From: SD19587-AT-swt.edu
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 1997 18:20:03 -0600 (CST)
Subject: thoughts


Hello,

my name is Shane Denson.  I've been a member of the list for about a
year now, but have contributed little (though I constantly pay attention
to what's going on here).  I hope I will be pardoned the poor organization
of what is to follow, but I am hoping that someone can help me sort some
things out.

First, I was confronted by the phrase "Being needs man" and tried to make
sense of it.  This is the argument that I have constructed (from Heidegger)
to support that conclusion:

(1)  Being is nothing without beings.
(2)  beings "are" only insofar as they are in a world.
(3)  Dasein is the mode of being "with" a world.
(4)  Therefore, Being needs Dasein.

I am personally of the opinion that "man" is too narrow a complement to
"Dasein", considering apparent animal precursors of language, etc., but
this is a minor point (maybe).

What I am really concerned with is the relation of Being and Dasein.
Premise (1) above seems uncontroversial.  Premise (2) seems (to me) 
likewise uncontroversial, though some fleshing out of "world" must be
done.  How do you (anyone) see "world"?  The idea I have been working with
regarding this concept is that "world" with its complement "earth" (cf.
"the origin of the work of art") is the conceptual-linguistic-temporal
framework corresponding (isomorphically?) to our language systems.  
Something like this: starting with something like Saussure's signifier-
signified-referent system, and applying Benveniste's criticism that 
makes the signifier-signified relationship necessary rather than
arbitrary (in accordance with Saussure's belief that there is no Platonic
realm of concepts), we extend this one step further, making even the 
referent (the thing-in-the-world) a thing tied necessarily to the sign
(by giving up again the Platonic realm).  But my question is: why must
we obviate the referent as independent of the sign? (i.e.  Why is language
the house of Being? and is this a good interpretation of the latter?)  And
secondly, how may we argue for this dependence of thing and language
(understood more broadly, perhaps, than in Saussurean linguistics)?

Again, I am sorry about the confusion here displayed by my randomness,
but related questions to this concern the status in Heidegger of the 
Kantian "thing-in-itself": is it no more?  

Some of this is prompted by an article on hermeneutics I was reading
in the Oxford companion to Aesthetics, which said something to the effect
that by the time of Heidegger's early work, philosophers in the hermeneutic
tradition had come to synthesize the theories of Kant and Hegel, the 
historicism of thinking in the latter affecting the symbiosis of thinking
and the thing-in-itself of the former.  Can anyone clarify this?

I apologize for the lack of clarity and precision on my part, but I will
be glad to re-formulate anything anyone finds puzzling.  My main concern
has been to pose, in broad outline some of my concerns and thoughts.

Any help will be appreciated.  Sincerely,

Shane Denson
SD19587-AT-academia.swt.edu


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