Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 13:34:21 +0100
Subject: Archetypes or Da?
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 28 March 1998

j md schrieb:
> Does anybody besides myself suspect some kind of mischaracterization,
>  and a very familiar and traditional one to boot, implicit in the rec
> ent discussion concerning the "seen" or "perceived" tree? Perhaps, I 
> could broach my suspicion with the seemingly naive question, "when do
> es one ever perceive 'just' a tree?' In other words, the alleged phen
> omenon which seems to be the object of analysis or interpretation or 
> study or thematization apparently pivots on modelling our everyday pe
> rceptual position as one in which we exist bereft of the epistemologi
> cal and ontological involvement in Worldliness -- or Da? -- which cha
> racterizes Dasein (us). In other words, this recent discussion seems 
> to be nested in the same kind of misunderstandings of Everydayness wh
> ich typify the (Western) tradition.
> Or do I just not get the discussion?

I don’t know, Jim. As far as my contributions are concerned, I have proceeded 
from the question asked: What do archetypes (a la C.G. Jung) have to do with 
Plato’s ideas? The phenomenological interpretation of the idea is an attempt to 
bring to life what Plato saw in the ideas, viz. the being of beings as a 
de-fining outline of what a thing is. So, to be sure, my explications have been 
limited in purpose in showing what was vital in the thinking at the inception of 
Western metaphysics and you are right to point out this “nesting”. 

But, having said this, there is no reason to stop at re-animating what a great 
metaphysical thinker like Plato thought in his key insight. Plato wondered at 
the wonder of us being able to see a being in its being, e.g the tree _as_ a 
tree. The interpretation of a tree runs along different lines in a thinking that 
is twisting free of long ingrained metaphysical habits of thought. The question 
as to the whatness (essence) of the tree makes way for the question as to way 
the tree presences (presents itself) in the openness of truth for Dasein. 

The “perception” of the tree is open to various interpretations, not least of 
all because the German word for this, “Vernehmen”, is much broader than the 
English “perception”. Although there is an etymological affinity between the two 
words in their ‘grasping’ or ‘taking’ stem, “perception” in English is almost 
automatically sensuous. “Vernehmen”, however, is a ‘taking in’ perhaps more 
adequately rendered by “apprehension”, which is still a ‘grasping’, but not 
necessarily sensous. All metaphysical thinking is characterized by this grasping 
of the being in its being by _nous_, intellect, mind, consciousness, etc. 

Thinking from the openness of the truth of being (or the Da), on the other hand, 
the granting (Gewaehrnis) of beings in the world becomes an alternative, viz. 
the alterity of the Other Beginning. The tree no longer comes to stand over 
against us in our grasping of it, but offers itself to Dasein in the openness of 
possibilities of existing in the world. Such many-fold possibilities are 
embedded in ongoing propriation that appropriates human being to being and 
allows each being to come into its very own. 

One under-estimates the shift in such thinking when one ‘grasps’ it merely as 
edifying philosophy that could be ‘employed’ for the ethical education of 
humankind. Any conception of a (mere) shift in ‘value systems’ or ‘world views’ 
must fall short of letting itself in for the transformation of the essencing of 
truth itself and our belonging to the latter. The current wave of ethics in 
philosophy (including normative foundations, ecological ethics and the like) is 
just one more wild goose chase to keep the academic community concerned and 
employed, for, in not venturing to take leave of the metaphysics of 
subjectivity, the illusion is nourished that we humans in our self-centred 
subjectivity are the be-all and end-all of the world (who must then be called to 
responsibility) instead of, in truth, being the recipient and plaything of the 
world in its many-fold and time-ly openness. 

Michael
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