Dear Jude,
Heidegger’s philosophical thought is by no doubt very complex and it is not walk in a part to summarize it in just few sentences. I have tried to make some very brief, loose-fitting distinctions between different categories not of Heidegger’s thought or the process of thinking, but of some Heidegger’s distinctions on what he understood the word thinking means.
Heidegger draws a clear distinction between “calculative” and “meditative” thinking. Calculative thinking is routinized and focused to achieve a certain result. This sort of calculated thinking dominates modern science and can be connected to Heidegger’s notion on metaphysics. You can find a thorough explanation in his essay What is Metaphysics.
Second notion on thinking according to Heidegger is “meditative thinking”, the “other thinking”, and represents an alternative to calculative thinking. It represents Heidegger’s own way of thinking about the essence of truth. Meditative thinking lets the things reveal themselves in their essential being. In his book Discourse on Thinking you can read that, "man is a thinking, that is, a meditating being." Meditative thinking represents a break from calculative thinking and gives us a chance to begin thinking philosophically, beyond concepts, methods and horizons that are already known.
Heidegger Martin, Discourse on Thinking. New York: Harper and Row, 1966, p. 7.
Heidegger Martin, Introduction to Metaphysics. Yale University Press, 2000.
Hope you find this helpful,
With kind regards,
Ksenija
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Ksenija Berk, PhD
precarious design critic and theorist, Ljubljana
http://ksenijaberk.typepad.com/blog/
---- "CHUA Soo Meng Jude (PLS)" <[log in to unmask]> piše:
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Since we are on the topic of intentionality, I wonder if anyone understands what Heidegger means by "thinking". He seems to suggest that we've all forgotten how to think, and I've been asking my friend who studied with one of heidegger's own students and he's not been able to explain that to me either. But Heidegger seems to suggest that thinking is something we've lost, an ability that is. Perhaps there in Heidegger's thinking there could be something very exciting and that could in turn inform what "design thinking" could or should be. I suspect Heidegger's thinking may have something very ethical about it, something to do with care (sorge), which is something I am struggling to wrap my head around. Heidegger seems also to suggest that metaphysics is not thinking, or I could be mistaken, but some scholars have suggested that mystical thinking could well be consistent with what Heidegger would recommend, some kind of overcoming of metaphysics (again something that I find confusing). I suspect by "metaphysics" is lumped together that scientistic, technical thinking seeking to understand the world in terms of anthropomorphic or else idolatrous (Marion) models, which are ultimately reductionistic? Still some scholars like John Caputo speak of a later, mystical Thomas Aquinas that overcomes metaphysical thinking, and sets it aside. I wonder if design thinking could be mystical in this sense, not in the sense of iffy or loose and unwarranted, but informed and guided by something more than secular, metaphysical reason, ie., some religious experience or value. Think for instance of St Francis of Assisi who shapes his tunic into a Tau or twists three knots into his cincture to represent the evangelical counsels (thus re-designing a sign), or reshapes "poverty" into Lady poverty, into a technology that supports a certain moral ideal (hence redesigning a state of affairs, an experience of lack), and hence to be loved, welcomed, and even to be committed to, rather than something which invites shame (as might be the case in medieval Europe). Francis' own life and various "designs" were all informed, if one can believe it, by his early graced experience of loving something so unlovable as a leper. Aquinas in turn, shapes "silence", after his own mystical vision (if that was not a stroke) into a new sign, a new gesture to express and testify to the reality and existence of profound knowledge beyond human comprehension, rather than ignorance. But it's possible HEiedegger had something else in mind, a different kind of thinking that is not metaphysical, and it would be interesting to understand what that is, and if it could inform designing?
Jude
National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg
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