I don't get Heidegger
If someone is a Heidegger scholar, I'm in need of desperate understanding of what this guy is talking about. It's not big deal, but it's just something that is bugging me because it doesn't make sense.
“This interpretation of the transition from the Da-sein to something merely objectively present, however, misses the phenomenal content in that the being still remaining does not represent a mere corporeal thing. Even the objectively present corpse is, viewed theoretically, still a possible object for pathological anatomy whose understanding is oriented toward the idea of life. Merely-being-objectively-present is ‘more’ than a lifeless material thing. In it we encounter something unliving which has lost its life” (Heidegger in Marino 302).
Reading through this extremely dense text, I find myself lost, but at the same time asking questions that possess the answers right under my nose, but put in such a fashion that it is too confusing or sophisticated to my understanding. My reading of the above passage, along with the text prior to that point, forces me to reevaluate what Heidegger is saying. If Da-sein is “being there,” which equals human existence, then I am not sure I have a good understanding of “loss of being-in-the-world.” According to my understanding, the objectively viewed corpse (still physically and mentally alive!) that is “lifeless” does not have life because it is dead, rather it is alive but chooses not to approach life and its situations in a manner that would deem it “alive” and/or an active participant in life. However, the particular person’s attitude/approach to life should not constitute that person as not having life, rather it should address a specific death of a portion of what constitutes a “whole” of one person, e.g. their emotion(s), soul, et cetera. Whether referring to the self of the other, I do not grasp the concept of no-longer-being-there. The logic seems backwards to me, especially when Heidegger compares the no-longer-being-there to the physically dead. How can he say that the physically dead are still a being because they are a corporeal thing encountered? Is he serious? And the person who is alive does not constitute someone who is there because of a dead quality they possess? Help me understand. This could all stem from the fact that I am not approaching this topic from a too philosophical point-of-view; I am a realist in that sense.
“This interpretation of the transition from the Da-sein to something merely objectively present, however, misses the phenomenal content in that the being still remaining does not represent a mere corporeal thing. Even the objectively present corpse is, viewed theoretically, still a possible object for pathological anatomy whose understanding is oriented toward the idea of life. Merely-being-objectively-present is ‘more’ than a lifeless material thing. In it we encounter something unliving which has lost its life” (Heidegger in Marino 302).
Reading through this extremely dense text, I find myself lost, but at the same time asking questions that possess the answers right under my nose, but put in such a fashion that it is too confusing or sophisticated to my understanding. My reading of the above passage, along with the text prior to that point, forces me to reevaluate what Heidegger is saying. If Da-sein is “being there,” which equals human existence, then I am not sure I have a good understanding of “loss of being-in-the-world.” According to my understanding, the objectively viewed corpse (still physically and mentally alive!) that is “lifeless” does not have life because it is dead, rather it is alive but chooses not to approach life and its situations in a manner that would deem it “alive” and/or an active participant in life. However, the particular person’s attitude/approach to life should not constitute that person as not having life, rather it should address a specific death of a portion of what constitutes a “whole” of one person, e.g. their emotion(s), soul, et cetera. Whether referring to the self of the other, I do not grasp the concept of no-longer-being-there. The logic seems backwards to me, especially when Heidegger compares the no-longer-being-there to the physically dead. How can he say that the physically dead are still a being because they are a corporeal thing encountered? Is he serious? And the person who is alive does not constitute someone who is there because of a dead quality they possess? Help me understand. This could all stem from the fact that I am not approaching this topic from a too philosophical point-of-view; I am a realist in that sense.