THISNESS AND THATNESS
JUD EVANS
A SHORT AND SWEET REJECTION OF HEIDEGGERIAN
GERUNDIAL REIFICATION
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| Copyright © 2008 Jud Evans. Permission granted
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Looking at a tree I see no thisness and thatness. This and that are simply demonstrative pronouns which symbolically
stand for the other one (or ones) or some some deitically pointed at object.
This; that; these; those; none and neither
are demonstrative pronouns that substitute
nouns when the nouns they replace can be
understood from the context. They also indicate
whether they are replacing singular or plural
words and give the location of the object.
Objects do not exist in states of being this or that and thisness and thatness are reifications which do not refer to any
specificity or singularity.
The moment one swings the attention from this to that, or from that to this - this becomes that and that becomes this. Palpably objects are incapable of such transcendentalistic
occult change. Therefore thatness and thisness has nothing at all to do with the ontology
of observed objects and everything to do
with the childish vocabulary of the philosophical
naif who makes such references.
In other words such words have everything
to do with the Heideggerian nursery-like argot. The
ideative baby-talk of the person concerned
with such utterances has nothing
at all to do with what he or she is looking
at.
To append the suffix -ness to an adjective in order to form a noun,
or to append or attribute a state or condition or so-called state of affairs upon a pronoun like that or this] is an act of reification - a departure
from the real world of sensibility. Attributing
You-ness or Me-ness to the personal pronouns you and I - is an act of semantic vandalism. What is
the point with such inane transcendentalisms?
The material uniqueness of form and concrecity
of the behaving you and me needs no additional
attributive pseudo-states, for we already
exist as we are. I already exist as I exist and you already exist as you exist, and we are in no need of an additional, counter-intuitive,
ontologically different bolt-ons.
So called Being cannot wrest anything from some transcendental
oblivion because neither being nor oblivion exist to wrested or to wrest anything from
anything. It is simply the idealistically
imprinted brain which conceives of as wresting
the observed tree from oblivion of the experiential
continuity through the medium of looking
at it - and looking does not exist either
- only the looker and what is looked at exists. There are millions of trees in the
world that exist in areas that will probably
never be seen by human eyes - but we know
they exist.
How do we Homo sapiens know that so-called
noumena exist? By trusting the logic of our evolved
brains which, packed as they are
with 100 billion neurons, have experienced such an earthly
environment since the appearance of
Homo sapiens about half a million years ago.
We read reports, descriptions, listen
to what travellers tell us,look at satellite
photographs, study botany, forrestry and
topography. We make informed judgements
based upon our experiential involvement with
such things.
The tree exists, but its thisness and thatness does not. Its so-called being does not exist either. The tree exists,
but the fact that it exists does not. The tree
exists in the sense that it exists in a form
which humans call a tree.
When a tree dies, that from which it was constituted becomes part of the fabric of other entities
- as does that which constituted the thinking brain-meat
of the animal which calls it a tree.
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