Richard,
>The first time had a profound impact. The second time I
was
> confused.
Comment:
This is my first ride with Being and Time, and I am deeply
moved. But who knows, I may have to join you once the
honeymoon is over.
my residual concerns are coming to
> the foreground. As
> a prelim, I view H's methodology based on Husserl's "auf
> the Sachen
> zuruckgehen" a misguided western controlled attempt to
> name.
Comment:
Actually, so far I have read Heidegger as struggling to get
us out of the naming game --or at least get us out of one
naming game. But I feel fairly sure that he wants us out of
any name game that arises from a subject-object
distinction.
>Note that the notion of the "thing" is in the foreground.
Comment:
I think H has tried to put off terminology such as "things"
as far as possible. The expression "thing," at least as we
use it, is very loaded with enlightenment metaphysics. As
far as I can tell, in B/T, Heidegger is only doing ontology
--Dasein's ontology, i.e. human ontology.
I think the expression "Being-There" is intended to be as
metaphysically uncomitted as possible --he wants to get us
away from thing talk at least until his analytic of Dasein
is completed. I think the idea is that after the analytic
is completed, thing talk --certainly as we know it --should
fall away --its too much a feature of the subject-object
distinction.
This is Heidegger's opening move:
1. We (you and I)are going to be the basis for analyzing
being because for some strange reason being is an issue for
us in a way that it cannot be an issue for tables and
chairs. (Here Heidegger is now being concrete about a
certain meaning of being --Dasein's being--, which in my
view, is "being" as the intelligibility of entities. Once H
enters the analytic, H's theme, it seems to me, is not the
general rarified "being" that seems to have interested him
in the first introduction). As far as I can tell, the
general or rarified notion of being is put off
provisionally.
2. Our essence is "to be." He states this dogmatically, he
does not argue for it. It just seems right to him (and to
me)and he makes this the basis of his opening move. But
notice there is no metaphysics here at all. We are not a
"thing" whose essence is "to be." We are simply Dasein
--"Being There." H says,
our "Being-WHAT-it is" must SO FAR AS WE CAN SPEAK OF IT AT
ALL, be conceived in terms of its BEING."
H makes it very clear that he is not talking about being as
some kind of a "property" of a THING. H says, "So when we
designate this entity with the term Dasein we are
expressing, not its "what" (as if it were a table, a house,
or a tree) but its being."
H is making it clear that the analytic of Dasein is only
about ontology --being (not entities, i.e. beingS). He will
try to get at what he calls the structure of being, but he
is not doing any kind of reduction, as far as I can tell.
>Even this
> consciousness "of"
> already predetermines being.
This bothered me a lot too. But notice that the word
consciousness appears nowhere in the text. For now, that
term too must be put off in order to give H a chance to get
his project off the ground.
It does seem right to me that some characterization of what
we call conciousness is implicit in H's project (you want
to yell at me and say, without consciousness there is no
project for H), but the way you are using the expression
"consciousness" actually seems, itself, to presume some
kind of "thing." But Heidegger wants to get being straight
first; then he may or may not employ expressions like
consciousness. His opening move is that being determines
the intelligibility of entities, hence, being will, in a
sense, deternime what we make of, (or whether we will
untimately understand), expressions like consciousness. Its
an ontology first project --loaded concepts like
consciousness must come later, if at all --and must first
be stripped of any metaphysical presumptions --particularly
the hidden ones-- if they are to be admitted.
> H's "is" is prior to "what" is a linguistic tautology if
>you assume being/Being.
I am not too sure what you mean here. If you are aligning
(b)eing with "is," and (B)eing with "what," you actually
have the references in reverse of the way the the main
MacQuarrie translation put these the distinction. But it
hardly matters. I think it would have been best if
Heiedegger has just said being when he referred to Daseins
essence, that is taking a stand on itself, being in the
world, (the intelligibility of entities)etc, and the term
entity when he referrred to what you call "what." In any
case, Heidegger distinguishes "is" from "what" as his
opening move. He is only talking about "is." The
metaphysical nature of entities, indeed, the nature and
meaning of metaphysics will be parasitic upon what we can
find out about being.
But if I perceive an intuition on your part that there is
no distinction between is and what (notice Heidegger has
nothing to say about "what"), then I think your intuition
may be along the same lines as H's --the elimination of the
subject-object distinction.
> To evaluate the meaning of being again presupposes
> meaning.
I think this is right. That is why Heidegger characterizes
his project as revitalizing the QUESTION of being. Don't
hold me to this, but sometimes I think that H is starting
philosophy all over again --at least taking us back to
Socrates and perhaps most poignantly to the pre-socratics
--in a revitalized quest for the meaning of meaning.
we are our body and everything else
> (soul, appearances) is a
> part of it. It's too early to report my analysis of this
> venture and I thank
> you for the joyful interaction. I just read the long
> standing joke. Sinatra
> is singing in the right key.
Or perhaps H has merely taken us to the pre-sinatras.
> Regards, richard
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