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So,

thank you so very much for deciding to turn to Politalk -

I'm going to be talking today about Philosophy, and already we can see a number of problems come about with even the mention of Philsophy. I know a number of people, perhaps the majority, view philosophy as pointless at least, and outmoded and dead at most. I can't say I disagree, but I'll continue to air my philosophical grievances pretty much for the entirety of my life...


...fortunately, my grievances have a certain amount of merit, respectability, and warrant (as Solomon R.I.P. once put it).

What I'd like to discuss today is the differences between two very similar philosophers.

That is, Heidegger and Husserl.

They have two very key concepts respectively, which are easily ascertained.

That is 'Primordial Intentionality' on the one hand -

- and what I'll call 'Level' on the other, as abstractly understood.


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The notion of 'Level' properly understood is, of course, the everyday conception of level. Level is sort of a shift in focus from varying degrees of rank.

It presupposes a kind of 'intentional object', and says basically, at least in Husserl, that one must make a conscious attempt to analyze varying levels of conscience, nuemenon, and phenomenon.

It's the basic underlying premise of phenomenology, and is much used by philosophers in Heidegger's time.

In fact, Heidegger dedicates his seminal 'Sein und Zeit' to Husserl, for his 'phenomenology'.

However, the way in which Heidegger 'moves away' from Husserl is in his most important concept, and that is 'Primordial Intentionality'.

'Primordial' intentionality is, in a sense, the kind of thing one can understand almost immediately. It doesn't take a Webster-mirriam kind of mindset to really understand (verstehen) what this kind of intentionality presupposes.

When something is primordial, it is basic.

So, on a basic level, we know what it means to be 'basic', and I think this is something many of the existentialists of our time really leave out.

This idea, notion, concept - is something we might like to think of as, in a sense, sort of 'brute physical reality' like the 'fear of god'.

A kind of 'intentionality' where I analyze concepts - or as Dreyfus put's it, where I 'stop and think' - is really a kind of delusion, not something worth doing at all, unless you really need to. Perhaps, just as a kind of tool... one which, if we were real 'masters' at our craft, we would probably not even need to use at all.


Of course, it doesn't take too long to think that... well, maybe that's not really true. I stop and think about things all the time. I even enjoy doing so.

But what one misses in this ascertation is the very important sense in which we have a responsibility to ourselves and the world to simply engage the world on a level of understanding (verstehen) which finds in-itself the kind of resoluteness put forth by many of the early scientists, which is - if we 'analyze' we 'deconstruct'. We rip it to shreds, much like the Shaw's Kitten example I put forth in an earlier lecture.

We sort of, see something we don't understand...

...this isn't, of course, to say we do not like it, or other such consequent existential arguments, but let's leave that aside.

But... we sort of see something we don't understand, and we are supposed to kind of 'circumspect'.

Well, Heidegger in fact defends this notion at some length, but really what I'm trying to get at is the conception of 'Primordial Intentionality' as the 'best' manner in which to live life.


Think of any number of examples which should spring to mind, and you have to think... is this really what it's all about?



~Domestic Democracy United

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