theoreticism

is the drive towards technical and objectifying modes of knowledge which dominate the West since Greece, and bring with it the oblivion of any more primordial or more reverential kind of existence.

Heidegger traces in the course of philosophy and European civilization’s basic sense of things since Greece an intensification and hardening of ‘theoreticism’, the drive towards technical and objectifying modes of knowledge and, with it, the oblivion of any more primordial or more reverential kind of existence: ‘the familiar and well-known has become boundless, and nothing is any longer able to withstand the business of knowing, since technical mastery over things bears itself without limit’ (P: 147).

is the crucial assumption that understanding consists in having an implicit or explicit theory of what is being understood, that all human behavior is a kind of knowing in some sense.

Pulling up that anchor, Heidegger turns to a reconsideration of our day-to-day ordinary, taken-for-granted understanding of things and each other. Tradition takes it as read that understanding the world and being competent in its activities depends upon having an effective inner model of the world and fluency in manipulating it from one context to another. At issue is what can be called ‘theoreticism’ – the crucial assumption that understanding consists in having an implicit or explicit theory of what is being understood, that all human behaviour is a kind of knowing in some sense.

theoreticism, n.All

theoreticism