Once upon a time I was a humanities major.
There is a lot of discussion about whether one acts responsibly when one selects this major. To the detractors: I couldn't have done anything else.
Anyway, the School of Humanities at the university I attended sends out a little magazine a few times a year. And the magazine I received yesterday had an interesting anecdote about Heidegger:
During a 1935 lecture course at the University of Freiburg, Heidegger held a piece of chalk in his hand and noted its properties. It was "an extended, relatively hard, gray-white thing with a definite form." As a thing, he further observed, it exists in space and time, at least that is our initial impression and way of talking. But this attitude incorrectly assumes that "space and time are in some sense 'external' to things," Heidegger added. Space does not end where the chalk begins; rather space informs the chalk and is filled by it. By this time his students were wondering about the inside of the piece of chalk, and to satisfy their curosity, Heidegger broke the piece of chalk. He then asked, "Are we now at the inside?" Most people would probably say yes - we are now looking at the inside of the chalk. But Heidegger insisted that we are again looking at an outer surface, somewhat smaller and rougher than before, but an outer surface nontheless. We really didn't get inside because the moment we broke it in half to discover its inside, the chalk "closed itself off" by offering itself as an outer surface. We are still on the outside looking at an opaque piece of chalk, not experiencing chalk's inner space.Heidegger then stated: "[We] were unable to find the space we were looking for inside the chalk, the space which belongs to the chalk itself. But perhaps we weren't quick enough. Let's try breaking the piece of chalk once again!" After snapping the chalk in half again with the same disappointing result, Heidegger asked, "So where on earth does the inside of the chalk begin, and where does the outside stop?"-from David Grandy, "A Second Glance at Chalk in the Classroom," Humanities at BYU. Spring 2010, p. 8-12. Retelling an incident recounted in Graham Parkes, "Thoughts on the way: Being and Time via Lao-Chuang," Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 105-44.
What an interesting look at perspective, and at how taking a step back from our expectations can lead us to a more precise conclusion.
Coming up (hopefully soon): Thoughts on Hegel. I'm reading Hegel: A Very Short Intoduction by Peter Singer. Oxford University has a huge series of Very Short Introductions, and I have several on my reading list. I feel a bit like I'm reading Cliff's Notes, but at the same time, there is no way I could read and digest enough Hegel to understand the basics in the time I have. Plus reading even this takes my full concentration and brain power, so I'm looking at it as the university lecture for the class I'm not actually taking. It also has me wanting to read more Kant.
I'm also starting to read one of the TOK texts. So hopefully I'll update about that soon as well.
