For most of its history, Western philosophy tried to use pure reason to know reality. But, argues Robert Pippin, Heidegger showed that this entire philosophical tradition was doomed, due to its mistaken assumption that what it is to be a feature of reality is to be available to rational thought. This assumption, which culminated in Hegel, led philosophy to forget the meaningfulness of reality for humans, and so left us lost. Only by recognising that we encounter reality not primarily through reason, but through the ways in which it matters for us, can philosophy recover the world as something meaningful for humans. 1. What is forgotten in the Western philosophical traditionHeidegger claimed that German Idealism and especially Hegel’s philosophy was the “culmination” (Vollendung) of the entire Western philosophical tradition. This meant that one could most clearly see in the work of Kant and Hegel the decisive, underlying assumption guid…
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