Knowledge by disruption

According to Heidegger, Descartes represents an effort at pure idealism. Knowledge comes to a detached subject gazing inward, without any attention to the world outside. Heidegger doesn’t believe that Descartes can do it, since we need some knowledge of the phenomenal world if we are going to connect it to the ideal scheme that is in our heads. Without that connection, we end in solipsism, and insofar as Descartes avoids solipsism, he must be engaging the world outside. Idealism collapses on itself.

As an alternative, Heidegger says that we come to know through the clash between real things and their properties and the cognitive schemes and frameworks that we work with. Knowledge is the accumulated memory of disruptions of our cognitive schemes. Disruptions free us from idealism and solipsism, introducing us into the real objective world: “Conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy have the function of bringing to the fore the character of objective presence in what is at hand.”