Heidegger and the Task of Philosophy

The sexually violent and pornographic culture of late modernity is a major ethical challenge of our time. Yet most people do not perceive these harms because they are obscured through being miscast as the ontologically different ways that women and men respectively experience their freedom or sexual liberation: women through enjoying such treatment and men through treating women in these ways. This position reflects a gendered idea of freedom that in its earlier shape goes back to the beginnings of political modernity.;This problem is currently being addressed most effectively outside philosophy though it has begun to be addressed in philosophy. In considering what a distinctively philosophical response to this problem might be, I reflect with Heidegger on the nature and task of philosophy, an enterprise that he distinguishes from much professional philosophy. I elicit his idea of philosophy from his practice of it in Being and Time and draw resources from his project that give shape to what a specific philosophical response of this order might look like.;The thesis delineates Heidegger's idea of philosophy. Philosophy as such responds to a major problem of our own time. The philosopher notices this problem through what Heidegger calls a "phenomenon," which is something that is usually hidden that shadows what we think we so surely know and is therefore considered beyond question. The philosopher elicits and explicates the problem that the "phenomenon" indicates to render it more intelligible, which is the work of phenomenology. Through this creative questioning of the matter at hand, a more adequate understanding emerges. This, in turn, leads to a "crisis in concepts" in relation to the existing understanding or conceptual framework.;Heidegger's project in Being and Time responds to the contemporary problem that he refers to as philosophy's forgetting of the question of Being. He means that philosophy in his era tends to evade addressing the matter of caring for one's finite existence, that is, considering how to live a meaningful life. He implicates, in this crisis, the ontological assumptions that govern philosophy. They reduce the world to timeless, definitive determinations that are cast as an area's exclusive reality while its other dimensions are not considered real. For Heidegger, it is precisely an openness to these other dimensions, that is, to "phenomena" that can call us to question what we know and therefore to question how we go about in the world and choose to live; a move that also describes the path of philosophy. Heidegger locates the source of this contemporary problem in a traditional understanding of ontology that goes back to Descartes and continues over the modern era, a tradition in relation to which he must critically situate his present-day project. Accordingly, he also suggests that philosophy, which elicits a "phenomenon" that brings us to the brink of a "crisis in concepts," also situates itself in a critical conversation with the greats of its past.;I conclude with a sketch of a possible philosophical response to the contemporary problem I treat, which would exemplify this basic Heideggerian idea of philosophy. Furthermore, I outline how this response would parallel Heidegger's project in Being and Time. For this ethical challenge also requires confronting and situating itself in relation to a strand of traditional ontology, in this case one that concerns a gendered idea of freedom that goes back to the Enlightenment and spans the modern era.