Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 14:27:06 -0700 From: hagen-AT-violet.berkeley.edu (Hagen Finley) Subject: Gravity and Light I just completed a course with Dreyfus on Heidegger & Foucault and I want to put froward a concern that has troubled me throughout the semester. I have never been very comfortable with the relative homogeniety of the clearing that Heidegger seems to argue for. Drawing on the metaphor of the clearing one tends to imagine a serene meadow flooded with the morning sunlight surrounded by a dark and ominous forest . The field of the clearing is flat and it lacks defining features which make one area more desirable than another. Movement within the clearing is unbridled. The inhabitants of the clearing see themselves and their world with the same eyes. What I want to argue is that position matters. There is a certain gravity to the position one stands in the meadow and that that gravity bends the light of the clearing. That means that the 'where' of the 'there' in Dasein makes a difference - that there are good and bad places to find oneself in the meadow and that people struggle to maintain positions which are favorable by blocking the mobility of those in less fortunate locations, and seek to move into better places currently occupied by others. I have been told that this concern is too ontic -that the turmoil of the clearing has no real bearing on the ontological argument that Heidegger is advancing. However, I am suspicious that this answer attempts to dismisses my concern without actually addressing the issue I am raising. Let me clarify. First, the issue I am raising is NOT moralistic - that the clearing really *ought* to be level, that mobility *ought* to be unrestricted, and that people *ought* to imputed a dimension of equality. Second, it is not my intention to reduce the mode of Being to the social or institutional structures of existence that order a given culture, although I will admit that this is closer to my point and it is the trap I need to avoid. Certainly early Heidegger is offering a structural interpretation of Being which transcends the actual practical instantiations of a given cultural interpretation. However, as soon as one begins to ask oneself what the clearing really looks like, merely dismissing relevance of the practices of a culture seems to contradict the 'bottom up' 'non-intentional' account Heidegger seeks to offer. Certainly Foucault seems to argue that it is the patchwork of social interactions which ultimately weave themselves into the overall fabric of a society. Foucault also seems to argue against the transcendence of Being, that there are any structures to Being qua Being at all. I am not sure I am ready to moor my boot to that pier, but I do feel the pull to anchor Being to practice. My intuition is that there is a residue left over from those ignoble beginings. One's position in the social interactions which make up the clearing continues to have a bearing on the mode of being one adopts - hence, there is a gravity to one's locality and that that gravity bends the light of clearing thereby individuating one's mode of being. This individuation may have some relationship to class experiences such that there are regions of the clearing which adopt a mode of being which can be differentialed from other regions. I am curious what others think of this intuition. Hagen Finley Berkeley, CA --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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