Existential Epistemology: A Heideggerian Critique of the Cartesian Project, by John Richardson

😴😶🤔💭🤯

My basic complaint is in the writing: there is too much signposting, too much delay, in getting to the point. Instead of starting with a 10,000 foot view thesis or argument with grounds and justifications that progressively deepens over the course of the book, we are instead repeatedly bid to wait for the payoff, the conclusion, the proof, etc.

To be fair to John: this was, if I’m not mistaken his first book. A book he wrote a decade later: Nietzsche’s System (reviewed here) is far superior as a written work, and succeeds exactly where this book fails (i.e., on the level of exposition). And further, this is still decidedly more readable, and understandable, than comparable works by other philosophers (Sebastian Gardner, I’m looking at you). So don’t let me complaints scare you off. Excessive signposting aside, he still writes in a very clear and accessible manner.

The ideas in this work, and the arguments, once we actually arrive at them, are fantastic. It’s thanks to this work that I finally have a concise way to sum up what Heidegger did to phenomenology (from “the things themselves” to the Being of things), how Heideggerian phenomenology relates to the existential analysis of Sein und Zeit (as a way of thinking that brings us into authenticity; i.e., into a confrontation with the two nullities at the essence of our existence (the nullity of thrownness, in which possibilities have been pre-nullified for us, and in which we have no control over; and the nullities of our projection, in which every path we take nullifies other paths) as well as the confrontation with death as the horizon of all projection), and a greater clarity on Heidegger’s rejection of the epistemological project (i.e., as a hopelessly confused attempt to justify present-at-handness by a thinking that is unknowingly trapped in fallenness).

Thank you, John!