Hello everyone, I'm Stephen West, this is philosophers this.

Thinking to everyone who supports the podcast on Patreon, Patreon.com

slash philosophers this.

So please listen to at least last episode before this one,

but a couple episodes ago, I brought up Heidegger in relation to

Nietzsche. And I said that a classic Heidegger style question that really shows the differences

between him and Nietzsche is that he asks, is it possible to think without the will?

Meaning is it a part of our thinking to not only be able to have freedom of the

will to be able to will yourself on to situations when you choose to

but beyond freedom of the will is there also a freedom from the

will that's an important part of our thinking as well? What this question refers to is

Heidegger's later work after being being in time, after Dazine,

after showing the limitations of only framing things in terms of subjects and objects,

willing ourselves onto reality. After that, he moves on to a very interesting stage of his philosophy where the main thing that he wants to

explore in his later work is what he calls releasement or letting be. Let's talk more about what that might look like.

See if the world around us to Heidegger is made up of a bunch of people that have a technological and framing to everything, where everything and everyone is just an object that we need to will ourselves on to, let's structure things, let's manipulate them, optimize

them. And if by doing that it leads to a world where we're constantly seeing everything

in terms of how to manipulate people to produce the most efficient outcome, then what would happen if someone decided there was more to life than doing that all the time?

What if somebody didn't buy the whole sales pitch that you're a bad person if you aren't constantly trying to educate yourself about the problems of 7.5 billion people.

What if there's more to what we are than constantly trying to save the world all the time through rational utilitarianism?

What if somebody instead decided to focus on trying to understand the nature of their own being better by putting in the work to maybe try to uncover a far more meaningful, richer, fuller experience of what it is to even exist?

Well, first of all, real question. of what it is to even exist?

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