Das Man: Heidegger on the Self That Isn't Yours

Heidegger called it das Man: the self made of borrowed opinions and issued tastes. Why trying to be authentic is part of the same trap. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger gave a name to the self that isn't yours: das Man, the one, the they, the everyone-and-no-one. It's the form of existence in which your opinions are absorbed rather than reached, your tastes issued rather than chosen, and your life lived by you rather than lived by. Heidegger argued this is the default state of being human, not a failure to be fixed.This episode enters through Antoine Roquentin, the central figure of Sartre's novel Nausea, sitting in a park as the world stops holding together. From there it works through Heidegger's three features of das Man (idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity), why the contemporary authenticity industry is itself a das Man response to the das Man problem, and what Heidegger actually meant by authenticity, which has nothing to do with personality and everything to do with the relation a person takes to their own death.Drawing on Heidegger's Being and Time and Sartre's Nausea.A narrated essay from Fractured Self, on identity, meaning, and the forces that fracture the self under modern conditions. No resolution is offered. The crack does not heal.00:00  Roquentin in the park01:18  What Heidegger called das Man02:11  The default state of existence04:16  Idle talk, curiosity, ambiguity06:42  Ambiguity and the self-sealing trap08:22  Anticipatory resoluteness09:09  Authenticity as the relation to death12:35  At the thresholdhttps://www.fracturedself.com