What is Called Thinking? (Heidegger)

[AshvinP]

This multi-part 'essay' is a metaphysical exploration of what we call "thinking", what it means "to think", what calls us to think and, essentially, what it means to be human. It is primarily sourced from Heidegger's lectures by the same name, although it is still a work in progress and may include some additional sources here and there. I plan on posting one 'section' of the essay per day. I would ask that readers limit comments to questions or clarifications until the entire essay is posted. If an issue is raised that you wish to contest or otherwise discuss, then I would ask you create a new thread for it. Thanks!

A common theme in 20th century philosophy and psychology has been the study of "phenomenon", also known as the field of phenomenology.

Documented in the Late Latin phaenomĕnon, referring to the Greek phainomenon, for describing a thought by an individual that is reflected in reality as an experience that escapes the commonplace, even alluding to something that appears to be real, associated with the passive verb phainesthai, for ‘appeared’, from the verb phainein, for ‘to show’ or ‘to appear’, with roots in the Indo-European *bha, interpreted as ‘to shine’ or ‘ to illuminate’.

Just from the etymology alone, we can see that the 'appearances' of the world possessed a numinous quality which most of us simply do not pick up on anymore. They have become objects or signs instead of symbols, exteriors without any interior, syntax without semantics. Owen Barfield wrote an entire book about the need for us to 'save the appearances', fittingly called, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry.

"The obvious is the hardest thing of all to point out to anyone who has genuinely lost sight of it.” (Barfield)

Saving the Appearances is about the world as we see it and the world as it is; it is about God, human nature, and consciousness. The best known of numerous books by the British sage whom C.S. Lewis called the "wisest and best of my unofficial teachers," it draws on sources from mythology, philosophy, history, literature, theology, and science to chronicle the evolution of human thought from Moses and Aristotle to Galileo and Keats. Barfield urges his readers to do away with the assumption that the relationship between people and their environment is static. He dares us to end our exploitation of the natural world and to acknowledge, even revel in, our participation in the diurnal creative process

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There are many other 20th century thinkers who chronicled a similar evolution of consciousness, including, but certainly not limited to, Carl Jung, Erich Neumann, William James, Rudolf Steiner, Martin Heidegger, Jean Gebser, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Sri Aurobindo. There is much more that could be said on this topic, but for our purposes here I want to focus on late Heidegger, who looked at the phenomenology of thinking and cognition with his students. Unlike the art, mythology, philosophy and technology of ancient civilizations, which we must approach indirectly, thinking and cognition is something we can undoubtedly call our own and experience first-hand.

While perceptions appear to us from without, thinking appears from within. The experience of perceiving appearances seems passive, while the experience of thinking about appearances seems active. The important thing to remember here is that we are not talking about what is metaphysically "true" about perceptions, thoughts and the appearances, but how the appearances of perceptions and thoughts reveal themselves to us in the present day. Thinking appears to be a 'latecomer' in the evolutionary process, which is why we are starting with it first. It is most readily and expansively accessible to us for that reason.

We can think of it like peeling off the layers of an onion or taking off clothes to look at the body. We start with what was put on most 'recently' and work from there. From here, we will survey some ideas from Heidegger's lectures on this topic in detail. I want any readers to understand that I am simply repeating in this 'essay' what I have learned from others, and nothing I am writing here is original. I will conclude this portion with a quote from Heidegger's lectures to his students, which were compiled into a book, What is Called Thinking.

What is Called Thinking?[/i]]But must here give attention to another matter. The interpretation of Greek thinking that is guided by modern conceptual thinking not only remains inappropriate for Greek thinking; it also keeps us from hearing the appeal of the problematic of Greek thinking, and thus from being held to a constantly more urgent summons to go on questioning. We must not fail, of course, to reflect on why and in what way it was precisely the thinking of the Greeks that essentially prepared the development of thinking in the sense of forming conceptual ideas; indeed, Greek thinking was bound to suggest that development. But on the path which we are following here, the important thing for us is first to see that our modern way of representational ideas, as long as it stubbornly holds to its way, blocks its own access to the beginning and thus to the fundamental characteristic of Western thinking

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[AshvinP]

Heidegger asks, 'what is the most 'thought-provoking' thing'? By that he means, what gives us over to thinking completely; what things appeal to us to give them our most thoughtfulness. For Heidegger, the most 'thought-provoking' thing in the modern era of advanced science and technology is the idea that we are still not thinking. What does that mean, to not be thinking yet? Even the deepest philosophers and scientists are not yet thinking, according to Heidegger, and he does not necessarily exclude himself from that list.

What are the reasons we are still not thinking? Perhaps it is because we are too apathetic and neglectful of our own capacity to think? But, in that case, the fact that we are still not thinking is no longer the most thought-provoking thing, since it is only a matter of time and effort before we begin thinking. Heidegger claims, instead, we are not thinking because "the thing itself that must be thought about turns away from man, has turned away long ago". That is a rather odd, isn't it? What appeals to us for our thoughts has also turned away from us. How, then, can we identify this thing that is always withdrawing from us; never standing still for us to grasp?

What withdraws from us, says Heidegger, is also drawing us towards it by its withdrawal. We are attracted to it by its withdrawal, as if by a magnetic force. And, as we draw towards what withdraws, we ourselves become pointers towards it. We, as humans, are always pointing towards what withdraws. The essential nature of humans is to points towards that which withdraws and appeals to us for our thoughts; to act as a sign pointing towards what withdraws, or, more accurately, a sign pointing into the withdrawal. To say that we are still not thinking, then, means we are remaining an uninterpreted sign to ourselves and others.

We are a sign that is not read.
We feel no pain, we almost have
Lost our tongue in foreign lands.

What then can convert the uninterpreted sign into a sign which can be read? The answer for Heidegger is the Greek "Mnemosyne", which may be translated as "Memory". More specifically, it is the Memory revealed and laid bare through mythos.

Mythos is what has its essence in its telling-what is apparent in the unconcealedness of its appeal. The mythos is that appeal of foremost and radical concern to all human beings which makes man think of what appears, what is in being. Logos says the same; mythos and logos are not, as our current historians of philosophy claim, placed into opposition by philosophy as such; on the contrary, the early Greek thinkers (Parmenides, fragment 8) are precisely the ones to use mythos and logos in the same sense. Mythos and logos become separated and opposed only at the point where neither mythos nor logos can keep to its original nature. In Plato's work, this separation has already taken place. Historians and philologists, by virtue of a prejudice which modern rationalism adopted from Platonism, imagine that mythos was destroyed by logos. But nothing religious is ever destroyed by logic; it is destroyed only by the God's withdrawal.
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And this, that we are a sign, a sign that is not read, does this not give enough food for thought? What the poet says in these words, and those that follow, may have a part in showing us what is most thought-provoking: precisely what the assertion about our thought-provoking time attempts to think of. And that assertion, provided only we explain it properly, may throw some little light for us upon the poet's word; Hoelderlin's word, in turn, because it is a word of poesy, may summon us with a larger appeal, and hence greater allure, upon a way of thought that tracks in thought what is most thought-provoking. Even so, it is as yet obscure what purpose this reference to the words of Hoelderlin is supposed to serve. It is still questionable with what right we, by way of an attempt to think, make mention of a poet, this poet in particular. And it is also still unclear upon what ground, and within what limits, our reference to the poetic must remain.

And that only brings us to the beginning of our inquiry into the essence of thinking. We must remember here that we are not pursuing a scientific inquiry or simply clarifying our definitions of terms. To approach the essence of thinking is to experience the process of thinking in its fullness and depth, even if there remains an unbridgeable chasm between our thoughts and that which withdraws from them. Heidegger makes clear to his students that learning to think is no small feat. It is presumably like any other craft which requires great skill and practice to master, as we attempt to restore our sight of the 'obvious'.

This is why we are here attempting to learn thinking. We are all on the way together, and are not reproving each other. To learn means to make everything we do answer to whatever essentials address themselves to us at a given time. Depending on the kind of essentials, depending on the realm from which they address us, the answer and with it the kind of learning differs...

Once we are so related and drawn to what withdraws, we are drawing into what withdraws, into the enigmatic and therefore mutable nearness of its appeal...

All through his life and right into his death, Socrates did nothing else than place himself into this draft, this current, and maintain himself in it. This is why he is the purest thinker of the West. This is why he wrote nothing.
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Thinking has entered into literature; and literature has decided the fate of Western science which, by way of the doctrine of the Middle Ages, became the scientia of modem times. In this form all the sciences have leapt from the womb of philosophy, in a twofold manner. The sciences come out of philosophy, because they have to part with her. And now that they are so apart they can never again, by their own power as sciences, make the leap back into the source from whence they have sprung. Henceforth they are remanded to a realm of being where only thinking can find them, provided thinking is capable of doing what is its own to do.

When man is drawing into what withdraws, he points into what withdraws. As we are drawing that way we are a sign, a pointer. But we are pointing then at something which has not, not yet, been transposed into the language of our speech. We are a sign that is not read.
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And so, on our way toward thinking, we hear a word of poesy. But the question to what end and with what right, upon what ground and within what limits, our attempt to think allows itself to get involved in a dialogue with poesy, let alone with the poetry of this poet this question, which is inescapable, we can discuss only after we ourselves have taken the path of thinking.

[AshvinP]

Heidegger wants his students to understand the tone of his lectures on Thinking is not fundamentally pessimistic or optimistic or indifferent. Since at least the time of Schopenhauer's publication of his main work, The Word as Will and Representation [Idea] (1818), critical Western philosophy has taken on a decidedly pessimistic tone. We see that reflected in much of Nietzsche's writings, even those which are critical of Schopenhauer. Heidegger is not disputing the profound insights of these two pillars of 19th century philosophy, but simply observing the general tone of their philosophy and how it has influenced all subsequent philosophy. Another example would be Oswald Spengler's, The Decline of the West.

The assertion seems to be tuned in a negative and pessimistic key. However, "thought-provoking" here means what gives food for thought. Most thought-provoking is not only what gives most food for thought, in the sense that it makes the greatest demands on our thinking; most thought-provoking is what inherently gathers and keeps within itself the greatest riches of what is thought-worthy and memorable. Our assertion says that we are still not thinking. This "still not" contains a peculiar reference to something still to come, of which we absolutely do not know whether it will come to us. This "still not" is of a unique kind, which refuses to be equated with other kinds...

This, and this alone, is why we say, then, that what gives us most food for thought is that we are still not thinking. This means : insofar as we are at all, we are already in a relatedness to what gives food for thought. Even so, in our thinking we have still not come to what is most thought-provoking. Nor can we know by ourselves whether we will get there. Accordingly, our assertion is not optimistic either; nor does it hang suspended in indecision between pessimism and optimism, for then it would have to reckon with both and thereby basically adopt their ways of reckoning.

Ultimately, we as individuals on the way to Thinking will be the deciding factor in how optimistic or pessimistic that path will be. For now, we can take some solace in the fact that we are, in fact, underway. Yet we should not expect to continue on this way without sacrifice. First and foremost, we will need to sacrifice what we colloquially call "thinking" - a formation of representational ideas about ourselves, other people and the 'objective' world. We will not make progress on the way if we stubbornly stick to any pre-conceived definitions or habits of mind. Rather than sticking to any 'scripts' drafted for us, we must remain open and flexible to the 'problematic' of the original question:

What is called thinking? We must guard against the blind urge to snatch at a quick answer in the form of a formula. We must stay with the question. We must pay attention to the way in which the question asks : what is called thinking, what does call for thinking?
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Learning, then, cannot be brought about by scolding. Even so, a man who teaches must at times grow noisy. In fact, he may have to scream and scream, although the aim is to make his students learn so quiet a thing as thinking. Nietzsche, most quiet and shiest of men, knew of this necessity. He endured the agony of having to scream. In a decade when the world at large still knew nothing of world wars, when faith in "progress" was virtually the religion of the civilized peoples and nations, Nietzsche screamed out into the world: "'The wasteland grows . . . " He thus put the question to his fellowmen and above all to himself: "Must one smash their ears before they learn to listen with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and preachers of repentance?
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But riddle upon riddle! What was once the scream "The wasteland grows . . . ,'' now threatens to turn into chatter... This fashion of talking platitudes is at work in that endless profusion of books describing the state of the world today... Script easily smothers the scream, especially if the script exhausts itself in description, and aims to keep men's imagination busy by supplying it constantly with new matter. The burden of thought is swallowed up in the written script, unless the writing is capable of remaining, even in the script itself, a progress of thinking, a way.

Nietzsche's script, for Heidegger, was 'a progress of thinking' that provided a way to bridge the chasm between purely instinctual animal consciousness and the supra-conscious Übermensch (superman). Man as the rational thinking animal, i.e. the 'last man' who exists today, is the sign which points into the destination and the bridge which bridges the chasm. The destination is the superman's dominion of the Earth as a whole; his assumption of dominion over the Earth which fulfills the words of the Old Testament - “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it." Yet we are already veering off the way if we imagine "dominion" in narrow social or political terms. Instead we must embrace the word in its fullest metaphysical sense.

With greater clarity than any man before him, Nietzsche saw the necessity of a change in the realm of essential thinking, and with this change the danger that conventional man will adhere with growing obstinacy to the trivial surface of his conventional nature, and acknowledge only the flatness of these flatlands as his proper habitation on earth. The danger is all the greater because it arises at a moment in history which Nietzsche was the first man to recognize clearly, and the only man so far to think through metaphysically in all its implications. It is the moment when man is about to assume dominion of the earth as a whole.
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This is why Nietzsche says: "Man is the as yet undetermined animal." The statement sounds strange. Yet it only puts into words what Western thought has thought of man from the beginning. Man is the rational animal. Through reason, man raises himself above the animal, but so that he must constantly look down upon the animal, subject it, master it. If we call animal characteristics "sensual," and take reason as non-sensual or supra-sensual, then man - the rational animal - appears as the sensual supra-sensual being. If we follow tradition and call the sensual "physical," then reason, the supra-sensual, is what goes beyond the sensual, the physical; in Greek, πέρα από το φυσικό means beyond the physical, the sensual; the supra-sensual, in passing beyond the physical, is the metaphysical.

[AshvinP]

We will continue our journey by taking a brief detour into Nietzsche's metaphysical 'superman'. The 'superman' is relevant to what calls upon we, the 'last men', to think, but Heidegger does not take us too far down that side path. He actually tells his students that they should "read Aristotle for ten to fifteen years before reading Nietzsche". Nevertheless, Heidegger believed Nietzsche was the 'culmination' of Western metaphysics and therefore his concepts must be mentioned in relation to ontology, i.e. the Being of beings. When Heidegger was lecturing in 1951-52, he indicated the superman may already be existing among us. Yet, if we search for the superman in all of the usual places with all of the usual suspects, then we will never find him.

But we shall never find the super man as long as we look for him in the places of remote-controlled public opinion and on the stock exchanges of the culture business all those places where the last man, and none but he, controls the operation. The superman never appears in the noisy parades of alleged men of power, nor in the well-staged meetings of politicians. The superman's appearance is likewise inaccessible to the teletypers and radio dispatches of the press which present that is, represent events to the public even before they have happened. This well made-up and well staged manner of forming ideas, of representation, with its constantly more refined mechanism, dissimulates and blocks from view what really is.

...Nietzsche's thinking gives voice and language to what now is--but in a language in which the two-thousand year-old tradition of Western metaphysics speaks, a language which we all speak, which Europe speaks-though in a form transposed more than once, timeworn, shallowed, threadbare, and rootless. Plato and Aristotle speak in what is still our language of today. Parmenides and Heraclitus, too, think in what is still our realm of ideas.
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And since we hardly know on what the nature of language rests, we naturally take the view that our motorcycle, for example, standing on the parking lot behind the university, is more real than a thought of Plato about... or Aristotle about... : thoughts which speak to us still to-day in every scientific concept and not only there and make their claim on us, though we pay no attention to this relation, hardly give it a thought.

Owen Barfield, an English contemporary of Heidegger and close acquaintance of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, explored many of the same philosophical themes as Heidegger and emphasized the etymology and essence of ancient language as well. In a conversation with another deep thinker on the nature of human consciousness, David Bohm, Barfield asked, "is it possible to know the implicate order as explicate?", to which Bohm replied, “I think it is but whether that should be called thinking, I don’t think I’m capable of doing it or to a very small extent anyhow. I think it is [thinking] and I think almost everything in the future may depend on more and more people becoming able to [think]."

Heidegger, along the same lines, was in the process of thinking through the nature of thinking, and wanted his students to first reimagine the way in which they interact with the monumental thoughts which they have inherited from the philosophical giants of the West. He wanted all of us to have a "face-to-face converse" with these thinkers and their thoughts, which requires a certain clarity of intention (to learn) and an effort to magnify what is 'great' in their thoughts. We should not presume to know what they were all saying without first encountering them in such a manner. That is especially the case when going to an encounter with Nietzsche's thoughts.

For notwithstanding many exaggerations and dark allusions, everything Nietzsche offers to our thought looks largely as if it were perfectly obvious-including even the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, including even his doctrine of the superman. But that is pure illusion. The doctrine of the superman, which by its nature can never be an anthropology, belongs, like every metaphysical doctrine of man, among the basic doctrines of every metaphysics; it belongs to the doctrine of the Being of beings. One might ask, then, why we do not at once present Nietzsche's doctrine of the superman in the light of his basic metaphysical doctrine of Being.

We do not, for two reasons : first, Nietzsche himself presents his basic metaphysical doctrine, his doctrine of the Being of beings, through the doctrine of the superman, in keeping with the unequivocal trend of all modern metaphysics; and second, we of today, despite our interest in metaphysics and ontology, are scarcely able any longer properly to raise even the question of the Being of beings-to raise it in a way which will put in question our own being so that it becomes questionable in its relatedness to Being, and thereby open to Being.

In what form does the Being which determines all particular beings appear to us? Heidegger says the nature of Being that we have in mind here found its classic Western metaphysical formulation in Friedrich Schelling when he wrote, "in the final and highest instance, there is no being other than willing... willing is primal being and to it alone belong all of [primal being's] predicates: being unconditioned, eternity, independence of time, self-affirmation... all philosophy strives only to find this highest expression". Every particular being and all beings as a whole have their essential co-creative natures through the primal will.

That sounds strange to us; and it will remain strange as long as we remain strangers to the essential and simple thoughts of occidental metaphysics, in other words, as long as we do not think those thoughts but merely go on forever reporting them. It is possible, for example, to ascertain historically down to the last detail what Leibniz said about the Being of beings, and yet not to understand in the least what Leibniz thought when he defined the Being of beings from the perspective of the monad, and defined the monad as the unity of perceptio and appetitus, as the oneness of perception and appetite. What Leibniz thought is then expressed by Kant and Fichte as the rational will, which Hegel and Schelling, each in his own way, reflect upon.

Schopenhauer names and intends the same thing when he thinks of the world as will and idea; and Nietzsche thinks the same thing when he defines the primal nature of beings as the will to power. That the Being of beings appears here invariably and always as will, is not because a few philosophers have formed opinions about Being. What this appearance of Being as will points to is something that cannot be found out by any amount of scholarship. Only the inquiry of thought can approach it, only thought can do justice to its problematic, only thought can keep it thoughtfully in mind and memory.

[SanteriSatama]

A common theme in 20th century philosophy and psychology has been the study of "phenomenon", also known as the field of phenomenology.

Documented in the Late Latin phaenomĕnon, referring to the Greek phainomenon, for describing a thought by an individual that is reflected in reality as an experience that escapes the commonplace, even alluding to something that appears to be real, associated with the passive verb phainesthai, for ‘appeared’, from the verb phainein, for ‘to show’ or ‘to appear’, with roots in the Indo-European *bha, interpreted as ‘to shine’ or ‘ to illuminate’.

Just from the etymology alone, we can see that the 'appearances' of the world possessed a numinous quality which most of us simply do not pick up on anymore. They have become objects or signs instead of symbols, exteriors without any interior, syntax without semantics. Owen Barfield wrote an entire book about the need for us to 'save the appearances', fittingly called, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry.

"The obvious is the hardest thing of all to point out to anyone who has genuinely lost sight of it.” (Barfield)

Finnish has similar semantic root. To appear, 'ilmetä'/'ilmaantua', comes from root 'ilma' (air, and in related languaged also sky weather, climate, space); with feminine suffix -tar, Ilmatar refers to feminine creative aspect and mythologically She is the mother of ur-shaman Väinämöinen.

As for Greek, Classical Greek has three voices: Active, Middle and Passive. According to my intuition, present participle phainomenon is in this context more closely associated with the intransitive Middle voice than with Passive voice, even though in the present participle there is no morphological distinction between Middle and Passive voices. I don't mean only to nitpick and brag with my Greek skills, the semantic distinction can be philosophically critical in this context. Passive voice would correspond with physicalist interpretation of quantum phenomenology, intransitive Middle voice interpretation has participatory meaning of inclusion of observer in the observation event.

Both Finnish and PIE roots of phenomenology are open to associating the root meaning with quantum superposition and process of decoherence.

[AshvinP]

A common theme in 20th century philosophy and psychology has been the study of "phenomenon", also known as the field of phenomenology.

Documented in the Late Latin phaenomĕnon, referring to the Greek phainomenon, for describing a thought by an individual that is reflected in reality as an experience that escapes the commonplace, even alluding to something that appears to be real, associated with the passive verb phainesthai, for ‘appeared’, from the verb phainein, for ‘to show’ or ‘to appear’, with roots in the Indo-European *bha, interpreted as ‘to shine’ or ‘ to illuminate’.

Just from the etymology alone, we can see that the 'appearances' of the world possessed a numinous quality which most of us simply do not pick up on anymore. They have become objects or signs instead of symbols, exteriors without any interior, syntax without semantics. Owen Barfield wrote an entire book about the need for us to 'save the appearances', fittingly called, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry.

"The obvious is the hardest thing of all to point out to anyone who has genuinely lost sight of it.” (Barfield)

Finnish has similar semantic root. To appear, 'ilmetä'/'ilmaantua', comes from root 'ilma' (air, and in related languaged also sky weather, climate, space); with feminine suffix -tar, Ilmatar refers to feminine creative aspect and mythologically She is the mother of ur-shaman Väinämöinen.

As for Greek, Classical Greek has three voices: Active, Middle and Passive. According to my intuition, present participle phainomenon is in this context more closely associated with the intransitive Middle voice than with Passive voice, even though in the present participle there is no morphological distinction between Middle and Passive voices. I don't mean only to nitpick and brag with my Greek skills, the semantic distinction can be philosophically critical in this context. Passive voice would correspond with physicalist interpretation of quantum phenomenology, intransitive Middle voice interpretation has participatory meaning of inclusion of observer in the observation event.

Both Finnish and PIE roots of phenomenology are open to associating the root meaning with quantum superposition and process of decoherence.

Thanks, that makes sense and seems compatible with Heidegger's approach as far as I understood it. I kind of gave up on this because too much work and so many books came out that I wanted to read. Also he meanders in all kinds of directions in the lectures so it takes a lot of curating. I may pick it back up later.

[SanteriSatama]

Thanks, that makes sense and seems compatible with Heidegger's approach as far as I understood it.

That is no surprise. The phenomenon called "Finnish Philosophy", ie. question what could it mean to think philosophy in Finnish, if such was possible, was very much inspired and affected by Heidegger. Even though Heidegger opined that genuine philosophy was possible only in Greek and German, rejecting his purism while adopting his phenomenological and hermeneutic methodology to decolonizing processes has been very fruitful.

Pauli Pylkkö, Tere Vadén and Jussi Backman are among names that have been developing what could be called Heideggerian school of Thinking in Finnish. Those guys and the school in general rekindled my own interest in philosophy, which became oriented towards philosophy of mathematics and rethinking its foundations also from Finnish perspective. The school has nothing to do with nationalism, it's language oriented and anarchic and very much interested in peer-to-peer dialogue with European and other languages.