This is the perfect word to start with and
set the tone. I will cut it down, though,
to just 'everyone' because 'everybody' is
too tremendous and leaves me in fear of confronting
the digestive philosophy and bowel rumblings
of Levinas who, in that sphere, is a very
formidable thinker. Heidegger could be flippantly
quoted as saying everyone is no one, the
'They' self. This would seem to indicate
superficially that Heidegger simply disparages
the 'They' self, but Mr. Day grasps Heidegger
perfectly when he indicates the 'They' self
is the most real self. But I'm jumping ahead.
As to the question itself, there is no relevance
of the "authentic self" to the
"post-modern context" by definition
of 'authenticity,' I would drop the 'self,'
because when dealing with the 'moment of
vision' of the resolve of authenticity the
'self' has become merely a 'call', a flimsy,
ephemeral thing that is most momentary, fleeting,
gone. First, authenticity must by definition
reject such a label. Second, a living context
that could be called "post-modern"
either simply does not exist or is an utter
abomination, the exact opposite of authenticity.
The only real context is you and I. But "I"
is nothing special: as Hegel said, everybody
calls themselves that. There are "I"s
everywhere, in truckloads, in shiploads.
It is nothing special. Sartre is irritating
just like a bad conscience. One of the few
things I like, though, about his critique
of the dialectic is that he has all human
history, and since animals do not have history,
that means --all language starts from basic
human needs, primarily hunger.
Everyone starts from the same place. I once
read a book that said we could not possibly
understand the ancient Greeks because their
context was so different from ours. Were
they not born from women? Did they not hunger?
Did they not bleed? These exactly same needs
we have exactly determined their context.
On that point I will grudgingly agree with
Marx. Again, there is only one living context,
you and I. "Ich oder du" if I remember
it right: me or you. "Heidegger ceases
to focus on questions of authenticity"
This is on the surface true, and very irritating
to me. He left far too much unsaid, as if
I was suppose to think for myself. I would
rather for him to do my thinking for me because
he does it so much better. But the "questions
of authenticity" are not only not rejected,
not denied, not declared false as such, but
you find authenticity/inauthenticity as well
as death constantly haunting the words of
his later writings, serving as its necessary
ground. For how can "Sein" ever
be thought about except as in and through
"Dasein"? What you say about Sartre
is perfectly true and also irritates me extremely.
Sartre may push too much for dasein to assume
moral responsibility ex nihilo where it is
completely out of place (it is only 'in place'
with everyday man), but his passion for this
does reflect the real urgency of the call
of conscience. Yet, none the less, Heidegger
is absolutely right in describing the call
of conscience as something outside morality,
amoral if you will, sort of like a yearning
for God when you know in the practical and
irrevocably real world God doesn't exist
as so well described in the teleology section
of the Critique of Judgement. The same with
ethics (why is Aristotle's ethics so totally
and deliberately misunderstood in the 'modern'
world searching for a ground for ethics?
Heidegger certainly understood that Aristotle
had the only clear answer. But that also
includes the Politics, which Heidegger is
very deficient in. I would appreciate it
if someone can prove me wrong.). This is
constantly reflected in everyday life where
the immediacy of the practical situation
either overrides or completely reinterprets
what one considers to be good and true (consider
the graduate student or junior professor
of philosophy: Which determines more fundamentally
what the truth is -- the naked, bare, unrewarding
desire for pure truth or the approval of
superiors and the reliability of a paycheck?
When one has tenure, then one might contemplate
the divine fields of Ideas.) -- and, most
important, leaving out the beautiful altogether.
For me that clenches the fundamental worthlessness
of everyday life. But I'm jumping ahead.
"The vast majority of everything we
do throughout our lives, no matter how we
strive for authenticity, is carried out in
its everydayness." Perfectly true. The
'everyday' is the real, not authenticity.
"This is not a failing." Perfectly
true. Without the everyday, without the real
"They" self you literally couldn't
function, either from the point of driving
a car or eating breakfast or surviving in
the workplace or home life. It is "most
of our life"
(actually all because authenticity can only
exist through the desire of inauthenticity
and is therefore its constant ground) "much
of which is extremely worthy and fulfilling".
If this is true I envy you and have less
than no desire to attack it. It is "carried
out in the mode of everydayness that Heidegger
focuses on this way of being-in- the-world."
He certainly does. But he also shrives it,
cuts it down in a double-handed fashion.
On the one hand, dasein is cut down to the
bare bones where even 'self' becomes a phantasm,
the ideal creation of inauthenticity. But
on the other hand, he shows that everything
'we' are, including 'our' self comes from
elsewhere, from 'somebody' else: and the
same applies to all other 'somebodies' to
the beginning of time. In other words, 'we'
really are no one, we really are 'They'.
"When we do achieve authenticity":
What do you mean by achieve? Possess permanently
as an accomplishment? Everydayness possesses
reality itself. It won't let you. "It's
a mistake to see the achievement of authenticity
as a drawing away from others": Here
again is the double-handed on the one hand,
if everydayness and the 'They' self are the
real situation of things then we never draw
away from them.
On the other hand, Heidegger describes in
SzT dasein, even then the shepherd of being,
as both totally absorbed in being- with yet,
knowing it is fallen, though 'fallen' from
nowhere, hearing the call of conscience that
it is not where it wants to be, that it is
not at home, knowing everydayness and the
'They' self, though they are reality, are
still fundamentally incomplete, wants to
strive for its myth of a 'true self' regardless
of its absurdity, as the only thing that
'completes'. In other words, dasein goes
where it finds it is always already totally
alone, in a solipsistic aporia it knows is
nonsense. "Dasein is always already
a social being": This is absolutely
true, but not the society of the textbook
or political tract or the TV sob show, but
the real everyday society of the work place
where you must, simply to survive, maintain
a firm level of hypocrisy and indifference.
And is it different in the comfort of your
family? Or simply a different context? Inauthenticity
is predominant and that is where all the
rewards of life are. It is more real. But
it is still a fraud. This is all wrong, but
still . .
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