It is not my job to resolve Heidegger's mess for him for I know that it is an irresolvable ontological topsy-turvyness, unless one goes against the logical nature of the brain and constructs a way around it with an illogical device which fools the naive.
From Heidegger's introduction of 'Dasein' (the gerundial noun - "Being There") onwards there is no explanation from him about the nature of the impasse. He doesn't face up to the logical inadmissibility of the daseinic device - he simply goes ahead and creates it and then spends a lot of time in subsequent chapters of *Being and Time* with illustrations of it fittingness for metaphysical exploration of "existence."
He is of course extrapolating his mental confusion from a false premise - the whole error of Heideggerianism is built on THIS particular wrongful diagnoses - he creates the 'Daseinic device' because he can't provide the man - for the man already has a *Being* - the man Is a priori.
I do not wish to annoy you further by repeating my ideas about piggyback duality. Simply - the brain will not allow incorrectness of this unconscionable magnitude. There can be no relationship between a *being* and a *non-being* and 'dasein' is decidedly a *non-being.*
Relationships only take place between entities - a man and a woman - the moon and the earth - oil and water etc. You don't have a relationship between a swimmer and swimming - the swimmer has a relationship with the water in which he swims. The *being* has a relationship with the cosmos - not with *Being.*
Moods are not entities. Existential moods and modalities are electro-chemical changes - movements - changes - which take place in the bodybrain - the human holism, and are part of the ever-changing physicality of the *being* in question.
My wife's moods are not separate from my wife but are part of my wife's brain and physiology whilst they are in operation. We can refer to a habitual swimmer as a swimmer in certain circumstances, but while he is a swimmer that is a person who travels through the water by swimming, he may also be a father, or a snooker player or a reader or even a philosopher. That part of your body which we call your lungs has a 'relationship' with the air that it sucks into the bronchial area via the throat. It is a very critical relationship, for without either your lungs or the air to fill them - you would die.
By cosmos I mean everything that exists anywhere. Dasein is no more capable of understanding *Being* than any man or woman for Dasein originates in the mind of a man, (Heidegger,) and the idea of Dasein taken up by his followers. It is a thing of the conciousness not a *Being* that can understand itself.
Dasein is a very simple concept. The German word 'Dasein' has been employed to a great degree in German philosophy to mean "existence," or Dass-sein "that it is," of a thing, state of affairs, person or God. (Here we can spot the usefulness of the word which includes Heidegger's errant 'IS' slipping in as an outlaw to the logic of the brain,)
In order to stress the special meaning 'Dasein' has for him, Heidegger sometimes hyphenates the word (Da-sein), suggesting "there *Being*," (again the secret ontological agent of subterfuge,) which is to say, the *Being* characteristic of human existence, which is "there" in the world.
I follow tradition and let the German word 'Dasein' or Da-sein stand, translating the former as "existence" or "human *Being*" only when the usage seems to be non-terminological. Dasein, *Being* is merely an idea which can comport itself towards nothing. *Being* cannot comport itself towards existence for 'Dasein' and 'Existence' are just ideas in men's heads. A man or a woman can contemplate, wonder about and question the 'nature' of 'existence' - but it is impossible for one idea to contemplate another idea - only a contemplator can comtemplate. 'Dasein' is forced upon Heidegger because of the linguistic-logico impossibility of piggyback *Being*. I have already said that since grammatically and semantically the brain blocks and seals off the use of the a double-barrelled or tandem existence, in order to proceed to construct his artificial viewing platform to contemplate the the 'experiential existence' of mankind he had no alternative but to introduce an logically illegal construct characterised by an disorderly, nonrational, and grammatically irreconcilable semantic component.
Furthermore I have a feeling that 'Dasein' may distort rather than facilitate existential investigation. This will be the next field of my investigation. Heidegger eloquently points to the usefulness of the Daseinic approach, but speaks not of the logical dynamic, which [like Pinnochio's puppetmaker) brought 'Dasein' to life.
It is that linguistic/semantic dynamic which concerns me, not the consequential advantages of a daseinic methodology. The daseinic illegitimacy I have explained in the body of my text. The meaning of 'Dasein' too I have already covered. Heidegger broaches logic by attempting to disengage existence from its multiplicity of seamlessly dove-tailed modalities which constitute an existential continuum. It is the same as trying to separate meningitis from the meningitis virus - the disease can only be observed as a corollary of the presence of the microorganism. We encounter linguistic and semantic gridlock because Dasein is grammatically, logically speaking and from the viewpoint of the human brain - an illegitimate ontological bastard.
I am sure that Heidegger would be most surprised and even annoyed that anyone would even dream of challenging this Daseinic contrivance, and I suppose that many of us as creatures of habit, will have become so used to living with the concept of 'Dasein,' that it will have become insinuated into their very conciousness, and the thought of being rendered 'Daseinless' fills them with horror. I have no wish to take away anyone's baby comforter, I am simply suggesting that it can be safely set-aside and that we all have to grow up one day.
And so in conclusion I will briefly restate my case, which is made up of two observations.
1. The verb 'BE' in all of its tenses touches *Being* only tangentially. Its main role is to as an assignment operator which is ready to 'stand in,' or 'dwell' as a 'ready to hand' actuator, which idicates or prompts an interest in the existential nature of the relationship between the subject and predicate of a sentence.
In its 'quiet, sometimes unneeded' role, that is when the nature of the subject and predicate are uncontroversial and accepted by both speaker and listener, it gives the false impression of an insignificant copuletic function. Thus in the sentence: "King John is ready." The *IS * relates NOT to King John's *existence* or *Being*, (which we assume and concur-in merely at the mention of the words "King John," but rather to a consideration of King John and any further unsignfied features of King John that we may wish or may not wish to contemplate, plus the "readiness of King John" and the nature of or state of his readiness. Heidegger is significantly reluctant to admit his inability to analyse the above, (illustrated in *A Chat with Herr Heidegger,* and his consequent infamous dismissal of the problem and subsequent creation of Dasein as a circumventory device is notes with contempt.. If he had said something like: "Look, I am restricted by the laws of linguistics and semantics to adopt a *Being* in the world' position because frankly I don't understand the workings of the BE-word, but I feel strongly that it would be worth while to adopt an artifice in order to view the cosmos from another interesting perspective, so I am forced to create a artificial creature without any past whom we can say has been 'thrown' into the world, (rather like Mary Wolstenholme's monster waking up on the operating table,) who had no past, (and in his particular case not much future.)
If he had levelled with us, if he'd said:
"Yes, I'm going to invent a character, and just like in fiction this character will be restricted in his world-view because of his fictive and impossible position in logic - for this character will have no history, no mother and father and no babyhood, no teenage years, and no genesis other than in the mind of his creator."
It's very probable that people like me would have overcome our suspicions and responded:
"Ok, that's fine - viewing the world in the first person suits my ego - it allows another way of looking at things for a change - false and contrived as it is - never mind - let's go!"
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