Dreyfus - Being-in-the-World

Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I.
by Hubert L. Dreyfus

# Paperback: 384 pages
# Publisher: The MIT Press (December 14, 1990)

Dreyfus has for many years lectured on Heidegger's Being and Time in courses at the University of California at Berkeley, and his explanations of that gnomic work have won wide acclaim, which this book shows was justified. He presents a detailed account of Division I of Being and Time , never lapsing into the incomprehensible. Heidegger repudiated the view that meaning is a mental phenomenon. Instead, he argues, human life is governed by practices that can never be fully articulated but only studied through interpretation. The theory of knowledge, as it has been pursued by Descartes and his successors, therefore rests on a false assumption. Human beings never live in the world as minds isolated from objects: the problem of skepticism arises through ignoring the inextricable immersion of human beings in practical activities. Dreyfus does not offer much argument that Heidegger's views are correct. Readers will, however, learn with crystal clarity the nature of Heidegger's position.
- David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio

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