A Heideggerian conception of knowledge

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to develop a conception of knowledge on the basis of the first division of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. The first chapter is a brief introduction. In the second chapter, I analyze a series of concepts Heidegger presents in Being and Time. The crucial one among these concepts for this thesis is what Heidegger calls “the world.” According to my argument in the second chapter, the world can be regarded as the structure that constitutes the background of our everyday lives. In the second chapter, I also make a distinction between two types of knowledge. I call them “transparent knowledge” and “opaque knowledge.” Transparent knowledge has the world as its object. The objects of opaque knowledge, on the other hand, are present-at-hand entities. In the third chapter, I evaluate two prominent theories on the background. These theories belong to John Searle and Hubert Dreyfus. In the third chapter, I show that both of these theories are open to various objections. In the fourth chapter, I try to show what Heidegger’s views on knowledge amounts to in an important section in Being and Time and argue that Charles Guignon’s interpretation of Heidegger’s approach to knowledge is mistaken and depends upon a partial understanding of what knowledge is.