Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 18:10:58 +0100
Subject: Re:  Heidegger,  Husserl , perception...
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 23 March 1998

Malcolm Riddoch schrieb:
ME:
> >Das
> >schlichte, sinnliche Vernehmen is _aisthaesis_, which is to be distinguished
> >from “pure _noein_”, i.e. “schlichtem hinsehenden Vernehmen”(SuZ:33). Neither
> >the one nor the other, however, are phenomenological, because neither
> >depend on
> >the _logos_.
>
> I don't agree at all with this distinction, it seems quite clear to me in
> this passage that Heidegger is talking about straightforward perceptions
> (or in other words pure noein) as a more primordial phenomenological locus
> of truth than mere judgements. Truth as the simple disclosedness of things
> as opposed to correspondence theory runs through the entire problematic and
> I think you are confusing the issue here a bit. The 'hinsehenden' refers to
> merely seeing without reflecting on the thing, without first taking the
> thing as a physical object as in scientific regard. But to say that this
> 'simple or straightforward seeing' is free of the logos is also a bit
> misleading because of course it is already a mode of understanding things...

Malcolm, the context in which your central citation is embedded on SuZ:33 is an 
introductory explication of what is meant by “phenomenology”, which is broken 
down into “phenomenon” and “logos”. The latter is taken in this context to mean 
“Reden (Sehenlassen)” (SuZ:32), i.e. “speaking (allowing to be seen)”. (Your 
citation from SuZ:149 belongs in an entirely different context) The paragraph in 
question starts by pointing out that the logos is “not the primary locus of 
truth” (SuZ:33). You don’t agree with the distinction between “schlichtem, 
sinnlichem Vernehmen” and “reinem _noein_” i.e. “schlicht hinsehendem 
Vernehmen”? Look again! At the latest since Kant, the word “rein” (pure) has the 
connotation of indicating something independent of sensuous experience, i.e. a 
priori seeing. Moreover, what does the “schlicht hinsehende Vernehmen” see? It 
sees the “einfachsten Seinsbestimmungen des Seienden als solchen” (“the simplest 
ontological determinations of the being as such”) -- and this is something that 
can never be seen sensuously! (And something Husserl does not have in view _as 
such_ -- but only implicitly in his concern with the objectivity of the object.) 
Even here, the ontological difference is being addressed explicitly. In not 
seeing the distinction, you are failing to see the ontological difference. 

There is, in addition, a translation problem that seems to be causing confusion, 
namely, “vernehmen” can mean “to perceive (hear sensuously)”, but it can also 
mean “to receive knowledge (learn, hear) of”. The usual German equivalent for 
“perception” is “Wahrnehmen” or “Wahrnehmung”, and this is always sensuous, 
whereas “Vernehmen” is not necessarily dependent on the senses, as the passage 
referred to in SuZ shows. 

> And so for you:
>
> >Heidegger’s starting point is
> >completely different; at first sight it could even appear to be less precise:
> >when I look at the inkwell, he says, I grasp it itself in my gaze, the
> >inkwell
> >itself without any reference to hyletic data or categories. Everything
> >depends
> >on having a fundamental experience with the thing itself. If one proceeds
> >from
> >consciousness, this experience cannot be had at all. To go through (Vollzug)
> >this experience, a region other than consciousness is necessary. This other
> >region is what is called Da-sein.” (GA15:382f)
> >
> >What do you make of this, Malcolm? Do you want to make a case for Husserl’s
> >Zeitlichkeit not being immanent to consciousness?
>
> What would this immanence mean? Zeitlichkeit constitutes the unity of
> consciousness and so it is nothing immanent 'within' consciousness if by
> this you mean an effect of an ego's conscious sense making. In another
> sense, as the originary source it is something 'outside' of consciousness,
> a natural phenomenon of sorts, no different from say the nuclear
> regularities that callibrate our most accurate clocks. No different that is
> except that Zeitlichkeit first constitutes the unity of experience such
> that something like empirical subatomic processes can give themselves to
> human perception...and so as for the inkwell, if you grasp it with your
> gaze doesn't this grasping have a duration? And in this duration isn't
> there a flux of straightforward sensible perceptions of the thing? But this
> perceptual flux has a double unity, the inkwell endures as what it is, and
> for Husserl that means the unity of consciousness non-thematically grasps
> the 'objective being' of the thing. 

This is not just “for me”, since I am merely quoting the minutes (Protokoll) of 
the seminar. It is becoming more and more apparent (to me at least) that this 
emphasis on “sensuous perception” is throwing you completely off track. It is 
the perspective offered in coming from Husserl to SuZ, but the lynchpin of 
“sensuous perception” to hook Husserl and SuZ together does not work either. 

As Anthony Crifasi rightly points out, the “besorgende Umsicht” (concernful 
circumspection; this is a horrible translation, since what is meant is the 
encompassing view that guides Dasein in its daily taking care of things) is 
non-sensual. The frequent recurrence of the phrase “flux of straightforward 
sensible perceptions” in your formulations shows, in fact, how far Husserl (at 
least in your reading of him) is from SuZ, also with regard to the issue of 
temporality. The temporality you describe in the above passage is a temporality 
of sensuous presence and is fundamentally different from the ecstatic 
Zeitlichkeit of SuZ. 

To return to the example of the hammer once again: The ‘seeing’ of the hammer in 
its being is essentially non-sensuous and has nothing to do with a “flux of 
straightforward sensible perceptions”. To start from this latter conception cuts 
you off from seeing the temporality of the hammer in Dasein’s existence. 

If I plan to do a job tomorrow, say, fix the antenna on the roof, I think of the 
tools I will need to do this, including the hammer which I will first have to 
pick up from the friend I lent it to. The being of the hammer is thus open to me 
_in the future_, its being-for-me is futural, withheld in the future. The next 
day, when trying to fix the antenna in position, I notice that the hammer is too 
light to hammer the studs into the brick. Then I recall that I have another, 
heavier hammer in the toolshed, which I used some time ago in laying parquetry 
floors. This second hammer is thus open to me in its being _from the past_. It 
is now refused to me in that past (since the laying of the parquetry floor is 
over and done with), but it now offers itself to me _in its being_ as suitable 
for my project, within which I can cast it in the role of the ‘heavier hammer 
suitable for nailing studs into the brick’. 

The point is that the seeing of the hammer in the future and in the past are 
both non-sensuous. And even seeing the hammer in the present _in its being_ is 
also non-sensuous. The hammer being good for hammering, its Um-zu, is nothing 
that can be seen with the senses. You can stare at the hammer all you like and 
gather as much sense data as you like about it and from it, you will never 
discover its being (its “simplest ontological determinations” (SuZ:33). 

> >So we are now at some remove from “schlichtem Vernehmen”, are we not?
>
> Not really, cos this is what I have been arguing for all along...it is the
> way in which straightforward perceptions of things are constantly given
> that is the object of the existential analytic. It's in this sense that I
> find the flux of perceptions to be at the very heart of the question of
> _Being and Time_. 

Here we disagree fundamentally. Putting “the flux of perceptions ... at the very 
heart of the question of _Being and Time_” amounts to missing the ontological 
difference, i.e. beings _in their being_, utterly. 

Regards,
Michael
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