Wednesday, December 22, 1999
To emphasize: THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
OF
METAPHYSICS is at least as important
as BEING
IN TIME, and since you are interested
in
both animals and Heidegger, it morally
should
be important to you. One thing extremely
important I forgot to emphasize in
the last
letter was how Heidegger means the
term "dasein"
which seems to escape almost all Heidegger
scholars including Germans like Tugendhat.
In his book SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND
SELF-DETERMINATION,
Tugendhat says Heidegger justifies
the term
"dasein" (p. 151-152) because
man
is 'his there' in disclosedness because
Heidegger
"wanted to get away from Husserl's
concept
of an intentional consciousness directed
toward objects and he needed a wider
concept
for which even the word 'understanding'
was
not sufficient. Understanding is a
mode of
disclosure for him, but moods are also
modes
of disclosure . . . If he had written
in
English, perhaps he might have chosen
the
word 'awareness'; there is no equivalent
for this in German, and its meaning
seems
to me to come closest to what Heidegger
means
by 'disclosure'. If you recall the
difficulties
that arose in trying to define the
word 'consciousness',
you will not want to take Heidegger
too severely
to task on this point how generous
of him!
He completely missed the point that
'awareness'
is a possitive and aggressive term,
exactly
what Husserl was doing, whereas 'disclosure'
is not only passive but lays out the
point
it's not under our fucking control.
WE DON'T CREATE REALITY BUT WE DO ACCURATELY
PERCEIVE IT! a point Heidegger constantly
makes). The situation is considerably
worse
in the case of the expression 'dasein'.
The
problem with this term is not so much
that
the expression 'da' (I first spelled
'dad':
Freudian slip?) (Eng. "there")
is unclear, but that the word 'dasein',
just
like the word 'consciousness', is a
'singulare
tantum': In contrast to the substantive
predicates
"human being" and "person"
it has no pluaral, and therefore it
seems
absurd when Heidegger says that he
wants
to designate this entity, man, as 'dasein'.
One cannot adopt a different expression
for
a word when it has a different grammar
(Heidegger's a bad boy, needs a steel
ruler
taken to the back of his hand). In
so doing
Heidegger remains entrapped in precisely
the tradition (who's trapping who here?)
he wants to overcome . . . Although
Heidegger
subsequently also analyzes the relation
of
oneself to others . . . a PECULIAR!
and MISGUIDED!
(me) EGOCENTRISM
(Tugendhat doesn't have both oars in
the
water here) nonetheless survives as
a result
of this reliance on a 'singulare tantum'.
I cannot see how the introduction of
the
term 'dasein' has had any positive
sense.
It is only a stylistic device that
has unfortunate
consequences, and we can better appropriate
Heidegger's contribution to our complex
of
problems if we refrain as far as possible
from the use of this term." And
totally
miss the MAIN POINT of ALL OF HEIDEGGER'S
PHILOSOPHY! But Tugendhat is far from
alone
in his confused but benign condescention.
Others want to translate 'dasein' as
"being
human" (JESUS! If that's all Heidegger
meant, why use such a special term?)
or "being
here" since 'we' are obviously
'here
and now'(MORONS!
I include myself since I also made
that mistake--but
for a very short while!). "Being-there"
is used by Heidegger precisely because
there
is NO "being here". Paul
defines
the Christian as "in the world
but not
of it" whereas the everyday person
is
in the world and completely and totally
OF
it. The everyday is simply not at home.
Sound
familiar? The subject does not exist,
it
is not an indisolvable atomic particle
that
can remain untouched by this Hell of
a world
as Ayn Rand would have it. You don't
rise
above the world because you are the
world--not
in an "egocentric" sense
but precisely
because THERE IS NO REAL ("there
are
no such things as abstractions")
EGO.
Self is a convention of language, you
need
it to say, "I think". You
need
it to make a logical proposition AND
BE MORALLY
RESPONSIBLE--FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.
(A Nietzschean perspective, or Liebnitzean,
you have only one free choice to make:
to
justify this world as the best possible
of
all possible worlds ((which it is!
it is!
Therefore real Hell would definitely
be a
relief)) which to Nietzsche was part
of the
horror of eternal recurrence, an abstract
idea he MEANT to be fictional!) I mean,
how
can you say,"Heidegger is a bad
boy
and I stand in a far superior moral
perspective
from which to judge him" if there
is
no self to judge? Simply because we
don't
like the idea and dread its possible
consequences
is NOT a logical argument that it is
not
as true as two plus two equals four.
Jivanmukta.
This is where Shankara, Abhinavagupta,
and
the Marquis de Sade are. They are 'released'
in apathy from the social convention
of the
guilt loaded 'self' (By the way, during
the
French Revolution (("Death to
the aristos!)),
the 'divine' marquis received a reputation
as one of the most fair and impartial
of
revolutionary court judges: "epekinia",
equity). ("All power to the soviets
of workers, soldiers, peasants--and
nurses!
Communism doesn't work, but the spirit
of
Lenin still lives! He just made the
mistake
of believing common, everyday people
basically
LOVE each other, and will work for
each other's
benifit.)
"Being-there" was not a mistake
because Heidegger meant you exist out
there
not 'in here'. You live without any
privacy
whatsoever in a public place all and,
in
a Hegelian sense, absolutely alone,
not because
you're fundamentally egocentric, but
because
you are that "singulare tantum"
Tugendhat completly misses his own
point
about! In other words, you lose the
best
of BOTH possible worlds in reality.
In other
words, there is only one world--there
is
only one reality. And you ARE either
IT or
you reject it--FOR NOTHING! Talk about
a
double bind! But one of Heidegger's
basic
points is, when you are talking about
fundamental,
EXPERIENCED reality you are AT the
limits
of language. Because abstractions are
not
real. Only reality, beyond the control
of
one's magical imagination, is real.
But without
that imagination, that reality is shit.
Now
back to THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS. (pg.
20)
"Here (Descartes) philosophizing
begins
in doubt, and it seems as though everything
is put into question. Yet it only seems
so.
Dasein, the I (the ego) is not put
into question
at all . . . All that is put into question--or
less still, remains open and is not
followed
up--is knowledge. . . A fundamental
Cartesian
stance in philosophy cannot in principle
put the dasein of man into question
at all;
for it would thereby destroy itself
at the
outset in its most proper intention."
"Philosophizing stands on its
own as
the fundamental occurence of dasein
. . .
Insight into the multiple ambiguity
of philosophizing
acts as a deterent and ultimately betrays
the entire fruitlessness of such activity
. . . We must rather uphold and hold
out
in this terror. For in it there becomes
manifest
something essential about all philosophical
comprehension, namely that in the philosophical
concept, man, and indeed man as a whole,
is in the grip of an attack--driven
out of
everydayness and driven back into the
ground
of things. Yet the attacker is not
man, the
dubious subject of the everyday and
of the
bliss of knowledge. Rather, in philosophizing
the dasein in man launches the attack
on
man . . . The normal human being takes
his
or her petty pleasures as the measure
of
what joy should be. The normal human
being
takes his or her shallow fears as the
measure
of what terror and anxiety should be.
This
normal human being takes his or her
smug
comforts as the measure of what security
and insecurity can be. It ought at
least
to have become questionable by now
whether
philosophizing as the ultimate and
extreme
pronouncement and interlocution may
be dragged
before such a judge, and whether we
wish
to let our attitudetoward philosophy
be dictated
by this judge; or whether we are resolved
to try something else, i. e., whether
we
wish to put ourselves, our being human,
on
the line. Is it really so sure that
the interpretation
of human existence in which we move
today
. . . is really the highest? Who can
guarantee
to us that man in his present day self
conception
has not raised some mediocre aspect
of himself
to the status of a god?
Enough for now. "Things fall apart".
Later...
Sat, 6 Jan 2001:
A gift should be given expecting no
return.
It is the fact that you can be bored
that
reveals the wholeness of world wherein
abstract
thought can occur. This Heidegger does
say
distinguishes man from animal. But
that is
to put it in very simpleminded terms
that
he constantly belittles and laughs
at. He
definitely says it with tongue in cheek,
and explicitly says he is playing a
game.
One could state crudely what he dances
around
and at least establish a point which
is to
be bypassed as unsophisticated and
too blunt
to make the real point, but for me
it works
for a start of comprehension. Heidegger
literally
means what he says in the "Letter
on
Humanism" about the "scarcely
fathomable,
abyssal bodily kinship with the animal".
The abyss is quite literal and central
to
his point ("You look into the
abyss
and the abyss looks back into you",
Nietzsche). At the beginning of his
course
he asks, "What is man? The crown
of
creation or some wayward path, some
great
misunderstanding and an abyss?"
an unanswered
question he has taken from Kant. Krell
seems
to believe Heidegger tends toward a
superhumanism,
but I think the word "abyss"
is
the key. And philosophy is the only
key to
that key. "Philosophy is philosophizing",
"something to do with the whole,
something
extreme", "an ultimate pronouncement
. . . that constantly permeates him
(man? dasein?) in his entirety."
He
quotes Novalis, "Philosophy is
really
homesickness, an urge to be at home
everywhere."
Heidegger then says, "To be at
home
everywhere means to be at once and
at all
times within the whole. We name this
'within
the whole' and its character of wholeness
'the world'. We are always waiting
for something.
We are always called upon by something
as
a whole. This 'as a whole' is the world.
We are asking: What is that--world?"
"We have somehow always already
departed
toward this whole, or better, we are
always
already on the way to it." "We
ourselves are this underway, this transition,
this 'neither the one nor the other'.
What
is this oscillating to and fro between
this
neither / nor? . . . What is the unrest
of
this not? We name it finitude."
To jump
to conclusion, finitude is not simply
'limit
of ability', it is mortality and the
consciousness
that man is just a kind of animal that
does
not want to know it is an animal, a
specific
fleshy animal that is as mortal as
any cow
or dog. And worse, is absolutely individual,
alone, me, "mineness", the
vanishing
mathematical point of Kant's logical
cogito,
a nothing that knows it is nothing.
Finitude
is also the deliberate ignorance that
a man
does not control his thoughts or language
except by severe limitation, by NOT
saying
what pulls at him. Aristotle says,
"to
logon zoon" which means either
the speaking
or reasoning animal, but the logos
is not
something owned but is on loan, borrowed,
even cohabited with.
In other words, Aristotle's definition
refers
to two different beings. Man is the
animal
that is possessed by speech. "What
is
world, finitude, individuation? Each
of these
questions inquires into the whole.
It is
not sufficient for us to know such
questions.
What is decisive is whether we really
ask
such questions, whether we have the
strength
to sustain them right through our whole
existence."
"The fundamental concern of philosophizing
pertains to being gripped, to awakening
and
planting it. All such being gripped,
however,
comes from and remains in an attunement."
In BEING AND TIME this was dread or
anxiety,
but here it is through boredom. They
are
"fundamental attunements of Dasein.
They are of the kind that constantly,
essentially,
and thoroughly attune human beings,
without
human beings necessarily always recognizing
them as such. Philosophy in each case
(you)
happens in a fundamental attunement."
"What Novalis names 'homesickness'
is
the fundamental attunement of philosophizing
. . . Metaphysics is a fundamental
occurrence
within human Dasein . . . The questioners
are thereby also included in the question,
placed into question. Accordingly,
fundamental
concepts are not universals . . . They
are
concepts of a properly peculiar kind.
In
each case (you) they comprehend the
whole
within themselves, they are comprehensive
concepts . . . They comprehend within
themselves
the comprehending human being and his
or
her Dasein--not as an addition, but
in such
a way that these concepts are not comprehensive
without there being a comprehending
in this
second sense, and vice versa. No concept
of the whole without the comprehending
of
philosophizing existence." "The
ambiguity of the critical stance in
Descartes
. . . begins with doubt, and it seems
as
though everything is put into question.
Yet
it only seems so. Dasein, the I (the
ego),
is not put into question at all . .
. All
that is ever put into question . .
. is knowledge,
consciousness of things . . . yet Dasein
itself is never put into question.
A fundamental
Cartesian stance in philosophy cannot
in
principle put the Dasein of man into
question
at all; for it would thereby destroy
itself
at the outset." Neither Descartes
nor
Kant ever question the existence of
the subject,
just the objective world. But they
can only
approach, IMAGINE, such a logical,
infinitesimal
point on COMING BACK FROM THE OBJECTIVE
WORLD
WHICH THE UNDERSTANDING 'FROM BEFORE
THE
BEGINNING' HAS POSITED AS REAL. IT
IS THE
OBJECTIVE WORLD THAT IS REAL AND WHOLLY
ABSORBS
ALL CONSCIOUSNESS. THERE IS NO PLACE
OR ROOM
FOR A SELF, A SUBJECT, EXCEPT AS THE
"I"
OF AN OBJECTIVE SENTENCE. Have you
ever touched
your 'self'? smelled your 'self'? weighed
your 'self'? taken a picture of your
'self'?
have you ever taken your 'self' for
a walk?
It is an abstraction as unreal as dialectical
materialism or the theory of relativity.
IT IS SOMETHING OTHERS EXPECT YOU TO
HAVE
SO YOU CAN BE 'MORALLY' ACCOUNTABLE,
i. e.,
held in guilt. The world is real, you
are
not, plain and simple common sense.
Yet just
as with abstractions and universals
you feel
the "I" must be real or everything
is nonsense.
YET IT IS STILL TRUE BY ANY RATIONAL
DESCRIPTION
OF REALITY, ABSTRACTIONS AND THE SELF
DO
NOT--LITERALLY--EXIST! "We must
rather
uphold and hold out in this terror.
For it
becomes manifest something essential
about
all philosophical comprehension, namely
that
in the philosophical concept, man,
and indeed
man as a whole, is in the grip of an
attack--driven
out of everydayness and driven back
into
the ground of things (the abyss!).
Yet the
attacker is not man, the dubious subject
of the everyday and of the bliss of
knowledge.
Rather, in philosophizing the Dasein
in man
launches the attack upon man."
Enough
for now. |