Monday 28 April 2014

Heidegger and Authenticity

Last week Craig Clancy from the Open University delivered a nice introductory session of Heidegger's idea of the call of conscience and how it relates to the idea of authenticity - especially in the second part of Heidegger's magnum opus Being and Time. He trotted through most of the concepts that Heidegger deploys to powerful existential effect in that book, especially authenticity's relation to Dasein, the real, the 'fallen' state of everyday life, freedom, death, demise, mood and guilt. Craig correctly pointed out that Heidegger gives all of these terms an important ontological inflection in understanding them from the point of view of time. The key question to emerge from the discussion is the extent to which the early Heidegger can be viewed as a moral philosopher and whether his ethics emerges from an essentially theological context (or not). Thanks to all of you who attended this - we hope to see a few more of you at these events next year Neil T