Das Gerede

It isn’t just us who are so temporary—it is all living beings, all living things—the animals, the trees, the clouds. They, too, exist briefly against the background of nothingness. Once we are aware that we, and all living beings, share this fragile state, we might learn to identify more with them, to recognize our kinship with all living things and with the Earth itself. They are like us, briefly alive against the backdrop of nothingness.

However, Heidegger is very aware of the way in which we hide from confrontation with Being, escaping into the warm folds of daily life, of society, and of what he termed its endless chatter, Das Gerede. We can imagine Das Gerede as an enormous pancake-like dough layer that smothers our connection with Being. Chatter is everywhere—it comes in via the airwaves, the media, our social circle—and it seeks to reassure us that trivia actually matters, that our jobs count, that what we are doing and thinking has importance. It hides us from the nature of Being in a world of death. So the task of philosophy is to remove us from the doughy comfort of chatter and introduce us, systematically, to the bracing concept of Nothingness.

Heidegger wants to free us from the pull of chatter, so as to focus on the intensity of existence.

– Courtesy of brainpickings.org

On Talking About Nothing

“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”

– Oscar Wilde

On Questions and Answers

‘Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.’

– sign in The Prisoner (1967)

On Religious People

“If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.”

– Gregory House

Buttonhole [Verb.]

To detain someone in conversation against their will.

What You Leave Out Is As Important As What You Leave In

Too many of our knowledge institutions base their authority on spurious claims of ‘comprehensiveness’. We prefer storytellers to panels of faceless academics.

“The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.”
– Henry Green

See other: Philosophy of Interestingness

On Describing Another

“A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s.”

– Jean Paul Richter

On The Fundamental Problem With American Political Discourse

“The problem with the discourse situation in America is capitalism. That’s the problem with it because you can make a lot money by being an assassin. A lot of money. Whether you’re right-wing or left-wing, you go in and you’re a hater – radio, cable, in print, whatever, you get paid. And there are people who do that. And they go in – they don’t even believe half the stuff they say – and they just rip it up. And they get paid a lot of money. And that has coarsened everything. They’re phonies. Capitalism drives that. There are Americans who want to hear hate, and they hear it, and that has just blown it all up.”

– Bill O’Reilly