Dear all:
As a humble PhD student I have followed the whole discussion about *things*,
and about the eventual agency of *things*. And guess what, a few
*things *trouble
me today. For me, the dictionaries (are artifacts made by humans) and
somehow also *things*. I wonder if the OED, even though you brought it up
as a credible source, Ken, has no a certain degree of agency here (becoming
the document that solves all doubt).
Now if like you Klaus, taught me: *We, the Humans, do not see and act on
the physical qualities of things, but on what they mean to us*. Perhaps,
there is here more than one version of reality, several indeed, meeting
each other here. All of them valuable (hear the Humberto Maturana echo...),
but not equally credible (at least depending on who be the judge, or the
spectator, and of which ones his/her values are).
Indeed, sometimes there may be (and I think is the case here) legitimate,
illegitimate or legitimated etymologies of the word 'thing' (and concerning
the agency issue) and they can make sense for different persons in
different degrees; even when they are expressed in the
"Carthago-delenda-est" way.
Moreover, some emails ago, dear Klaus you told us (and it seems to me also
you Ken agreed) that:
>*in any case, in german "ting" and "ding" are unrelated*.
But reading these excerpts from Heidegger I can not help but feeling
differently (believe me I am a little confused). And I must confess that I
feel more comfortable with Heidegger than with the OED as a source for this
occasion:
(taken from "The Thing" (pp. 161-184) in Heidegger, M., (2001). *Poetry,
language, thought.* New York: Perennial Classics.
[...]
The Roman word *res *designates that which concerns somebody, an affair, a
contested matter, a case at law. The Romans also use for it the word *causa*.
In its authentic and original sense, this word in no way signifies
"cause"; *causa
*means the case and hence also that which is the case, in the sense that
something comes to pass and becomes due. Only because *causa*, almost
synonymously with *res*, means the case, can the word *causa* later come to
mean cause, in the sense of the causality of an effect. The Old German
word *thing
*or *dinc*, with its meaning of a gathering specifically for the purpose of
dealing with a case or matter, is suited as no other word to translate
properly the Roman word *res*, that which is pertinent, which has a
bearing. From that word of the Roman language, which there corresponds to
the word *res*—from the word *causa *in the sense of case, affair, matter
of pertinence—there develop in turn the Romance *Ia cosa* and the French*
la chose*; we say, "the thing." In English "thing" has still preserved the
full semantic power of the Roman word: "He knows his things," he
understands the matters that have a bearing on him; "He knows how to handle
things," he knows how to go about dealing with affairs, that is, with what
matters from case to case; "That's a great thing," that is something grand
(fine, tremendous, splendid),something that comes of itself and bears upon
man.
But the decisive point now is not at all the short semantic history here
given of the words *res, Ding, causa, cosa, chose,* and *thing*, but
something altogether different, to which no thought whatever has hitherto
been given. The Roman word *res* denotes what pertains to man, concerns him
and his interests in any way or manner. That which concerns man is what is
real in *res*. The Roman experience of the *realitas *of *res *is that of
a bearing-upon, a concern. But the Romans never properly thought through
the nature of what they thus experienced. Rather, the Roman *realitas *of *res
*is conceived in terms of the meaning of *on *which they took over from the
Greek philosophy; *on*, Latin *ens*, means that which is present in the
sense of standing forth here. *Res *becomes *ens*, that which is present in
the sense of what is put here, put before us, presented. The peculiar *realitas
*of *res *as originally experienced by the Romans, a bearing-upon or
concern, i.e., the very nature of that which is present, remains buried.
Conversely, in later times, especially in the Middle Ages, the term *res*
serves to designate every *ens qua ens*, that is, everything present in any
way whatever, even if it stands forth and presences only in mental
representation as an *ens rationis*. The same happens with the
corresponding term *thing *or *dinc*; for these words denote anything
whatever that is in any way. Accordingly Meister Eckhart uses the word
*thing* (*dinc*) for God as well as for the soul. God is for him the
"highest and uppermost thing." The soul is a "great thing." This master of
thinking in no way means to say that God and the soul are something like a
rock: a material object. *Thing* is here the cautious and abstemious name
for something that is at all. Thus Meister Eckhart says, adopting an
expression of Dionysius the Areopagite: *diu minne ist der natur, daz si
den menschen wandelt in die dine, di er minnet*—love is of such a nature
that it changes man into the things he loves.
Because the word *thing* as used in Western metaphysics denotes that which
is at all and is something in some way or other, the meaning of the name
"thing" varies with the interpretation of that which is—of entities. Kant
talks about things in the same way as Meister Eckhart and means by this
term something that is. But for Kant, that which is becomes the object of a
representing that runs its course in the self-consciousness of the human
ego. The thing-in-itself means for Kant: the object-in-itself. To Kant, the
character of the "in-itself" signifies that the object is an object in
itself without reference to the human act of representing it, that is,
without the opposing "ob-" by which it is first of all put before this
representing act. "Thing-in-itself," thought in a rigorously Kantian way,
means an object that is no object for us, because it is supposed to stand,
stay put, without a possible before: for the human representational act
that encounters it.
Neither the general, long outworn meaning of the term "thing," as used in
philosophy, nor the Old High German meaning of the word *thing*, however,
are of the least help to us in our pressing need to discover and give
adequate thought to the essential source of what we are now saying about
the nature of the jug. However, *one* semantic factor in the old usage of
the word *thing*,
namely "gathering," does speak to the nature of the jug as we earlier had
it in mind [...].
Well, If some one wish to deem a little, what I am attempting to introduce,
here are, just the text:
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~ryanshaw/nmwg/the.thing-heidegger.pdf
(very bad scanned) and (much better copied), the complete book:
http://ssbothwell.com/documents/ebooksclub.org__Poetry__Language__Thought__Perennial_Classics_.pdf
Well I am just trying to get the best of you all; and as Heidegger wrote at
the end of his quoted text:
"Men alone (or PHD-Design List members?), as mortals, by dwelling attain to
the world as world. Only what conjoins itself out of world becomes a thing."
Whatever the case, I'd love to know what do you think about it.
Cheers:
*MSc.*
*Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrerotel: (571) 2427030 ext 1739 *
*http://www.utadeo.edu.co/programas/pregrados/diseno_industri/index.php
<http://www.utadeo.edu.co/programas/pregrados/diseno_industri/index.php>*
*Profesor Asociado II Programa de Diseño Industrial*
*Facultad de Artes y Diseño*
*Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano*
*Bogotá - Colombia, S.A.*
*PhD-Student in Design *
*Doctorado en Diseño y Creación*
*Universidad de Caldas*
*Manizales, Colombia*
*Lecturer Grade B (Britain equivalent)Instructor (USA equivalent) of
Industrial Design *
*School of Arts and DesignJorge Tadeo Lozano UniversityBogotá - Colombia,
S.A.*
PS: Dear Ken, five months ago you give me the honor to direct a list mail
to Klaus and me, I remember it very well, I am very grateful, but I need to
learn a lot in order to answer with a quality similar to yours. Anyway, in
time, I will.
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