From the “Banality of Evil” to the Banality of Concepts: Soroush Dabbagh’s Reading of Arendt and Heidegger

From the “Banality of Evil” to the Banality of Concepts in Soroush Dabbagh’s Reading of Arendt and Heidegger[1]

Hamidreza Saadat Niaaki

Sometimes the fate of a philosophical concept is more revealing than the misunderstanding of the concept itself. Some concepts, precisely because of their interpretive power and apparent capacity to explain a wide range of phenomena, are more vulnerable than others to being detached from the problem that made them necessary and turned into general labels for a set of more or less similar experiences. What remains, then, is the concept’s name, and with its name its authority; yet the distinctions that originally made the concept necessary to the philosopher gradually disappear. In this essay, “the banality of concepts” names a mechanism whereby a concept retains its name and philosophical authority while losing its connection both to the problem that made it necessary and to the distinctions and constraints that define its limits. As a result, it acquires a general and flexible meaning that can be transferred from one system of thought to another at little conceptual cost. “The banality of concepts” is not a term of disparagement, nor is it another name for error or oversimplification. Nor is it an extension of Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil”; rather, it is the name I use in this essay for the mechanism just described. The issue lies in the gap that opens between the survival of a concept’s name and the erosion of its determinations. The name and its authority remain, but part of what makes the concept the concept it is has been lost. Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” provides a telling example.

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Soroush Dabbagh drew on this concept in an essay titled “The U.S. Election and the Banality of Evil”[2] to explain the appeal of Donald Trump to a segment of American society. He writes that when “individuality” and “autonomy” are eclipsed and “thought and reason are suspended,” “evil becomes something commonplace and banal.” He goes on to describe the disabling of “ordinary moral intuitions” as “moral desensitization.” Shortly thereafter, he treats voters’ overlooking of conduct that he himself attributes to Trump—their failure to “take it into account”—as an instance of the “banality of evil.”

But “banality” in Arendt’s formulation does not describe evil becoming trivial in Eichmann’s eyes. Her claim is not that Eichmann regarded an immense crime as commonplace and was able to commit it because he had lost his moral sensitivity to it. For Arendt, the crime remains immense and horrifying. What unsettles her expectations in encountering Eichmann is instead the absence, in its perpetrator, of a depth commensurate with the magnitude of the crime: behind enormous evil there need not stand an equally enormous demon, a diabolical personality, or a motive whose depth matches the crime. An ordinary person, captive to clichés and afflicted by thoughtlessness (Gedankenlosigkeit), can participate in a machinery whose outcome is a monstrous crime. The paradox lies precisely in this disproportion: the magnitude of the evil remains, while the corresponding demonic grandeur one expects to find in its perpetrator is absent.[3]

In Dabbagh’s reading, the locus of banality shifts. The central issue is no longer the absence of depth in the way evil is enacted or in its agent; instead, “evil” itself “becomes something commonplace and banal.” This is what allows moral desensitization to become an explanation of the banality of evil, and a voter who fails to “take into account” another person’s conduct to be placed within the conceptual lineage of Arendt’s idea. In effect, before Arendt’s concept is extended to a new case, the concept itself is reconstructed; an instance is then found for this new definition, and finally that instance is presented under the name of Arendt’s concept.

“Thoughtlessness,” too, does not emerge unchanged from this transfer. Arendt’s account of Eichmann’s thoughtlessness cannot be equated with lack of intelligence, an inability to reason, or the “suspension of reason.” Eichmann could calculate within an administrative apparatus, understand rules, organize his duties, and select means for achieving the apparatus’s objectives. What was at issue was the kind of thinking that takes a person beyond clichés, ready-made language, and accepted rules and makes judgment possible. Moral desensitization may be an important phenomenon, but desensitization is not the definition of the “banality of evil.” If Dabbagh is claiming that there is a relationship between the two, that relationship must be argued for; it cannot simply be assumed by placing the two expressions side by side.

The next leap likewise requires an independent argument. Eichmann is Arendt’s subject because he himself participates in the machinery of crime; the voter in Dabbagh’s example, by contrast, falls under the concept because he overlooks the wrongs attributed to someone else. One might argue that Arendt’s concept is capable of such an extension, but that extension is precisely what must be demonstrated. Otherwise, we encounter a pattern that later reappears in Dabbagh’s reading of Heidegger: first, a concept is distanced from its specific determinations; next, it is reconstructed in a more general sense; and then this reconstructed version is presented as a new application of the original concept.

In Dabbagh’s reading of Heidegger, this pattern is no longer confined to a single concept. Thrownness, temporality, authenticity, anxiety, the truth of the work of art, world and earth, technology, and even the ontological difference are each, in one way or another, drawn into a network of “presence,” “contentment,” “contemplation,” “depth,” “silence,” “meaning,” and the “modern wayfarer.” There need be nothing objectionable about such a synthesis in itself: no philosopher can claim perpetual ownership of his concepts, and the history of philosophy is inconceivable without the appropriation, transfer, and reconstruction of concepts. The problem begins when the boundaries between expounding a philosopher, interpreting him, applying his concepts, and constructing one’s own thought under his inspiration become blurred.

“Thrownness” is a clear example. Dabbagh writes: “By introducing the concept of Geworfenheit (thrownness), Heidegger emphasizes that the human being has been thrown into a world that came into being and took shape independently of his will and choice. At the same time, this very thrownness leads to contentment when the individual encounters the world authentically: instead of trying to control the world, he experiences and realizes his own "presence" within it in a manner that is free yet receptive.” He immediately adds: “Contentment consists in experiencing presence—a presence that emerges beyond the surface of everyday events and occurrences and profoundly orients the wayfarer toward the here and now.”[4]

The first account of thrownness is acceptable as a preliminary explanation. Dasein finds itself in a situation it did not initiate, and many of its factical determinations are not the result of its own choices. But the sentence beginning “At the same time” is no longer an explanation of thrownness. Thrownness belongs to Dasein’s facticity and has its place within the structure of care. Becoming authentic does not abolish it; rather, it transforms the manner in which this facticity is taken over.[5] From here one can discuss the relationship between authenticity and taking over one’s facticity, but there is no self-evident path from this analysis to “contentment,” “experiencing presence,” relinquishing control, or becoming oriented toward the “here and now.” These may be elements of Dabbagh’s philosophy of life, and they may even be inspired by Heidegger, but being inspired by a concept is not the same as deriving a conclusion from it. It is precisely by eliminating this argumentative distance that thrownness is transformed from an existential structure into an element of an “existential way of life.”

In the discussion of time, the problem is more fundamental. Before we even reach Heidegger, an error occurs concerning Kant—an error significant precisely because it can no longer be attributed to the difficulty of Heideggerian terminology. Dabbagh writes: “In Kant’s philosophical system, too, "time" is not among the "categories of the understanding" and does not play a constitutive role in the emergence of knowledge; rather, it has a regulative status and is counted among the "a priori forms of intuition".”[6]

The first half of the sentence is correct: for Kant, time and space are not categories of the understanding but a priori forms of intuition. Yet for precisely this reason, the second half is incorrect. Time and space do not have a merely regulative status. They are a priori conditions of the possibility of sensible intuition and therefore constitutive conditions of the possibility of phenomenal experience. The “constitutive/regulative” distinction cannot be applied to time and space in this way, treating them, despite their status as a priori forms of intuition, as lacking a constitutive role in empirical knowledge. At this point, we are no longer dealing with a disagreement over interpretation, because the sentence places side by side two claims that are incompatible within Kant’s transcendental system.[7]

The significance of this slip becomes greater when Kant is immediately contrasted with a “nonlinear conception” of time, while his own view is described as “influenced by Newtonian physics” and possessing a “linear-mechanical genealogy.”[8] Kant certainly thinks in profound engagement with Newtonian science, but time in the Critique of Pure Reason is not simply a philosophical version of Newton’s temporal container. Kant explicitly separates time and space both from determinations of things in themselves and from independently existing containers in the world, treating them instead as a priori forms of sensibility. Placing Kant under the heading of “linear-mechanical time” and Heidegger on the side of “nonlinear-existential time” turns a complex distinction into a simple binary—one highly convenient for the spiritual framework that follows, but only at the cost of precision on both sides of the comparison.

The same pattern continues in the account of Heidegger’s temporality. Dabbagh writes: “He analyzes time not as something external that encompasses us, but as something internal and arising from human being [...] On this view, we encompass time, in the sense that we can participate in the process of "temporalizing." Temporalizing is an existential activity; through confronting death and the passage of time, the human being constructs the meaning of his own being.” He then adds: “The human being is a being who, through encountering the present, can taste "time-within" and create "lightning-flash moments of presence".”[9]

Temporality (Zeitlichkeit) is Dasein’s fundamental temporal structure, and Heidegger does speak of the temporalizing of temporality. Yet in Dabbagh’s account, this existential structure becomes something resembling an activity undertaken by a person to alter the quality of the experience of time: we come to “encompass” time, participate in “temporalizing,” taste “time-within,” and create “moments of presence.”

This shift is particularly evident in the emphasis on the “present.” Heidegger’s authentic temporality is not a philosophy of living in the present. Its structure is ecstatic: future, having-been, and present belong together in a structural unity, and in the analysis of authenticity the future plays a fundamental role.[10] Nor can the moment (Augenblick), without further explanation, be reduced to pure presence in the now. Thus, bringing Heidegger’s temporality into proximity with Abu’l-Hasan Kharaqani’s “swimming in the sea of time,” Sohrab Sepehri’s “pool of the present,” or an experience akin to mindfulness may make for an intriguing comparison, but a sound comparison begins with difference. If temporality, the moment, “time,” the present, and presence are placed in a single semantic field from the outset, what ought to be the object of comparison has already been assumed in advance. Comparison then ceases to clarify the relationship between different concepts and instead becomes confirmation of a similarity that has itself already been constructed.

In The Origin of the Work of Art, the problem goes beyond interpretive transfer and becomes a clear textual error. Dabbagh writes:

“In confronting the work of art, Heidegger says: "The work of art returns earth to sky, and sky to earth." In other words, the work of art makes possible a kind of struggle between earth (the concealed and hidden) and sky (the open and manifest).”[11] Contrary to Dabbagh’s account, however, the decisive conceptual pair in The Origin of the Work of Art is world (Welt) and earth (Erde), not sky (Himmel) and earth.[12] Sky appears in a different constellation of Heidegger’s later thought, in the fourfold (Geviert), alongside earth, mortals, and divinities.[13] Replacing “world” with “sky,” therefore, cannot simply be regarded as a free reading of the world-earth pair; the two formulations belong to different conceptual contexts.

Even if we correct “sky” to “world,” the problem does not disappear. Earth is not simply “the concealed and hidden,” nor is world simply “the open and manifest.” For Heidegger, earth has the character of self-seclusion, while world is the historical horizon of meaning-giving relations that the work sets up. The strife (Streit) between world and earth is likewise not a simple narrative of transforming the hidden into the manifest. Once this structure is reduced to the hidden/manifest binary, the next transfer becomes easy. Dabbagh writes: “Contemplation at this level is a kind of existential readiness to experience the world as a work of art. A person who experiences this kind of contemplation no longer seeks to master the world or interpret it according to his own desires; rather, he accepts the world in its being and enters into a silent dialogue with it.” He then connects this contemplation to “experiencing presence,” “accepting the being of things as they are,” mystery, silence, and ultimately the modern wayfarer.[14]

Speaking of openness or of a transformation in the human relationship to beings is not in itself necessarily anti-Heideggerian. The problem is more precise. From the happening of truth in the work and the strife of world and earth, Dabbagh moves, without any argumentative bridge, to an existential program of contemplation, acceptance, presence, and spiritual silence. A problem that in The Origin of the Work of Art concerns truth, the work, world, and earth becomes, in Dabbagh’s framework, part of the modern wayfarer’s mode of life; once again, the boundary between “I learn this from Heidegger” and “Heidegger says this” has been blurred.

This blurring has considerably more sensitive consequences in the discussion of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit). In a text published under the title “The Roots of Totalitarianism in Martin Heidegger’s Philosophy,” presented as an excerpt from Dabbagh’s lectures on “Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy,” we read:

“What in Heidegger’s philosophy can be regarded as a cornerstone of totalitarianism is the distinction he draws in his works between Being and being. Heidegger speaks of a concept called authenticity and, as he sets it out in Being and Time, maintains that in the present age and the modern world, the condition of humankind has developed in such a way that "authenticity" and people who possess "authenticity" have fewer opportunities to emerge and manifest themselves, while human beings have in a sense become subjugated to technology and thinking in terms of beings [...] And the principal task of philosophizing is to bring Being out of concealment and turn toward being.

[...] Levinas, the French philosopher, says in his criticism of Heidegger that when you speak of authenticity and say that many people do not possess this authenticity and are deprived of it, while also being technologized and alienated, you pave the way for despising and demeaning them and consequently create the conditions necessary for eliminating them.

Levinas says that, logically, the political implications of Heidegger’s position are the violation of human autonomy and Dignity.”[15]

These few lines place alongside one another several independent claims, each requiring argument. Authenticity is presented as though it were a property possessed by “people who possess authenticity,” while “many people” are “deprived of it.” The latter group is also described, within the same chain, as technologized and alienated. Levinas is then said to maintain that such a situation opens the way to “despising and demeaning” them and ultimately to creating the “conditions necessary for eliminating them.” Overarching this entire chain, the distinction between Being and being is presented as something that can serve as a “cornerstone of totalitarianism.”

The first problem lies in the very account of authenticity. Authenticity and inauthenticity in Being and Time are not names for two classes of human beings. They are two modes of Dasein’s being. Nor is “the they” (das Man) a mass of inferior or inauthentic human beings opposed to an elite minority.[16] Inauthenticity is not a description of “other people,” and falling (Verfallen) belongs to Dasein’s existential structure.[17] Even if, in the debate over the normative valence of authenticity, we accept an interpretation that accords authenticity some kind of superiority, it still does not follow that humankind is divided into “people who possess authenticity” and “many people” who are “deprived of it.” Regarding one mode of being as superior is one thing; turning it into a kind of existential capital that some groups possess and others lack is quite another.

This shift is decisive, because it is only after it occurs that the political argument becomes possible. If human beings are first divided into those who possess authenticity and those deprived of it, one can then ask whether the latter group becomes vulnerable to contempt and whether contempt for them might open a path toward political elimination. But this conclusion is no longer derived from the concept of authenticity in Being and Time; it arises from anthropologizing an existential distinction. Something is first added to the premise of the argument, and then the political consequence of that addition is deployed against the original concept.

A more fundamental problem appears at the very beginning of the same passage. If, as the context suggests, what Dabbagh means by the distinction between Being and being is the ontological difference between Being (Sein) and beings (Seiendes), how can this distinction constitute a “cornerstone of totalitarianism”? This claim cannot be accepted merely because of Heidegger’s historical relationship with Nazism. The relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and politics is a real and profoundly serious issue, but precisely for that reason it must be shown through what premises the distinction between Being and beings leads to a particular conception of the human being, plurality, autonomy, authority, and the political, and how a totalitarian structure follows from it. None of these intermediate links is constructed in the quoted passage. The starting point and destination of an argument have been placed side by side, but the argumentative path between them is absent.

The inclusion of technology in the same chain further complicates matters. Authenticity and inauthenticity belong to the existential analysis of Being and Time, while the well-known formulation of the critique of technology in the concept of enframing (Gestell) belongs to a later phase of Heidegger’s thought. A relationship can be established between these phases, but that relationship is precisely what must be demonstrated. Placing authenticity, technology, thinking in terms of beings, the ontological difference, and totalitarianism side by side is no substitute for reconstructing the development of Heidegger’s thought and establishing the relations among these concepts.

Nor does invoking Levinas bridge these gaps. Levinas’s critique of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and his objection to the priority of ontology over the ethical relation to the Other are well-known strands of his thought.[18] But the very specific claim attributed to him here—that dividing human beings on the basis of authenticity opens the way first to contempt and then to their elimination and “logically” entails the violation of human autonomy and dignity—requires a specific source. Until such a source is provided, Levinas’s general critique of Heidegger cannot be taken as evidence for this particular chain of argument.

In the discussion of anxiety (Angst), the situation is different, and this difference matters for a fair assessment. In distinguishing fear from anxiety, Dabbagh identifies a genuine point in Heidegger: fear has a specific intraworldly object, whereas anxiety has no such determinate object. His basic point, therefore, cannot be called mistaken. The problem begins when Heideggerian anxiety is placed in the same field as Sepehri’s “lucid fear,” Yalom, Jung, and profound existential experience. Such a comparison is possible and may even prove fruitful, but to be philosophical it must show exactly in what respects anxiety resembles these experiences and in what respects it differs from them. Anxiety in Being and Time is not simply a name for every intense or profound existential experience; it has a specific ontological function in disclosing being-in-the-world and individualizing Dasein. Phenomenological resemblance alone does not establish conceptual equivalence.

The same caution is required with regard to silence. Silence (Schweigen) is not insignificant in Heidegger, and in Being and Time it is related to discourse (Rede) and hearing (Hören).[19] The association between silence and Heidegger is therefore not in itself fabricated. But when the claim that “it is in silence that language finds its most authentic function: accepting Being as Being” is introduced “in Heidegger’s words,”[20] this particular formulation requires a source. And when the discussion then moves from there to Quaker worship, Rumi, Sepehri, “spiritual silence,” self-examination, psychological tranquility, and the reduction of boredom, we once again find an unwarranted transfer from a Heideggerian concept or theme into a different spiritual framework.

Perhaps nothing reveals the logic of this reading as clearly as Dabbagh’s own description of “Sepehri and Heidegger, two contemporary modern wayfarers.” Dabbagh explicitly states that he intends to compare the lifeworlds of these “two modern wayfarers” with respect to such themes as death, the transcendent, poetic thinking, technology, time, and the political.[21] Here the “modern wayfarer” is no longer merely a literary label; it becomes the horizon within which Heidegger is read. This same horizon explains why Heidegger’s various concepts can ultimately converge on a relatively stable set of ends: presence, contentment, contemplation, silence, release from control, awareness of death, meaning, and the alleviation of boredom.

At this point, the issue is no longer a collection of scattered errors. If “world” had merely been mistaken for “sky,” this could have been regarded simply as a textual slip or an isolated error in recounting Heidegger. If the only mistake concerned the constitutive role of time and space in Kant, it could have been treated as an error in the history of philosophy. If the “banality of evil” had merely been brought close to moral desensitization, one could speak of the misinterpretation of a single concept. But when thrownness becomes contentment and the experience of presence, temporality becomes tasting “time-within” and creating moments of presence, the truth of the work of art becomes contemplation and spiritual silence, authenticity becomes something possessed by one group of human beings, and the ontological difference becomes a “cornerstone of totalitarianism,” then, in the materials examined in this essay, we are no longer confronting a single error. What emerges instead is the very pattern of handling concepts that I called the “banality of concepts” at the outset of this essay.

In the cases examined here, this pattern takes shape when a concept’s internal resistance is diminished and its transfer from one system to another becomes conceptually costless. The result is a concept that continues to enjoy the authority of the originating philosopher’s name but no longer carries with it all the constraints that once defined the limits of its application.

The problem does not arise from comparing Heidegger with Sepehri, placing Heidegger alongside spiritual wayfaring, or bringing psychology into conversation with philosophy. A sound comparison begins with difference, and the philosophical question is what relationship can be established between different systems once their differences have been specified. If concepts such as temporality, presence, time, silence, and contemplation are placed within a single horizon before their relationship has been demonstrated, comparison gives way to the removal of conceptual friction, and their apparent proximity is achieved by effacing the determinations that had previously distinguished them from one another.

A philosophical concept is determined not only by what it says but also by what it does not allow us to say. “Thrownness” matters because it is not simply any “acceptance of what cannot be changed.” “Temporality” matters because it is not another name for “living in the (pool of the) present.” “Anxiety” matters because it is not every profound existential experience. “Authenticity” matters because it is not the existential capital of a group of “authentic people.” “World” matters because in The Origin of the Work of Art it cannot be replaced with “sky” while assuming that the structure of the argument remains intact. The “banality of evil,” too, matters because it is not merely a more philosophically grandiose expression for the normalization of evil or moral desensitization. A concept for which it is unclear what it cannot say gradually acquires the capacity to say anything—and at precisely that moment, it says almost nothing determinate.

The damage this mode of engagement can do to philosophy in the Persian-speaking world begins here: the danger of cultivating a distorted relationship with philosophy itself. This problem is more serious than a reader’s misunderstanding Kant, Arendt, or Heidegger. Such an approach risks teaching the audience, instead of reconstructing a concept within the problem that generated it, recognizing its distinctions, demanding sources for attributions, taking seriously the historical development of a philosopher’s thought, and constructing an argument for transferring a concept from one system to another, to understand philosophy as a storehouse of resonant names and terms that can be used to express unargued intuitions we already possessed in advance.

In such a situation, “in Heidegger’s words,” “according to Arendt,” or “Levinas says” may themselves become substitutes for argument. The philosopher’s name does the work that the text and the argument ought to have done. The authority of the name remains, while the concept’s resistance has disappeared.

It is here that the boundary between popularizing philosophy and the banality of concepts becomes visible. The popularization of philosophy reduces the difficulty of language so that the difficulty of thought can become clearer; the banality of concepts, by contrast, removes the difficulty of thought itself so that the concept can be more readily consumed. The popularization of philosophy builds bridges between traditions while preserving both sides of the bridge. The banality of concepts eliminates the distance and then calls this erasure “similarity.” The popularization of philosophy helps the audience understand why a distinction matters; the banality of concepts treats the distinction itself as an obstacle to the smooth circulation of names and experiences.

In this respect, we must distinguish between simplifying the expression of a concept and simplifying the concept itself. The most difficult philosophical concept can be explained in clear and accessible language without sacrificing the determinations, distinctions, and constraints by virtue of which that concept is the concept it is.

Philosophy begins precisely where the concept resists us. A philosophical text must be capable of disrupting our favored analogy, taking from our hands a term we are eager to use, putting distance between two thinkers we would like to bring together, and even forcing our own system of thought to change. If Heidegger enters our thinking only to the extent that his thrownness becomes acceptance, his temporality becomes presence, his art becomes contemplation, his silence becomes spiritual tranquility, and his authenticity becomes the model of the modern wayfarer, then the question inevitably arises: how much of Heidegger has entered this framework, and how much of the framework has simply returned to us dressed in Heideggerian vocabulary?

A philosopher who always says exactly what we already wanted to say is no longer our interlocutor; he is, in fact, our echo. Reading philosophy means accepting the possibility that the text may stand against us and refuse to let us do whatever we please with its concepts. Consuming philosophy is precisely the opposite: it removes a concept from its system, files down its troublesome edges, and polishes it until it can fit into any other system.

The banality of concepts begins here: where we no longer change in our encounter with a concept, but instead change the concept until, without resistance, it says exactly what we wanted to say all along.

Notes

[1] The scope of this essay is limited to the sources by Soroush Dabbagh cited in its notes: his essay on the “banality of evil” in the 2016 U.S. election, his article “The Modern Wayfarer, Experiencing Presence, and the Experience of Boredom,” and materials published on his official channel that are cited in the text. Dabbagh has also delivered lectures on Arendt and Heidegger, but with the exception of a published excerpt from his lecture series “Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy,” which is cited in this essay, these have not been examined. The present critique therefore concerns only the materials cited here and does not claim to assess everything Dabbagh has said or written about Arendt and Heidegger. The orthography and punctuation of quotations have been standardized without altering their wording or content.

[2] Soroush Dabbagh, “The U.S. Election and the "Banality of Evil",” Zeitoons, November 12, 2016, available at:

https://www.zeitoons.com/20842

[3] Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books, 2006, 287–288.

[4] Dabbagh, Soroush (1404). “The Modern Wayfarer, Experiencing Presence, and the Experience of Boredom,” In the Passage of Time: A Stroll through the Garden of Abu Sa'id. Edited by Hossein Jamalipour, Sohrevardi Foundation Publications, p. 228.

[5] Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. 11. Auflage. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1967. §§29, 41, 60, 62.

[6] Dabbagh, “The Modern Wayfarer, Experiencing Presence, and the Experience of Boredom,” p. 208.

[7] Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Herausgegeben von Raymund Schmidt. Philosophische Bibliothek, Bd. 37a. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1956. Reprint, 1967. A24/B38–39; A34/B50–51; A647–648/B675–676.

[8] Dabbagh, “The Modern Wayfarer, Experiencing Presence, and the Experience of Boredom,” p. 208.

[9] Dabbagh, “The Modern Wayfarer, Experiencing Presence, and the Experience of Boredom,” p. 209.

[10] Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. §65

[11] Dabbagh, “The Modern Wayfarer, Experiencing Presence, and the Experience of Boredom,” p. 216.

[12] Heidegger, Martin. Holzwege. Gesamtausgabe, Bd. 5. Herausgegeben von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977. S. 34–36.

[13] Heidegger, Martin. Vorträge und Aufsätze. Gesamtausgabe, Bd. 7. Herausgegeben von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000. S. 151–152.

[14] Dabbagh, “The Modern Wayfarer, Experiencing Presence, and the Experience of Boredom,” pp. 217-219.

[15] Soroush Dabbagh, excerpted from the lecture series “Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy,” Soroush Dabbagh’s official Telegram channel, post 3509

https://t.me/Soroushdabbagh_Official/3509

[16] Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. §27.

[17] Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. §38.

[18] Emmanuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” in Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 5–7, 9–10.

[19] Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. §34.

[20] https://t.me/Soroushdabbagh_Official/9731

[21] https://t.me/Soroushdabbagh_Official/6003