April 18, 2000.


There is no such thing as "mankind" at all. It is something invented to give sociologists jobs and preachers and politicians something to talk about that makes everyone listening feel "at home" together, a comfortable feeling of being united in a common valuation. The same, of course, goes for "brotherhood". But then the same also goes for any sort of union, any "become united at a more basic level" which I assume from the context means somehow united with other people, and not part of a Hegelian dialectic where you are never quite certain if he means 'us' includes 'me' or 'I' encompasses all of 'them'. Heidegger says in the face of death being-together and being-with fail: ". . . Any being-together-with what is taken care of and any being-with the others fails when one's ownmost potentiality-of-being is at stake. Dasein can authentically be itself only when it makes that possible of its own accord" (B&T pg. 263 German pagination). Tugendhat calls Heidegger's authentic dasein a "singulare tantum" which I take to mean ontologically alone. I use the deprivative term because conveying any sense of being 'one' or united as a whole for dasein is ludicrous since dasein is a compendium of incomplete structures, especially the resolve of authenticity itself which is based on the call of conscience which simply says one doesn't belong where one is, and which gives us a freedom to choose but gives us no standard from within oneself by which to choose where any choice then in that infinite field of possibilities would then necessarily be in "bad faith" because it must jump into an external standard made by other people. Authentic dasein then must stand where no standard exists except honesty because choosing falsity for oneself when one knows it is false is a pointless and self-refuting endeavor. "Honesty is the only virtue,” said Nietzsche and from that can be derived reason and consistency because only the truth of the matter is of any use or interest here. But honesty, like reason and consistency, by itself is not a standard of action. All it does is get you to authenticity.

I am pretty certain Nietzsche and I know for sure Heidegger does not regard 'man' or dasein as 'a will to power' or, worse, 'wills to power' amongst many. Heidegger regarded Nietzsche as teaching the will to power as another name for being, or even phusis, since "will to power" as ontological is fundamentally temporal, and moves into the future of the world as the irrevocable force of history which, in its present form, is technology. Just as you cannot have a dialogue with being you cannot have a dialogue with will to power. Dasein is swept up in the futurel force of history. And one also remembers that Heidegger literally means it when he says being is nothing, so that if will to power is being then either a "communion" or a "direct engagement" or a "forceful dialogue" would simply be talking to yourself. Being is literally nothing, and yet this 'nothing' is most important for us since it is the only 'thing' that breaks us out of the meaningless circle of Aristotle's "this is done for the sake of this is done for the sake of . . ." to make an authentic whole of one's ownmost existence in the face of death. So too dasein then is also nothing and the authentic self a product of the resolve of imagination that simply says there MUST be something better that the solid reality of the boring 'They' self of the fallen everyday.

Dasein being made up of fundamentally permanent incomplete structures like the meaningless call of conscience, falleness that has not fallen from anywhere, throwness that is not thrown from anywhere, and freedom that has no ability to choose honestly. But the highest desire is certainly not the desire to know. I thought both Nietzsche and Heidegger had destroyed that. The highest desire is to withstand death that is going to erase you, and since you, as the ontological "singulare tantum" are the only one that can know

Knowledg cannot be shared - one cannot get into someone else's mind, and just as a library contains books not knowledge itself which only exists in your mind -- not mine because ontologically I am absolutely, in the Hegelian sense, elsewhere to you) your death will erase the universe, history, and being as such. That is crudely put but I hope it makes the point, essentially a Nietzschean one, that you --not me-- are responsible for everything, that it is and what it is, what is past, what is now, what is future. Ontologically only you know that you know. Ontologically you are figuratively 'cut off' from everybody else, except you are alone with your death. And that true partner provides you with your highest desire.

Everydayness

Everydayness is the only solid reality. The 'They' self is the only real self that endures through time no matter what. But no one is satisfied with that. The universe of the practical is essentially trivial because it is not whole as inauthentic dasein wants to be (to get back from where it fell, to go back to where it was thrown from, its true home instead of being all the time dissatisfied with what the real pitifully provides). So the only structures that will begin, really ‘tease’? to 'satisfy' dasein are imaginary ones. Heidegger described it best when he said that in ultimate boredom (Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, pp. 132-164) one finds that the whole universe is useless and yet, on the other hand, this is something wonderful because you have been freed from the burden of the universe. But for what?

It doesn't make any difference whether existence is real or not. But in reality which, as such is always 'everyday', no one is compelled "by Nietzsche's assertion tha: "this reality can only be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon", and "art is never at the foremost of reality" and desire is fundamentally magical not real. Only authentic dasein gets a glimpse of this when imaginatively composing itself with only itself for an audience, so that one is constantly at risk of boring oneself until one realizes what "bored to death" means in this context.