Martin: I've read Heidegger on several occasions with various degrees of
incomprehension. Your little explanation is very helpful. But it leads to a
question: it seems to me that our sense of individual selfhood is
conditioned by our sense of self-within-society. Even those of us who
believe that individual selfhood ends with the last breath often behave as
if we assume that self-within-society continues (sorry for the shabby
terms), otherwise we wouldn't work so hard to influence events that will
only unfold after us, often at the risk of death. Does Heidegger ever
address this, or is he wedded to a sense of self in isolation? And if so
how does he deal with apparent altruism?
Mark
At 07:04 PM 10/17/2001 +0200, Martin J. Walker wrote:
>These are very knotty questions which are not as simple as saying "the self
>is an illusion, amen." For Heidegger, as I understand it, Being (das Sein)
>is indefinable by being-there (Dasein), which all persons have in common:
>their selves are constituted by that community & their language (based on
>understanding,Verstehen, plus Rede, speech), both of which also imply the
>project (Entwurf) & the care (Sorge), the latter comprehending the past &
>present as the condition & the future as the field of self-realization which
>must end in death, thus my dread (Angst) until I affirm death as my most
>real possibility, thus devaluing in a sense all the projects etc of
>Being-there & attaining authentic existence, though Being is always far-off.
>The transcendent Self of the Upanishads is actually closer to Being than
>Being-there, thus only a logical step forward (and a lot of meditation) was
>necessary for Gautama to realize _sambodhi_ as the illumination that
>transcends the object-subject of normal consciousness: this results in
>_nirvana_, in which the distinctions of the normal self have vanished.
>Thus in both philosophies the normal self is something to be transcended as
>not finally constitutive of Being, but it is hardly a simple illusion.
>Heidegger would presumably frown on any belief in survival after death as
>inauthentic.
>I can't understand why you find the implications of non-self <a bit scary>,
>as death (nothingness) will relieve you of your self in any case, a much
>scarier consideration I would have thought; I myself shall be quite happy to
>wander around the Bardo or various reincarnations before being relieved of
>self, if death is not the end. Amen.
>Martin
>
|