Re: [xmca] Polls are closed: Manfred Holodynsk's article is choice

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Right, Rauno, and Andy seems to have drawn from Heidegger (along with many others) in formulating his idea of project. Here's what he writes:

"Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) also began from Husserl’s phenomenology, but put the artifacts people produce and use in the course of their activity at center stage. According to Heidegger, we ‘project’ our concepts on to objects, although there is always something there, and we have a pre-intellectual or practical knowledge of how to use a tool, for example, and what it is for, prior to our projection. Heidegger developed his Existentialist concept of the project in “Being and Time” (1927). Although Heidegger introduced the concept of ‘project’ into phenomenology, the artifacts which mediate our actions play the predominant role, not the activities which constitute the object as a concept for us."

<http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/project-interdisciplinary.htm>

There are a variety of problems with this summary of Heidegger's analysis in Being & Time. First, Heidegger doesn't propose that we project concepts onto objects; rather we project ourselves, our being, in our practical activity. We understand ourselves in  terms of what we do. Our 'practical knowledge' already involves projection; it is not prior to projection. Furthermore (second) Heidegger wrote not just of projection but of "thrown-projection," to emphasize that we are always already involved. The occasions where we can 'commit' to a project are not fundamental; usually we find ourselves already born into practical activities that have this character of thrown-projection. History is central to Heidegger. And third, equally central to Heidegger's analysis is his observation that projection is always *upon* a world of public practices. This "ground" plays a crucial and constitutive role. 

Heidegger is not the final word, by any means. One can raise many questions about his analysis of human being (his ontology!). But at least he did not neglect either history or the social world in which humans act.

Martin


On Apr 1, 2013, at 12:24 PM, Rauno Huttunen <rakahu@utu.fi> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Berger & Luckmann and Heidegger think that way. Heidegger writes on Dasein's ("human being" or being that questions its being) "projective" nature. 
> 
> Rauno Huttunen
> Happy Eastern from the most eastern part of Western World 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> Lähettäjä: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] k&#228;ytt&#228;j&#228;n Martin Packer [packer@duq.edu] puolesta
> Lähetetty: 1. huhtikuuta 2013 18:03
> Vastaanottaja: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Aihe: Re: [xmca] Polls are closed: Manfred Holodynsk's article is choice
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> Both!
> 
> Martin
> 
> On Apr 1, 2013, at 9:42 AM, "Glassman, Michael" <glassman.13@osu.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> Something I have been thinking about lately.  Does the social world make projects possible, or the projects actually create the social world (or the need to create multi person projects as part of our larger human project?
> 
> 
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> 


__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca