See also letters: Renne de Bakker 28 Aug Gary Moore 3 Sept Renne de Bakker 5 Sept Renne de Bakker 25 Sept



Gary C. Moore wrote:
It is strange that Heidegger, in his book THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF METAPHYSICS: World, Finitude, Solitude does not actually discuss "solitude" [Einsamkeit] but rather "individuation" [Vereinzelung] which, instead of being a withdrawal or detachment or being cut off, is a process of interaction with the world -- which would really make it more consistent with "world" and "finitude" than "solitude" which is a withdrawal or detachment from interaction into silence or disdain for communication. Does Heidegger actually discusses "solitude" as such, the real thing, anywhere? If so, I have missed it. For after all, he says he has "loneliness", not that he is "alone".

RENNE DE BAKKER:
Heidegger in 1930 presents Einsamkeit and Vereinzelung as 2 words for the same thing. See German p. 8, bottom, of the "Metaphysical Concepts":

"Endlichkeit IST nur in der wahren Verendlichung. In dieser aber vollzieht sich letzlich eine VEREINZELUNG des Menschen auf sein Dasein. [...] Diese Vereinzelung ist vielmehr jene VEREINSAMUNG, in der jeder Mensch allererst in die Naehe zum Wesentlichen aller Dinge gelangt, zur Welt. Was ist diese EINSAMKEIT, wo der Mensch je wie ein Einziger sein wird?"

"Finiteness IS only in the true Verendlichung (finitude as defined by death?). In this 'finitude', however, a individuation of man carries itself out in the long run in his existence . . . This sort of individuation is rather that solitariness in which each human being arrives first of all into the proximity at the substantial one of all things, to the world. What is this ISOLATION (solitariness), where the human ever will be like an only
(one)? "

RE: GARY C MOORE:
The above is a revised Altavista translation of your quote. I think the corresponding passage in my McNeil & Walker translation is,

"Finitude only is in truly becoming finite. In becoming finite, however, there ultimately occurs an INDIVIDUATION of man with respect to his Dasein . . . This individuation is rather that SOLITARINESS in which each human being first of all enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world. What is this solitude, where each human being will be as though unique?" (pg. 6)

There is a great deal to think about here, but is still both unclear, insufficient, and superficially contradictory, i. e., combining things that ordinarily do not go together. Yet we know they must go together according to the premises of Heidegger's philosophy. ". . . That solitariness in which each human being first of all enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world" implies a gathering out of dispersion. "Into the proximity at the substantial one of all things" from my faltering translation, however, seems to say the world is the meeting place (as a substantial oneness?) of the dispersion gathered together by individuation. "That solitariness in which . . . first of all" implies an "In the beginning . . ." as if a creation or a primal birth which is exactly what birth, or an answer to the call of conscience, would be for "each human being" in some authentic sense. "First of all enters into a nearness to what is ESSENTIAL to all things" implies it is the "nearness" itself that is "essential in all things" which "each human being enters into", but this would equate "solitariness" and "a nearness to world" which "is essential in all things". Unless this is solipsist in the sense that Sartre defines it below (a refusal to leave the solid ground of experience) this would seem to be a contradiction.

However, "substantial oneness" would seem nearer to the meaning of solitariness here. This 'solitude' would be quite crowded. "Solitude" is defined as "where each human being will be AS THOUGH unique", or as an "only one" which has less of a sense of particularity [i. e., "unique' as opposed to "common"] and something much more fundamental. As though implies, however, the necessary throwness into the inauthenticity of the They self. This implies a duplicity (or doubleness?) in solitude "in which each human being enters" so that there are two different 'things' here, "solitude" and "human being" as absorbed into the They, and it is "in" the solitude that the human being "enters into a nearness to world". "Solitude" is being used in a strange way here.

But, acknowledging my lack of understanding and therefore labeling it a sort of 'X', then as an 'X' it begins to fit into the first part of the quote where "finitude IS becoming finite" where "in becoming finite" there "occurs an individuation of man WITH RESPECT TO HIS Dasein" which implies a passiveness in "Dasein" as a possession of man and not the other way around. This passiveness is also indicated both in the nature of the call of conscience which has nothing specific about it, and the call is only heard within the frustration of inauthenticity to find its ownmost project. This would mean a fundamental disagreement with the implications of the usual studies of Heidegger that seem to establish a hierarchy of Dasein which is on a 'higher' level than man, and in turn 'Sein' being on a 'higher' level than "Dasein" which would also be in perfect accord with their usual motivation to equate "Being" with "God". In Michael Haar's book HEIDEGGER AND THE ESSENCE OF MAN (as far as I have gone) he also seems to be making a point of the diminution of man as well as being-there under the overlordship of the neutrality of 'being', and this actually does seem to be what Heidegger 'implies' EXCEPT, 1) especially in translation, the equation is ludicrously made than since "Being" is capitalized and "God' is capitalized then they are supposedly equated by Heidegger -- which he has always denied; 2) that Heidegger has also said all his efforts in "Turn II" are dependent on his work in "Turn I" and vice versa which is what got me started reading Michael Haar's book in the first place where in the introduction he makes clear that there is a failure and need in Turn I for Turn II, but in the body of the book seems to be saying Turn II there is a failure there also because it seems to turn its back on Turn I as absolutely necessary, both primarily and fundamentally. And an accord seems to have been the intent of what Heidegger said in his prefatory letter to William J. Richardson's book HEIDEGGER: Through Phenomenology to Thought. 3) In the "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger does NOT say 'Being is the shepherd of mankind' as Jesus is the shepherd of his human flock, but says, "Man is the shepherd of being" which would not only utterly destroy any analogy with 'God', but be in accord with what I said above and agrees with the statement in "What is Metaphysics" that "Being and the nothing belong together . . . because Being itself is essentially finite and reveals itself only in the transcendence of Dasein which is held out into the nothing" (from BASIC WRITINGS, ed. & trans. Krell, Harper Collins, 1993, pg. 108).

"In becoming finite . . . occurs the individuation of man" implies 1) a gathering together of 'man' out of a primal dispersion, but also 2) a differentiation of "individuation" from "solitude" since solitude is that "IN which FIRST OF ALL enters into a nearness to world" so that the gathering of "in becoming finite", individuation - if it is a gathering - occurs WITHIN solitude so that this solitude would both be the first and accordingly the first experience forgotten as irretrievable. Therefore "solitude" would be a primary necessity for "individuation" and, in SOME sense come before it. But would this not accord with authenticity's "always already" being beforehand so that being-there there becomes what it "always already" was?

The only dispersion I can easily think of is being-in-the-world itself as being oneself merely one of the objects, the 'object' "I" specifically as a scatter within the 'They' self. But the above implies an AUTHENTIC GATHERING FROM DISPERSION prior in some sense to that. Being-in-the-world is indeed where the "call of conscience" uncovers the first glimmer of authenticity - which has been there all the time - within inauthentic being-there. Individuation as finitude would then be essentially an unacknowledged but sophisticated solipsism "presented more modestly as a refusal to leave the solid ground of experience" (BEING & NOTHINGNESS, trans. Barnes, Pt. 3 "Being-for-Others", Chap. 1 "The Existence of Others", II. "The Reef of Solipsism", Phil. Lib. Pg. 229, Wash. Sq. pg. 311) that Sartre talks about where we face both the fact that the 'They' self as the "Other" which completely dominates, forms, and literally IS what is 'me' as though unique, yet it exists only through my individuation, being-there as ownmost, that there is an 'Other' or 'They' self at all to dominate what I am. That would imply then one "always already" has been finite, individuated, alone, authentic, has 'known' it somehow from the beginning in solitude, and has known it is connected to death somehow as the ultimate solitude, and therefore in the "thrown" natural and necessary course of life ALSO has "always already", in the beginning within the past, run away from it. Instead of any kind of act of cowardice, then, running away and forgetting solitude, finitude and death are actually the necessary structuring, individuation of being-there as thrown. It is a hermeneutical circle as, somehow, to even 'become' INAUTHENTIC BEING, IT MUST IN A WAY FIRST BE 'AUTHENTIC' IN SOME SENSE! And THEN 'inauthenticity' would be an 'authentic' evolution of being-there!

II: The Field of Equally Indifferent Possibilities Discovered in Authentic 'Conscience' Through Existential Anxiety and Fundamental Boredom

Heidegger's refuses to evaluate authenticity and inauthenticity as one preferable to the other, or as Joan Stambaugh expressed it: "Bearing in mind Heidegger's fundamental distaste for questions of value and for value judgements in general - a distaste that expressed itself very early and in no uncertain terms in BEING AND TIME with the refusal to deem inauthenticity inferior to, or less desirable than, authenticity . . . " (THE FINITUDE OF BEING, SUNY, 1992, pg. 5). And as Michael Haar said after his analysis of the fundamental importance of originary time that overrides any determination by Dasein, "Thus from the summer of 1927 onward, the importance of the distinction between authentic and inauthentic, originary and derivative, becomes attenuated; DASEIN moves toward NEUTRALITY"
(HEIDEGGER AND THE ESSENCE OF MAN, trans. McNeil, SUNY, 1993, pg. 40). Then evaluative concepts or "maxims" that are considered absolutely necessary to ordinary, 'inauthentic' human choice, as sociability, action as in "life or death importance", "good and evil", "self-esteem", "the Ideal of Man", or "the forgiveness and condemnation of God" become mere objects of analysis, like the universal "I" identical to the

****** 'They' self, Heidegger's analysis of the "call of conscience" and "primordial guilt" demonstrates have absolutely nothing to do with moral implication. The notion of "neutrality" is implicit in 'authenticity' since from that point being-there views all possibilities as equal. This 'neutral' point, however, is compromised by "throwness" where choices have "always already" been made for authentic being-there which can then 'authentically' reappropriate its understanding and practical world through its opposition, destruction, and reassembly in repetition by making the past one's ownmost. But this involves the choice of the possibilities of life as defined by the choice of running ahead towards death which opens up the infinite field of possibilities. Hence 'authenticity' which you "always already" had, you clarify and hold to in resolve out of the desire for authenticity that grows out of inauthenticity's incompleteness as if remembered from the forgetting implicit in throwness. In other words, you have the hermeneutic circle of assuming authenticity in the midst of inauthenticity. It is a seed that both 'grows' into inauthenticity and yet being within inautheticity, it 'yearns' to grow out of it, and is therefore a necessary structure within inauthenticity that makes it possible to turn towards authenticity.

From the point of view of 'authentic' understanding, Heidegger says, "With its unequivocally calculable maxims that one is led to expect, (the ordinary definition of) conscience would deny to existence nothing less than the possibility of acting. Because conscience evidently cannot be 'positive' in this way, neither does it function in the same way 'only negatively'. The call discloses nothing that could be positive or negative as something to be taken care of, because it has to do with an ontologically completely different being, namely, existence. On the contrary, the correctly understood call gives the 'most positive thing of all' in the existential sense - the ownmost possibility that Da-sein can give itself as a calling back that calls it forth to its factical potentiality-of-being-a-self. To hear the call authentically means to bring oneself to factical action" (BEING & TIME, trans. Stambaugh, SUNY, 1996, 271, M&R 340-1, SuZ 294).We must always keep in mind even the ‘authentic’ self is factically, in the real, always just a “potentiality”, not an “in-itself” of any sort.

It is not that "maxims" or rules would deny action per se, but denies action with intention and deliberate choice as blindly following rules like a pin ball in a game machine rolling randomly down an incline, hitting random posts that determine its 'choices' for it. And yet one both claims and is accused of responsibility for those acts. And yet those acts were formed as much by the situation (Lage) that one could neither escape nor accept responsibility for. In that situation, one is as acted upon as acting. And even when accepting blaim, one knows that many factors contributed to its design that one knows clearly only retrospectively that one might have controlled. This would also be in accord with Michael Haar's quote from Heidegger, "Essential thought is also an acting" (pg. 54, BASIC WRITINGS 1977 ed. pg. 308?). What holds you ‘responsible’ is that somehow you should have thought out the whole situation before acting. And yet thinking it out beforehand deliberately is a near impossibility – unless one has a fund of experience immediately accessible so that, “Essential thought is also an acting!” So once again you have a pre-ontological understanding of how one should be and operate within a hermeneutical circle. The inheritance of ethical rules, that Aristotle says a child must become habituated to before it can begin to understand them with the judgement of equity, i. e., "EPIEKEIA", would imply that, as simply inherited, they are basically meaningless by not being reappropriated into the context of the gathering of ‘authentic’ individuation which one achieves with equitous judgement in actual situations.

III: Dreyfus: “Could Anything Be More Intelligible Than Everyday Intelligibility?”

'Authentic' action is based on equitable assessment of the situation, not fixed 'maxims' of what bounds one absolutely to do this and not that regardless of situation. Hubert Dreyfus' paper (accessible at his web site) "Could anything be more Intelligible than Everyday Intelligibility?: Reinterpreting Division I of Being and Time in light of Division II" gives an interesting summary of this situation. He holds there is a form of understanding superior to everyday understanding called "primordial understanding" (B&T, Stambaugh 157/M&R 212/SuZ 168), but " . . . This higher intelligibility must somehow be based on and grow out of the average intelligibility into which everyone is socialized" (pg. 3). "As the competent performer becomes more and more emotionally involved in his task, it becomes increasingly difficult to draw back and to adopt the detached rule-following stance of the beginner. While it might seem that this involvement would interfere with rule-testing and so would lead to irrational decisions and inhibit further skill development, in fact just the opposite seems to be the case" (pg. 7).

From here Dreyfus' comes to describe what he calls "the PHRONEMOS as a socially recognized virtuoso" (pg. 9). "This is obviously Aristotle's PHRONEMOS. Of course, there may be several wise responses. Indeed, on my account, the idea of a SINGLE correct response makes no sense since other virtuosi with different funds of experiences would see the matter differently, and even the same PHRONEMOS would presumably respond differently once he had more experience and therefore would discriminate a richer repertoire of situations" (Ibid.). " . . . Heidegger's resolute individual deviates from the banal, average, public standards, to respond spontaneously to the particular situation. In Heidegger's terms, irresolute Dasein responds to the general situation (Lage), whereas resolute Dasein responds to the concrete situation

(Situation) . . . (Irresolute Dasein) "knows only the 'general situation'" (B&T, Stambaugh 276/M&R 346/SuZ 300), while "resolute Dasein" is in touch with the "concrete Situation of taking action" (B&T, Stambaugh 279/M&R 349/SuZ 302, (GCM)which also asks, "What can death and the 'concrete Situation' of taking action have in common?"). The distinction between these two kinds of situation seem to come out of nowhere in Being and Time but they clearly have their origin in Heidegger's detailed discussion of PHRONESIS in his 1925 Sophist Lectures" (Ibid.).