Nature (or Not) in Heidegger

Abstract

“Nature (or Not) In Heidegger,” looks across the full scope of Heidegger’s work (starting with Towards a Definition of Philosophy from 1919 and ending with the Four Seminars from 1966–1973) to trace a continuing insistence in his thought on a parallel between the way technology distorts our relationship with beings (the natural world seen as nothing more than a collection of calculable masses in motion) and a similarly distorted understanding of ourselves (as “minds” in relation to, and potentially explainable in terms of, a subset of these calculable masses we call “human bodies”). For Heidegger, a more primordial relationship between Dasein and beings can be found in our everyday engagement with the things around us. This reading of Heidegger suggests two strong claims: if the critique of technology in his later work is intrinsically linked to his understanding of Dasein, the difference between the early and late Heidegger might be less extreme than has been thought; and, rather than “solve” the mind/body problem by redefining the mental to make it compatible with science, as most philosophy attempts to do, we might instead follow Spinoza, who responded to Descartes’ dualism by redefining Nature itself.