Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 07:11:47 -0400
From: Daniel McGrady <dMcGrady-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: What is being said


Hi Bob,

Good to talk to you.

>Hi Daniel.  i was wondering if you could distinguish "metaphysical
thought"
for us?  i for one am interested in your view.

I can only try Bob.   In broad terms, I think 'metaphysical thought' is
that intellectual procedure which prevents us from doing philosophy.   It
is the intellectual activity in which the subject one inquires into,
becomes the first issue, while the mode of being of the one who inquires
falls out of sight.   The cosmologist that becomes absorbed in coming up
with a picture of the origins of the universe might run his own brain into
the ground doing so, because he forgets himself and his own mode of being
in the process.   His mode of being as inquirer falls out of sight, so that
in not seeing it as also the issue for him, fails to concern himself with
its care and improvement.   The engineer who becomes so involved in the
technology may fail to concern himself with himself AS engineer.   This
would involve him in self-translucency, self-openness and self improvement
insofar as being an engineer is concerned.   And this should not be lost
sight of when he becomes occupied with the matter at hand.

In the case of language, metaphysical thought takes over when we become
interested in the technical questions of language, say, semantics, syntax,
signifiers, grammar, etc., while forgetting how to improve ourselves in our
use of language.  Thus the relationship becomes one of science only and not
of praxis.   The question for Heidegger was how to prevent thought from
disintegrating into intellectual curiosity, such that we become so
fascinated with the question (the object of the inquiry)  we forget the
mode of being which we ought to be practising.   The psychologist and
philosopher who become fascinated with the nature of the mind without
practising what it is to mind and to be mindful.    The thinker who becomes
so fascinated with the nature of thought that they forget their own
practice and struggle towards being a thinker.     Or the philosopher who
specializes in the nature of truth as a philosophical problem, such that
they become absorbed in correspondence theories of semantics, coherence
theories of syntactical arrangements, and forget what it is to practise
being in the truth or being truth-ful.    
In short, for Heidegger, the primal question is always a to-be question. 
Not what is the nature of knowledge, but what is it to be a knower.   Not
what is the nature of a question, but what it is to be a questioner, such
that that now becomes an issue for me to realize.   For language, it is
easy to fall into looking for scholastic statements about the nature of
language, while forgetting the primal issue, how to practise letting
language be in and through us, such that in us language really becomes hums
and dings.   It is practice first and foremost towards being, not the
satisfaction of intellectual curiosity.

Hope this helps.

Daniel



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