I.D. Orient 00011

Letters to Nowhere, Jan 2001

Gary C Moore wroteto Jeffrey Masson
.
Heidegger, animal is man, dasein is nothing VIII

Awaiting the obvious doom of your reply, I need to get to these vague ideas quickly before their threats disappear into comforting thoughts. But first I have finished the Santarasa and found the exposition of the Rasagangadhara by Jagannatha fascinating. The nature of sthayibhava "implanted in the mind since the time of birth" is clarified for me. And, "For it has been said that a sthayibhava revealed (or suggested) by the vibhavas etc. is called by the name of rasa. You have probably already made this clear in the main part of the book and I am only now catching up. The 'doctrine' of the origination and cessation of rasa that is permanent in the base of consciousness, that "comes to an end, the light of one's own blissful consciousness becomes veiled once again by the power of ignorance . . ." is powerful. I found the addendum interesting as well, especially Abhinavagupta's image of the clean piece of cloth absorbing all the water as an image of the sensitive reader. This is a GREAT book. It is written with wonderful sensitivity, perception, and passion. But the Heidegger is becoming a threatening maze of obviously contradictory ideas, much the way Shankara proceeds in the Brahmasutrabasya, that leaves me frightened of the eternal spaces like Pascal (name dropping: I love it. It also relieves the tension.). That a life is 'infinitely' valuable is only valid from the point of view of the singulare tantum. From the point of view of 'They', where I really exist, no one as singulare tantum is valuable at all by definition. If a person is important to the 'They', it is their qualities standing by themselves that are important as with intelligence, kindness, love, skill, sociability, riches, etc., not the singulare tantum itself. That does not, indeed cannot, count at all. In a way it is a despising of yourself. Sometimes confronting these big questions that I cannot immediately answer, though it seems an answer should be obvious, it is utterly humiliating being held in front of them. It makes me feel like a bug about to be squashed. In the scheme of my own language I am nothing. The divine steals all value away. At the end of FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS again, (p. 341) "If this original manifestness of beings is more originary than the LOGOS, and the LOGOS is a manner of human comportment, where then is this originary manifestness? It is surely not outside man, but must be man himself in a deeper sense, man himself in his essence. We indicated this essence by way of a thesis: man is world-forming. Where is this manifestness situated, and what does it consist in?" Is he being ironic? Is he referring to our arrogance at claiming language which we do not control? The description of manifestness is of something prior to the here and now where we really are. He is saying the essence of man is not his essence. He is saying that man is not himself. There is no "where".

Awkwardness points toward . . . what? On the next page, he tries to say the main difference between man and animal is attunement, that an animal is not "tuned in to the 'either/or' of conforming or not conforming to those beings that the LOGOS is about. Man's being open for beings themselves . . . is not the being at hand of a gaping emptiness that could be filled . . . Rather, this being open for beings as they are sustains the LOGOS as such brings with it the possibility of a pointing out that can be bound by beings. Being open for . . . is from the very outset a free holding oneself toward whatever beings are given there in letting oneself be bound." Then both animal and man are captivated, freedom is simply a synonym for "leeway", "play", or better yet the going back and forth, from one thing to another, comparing them all, SYNTHESIS and DIARIRESIS, that both Aristotle and Kant talk about (there is a specific word for this but I cannot think of it right now) (discursiveness!). In a computer it's called "fuzzy thinking". This is the "tuning in" to beings that is the fundamental comportment of man.

It is simply the process of "working something out". It "is characteristic in general of every of every ability and comportment as distinct from capacity and behaviour. In the latter we never find any letting oneself be bound by something binding, but merely a sphere of instinctual drives becoming disinhibited (!!!!) while remaining captivated." Man has 'freedom', an animal is 'disinhibited'. What's the difference? Animals work things out too, they solve problems. Heidegger knew this. So once again, it simply comes down to: Language has man, which is something he states repetitively in his late philosophy. All an animal has to do is speak to be fully man, the featherless biped. Even that freedom of "leeway", "that conformity or nonconformity is regulated according to beings. Propositional comportment must intrinsically already be the providing of something that can give the measure for the very making of assertions. This provision of, and subjection to, something binding is in turn only possible where there is freedom. Only where there is the possibility of transferring our being bound from one thing to another are we given the leeway to decide concerning the conformity or nonconformity of our comportment toward whatever is binding." And this bind is the PHUSIS he is talking about at the beginning of the book. (p. 30) "PHUSIS, that which prevails, means not only that which itself prevails, but that which prevails in its prevailing or the prevailing of whatever prevails." The "whatever" is the 'whole', the world supposedly formed by man long before he could know its formation. (p. 32) "The prevailing of whatever prevails, and that which prevails itself, manifests itself, as soon as it is taken from concealment . . ." (p. 33)"Aristotle designates the ultimate determinant within the PHUSEI ONTA, as the divine, without yet associating this with any particular religious view. Questions are thus asked concerning beings as a whole, and ultimately concerning the divine."