Dasein Disclosed: John Haugeland's Heidegger
John Haugeland, Joseph RouseA labyrinth of notoriously difficult ideas and terminology, Being and Time has inspired copious commentary. Not content merely to explain, Haugeland aspired to a sweeping reevaluation of Heidegger’s magnum opus and its conception of human life as Dasein―a reevaluation focused on Heidegger’s effort to reawaken philosophically dormant questions of what it means “to be.”
Interpreting Dasein unconventionally as “the living of a living way of life,” Haugeland put involvement in a shared world, rather than individual persons or their experience, at the heart of Heidegger’s phenomenology of understanding and truth. Individuality, Haugeland insists, emerges in the call to take responsibility for a collective way of being in the world. He traces this thought to Heidegger’s radical conclusion that one does not truly understand philosophical concepts unless that understanding changes how one lives.
As illuminating as it is iconoclastic, Dasein Disclosed is not just Haugeland’s Heidegger―it is a major contribution to philosophy in its own right.