The influence of the early and middle post-moderns can easily be seen in Dewey and Heidegger's philosophies. The early post-moderns, namely, Hegel and Marx, were concerned with a unified system, with all of society as a context for the individual to pattern his life by. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, the middle post-moderns, turned to the individual, with Kierkegaard discussing what it means for the individual to be authentic, to not just blindly submit to the will of the many, and Nietzsche advancing the idea of certain individuals, known as overmen, who could be inspired and in turn inspire those who would follow them. Although Dewey and Heidegger came from different perspectives and different schools of thought, these basic influences can still be seen in their philosophies, which were concerned with the individual in the context of society. This marriage of early and middle postmodernism is concerned with applying practical empiricism to problems such as the meaning of Being and the different worlds that influence us at any given time. To say that this limited space doesn't do these philosophers justice is a massive understatement, but hopefully it will inspire you, dear reader, to find out more about them, because it truly is pretty fascinating stuff.
John Dewey
1859-1952Education: University of Vermont, Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago
Influential in social and educational reform
Pragmatist and champion of democracy
Dewey was an American philosopher, who developed, along with Charles Peirce and William James, what is known as pragmatism. Pragmatism is what you might call classical American philosophy, not just because its founders were American, but because it has something of the pathos of America built into it. The name, pragmatism, loosely relates to practical results: experimentation and observation. Dewey sought to reform the educational system between the extremes of rationalism and empiricism. Empiricists thought that experience starts with what is given to our senses. Rationalism, on the other hand, is based on thought and gives little to no credit to experience. Traditionally, then, experience and thought are antithetical to each other. But real experience, according to Dewey, is an interaction between a thinking being and the world.
Teachings
- Change is valued. Movement is prioritized over the fixed, and transitions are given emphasis over origins.
- Intelligence should be practical. Knowledge is an interaction between the knower and the known.
- Intelligence is not simply the gleaning of information, but the process of solving a problem. A satisfactory state is reached after interplay between discovered facts and suggested solutions.
- The measure of a thing is whether one likes the results it brings after continued experimentation, rather than emphasizing the values of something abstract, such as God, or reason.
- Unified problem solving -- it should seek to solve a problem that its visitors may have.
- Accessible by application -- we participate by testing out the presented standards.
- Ongoing revision -- we are invited to consider articulated standards for site content, to test and review those standards by applying them, and to help revise those standards as necessary.
Martin Heidegger
1889-1976Education: University of Freiburg
Incredibly influential in topics such as ontology, phenomenology, and existentialism
Notoriously difficult to understand
The easiest way to think of Heidegger is as a modern reincarnation of Aristotle. Heidegger was particularly influenced by book six of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, in which he saw Aristotle at his most nuanced as he discussed the limits of reason in attaining the moral life. In this book, Aristotle distinguishes between practical understanding and theoretical understanding. In theoretical understanding, we understand what is fully actualized and therefore won't change. But in practical understanding, we actualize potentialities of things that do change.
For Aristotle, potentialities are in substances and things develop accordingly unless the surrounding situation deters it. For Heidegger, on the other hand, potentialities emerge in the occasion or experience of development, drawing on past worlds; not substances with potentialities but events forming and actualizing potentialities. Heidegger takes the practical understanding as fundamental. We develop our theoretical understanding in a practical world, learning to abstract away from a natural object, like a chair to sit on, and instead see it as an object in space so we can predict its movements. From this idea, it should be easy to see how Dewey and Heidegger are somewhat related.
Teachings
- Asked, "what does it mean to be?" Answer: (in very small part): humans are the being for whom things matter; therefore, to be is to care.
- Care is brought out in art. And art is truth's "setting-itself-to-work." Art sets up a world which allows for the truth of something to be disclosed.
- We are responsible for the state of things in our world. We are always here in the world, and nothing can be said about any other world, such as Kant’s noumena, for instance. For a question to make sense it has to fit into our world and our concerns. So it doesn't make sense to ask what the world is like separate from us and our concerns.
- When we act, we change things around us, and thus we also change the potentialities of those things. For example, once we use a hammer a new way, say, to pry something open, the potentialities of the hammer change. So we are continually, over time, having to actualize new potentialities, and by doing so we close off some possibilities and open up others.
- Discusses "conscience;" an echo of Kierkegaard's authenticity, as well as being conscious of the multiple "worlds" that affect us at any given time, drawing from those worlds authentically in the moment of performance.
- Unified by possibilities -- as users on the site, we increasingly draw from similar worlds of possibilities.
- Accessible by disclosing -- we participate by exploring new possibilities opened up by content.
- Ongoing by authentic choices -- we are encouraged to actualize definite possibilities that may require giving up others; to make hard choices in the moment, because we are caring for many; and to actualize the best possibilities sensed.
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