out the paper assignments to his students, between two ways of ‘nearness’, one being the very possibility of our being to experience the world as something that can be near or far (which Dreyfus calls ontological) versus the other being the idea that our being is constituted such that we always seek to be nearer to things (which Dreyfus calls ontic). At that specific moment, I was riding over the bridge over the Vecht canal, on my bike, which is about a minute from where my work is. So I actually remember things in a threefold fashion where the issue concerning Heidegger’s work is connected to Dreyfus’ classroom is connected to the place where I was while listening to the lecture. Boy, is that phenomenology or what?
By the way, where are you all, while you are reading this? (Is anybody still reading this?)
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