Naturalism, According to a Christian Apologist (1)

The words “Christian Apologist” are used in the title above because the passages quoted within the following essay come from the website ‘Compelling Truth: Worldview and Apologetics’. So the article I’ll be discussing (‘What is Naturalism?’) is an example of “apologetics” written by someone who states that he’s “presenting the truth of the Christian faith”.

[Part Two will follow shortly. This will be on this Christian apologist’s account of materialism and reductionism, as also seen within the context of naturalism.]

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(i) Introduction: What Is Naturalism?

(ii) Do Naturalists Believe That There Is No Emotion?

(iii) The Natural and the Supernatural

(iv) Science + Religion (the Natural + the Supernatural)

(v) Conclusion

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Introduction: What Is Naturalism?

In the introduction to the website ‘Compelling Truth: Worldview and Apologetics’, we’re told the following:

“The purpose statement of CompellingTruth.org is: ‘Presenting the truth of the Christian faith in a compelling, relevant, and practical way.’”

This website’s general introduction continues as follows:

“[] Our mission is to take the questions, issues, struggles, and disagreements that exist within the Christian faith and shine the truth of God’s Word on them. We believe the truth of God’s Word is compelling. []”

So it’s interesting to see how a Christian apologist sees naturalism.

The writer of ‘What is Naturalism?’ states the following:

“Naturalism is the belief that everything in the cosmos is a component or product of the physical stuff of nature. There is no such thing as the supernatural, including souls, spirits, and God.”

I personally do believe that almost “everything in the cosmos is a component or product of the physical stuff of nature”. [See the next essay on ‘What is Naturalism?’, and its section on materialism and reductionism.] I also believe that “[t]here is no such thing as the supernatural, including souls, spirits, and God”.

So I’m fairly happy with this definition from a Christian apologist. However, I’ll still make some points and qualifications.

For example, the words “component or product” (as “is a component or product of the physical stuff of nature”) need to be unpacked. In addition, words like “soul”, “spirit” and even “God” can be defined in ways which square with at least some kinds of naturalism. [See ‘Religious naturalism’.] However, the way that this Christian writer himself defines these words certainly doesn’t square with any kind of naturalism.

Finally, I can’t (as it’s often put) “prove” that souls, spirits, God, etc. don’t exist. That’s because these kind of things can’t be proved (or disproved) in any strict logical or mathematical sense. In fact, it’s a category mistake to ask for proofs or disproofs of these things.

Do Naturalists Believe That There Is No Emotion?

This account has it that, according to naturalism, “there is no emotion”.

Now even the Christian apologist who wrote this must know that naturalists don’t actually believe that.

Clearly, this writer is confusing disagreeing with a supernaturalist account of emotion, with naturalists actually believing that there is no such thing as emotion.

The problem is that this supernaturalist offers his readers a supernaturalist account of emotion (as well as other things), which, obviously, the naturalist doesn’t agree with. Yet that doesn’t mean that the naturalist actually believes that there’s no such thing as emotion.

The writer also includes “free will, purpose, soul, God” in the list of things which naturalists believe don’t exist…

Yet this list is problematic too.

There are certain naturalistic accounts of free will, purpose, the soul, and even God. Indeed, this Christian apologist admits as much when he tells us that

“although [naturalists] do allow for ‘purpose’ in human interaction, purpose that is driven by the survival of our DNA is not truly free will”.

So it depends on definitions. [See ‘Religious naturalism’.]

What’s more, even though this is an acknowledgment that there are indeed different non-religious accounts of emotion, purpose, free will, etc., these are still not very honest descriptions of those non-religious accounts. (For example, what does the clause “purpose that is driven by the survival of our DNA is not truly free will” even mean?)

Now let this Christian apologist himself make his own distinctions when it comes to what he calls “the human soul”.

Here the Christian writer distinguishes the human soul from “consciousness, mental thought, and value (both in preferences and morality)”, and concludes that (even?) naturalists believe that these things “do exist”.

However, to this Christian apologist, the human soul is above and beyond consciousness, mental thought, and value.

So what exactly is above and beyond all these things?

The answer is simple: the supernatural.

The Natural and the Supernatural

The next bit of ‘What is Naturalism?’ is fairly uncontentious. It goes as follows:

“If there is such a thing as the supernatural, it does not affect the natural world in any noticeable manner.”

It can be conceded that it is possible that some naturalists have used the same words as those quoted directly above. In other words, some naturalists might well have said that the supernatural “does not affect the natural world in any noticeable manner” (i.e., even if “there is such a thing” as the supernatural).

Yet how can something which doesn’t affect the natural world even be so much as a “thing”?

How could we know that something supernatural exists — or has any kind of reality — if it doesn’t impact on the natural world?

[The naturalist does face the problem of abstracta, at least in these respects.]

Of course, religious and “spiritual” people believe that what is supernatural does indeed impact on the natural world. This is the case with miracles, people being affected (or “moved”) by God, “religious experiences” generally, ley lines, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, levitation, extrasensory perception, poltergeists, ectoplasm, invisible men, etc…

All these things are believed to impact on the natural world.

Thus, religious people obviously do believe that the supernatural affects the natural. Indeed, without such a relation, there wouldn’t even be such a thing as religion. In other words, all religions strongly and frequently stress the relation between the natural and the supernatural…

And that’s why scientists can’t help but have something to say about the religious accounts of the supernatural (or “the transcendent”).

In other words, there can’t really be two (as Stephen Jay Gould puts it) “independent magisteria” of science and religion. And that’s precisely because religions have it that the supernatural has a frequent and very important impact upon the natural. [See Non-overlapping magisteria.]

Science + Religion (the Natural + the Supernatural)

One common way that some (perhaps even many) religious people (a Christian apologist in this case) attempt to square science with religion is by stating passages similar to the following:

“[T]here is merit in attempting to discover God’s creation through the laws He has put into place.”

But then there’s a “but”…

Indeed, it’s a big but in this case.

This passage continues:

“But, as God has created the cosmos, it also makes sense to take His work and His character into consideration.”

Those two sentences are only the beginning. We then have the following passage:

“The Bible has specific things to say about geology and cosmology. Job 38 clearly shows that we cannot understand our world outside of the influence of God. Although a thorough scientific study will eventually bring us back to God’s written account, it would save time if we’d just believe Him in the first place.”

So here we have the natural (or what is studied by science) + the supernatural.

In other words, both science and religion are taken together as being part of the same package… Except, of course, that it can’t also be naturalism if we have + the supernatural. That would obviously defeat the object of naturalism. Quite simply, anything that includes + the supernatural can’t, by definition, be naturalism…

But can it be scientific?

Well, if we take science + the supernatural as part of the same equation, then obviously the science part is, well, scientific. And it’s equally obvious that the + the supernatural isn’t scientific.

So if the + the supernatural is acceptable, then surely anything deemed to be supernatural is also acceptable. Thus, we’ll have science + anything supernatural. After all, what grounds has, say, a Christian got for rejecting science + ley lines, or science + multiple gods, or science + pink pixies, or science + ectoplasm, or science + reincarnation, etc. other than scientific grounds?…

Well, he actually has religious grounds for rejecting these many denizens of the supernatural realm.

So someone — say, a Christian again — may have his own religious grounds for rejecting ley lines, polytheism, pink pixies, reincarnation, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, levitation, extrasensory perception, poltergeists, ectoplasm, invisible men, monsters, extraterrestrial creatures, legendary creatures, etc…

But why should the Christian’s preferences when it comes to the supernatural realm concern the naturalist?

This would be a dispute between those who, say, on the one hand, believe in the virgin birth and the Trinity, and, on the other hand, those who believe in ley lines, polytheism or pink fairies. Thus, the only way that a naturalist — or anyone else for that matter - can enter this debate is by adopting a particular religion, and then battling it out from that particular religion.

Conclusion

The writer of the article ‘What is Naturalism’ effectively uses the word ‘naturalism’ as a synonym of the word ‘scientism’.

Despite the self-designation ‘apologetics’, the article ‘What is Naturalism?’ is closer to being a political pamphlet (or a political opinion piece) than it is to being a philosophical or scientific article. That said, it was chosen because it’s actually quite faithful to most of the critical (or negative) accounts of naturalism I’ve read over the years — even form those who don’t explicitly defend religion.

So this account of naturalism does indeed often verge into political-pamphlet mode.

For example, it does so when it uses such phrases as “the horrifying consideration that…”, “the Bible refutes…”, (naturalists believe that) “psychology, sociology, and anthropology, can be reduced to the harder sciences”, (naturalism has it that) “the experiences of life such as pain, preference, desire, or emotion, also do not exist”, “scientists go so far as to deny a basic sense of self or even a sense of pain”, etc.

All this is straw-target (or even cartoonish) stuff.

What’s more, Compelling Truth portrays naturalists (as well as “materialists”) as almost literal demons who’re out to destroy everything of value.

It also claims that naturalists believe things which they clearly don’t actually believe.

Indeed, this account of naturalism doesn’t even attempt to argue that these (supposedly) extreme naturalist positions (or ideas) are the logical conclusion of naturalism. Instead, it deems them to actually be an explicit part of naturalism.

However, none of this is a surprise.

This account of naturalism (i.e., ‘What Is Naturalism?’) doesn’t actually quote a single naturalist, or quote a single sentence from a work on naturalism. Yet, and as already stated, not everything this account says about naturalism is false.

Philosophy: My Posts (or Tweets) on X (9)

 

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(i) Should Science Shape Society in Very Specific Political Ways?

(ii) A Flawed Philosopher?

(iii) Interdisciplinary Philosophy

(iv) Climate and Groups: Science and Politics

(v) Hollywood Zombies and Philosophical Zombies

(vi) Wittgenstein’s Philosophical I

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Should Science Shape Society in Very Specific Political Ways?

This is certainly the position adopted by Scientific American in recent years, and even more obviously by Science Magazine (or Science).

When it comes to Scientific American, it’s fairly new editor — Laura Helmuth (she also edited Science Magazine!) — has explicitly said that it should be politically committed in specific political ways (see here). This led to an entire edition being devoted to political issues. [See also Scientific American’s ‘Yes, Science is Political’, and Scientific American dedicates itself to politics, not science’.]

The problem with those scientists, activists and laypersons who say that “science shouldn’t be neutral” is that they usually have something very specific in mind. That is, they believe that “science as a field” should be politically committed and politically aware. More importantly, it should be committed to specific political things, and be aware of specific political things…

But what happens when other scientists take views the activists strongly disagree with?

What happens when other scientists and activists become committed to political and social causes they find very objectionable?

Thus, the self-conscious attempt to politicise science can actually backfire — at least it can do so for these activists.

The upshot, again, is that those who say that science “should shape society” have very specific political and social things in mind. So this isn’t an abstract statement about science and its (obvious) relation to society as a whole. This is a manifesto from specific political activists (some of whom are scientists) with specific political ends and goals in mind.

Thus, they’ll also need to do battle with those scientists who uphold different political views. This, then, will become like a battle for Gramscian hegemony. It just happens that it will be a battle fought by scientists against other scientists.

The Science Magazine and Scientific American position also turns science into a political weapon that scientists and activists use to advance political causes and ends.

Of course, this already occurs at Science Magazine and Scientific American. But, it seems, the activists want more control and power over the entire scientific enterprise.

Is that a positive scenario?

A Flawed Philosopher?

Kevin M (i.e., associate professor of philosophy Kevin Morris) seems to overlook the possibility that a “non-philosopher” may simply be bored by the aspect of philosophy being discussed at the time. After all, nearly all (professional) philosophers themselves will be bored by certain areas of philosophy. In other words, no philosopher finds all philosophy interesting or worth discussing.

So mentioning boredom isn’t condescending to laypersons, or a slap in the face of philosophy itself. Basically, you simply can’t generalise about non-philosophers and philosophers in these scenarios.

For example, if someone talks to me about computer programming or even theoretical biology, this would probably bore me. But that has no large implications for the theoretical biologist/computer programmer, or for me as a layperson…

There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.

By the way, what is a “deep philosophical conversation”? More specifically, what’s meant by the word “deep” here?

Interdisciplinary Philosophy

I too believe that “philosophical work in mind and language” is superior when it consults the various relevant sciences. And, sure, that’s happening more nowadays than it did in the past — at least when it comes to mind and language. That said, I’ve read some works on mind and language by philosophers that are just examples of science.

I believe that Patricia Churchland is a good example of this. (Most of the stuff I’ve seen of Churchland’s is just neuroscience, cogntive science, etc. — for good or bad.)

But I’ve seen other lesser names who write papers, etc. with virtually no philosophy in them. Instead, they’re simply either accounts of the scientific literature on the given subject, or even purely scientific themselves.

Perhaps the partisans of science-vs-philosophy like this result in philosophy.

Climate and Groups: Science and Politics

Climate must have at least some impact on human groups as taken in broad terms, and over longish periods. Of course, we’d need to be careful about generalisations and speculations. However, doesn’t Professor Ellie Anderson (@ Pomona College) herself generalise about all those who’ve simply noted the impact of climate on the behaviour of certain groups throughout history?

It depends on what she means by “people’s dispositions” too.

Are we talking about individuals’ beliefs and collective beliefs too, or just non-verbal behaviour? Indeed, can we disentangle the two at all?

Ellie Anderson is trying soooooo hard not to be racist — and also to be anti- “colonialist” (her word) — that she’ll overlook all contradictory evidence.

And she’s also keen to use the term “pseudoscience”, which is often used as a political sledgehammer.

Anderson’s main aim is no doubt political, not scientific or philosophical. And this is exactly how she seems to read the views — on this subject at least — of her scientific and philosophical opponents…

Is this a case of projection in the battle for political hegemony?

Hollywood Zombies and Philosophical Zombies

Spoiler alert: the notion of a zombie in analytic philosophy is very unlike the notion of a zombie in Haitian voodoo or in Hollywood films. Hence the term “philosophical zombie” (or “p-zombie”).

The main difference is that you could behaviourally and visually spot Hollywood zombies from a mile away. You couldn’t do that with an “analytic” p-zombie. Indeed, that’s precisely the point of this philosophical notion.

All that said, this tweeter appears to classing analytic philosophers themselves as zombies!

Wittgenstein’s Philosophical I

I take Wittgenstein’s point… to a degree. However, the (errr) “fact” that each subject both cognises and experiences almost everything of “the world” through the prism of the “philosophical I” doesn’t — automatically — mean that it is “not a part of the world”. (No philosophical account of the “I” needs to be given or accepted here.)

A more mundane analogy here is the inability to literally look at your own eyes… with your own eyes. (I.e., without the help of a mirror, photograph, etc.) There is nothing “metaphysical” about this example… at least.

The Cartesian self (if there is such a thing) is also part of the world. What else can the Wittgenstein I or the Cartesian subject be a part of?

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My X account can be found here.

Why Heidegger, the Nazis and Religious People Wanted to “Transcend Rationality”

 

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The title of this essay could just as easily have included the words “poststructuralists” and “postmodernists”. However, it would have been too long had I done so.

(i) Transcending Rationality

(ii) Heidegger: An Anti-Intellectual Intellectual

(iii) Heidegger’s Nazi Philosophy

(iv) Heidegger on the Flight of the Gods

(v) The Hammer, and the Ontology of the Social

(vi) Heidegger on Spiritual Dasein

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“[T]he nature and significance of Heidegger’s thought cannot be determined by selective quotation from his work nor by a focus on the shortcomings of Heidegger the man. If it is his philosophy that is at stake here, then it is with his philosophy that we must engage — and there are no shortcuts to doing that.”

— The philosopher Jeff Malpas (as quoted by Jonathan Este). [See note 1.]

“Heidegger’s support for the Nazis is well known and has been meticulously documented. Six years after publication of Being and Time, Heidegger joined the NSDAP and was elected rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933. In that role he gave a number of speeches in support of the new regime and wrote denunciatory letters about liberal and left-leaning colleagues.”

— Jonathan Este

More relevantly, the journalist and writer Jonathan Este then continued:

“The inevitable question is whether Heidegger’s Nazism infected his philosophy.”

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Transcending Rationality

The following are two problems with those individuals and groups who and which want to “transcend rationality” (or to “transcend reason”):

(1) Historically, reason has often been required (or used) in order to transcend reason.
(2) Those individuals and groups who and which extol transcending reason have also needed to compete with rival individuals and groups who and which also extol transcending reason.

In terms of (1). Since irrationalists have (supposedly?) given up on reason or rationality, then they must use violence, abuse, emotional language, poetic/categorical proclamations, etc. instead (i.e., in order to impact on society at large).

It’s true that reason needn’t always be required to transcend reason. However, this has usually been the case. Of course, tapping into people’s feelings and emotions has been a very popular means of transcending reason…

That said, not all those who ride on people’s feelings and emotions will also claim to be “transcending reason”. Thus, this is a very philosophical way of putting the issue.

It also gets more complicated because many of those who tap into people’s feelings and emotions can’t exclusively do this via irrational means. Indeed, they too must use their reasoning skills.

Think here of the parallel case of those Nazis, Heideggerians and religious people (such as Creationists and New Agers) who’ve castigated science at the very same time as making full use of scientific technology…

How could it be otherwise?

Heideggerians have just been mentioned.

So is the enterprise of “transcending reason” one explanation as to why Martin Heidegger embraced the Nazis?

Heidegger: An Anti-Intellectual Intellectual

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is a good case study here.

Heidegger was a very intellectual anti-intellectual.

Firstly, some (perhaps even many) Heideggerians would argue that Heidegger used reason against reason. (As did Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason.)

… Actually, this last claim is debatable.

As just stated, some Heideggerians are keen to stress Heidegger’s actual arguments (i.e., even if those arguments need to be suitably parsed). Other Heideggerians, on the other hand, really do want to emphasise the fact that Heidegger “transcended reason and rationality” in order to escape into some kind of poetic, mystical and intuitive… something — “I know not what”.

Of course, these two attitudes to Heidegger's philosophy may well be held together.

In any case, the German National Socialists (i.e., of the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s) wanted to transcend reason/rationality too.

And Heidegger has been frequently and strongly connected to the Nazis.

Most Heideggerians, of course, say that this Nazi connection is irrelevant to Heidegger’s actual philosophy…

Really?

What if Nazi and other other kinds of irrationalism are deeply embedded in Heidegger’s philosophy?

Thus, the similarities between Heidegger’s philosophy (or philosophies) and Nazism include the following:

an interest in mysticism and the early medieval period (shared with, amongst others, the English Catholic fascists of the early 20th century), anti-intellectualism (or intellectual anti-intellectualism, as with Joseph Goebbels), a distaste for modern civilisation, science and technology (which can quite easily go alongside the use of technology, as was the case with the Nazis), counter-Enlightenment positions, a stress on “thinking with the blood”, an idealisation of peasant life, and so on.

So it’s odd that many Heideggerians are keen to play down Heidegger's explicit politics at the very same that they’re keen to play up other philosophers’ implicit politics.

The reason for this is fairly simple.

Heidegger’s philosophy is often used to advance somewhat fashionable political views and positions. Thus, they claim that his political beliefs and actions in favour of the Nazis and Nazi policy muddy the philosophical water. They also claim (as Jeff Malpas does in the opening quote) that Heidegger’s philosophies stand regardless of his connections to Nazism.

On the other hand, other philosophers often have their political lives gone over with a fine tooth comb — sometimes by these very same Heideggerians! Obviously, this is the case because of the specific nature of their politics.

So there are double standards here. [See note 1.]

To repeat.

It really does seem bizarre that Heideggerians are at pains to play down Heidegger’s Nazi connections. Indeed, this was precisely what the French philosopher Jacques Derrida did.

That last claim has been fiercely disputed.

The broad upshot is that, of course, Derrida didn't deny (or ignore) Heidegger’s Nazi connections. However, he did attempt to separate them from Heidegger’s actual philosophy… Or at least Derrida attempted to separate such Nazi connections from Heidegger’s later non- “metaphysical” philosophy. [See note 2.]

Heidegger’s Nazi Philosophy

As just alluded to, and despite the defences of Heidegger, many people have noted the strong similarities between, just to take one example, Heidegger’s philosophical “attacks on realism” and Nazism. Indeed, there are many other connections between Heidegger and Nazism that are worth commenting upon. And that’s for the simple reason that they also have a bearing on Heidegger’s actual philosophical positions, beliefs and attitudes.

More specifically, if there is any direct connection to be found between Heidegger and Nazism, it’s that of anti-intellectualism.

Oddly, Heidegger’s anti-intellectualism is very intellectual in form.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that this anti-intellectual intellectual had strong sympathies with German National Socialist forms of anti-intellectualism.

Now let’s connect anti-intellectualism to the parallel desire to transcend reason.

It’s worth quoting Jonathan Estee again here. Este writes:

“[A]t one point [Heidegger] speaks of the characteristically Jewish gift for ‘calculation’, which would then find an ideal foothold in ‘the empty rationality and calculative bent’ of Western metaphysics, especially since Descartes.”

This negative attitude toward “calculation” and “empty rationality” can also be found all over the place in the writings of fascists, Nazis, New Agers, spiritual people, postmodernists, poststructuralists, etc.

Heidegger on the Flight of the Gods

Martin Heidegger once wrote of the “flight of the gods”.

This was a reference to what he took to be the ascendancy of “scientific culture” in 20th century Western society (including Germany, most of Europe and the United States), as well as the concomitant rise of what’s often called “instrumental rationality”.

(Heidegger — along with Edmund Husserl — also wrote of the scientific flight from “lifeworlds”.)

In his Being and Time, Heidegger had the following to say about “the world” as it was in the late 1920s:

“We have said that the world is darkening. [] [T]he flight of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the standardization of man, the pre-eminence of the mediocre.”

Heidegger also told his readers that “we are too late for the gods, and too early for Being”.

Heidegger believed that Europeans were too late for the gods because theology and metaphysics themselves could no longer have any purchase on the modern mind — even way back in the 1920s! Unfortunately, most Europeans (at the time) were also “too early for Being”. That is, they were too early for Heidegger’s very own ontotheology (or ontic-theology).

Now let’s consider Heidegger’s well-known hammer example.

The Hammer, and the Ontology of the Social

Heidegger’s general point was that (in everyday life) we don’t have intellectual knowledge of the hammer we use to bang in nails. Instead, we have some kind of (for want of a better word) intuitive relation to the hammer. In other words, we don’t really know that the hammer is too heavy. Instead, the hammer “reveals itself as being too heavy”. That means that we only have a physical relation to the hammer, not a knowledge-based one. In fact, Heidegger seems to claim that when we use a hammer, we don’t think at all. We simply feel that it’s too heavy.

Of course, this somewhat innocuous(!) hammer example can be — and indeed has been — broadened out by Heidegger and others.

Thus, we come to to Heideggerian “involvement” and Heideggerian action.

Heidegger believed that knowledge must be firmly connected (in some way) to action. Or, in Heidegger’s own words, it must be connected with our “concern” for the world.

Yet perhaps Heidegger was right to argue that knowledge is “secondary to [our] involvement in the world”. Indeed, isn’t it the case that we wouldn’t even care about knowledge if it weren’t for the fact that we’re somehow already involved with the world? In other words, without some kind of involvement, the desire for knowledge wouldn’t even arise in the first place.

(These aspects of Heidegger’s philosophy, alongside “the ontology of the social”, appeal to Left Heideggerians.)

So what about Heidegger's mysticism?

Heidegger on Spiritual Dasein

Master Eckhart (1260 — c. 1327) is generally regarded as the greatest representative of German mysticism. This mystic had a strong impact on the young Heidegger. More particularly, it was Eckhart’s notion of not knowing anything that inspired Heidegger.

It can be noted here that Heidegger also put this “question of Being” forward as the “spiritualising” part of the National Socialist revolution in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In any case, Master Eckhart himself once wrote the following words:

“[W]e say that a man ought to be empty of his own knowledge, as he was when he did not exist.”

Heidegger opposed (what he took to be) traditional metaphysics with his very own “meditative” alternative. At times, he called this meditative alternative “thinking” or “letting be”, which was a term he adopted from Meister Eckhart.

Heidegger also used the German word Gelassenheit.

This is a term for thinking “without [a] why”. According to Heidegger (at least at one point in his career), meditative thinking “lets things” show themselves, rather than be shown (or circumscribed) by the inquiring mind.

The mystic German Catholic priest Angelus Silesius also influenced Heidegger. Indeed, it is “Silesius’s rose” that, according to Heidegger, lives “without reason” or “without why”. [See here, and note 3.]

Heidegger’s most important concept, Dasein, also has a mystical (or religious) dimension to it.

Dasein is “to be” in the world.

Heidegger believed that his notion of Dasein is not one of knowing. Instead, Dasein is always already in the “background” each time we know, acquire knowledge, or contemplate the world. [Interestingly enough, the American analytic philosopher John Searle has made extensive use his own notion of “the Background”.]

In a basic sense, then, all the above appears to stress the non-rational or non-intellectual nature of Dasein. In other words, the overall aim is to be, rather than to think. In addition, action and involvement (or “changing the world”) was also very important to Heidegger, as it still is to contemporary Heideggerians.

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Notes:

(1) This passage from Malpas is taking the only-engage-with-the-philosophy-itself idea to its extremes. And some readers will doubt that Malpas himself is ever entirely faithful to his own impossible — and perhaps even counterproductive — ideal.

What’s more, my argument in the essay above is that Heidegger is a very bad choice when it comes to abiding by Malpas’s philosophical ideal. In fact, there’s something a little phony (or even dishonest) about it when applied to — specifically — Heidegger!

(2) Derrida once criticised philosophers for erasing their private lives from their philosophies. See ‘Derrida: On The Private Lives of Philosophers’. here. See also ‘Derrida and the Heidegger Controversy’, and ‘Everything Burns: Derrida’s Holocaust’.