Sublime

C’est exactement ce que je pense, cette idée qu’il faut veiller à ne pas se perdre dans les distractions de la vie. Heidegger appelait cela tomber, ou être absorbé, dans la quotidienneté de la vie. Bon, je sais bien que tu ne supportes pas Heidegger, Pam, mais je pense que ses erreurs politiques ne doivent pas nous empêcher d’apprécier sa clairvoya

For us, a man is a hero and deserves special interest only if his nature and his education have rendered him able to let his individuality be almost perfectly absorbed in its hierarchic function without at the same time forfeiting the vigorous, fresh, admirable impetus which make for the savor and worth of the individual.

freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

And yet most of the time, for Heidegger, we fail dismally at this task. We merely surrender to a socialised, superficial mode of being what he called ‘they-self’ (as opposed to ‘our-selves’). We follow das Gerede (The Chatter), which we hear about in the newspapers, on TV and in the large cities Heidegger hated to spend time in.

In turn, we lose our humanity if others’ speaking is kept from reaching us.

He has found less and less ground for authority at the same time he thought he was setting himself up as the center of authority in the universe; indeed, there seems to exist here a dialectic process which takes away his power in proportion as he demonstrates that his independence entitles him to power.

By uprooting himself from the world, man makes himself present to the world and makes the world present to him.

The condition of our freedom, then, is that we understand ourselves as finite. Only in light of the apprehension that we will die—that our lifetime is indefinite but finite—can we ask ourselves what we ought to do with our lives and put ourselves at stake in our activities.