Being in the World: Commentary on Heidegger's "Being and Time", Division 1 [Paperback]

Anyone who attempts to study Heidegger's commentators will quickly discover that many of them can be even more difficult than Heidegger himself. One notable exception is George Steiner, whose 'Martin Heidegger' (1989) is such an interesting book that one wishes it had been two or three times longer. As a general introduction to Heidegger's life and thought, however, it can only take one so far, and those wishing for a fuller treatment would be well advised to take a look at the present equally lucid and stimulating study by Dreyfus.

He explains that he has limited detailed treatment of 'Being and Time' to Division I of Part One (i.e., the first half), because he considers this "the most original and important section of the work, for it is [here] that Heidegger works out his account of being-in-the-world and uses it to ground a profound critique of traditional ontology and epistemology" (p.vii). Division II, though containing important material, is marred by "some errors so serious as to block any consistent reading" (p.viii), though it is taken up in a 57-page Appendix.

In his brief but extremely interesting Introduction, Dreyfus sets out to answer the question, 'Why study Heidegger?' If I have understood Dreyfus correctly, what he seems to be saying is that Western thought has been fundamentally in error since the time of Plato : "Plato and our tradition got off on the wrong track by thinking that one could have a theory of everything.... Heidegger is not against theory. He thinks it powerful and important, but limited" (p.2).

Heidegger, in other words, although accepting a reasonable use of reason, has seen through the folly of that worship of reason which leads to its unreasonable and excessive use. Dreyfus tells us that Heidegger seeks to clear away five main false assumptions :

1. Explicitness. "Heidegger questions both the possibility and desirability of making our everyday understanding explicit" (p.4). There are and always will be many things in life that cannot be made explicit, that cannot be explained, that are not amenable to "critical reflection," things, for example, such as human skills.

2. Mental Representation. "Heidegger questions the view that experience is always and most basically a relation between a self-contained subject with mental content (the inner) and an independent object (the outer)." For him "there is a more fundamental way of being-in-the-world that cannot be understood in subject/object terms" (p.5).

3. Theoretical Holism. Heidegger "insists that we return to the phenomenon of everyday human activity and stop ringing the changes on the traditional oppositions of immanent/transcendent ... subject/ object ... explicit/tacit ... etc." (p.6).

4. Detachment and Objectivity. "From the Greeks we inherit not only our assumption that we can obtain theoretical knowledge of every domain, even human activities, but also our assumption that the detached theoretical viewpoint is superior to the involved practical viewpoint" (p.6). Heidegger, following the insights of Nietzsche, Peirce, James and Dewey, denies these assumptions.

5. Methodological Individualism. Heidegger, "in his emphasis on the social context as the ultimate foundation of intelligibility [shares with Wittgenstein] the view that most philosophical problems can be dis(solved) [sic] by a description of everyday social practices" (p.7). In other words, they are pseudo-problems.

If Heidegger were only clearing the ground of 2,500 years of sheer wrongheadedness, he would of course still be an extremely important and valuable thinker. But, as Dreyfus explains, he goes further, for "he has a positive account of authentic human being and a positive methodological proposal for how human being should be systematically studied" (p.8). His influence, which today extends into many areas, has been and continues to be enormous as more and more specialists and experts and technicians of every kind begin to appreciate the fruitfulness of his way of thinking in contrast to the often dismal results produced by their own.

Heidegger's 'Being and Time' is a notoriously difficult book, and Dreyfus' commentary is to be welcomed as the first study that succeeds in making it both intelligible and exciting, even to the non-specialist reader such as myself. As one of the clearest accounts of Heidegger's thought to date, it belongs in the library of anyone who is at all interested in this revolutionary and amazing thinker.

Reading Being-in-the-World has had a great impact on the way I now understand our everyday life in terms of the practices that we pick up -as Heidegger puts it- from the society we are brought up in and not in terms of abstract theories that try to relate our specific actions to mental states. As a management consultant, it guides me away from trying to specify precisely, say, the 'things' a salesman should say and do in a conversation with a client. I'd be better off if I can find another salesman that exhibits the results I'm interested in, and managing a "learning-in-action" program, so that the first salesman learns from the more experienced salesman. As a father, it guides me away from getting my son to hold on to vast amounts of information -the purpose of our modern educational system- but to situating him in an environment where he can pickup successful practices for dealing with diverse situations- including technical and interpersonal problems.

Being-in-the-World was not an easy read for me, since my background is in Computer Science and Management (I had to do some research in the philosophical traditions and problemas that Heidegger was attacking). However, Dreyfus' commentary is most relevant to people in Computer Science and Management - guiding them away from the utopias of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems.

I recommend this book to anyone willing to make an effort in understanding one of the deepest thinkers on what it means to be a human being "living life at its best."