Action ‘the fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable’ Action is the aspect of the vita activa, in Arendt’s view, that is the most philosophically important. It gives us the freedom to invent, to come up with new ideas and put these ideas into the world. Arendt argues that by doing this within the public sphere, humans are thus engaging in political deliberation and decision making; causing man’s action to become political. Action is the activity tied to the condition of plurality; ‘men, not man, live on earth and inhabit the world’. Where work remedies the worldliness of labour, action remedies the meaninglessness of work, In contrast …show more content…
And can ethics exist since ‘God is dead’? In this work, Heidegger responds to these questions, arguing that in order to produce an answer, we must discard the metaphysical tradition and the idea of man as he has always been considered. We must instead change the way we perceive and consider man. We must look to metaphysics and ontology, the study of being, as, in Heidegger’s view, it rightfully was studied back to pre-Socratic times, with the study of Ereignis. This is the idea that being (sein) is separated from man by a rift (ereignis). Man is only able to asymptotically approach sein, and in order for man to proximate himself near sein, he can only reduce the rift between sein and man, but man can never be reunited with being. Heidegger argues that metaphysics has always considered man in relation to objects, and considered man in relation to other subjects, but never in relation to being. Thus, man has been reduced to Dasein, which etymologically means being there, it is the relation man has to objects and subjects; dasein puts man in a specific particular place in history and time. However, Heidegger argues that sein is eternal, it is primordial, just like the rift of …show more content…
The thinkers Heidegger critiques from Socrates to Kant, are stuck in the dasein trap; they are trapped in an inescapable metaphysical context. Heidegger critiques the tradition of philosophical humanism, he believes that metaphysics has abandoned its goal of reducing the refit of ereignis and this is due to its focus instead on subject/object relations, a pre ontological misinterpretation of being. Thus, Heidegger’s goal for metaphysics is its destruction, and to reground metaphysics in a more originary, supreme form of