Ontology vs. epistemology

ontology / epistemology

Ontology asks what it is to be; epistemology asks what we can know. Heidegger insists the former comes first.

The 3 claims that turn on it

In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.

Lecture 12Heideggerean Existentialism

Modern philosophy since Descartes asks how we know before asking what being is. That order is backward: the Greeks understood that the question of being comes first.

Put simply Heidegger: since Descartes, philosophy has asked "how do we know?" before "what does it mean to be?" That order is backward. The ancient Greeks understood that the question of being comes first.

HeideggerL12 · 20:46

Descartes starts from thinking and Husserl from thinking about an object; Heidegger starts from existing. That I am comes before anything I think: being precedes knowing.

Lecture 25From Modernity to Post-Modernity

ShoreL25 · 40:28Core idea

In Shore's telling the course moves from epistemology (truth as mind matching object), via ontology, to ethics (truth against lies, authenticity against inauthenticity); history occupies the middle.

Put simply Shore's map of the course: from truth as the mind matching the world, through questions of what it means to exist, to truth as the opposite of lies and of living falsely. History sits in the middle.

How these claims connect

Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.

Heidegger turns over Husserl

HusserlIntentionality is the structure of consciousness: always reaching for its object, like a magnet on a string. Neither subject nor object comes first; their relation does, bridged by intentionality. L11 · 40:21

HeideggerDescartes starts from thinking and Husserl from thinking about an object; Heidegger starts from existing. That I am comes before anything I think: being precedes knowing. L12 · 20:46

Reverses the order: being precedes thinking, so the "I think an object" already presupposes an I existing in the world.

Heidegger turns over Descartes

DescartesEven if a demon has planted every thought in my head, the thinking itself is happening, so I must exist: "cogito, ergo sum." L2 · 15:49

HeideggerDescartes starts from thinking and Husserl from thinking about an object; Heidegger starts from existing. That I am comes before anything I think: being precedes knowing. L12 · 20:46

"I am, therefore I think": existing precedes knowing

The questions it belongs to

Throughlines that pass through one of these claims.

1 of its claims

The problem of the bridge: how does the mind reach the world?

1 of its claims

Is and ought: can what happens tell us what we should do?

Related terms

Terms that appear in the same claims.

Seinsfrage

the question of Being (Seinsfrage)The question of what "to be" means, which Heidegger holds is philosophy's proper first task and the subject of Being and Time.

Seinsvergessenheit

forgetting of Being (Seinsvergessenheit)Heidegger's charge that philosophy since the Greeks has neglected the question of Being, fixating on knowledge and entities instead.

Cogito, ergo sum

cogito, ergo sum"I think, therefore I am": the one certainty radical doubt cannot dissolve, since doubting itself proves a thinking self exists.

Eigentlichkeit / Uneigentlichkeit

authenticityOwning one's existence instead of living by convention. For Rousseau, resisting society's false politeness; for Heidegger (Eigentlichkeit), facing one's finitude and deciding for oneself rather than going along with "the they."