Is Ontology Overrated or Not?

I am struggling along, a half-a-block behind the pack, reading Being and Time with the Unfogged book group.  I have trouble with passages like this:

If the question of Being is to be explicitly formulated and brought to complete clarity concerning itself, then the elaboration of this question requires, in accord with what has been elucidated up to now, explication of the ways of regarding Being and of understanding and conceptually grasping its meaning, preparation of the possibility of the right choice of the exemplary being, and elaboration of the genuine mode of access to this being.  Regarding, understanding and grasping, choosing, and gaining access to, are constitutive attitudes of inquiry and are thus themselves modes of being of a definite being, of the being we inquirers ourselves in each case are. 

Reading it feels like running the first couple of miles after I haven't run in a while.  I can do it, but it doesn't feel good, and it is only with steady discipline and stern remonstrances to myself that I keep myself from giving up and doing something that feels more enjoyable.  At the same time, it's exactly this sort of dogged concentration I need to keep my mind from wandering that feels like the point.  Once upon a time I knew calculus and could pretty easily answer questions like this.  Now I wouldn't know where to start, no matter how many scratch pads and pencils you gave me, no matter how much time.  But I'm very proud of having once been good at calculus.  There's still a matter of pride of knowing my brain can learn that kind of thing.  I'm in this for that sort of brain-stretching.

In any case, I don't have a nimble grasp of Heidegger, although I'm following along okay.  But all his talk of ontology has me thinking again about the whole concept of ontology, and the presumption that it makes sense to categorize things by describing their features, and to thereby create a map of the world.  That's the premise of ontology, right?  That doing it is somehow worthwhile and that some expert, by thinking really hard, can come up with the "right" way and give us a better map of reality.  I think there's something to that, at least as a mental exercise to hone observation and discern fundamental features and distinctions.  But I am convinced by Shirky and Weinberger and others that some of the underlying premises of ontology, at least to the extent ontology is about mapping and ordering knowledge about the world, have been limited or perverted by the physical world and the heirarchies of knowledge that physical space have imposed.  I don't feel smart enough to understand whether this is a big deal, the concept of indexing and tagging rather than classifying.  But I think it is. My gut says it's fundamentally important.  I feel smart enough to wish I could watch a lecture or a debate between a couple of REALLY smart people talking about this subject, and if they were better at speaking clearly than Heidegger is, I think at the end of the talk I would really understand.  With my only limited comprehension, I have a watch on Heidegger to see whether his underlying assumption about ontology might be challenged by the work of those guys.  Right now it doesn't look like it. 

Comments

[TP]

*shrug*

I was a philosophy major in college, have done some graduate work in the field, and am about to do some more.

I've always found most of the field of phenomenology to be at the very least obtuse, and at the very most virtual gibberish.

Sartre's literature is vastly superior to his philosophy, IMO.

[ogged]

This made me smile Sherry, because when "ontology" was adopted by the web folks to mean "categorization scheme" we--then in grad school--had a laugh about it. It's not what Heidegger (or most philosophers) mean by the word, which is simply "the science/study of being." (They're not unrelated, but in this case, it's not helpful to try to work back from the newer use to the older.)

(I'm also not taking offense at your implicit dig at my precis.)

[ogged]

This made me smile Sherry, because when "ontology" was adopted by the web folks to mean "categorization scheme" we--then in grad school--had a laugh about it. It's not what Heidegger (or most philosophers) mean by the word, which is simply "the science/study of being." (They're not unrelated, but in this case, it's not helpful to try to work back from the newer use to the older.)

(I'm also not taking offense at your implicit dig at my precis.)

[Scheherazade]

No dig intended, and in fact I think it's very clear and useful. For that reason I am, at first, only skimming the precis, because I'm on shaky ground with my own ability to comprehend the text itself. I don't want to get lazy and start relying on your (or others') description of what the text is saying.

Re: the distinction between the Web use of ontology and the broader use, I'm glad for the distinction. Rereading Shirky I saw him using it, too. Maybe that means there's no conflict here. I'm not sure I grasp all of this well enough to conclude. Which is why I'm glad to be a fly on the wall for y'all's discussion.

[Michael]

Agreed about Sartre's philosophy...All of Sartre's good stuff, all his work on ontology-- it's all basically a rip off of, drumroll, please: Heidegger! Sartre was a better writer, but please, his whole idea of "being and nothingness" was cribbed from Heidegger. Heidegger is the man, philosophically.

On another note: what makes Average Joe think she can pick up a great work like Heidegger's "Being and Time" and figure it all out? It's not easy, that's why it's so important! To paraphrase Stephen King, when people tell him they've always wanted to "try" writing: "I've always wanted to try brain surgery" but I know it's not going to be that easy! People don't have the same appreciation for philosophy. No matter how clearly the best brain surgeons (or physicists or whatever) talk about their work, I'm not going to get it. It's not Steven Hawking's fault I don't understand physics -- it's because of my own lack of knowledge / experience / ability. Same is true with philosophy, though I applaud you for trying. (By the way, I did not mean to imply that you're average...just that you're not trained in philosophy!)

I was fotunate enough in graduate school to take a seminar course in devoted only to "being and Time" to one of Heidigger's students, Hans Jonas. Jonas abondoned Heidigger in the mid-30's (when H's Nazi sympathies became clear) to study with Karl Jaspers. This class was one of the most memorable (in the good sense) classes that i ever took and was at last as difficult as any classes i had in theoretical physics. You might fund the understanding of H's work illuminated by the fact that his thinking started from an orthodox Catholic perspective and then was transformed to a secular perspective. another starin of thought in Heidiggerian existentialism is the secularized version of Gnostic thought contemporary with the early christian canons. For this you might try to find a copy of Jonas' "The Gnostic Religions."

In our small seminar clas we only managed 10 to 20 pages per week and that with difficulty for all the students. But whoever said that profoud thinking should be easy. I certainly agree with Michael's comment about Satre relative to Heiddiger. Unfortnately H became a Nazi sympathizer, undermining his appeal to contemporary intellectuals. we

[wab]

One further comment that i omitted in the last post. You might have in mind when reading the early sections of Being and Time whether you find any ontological structure to form the basis for a theory of morality in Heidigger. Most of us in Jonas' class started to comment on the lack of such a structure, only after we were more than half way through the book. A serious student might have plowed back into the early text, but as that text is so dense probably none of us did. It was far easier to ask our expert professor. Still it is nice to judge for oneself and that is much easier if one is alerted early in the course of reading.

[PG]

Like TP, I've always gone away from the phenomenological end of philosophy; political and moral philosophy struck me as more graspable and "important," if it's really fair to characterize one abstract subject (just because one can use Kant or Rawls to describe our choices doesn't mean that anyone's making them with those philosophers' articulations in mind) as more important than another. My big breakthrough on ontology was when I realized that it wasn't the opposite of deontology.

In light of my blog's URL, however, I probably ought to learn a little more, despite how poorly I did in Logic (lowest grade in any philosophy class I took).

[SombreroFallout]

Is Ontology Overrated or Not?

mmm. Who's to say?

No, really. Who?

[SombreroFallout]

escusa moi [sic]

Of course it's overrated.