Saturday, January 19, 2013

Philosophy: Martin Heidegger's METAPHYSICS part 1. (appendix)

If you liked my story about my encounter with the metaphysical thought of Martin Heidegger and you are interested in this topic in a more general way, than I highly recommend that you go to the library or order 'Basic Writings' and read it for yourself. Also, when reading philosophy it is easy to drown in labyrinth of language, this can make your reading experience feel like a waste of time, downright terrifying, or extraordinarily exhilarating. For me it's most often all three at once, and I happen to like this ‘emotional cocktail, so that’s why I do it, but if you find yourself overwhelmed while reading such a text and you don’t happen to like being overwhelmed then I recommend you get some help.




There are a lot of modes of help out there; you could enroll yourself in school, but that’s a big commitment, and you might just end up in a pile of debt, you could get yourself a study guide, (introduction, idiots guide, for beginners est.) or you could utilize the wide array of on-line recourses, the most imfamous of which is Wikipedia, who cares what experts say. It’s great. as you probably know YouTube is another great resource (it's not just for cat videos, and watching idiots puck on themselves, or whatever people watch on YouTube these days).



There are quite a few philosophy commentators on YouTube many are quite good even inspiring, but probably the most prolific of these would have to be 0ThouArtThatO and John David Ebert. These two guys have pretty much opposite styles; 0ThouArtThatO is casual and seems to spend a good deal of his videos improvising, it's clear he's brilliant, and he will leave you with more than just a basic understanding of each topic, but if you are over the age of 30 I must warn you if you have any taste propensity for ageism he will surely dish you out a healthy slice of humble pie (he looks very young I think he's got to be like 14 in some of these videos), and he is brilliant. Then there’s John David Ebert, he’s very thorough! He presents quite possibly the greatest summaries ever to exist. Both of these guys have hundreds of videos, if you watched them all you could be a smart ass philosopher king in no time.




Here’s John David Ebert on Heidegger's Intro to Metaphysics ½ to get you started:









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