There is a sense in which Heidegger’s work in Being and Time is at best some sort of ivory tower abstracting.  And of course it is abstracting.  Heidegger is looking to dismantle the traditional concepts of philosophy at the time to see if there is way of building up an ontology from the resources of observation and reason.  So language sounds even more foreign because he does not want to appeal to ready-made categories of philosophy.  What I want to definitely demonstrate however is that this is not an ivory tower exercise.  Case in point;

Overheard at Robin’s Donuts in the morning last week,

I think the sexiest woman in Hollywood is X
but the person I would most want to bang is Y

Think of the nuanced distinction of categories here.  To be quite honest this line stuck with me for a couple of days.  Here is a man who has clearly given some thought to the manner in which women-are-being-in-the-world-for-him (to use a heideggarian term . . . sort of).

So remember this the next time you disparage the project of someone like Heidegger.  Turn that disparaging finger inward and examine your own fundamental categories of being in the world!

Oh and I did catch X but missed Y.  Though it is easy to follow his line of thinking and it would make the name of Y almost superfluous anyway. X was Jennifer Aniston . . . (!?!)

And as though that conversation was not bizarre enough to overhear.  This is what I caught later at a University Starbucks,

So we were hooking up and then he said, ‘You should consider yourself lucky to be with someone so good at Tetras’  And he kept playing while he took his pants off.

I am not sure Heidegger is sophisticated enough to respond to that one.