File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9802, message 43


Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 13:01:18 -0500
From: Daniel McGrady <dMcGrady-AT-Compuserve.Com>
Subject: Re:  holism & hermeneutics


8-2-98

Michael Eldred wrote,

> If =91stonily=92 is the hypokeimenon, i.e. underlies the presencing, isn=92t it
the =91subject=92? >=91Stonily=92 then requires stone (ob-ject?) to presence in the
open there of there-being. >Is stonily presencing then a pro-ject thrown
into the opening? 

Michael - Yes to the first, no to the second (stone as project), but let me
try and spell it out.   Not only does Heidegger want to move beyond a
metaphysics of the subject, but to do so in dialogue with it.  This is
often described of getting beyond the subject-object structure, and this is
quite wrong.  For the 'subject-object structure' supposes a straight
relation of reciprocity between subject and object, and this is not the
case.   Secondly, unless this analysis is done properly, it will not lead
us properly into Heidegger's later analysis that goes beyond the object to
the thing.   Actually, you choosing the example of 'stone' makes our
subject-object analysis quite tricky.   For 'stone' equivocates between
thing and object.   In fact your 'The stone stones stonily' will work
beautifully for something like 'The Origin of the Work of Art'.   So I
suggest another case, a chair, for this is obviously an object.   The
subject is not an individual.  It is the individual under the mode of
subjectivity.  And this means that the individual submits to a modal,
subsumes itself under a modal, assumes the modal, and constitutes itself by
the modal.  All of this is a relationship in the vertical dimension.  
Basically the individual must bring themselves _under_.  The relation to
the object is horizontal.  So the relation is not direct, it is mediate. 
And what is more to the point, to be mentioned later, it is doubly mediate.

The subject is the hypokeimenon because what the individual becomes is the
mode  which underlies the presencing of the object and which holds the
object in its identity.   The individual, becoming subject, becomes the way
in which the object may come to presence.   The subject, the individual
within a particular mode of subjectivity, presents itself in that mode as
the condition of the object coming to presence.   I.e. the mode of the
subject, which does underlie the object, is not the mode according to which
the object appears, but only the condition for the mode under which the
object appears.  Otherwise the object would become the same thing as the
subject.  But for Heidegger it is merely the conditional mode under which
access is made.

>Who is the subject? Recall that in medieval philosophy the roles of
subject and 
>object were precisely the reverse of how we think of them today. Could our

>modern human subject become subject to, subjugated to, submit to stonily 
>presencing which is granted to it? Such stonily presencing would be a
whole 
>experience, holistic, thus bringing us back to =91holism & hermeneutics=92,
and this 
>whole experience would not centre on the thing, the stone, the 
>what-that-is-presencing-itself-stonily, but more the mood/modality of
stonily 
>prensencing, which is not restricted to things called stones. Thus stony
silence 
>is also an equivalent way of stonily presencing, not simply a metaphor. 
>(Heidegger says that there is metaphor only in metaphysics.)

We are back with holism and hermeneutics.   But I do not want to be back
there a la Dreyfus.  For wasn't his position in his paper, 'Holism and
Hermeneutics', although this is vague memory, that all of our
(philosophical)  understanding was 'theory laden'?    This seems to miss
the great gulf between the methodology of Moore and Wittgenstein, in which
Moore's analysis of the ordinary sense, included propositions such as 'I
know the earth has existed for millions of years' as basic.   This is a
theory laden proposition, quite unlike 'I am in pain' which is certainly
not a matter of theory.   I notice you said that Heidegger's method was not
phenomenological, and it certainly looks like this because of the use of
terms like 'structure'.   But I think Heidegger's position can be retrieved
from this by arguing that his method of 'interpretation' is one of
elucidation of the logic of the phenomena, according to the logic by means
of which it has already shown itself.   

The subject, as said above, is not the individual.   The individual must be
understood through 'Da-sein' which is where the analysis of the
subjectivity of the subject must lead to as its presupposition.   But the
analysis of Da-sein must remember the elements of subjectivity, all of
them.   The one that is normally forgotten in taking the subject to be the
individual I, is the vertical, which is what I think you are driving at in
saying that the focus should be not upon the thing, the stone, but upon the
mood.   I agree with this because this is always what is forgotten.  But I
do think that we must not lose sight of the stone, because to bring it to
unique presence, is part and parcel of the issue for the would be
presencer.   But the would-be presencer, such as a poet, must take with
ultimate seriousness their modality under which they subsume themselves for
the sake of a presencing of an other.   Consider Wordsworth humming rhythms
as he treads the Lakeland paths, practising those forms that he must submit
his entirety to, if things are to make their appearance through them.


>If you go that way, this will happen? How is this different from the way 
>(methodology) of _techne_ and technology, which are also knowledge of the
ways 
>of getting at what one has in view, i.e. what is the difference between 
>submitting to a way and using a way?

Submission to a way is a double submission.   This shows why Heidegger was
so different from existentialism, in which the project was that under which
the object was brought.   But for H subjectivity was doubly submissive,
first to the modality through which the object would make its appearance.  
And secondly, the subjective modality was for the sake of the object
appearing.  So the individual submits first to the way of the subject, but
this way has its for-the-sake-of not in itself but the other.   I.e. it is
the servant of the other, not vice versa.  And this is how the technology
question is answered.   The way is surrendered to as a way of surrendering
to the thing or other being itself.


>So the way leaves an earthy trace of it having once been in modal
resonance? 
>Da-sein would then be, in the first place, an attunement with the moods of

>modality, things being merely props.

Yes, the way, being for the sake of the release of the other/thing's being,
cannot be applied arbitrarily.   When an individual sub-jects itself to a
way, that way is a way that it becomes.   The way that it becomes is not
arbitrarily put before the thing but as the basis of that thing happening=2E 
 You can see here how H's existentials are extensions of Kant's schematism
of the categories.   Kant needed to show that the categories were not
arbitrarily stamped on to objects.   He of course does it through
temporalizing the subject.   For Heidegger the temporality of the subject
is for the sake of the other, by placing its own existence for the
dispensation of the other.   I.e. it is basically care, almost
self-sacrifice.  One's own modes of being are placed there for the sake of
the other taking place.


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