Notes to part one
Heidegger is one of the main 20th century philosophers. In his book "Being and Time", he speaks of the way in which we experience the solicitude of those around us as a kind of oppression, for it undermines our own projects. He also talks about the way in which we approach objects instrumentally. In this case, the taking up of pre- existing thoughts is likened to things to be used. At the same time, a misgiving about about approaching life through books and learned ideas is expressed. There is a poking of fun at the orderly, almost pat, acquisition of knowledge, followed by a sense of being overwhelmed by experience. There are allusions to Kant, and the idea that we take the material of experience and synthesize it into a whole that is our own, as well as the idea that we get the material of experience through the perception of time and space, and the sense that processing that material is under strain. An allusion to Hegel (The Phenomenology of Spirit) and the idea that we recapitulate the stages that consciousness goes through historically, with the thought of being stuck at an early, stoic stage. The ejaculation "oh christ!" is followed by a jest about not being developed enough to have the sort of consciousness that corresponds to that historic moment. |
