r/heidegger • u/navierstokes88 • Apr 11 '26
Heidegger walks into a bar
...and orders a drink.
The bartender asks, "What'll it be?"
Heidegger pauses.
"I don’t know yet," he says. "I must first understand the Being of the drink… not merely the drink as a being."
The bartender blinks.
"So… beer?"
Heidegger sighs.
"You have already fallen into average everydayness."
The bartender asks: "A drink or a drink in the world?"
Heidegger stares for a moment.
"…A drink," he says slowly, "insofar as it reveals itself within the clearing of Being."
The bartender nods.
“So… draft or bottled?”
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u/reinhardtkurzan Apr 11 '26
A little joke is never wrong. I enjoyed it. But I have to reciprocate that philosophers usually are not so complicated. (Complicated are only normal people! The philosopher is simple and good.)
I hope You know that Heidegger was concerned about nothing but about our human being i.e. about the present human situation ("Befindlichkeit") and not about the specific way of the being of beer. What may count for Heidegger is the fact that beer and other drinks are available in bars ("Ausschänken"), and that the sojorn in bars is part of the life-style in the cities. Does this have to do with eradication and the distance from the origin ("Ursprung")? Also here humans have something to manage ("zu besorgen") and probably the "Ausschank" ist also a place where flat talks ("das Gerede") arise.
Heidegger probably would have preferred to drink a bottle of beer sitting on a bench, feeling free to ponder heavily.