Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 12:36:11 -0230 (NDT)
From: Daniel James Arthur Tarte <h53djat-AT-morgan.ucs.mun.ca>
Subject: Re: Actuality (re. Heidegger, Husserl, etc)




Hello Again Henk,

D: There seems to be three 'levels' (to put it crudely) to SuZ: i) the
intentional structure of Dasein, which requires as the condition of its
being ii) the temporal structure of Dasein, which requires as the
condition of its being iii) the temporalizing of temporality. Obviously,
Heidegger says the most about i) and the least about iii). Are you
equating 'the transcendental' with the understanding ('Verstehen') here?

H: Indeed. In the sense that I tend to see disclosure of transcendence
as (a form of) understanding. By the way, is my impression correct? Do
you suggest that "the temporalizing of temporality" is "purely given"?

D2: The end of S&Z seems to hint at the temporalizing of temporality as a
'pure giving'; certainly, with his later meditations, Heidegger is more
strongly appealing to a profound sense of being and/or time 
(transcendence?) that simply gives itself.
------------------------------------------

D: 'Making present' must involve a fundamental temporality that is more
basic than intentional acts, or even Dasein's 'particular' temporality,
otherwise 'I' would still be responsible for the coming to be and
passing away of the world.

H: You have a point here! Nevertheless, I could, of course, refer to the
discussion between Husserl and Heidegger about their main difference,
i.e. the "is" of beings. I could also refer to Heidegger's "Dasein [...]
is not itself". And add that to equate "subiectum" and "Dasein" is
something some people (cf. Von Herrmann) would hesitate to do. However,
this may be too evasive an answer. Heidegger leaves no room for doubt
when he says that _I_ am continuously living in this making-present.

D2: I wouldn't mind hearing about that reference to Husserl and Heidegger.
If you do so, you should also tell me how you see its pertinence to a
temporality that permeates and underlies intentionality, because I'm not 
sure here how your response is meant to relate to my comment. That 
intentionality has a basis in temporality negates the primacy of 
the (intentionalizing) subject. Dasein is not a subject because it is 
distinguished by its temporalizing, and beyond that to a 'relation' of 
its temporalizing to a temporalizing in itself. The Daseinanalysis is a 
means to an end, not an end in itself. [Apparently, subiectum only 
becomes a narrowly self-positing subjectivity in the modern age; 
subiectum, as substance prior to the modern development, could refer to 
Dasein IF such a substance were referred to its original derivation in 
ousia, understood as a simple and 'innocent' showing: the transcendent 
as a region of coming to be and passing away, instead of metaphysical 
presence.]
----------

D: But I'm slightly confused here because I'm not sure what you mean by
absolute absence, and why such an 'absolute' could be important here.

H: For example, if making-present would refer to a situation wherein
"what has presence is encountered in a present" - and if this situation
would be unlike the extasis of the past and unlike the extasis of the
future, would it - in this case - still be possible for the absent to be
implied in the present? How would one deal with the absent?

D2: I take S&Z to be arguing that while the analysis of time must 
distinguish the differences between the past and the present and the 
future, it must also adequately articulate the manner in which such 
differences retain their difference while at the same time 
'being-together' in the lived experience of time; the difficulty comes in
not reducing the 'reality' of the past and the future to the presence of 
the present. The absent, the 'not', permeates presence. Indeed, Heidegger 
goes even further to eventually raise the consideration that the 'not' 
itself surrounds and supports the 'is': Man is that being which is held 
out in the nothing ('What is Metaphysics? 1929). One of my more 
'scholarly' interests in Heidegger's writing is the attempt to discern if 
indeed the absolutely primitive temporalizing of temporality he discovers
at the end of S&Z is in fact the phenomenon of 'positive' negativity that
comes to define his later elaboration of a 'history of being', wherein the
deprivation of being in contemporaneity (ie. nihilism) is seen as a 
deprivation that is 'given' to thinking. Even upon this world-historical
level, absence as absence can be seen to permeate (and support) presence 
as presence. Would not pure presence (or making absence present) be a 
metaphysical ambition, rather than a 'Heideggerean' ambition? In S&Z, the
limit of Dasein is not a death that shall one day occur; rather, it is a 
realization of one's own death (the ultimate not), which articulates 
Dasein positively, in that it forces Dasein to take stock of its 
situation, and to devote itself to those possibilities that are closest 
to it, most appropriate to it. "what has presence is encountered in a 
present". This does not mean that absence cannot be an issue for any 
present; only that the concept of the present is defined by presence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

H: Time needs not to be more abstract than Thinking. Perhaps there is a
way
out ... Vasterling and Kontos seem to point in - different but
interesting - directions.

D2: Can you provide me with a sense of their directions?
--------------------------------------------------------

D: What if we consider metaphysics as the 'difference' that mutates the
'identity' of experience? The 'data' of the field of perception is
always passively structured; this is why one may call it a
'presentation'; is this latter not in a way self-supporting? Why should
it require any thing else -either subjective or objective- in order to
be structured?

H: Why "passively"? In what way "self-supporting"? Only making-present
brings beings into view, hearing, etc. Or am I mistaken? Are beings
always already given? In the sense that they have presence, even if
there is no Dasein to _make_ them present in a present? In other words,
is there a world even if there is no Dasein in the world? If this were
the case, would there still be a Heideggerian difference between the
"is" of the constituter and the constituted?

D2: Hmmm. I guess that 'passively' was written in haste. Nevertheless,
I think I meant by passive the straightforward and unmediated 
presentation of data. 'I' do not do anything when I recognize the sound 
of an airplane flying over my house. I suppose I may have been objecting
to intellectually-inclined attempts to refer the fluidity and flux of 
sensation to a static and definitive supersensual order. Passivity is 
meant to be taken positively, as not requiring for its cogency either the
application by the subject of a concept to the sensation, or a 
pre-existing 'objective' form or ideal entity. 'Self-supporting' by the 
same token; it is possible to speak of a structure of sense or matter 
without recourse to metaphysics. And from the point of view of fundamental
ontology,this would be characterized as existential or 'living' space
(living space... uh oh). When you say that beings are 'always already 
given', are you intending the meaning of such a phrase as synonomous with
Heidegger's sense of the apriori? That is, as Dasein, I am always already
with things, tasks, people and concerns; rather than refer this situation 
to ideal structures, Heidegger chooses to elaborate its cogency in terms 
of its inherent temporal flow. I do have difficulty with Heidegger's 
tendency in S&Z to make 'world' dependent upon Dasein; this seems to be 
inconsistent with his stated claim that 'world' is apriori. Perhaps 
Dasein's 'relation' with a temporalizing of temporality makes it
deeper than the apriori? Perhaps 'world' is only expressive of comportment
and its temporal dynamics? This leads to the question of a giving of
the world, 'from nothingness'. I'm beginning to think that this latter 
claim of Heidegger's is no more profound than the deepest claims of the
metaphysicians he disputes. Perhaps at a certain point, certain attempts 
at thinking reach artistry; then we really admire them simply for their
manner of expression, like a great novel or painting or symphony. They 
express themselves, and that is enough. Concern for whether or not the 
utterance is true is replaced with an admiration for the finesse with 
which the thinker takes a stab at the ultimate.         
-----------------------------------------------

D: Heidegger seems to want to argue for a concept of time that is 
stronger than 'not doing anything but' temporalizing as Dasein; the 
analysis of comportment points to a circular flow becoming 'in' Dasein, 
and this further to a temporalizing in itself (ie. the abyss).

H: Indeed. Heidegger's time refers to truth - in all its mysteriousness.
But this truth loses all of its mystery if time becomes the "captive" of
a non- metaphysical (?) making-present as defined above. Unless - and I 
am speculating now along the lines of Kostos - the transcendence 
(intentional depth structure) is the part of being that remains concealed
- after having backed up the making-present (intentional surface 
structure), i.e. after the latter's thematization ... a concealment 
because of its revealing of the absence of what is no longer and not yet
there ... This would - if it does make any sense at all - probably require
a new definition of making-present - in which the absent would have to be
given a place.

D2: You return again to 'a place for the absent'; is this notion of 
especial interest to you? Do you understand Heidegger to be lacking such
a place? My view is that Heidegger speaks of the negative better than 
anyone else I have read, including Hegel. We do not such much give the 
negative a 'place', as keep ourselves open to it.  
-------------------------------------------------

D: But I am becoming more amenable to the idea that time and its 'not' 
need not refer to an autonomous and irreducible primitive, but to an 
irreducible primitive inhabiting experience, one that dissolves
experience as subject or object based, and opens it to the moment of
exposure (difference) with the world that has nothing to do with 
identity. In the 'movement' of becoming, it may be possible to speak of
experience without subjective or objective referents, and yet remain
'empirical'.

H: To be sceptical - it all depends on the kind of experience. Aren't
the hermetic qualities of truth and the "clearing of the playground"
romantic notions - at least to a certain degree? Could it be that the
Heidegger of after the _Kehre_ has withdrawn himself from the world?
Campaigning - in his unimitable way - against the windmills America,
metaphysics and technology (in alphabetical order)? Aren't the
everydayness of Dasein, its _Angst_ and _Death_, even its naive
understanding of Being gone? Irreverently - too irreverent, perhaps-,
what does Heidegger (or any other philosopher) have to say about the
experience of a visit at the dentist?

D2: Yes, I largely agree with the concerns motivating your questions 
(and the questions as well); this I why I would try to formulate the role
of the negative in more concrete terms [ie. a visit to the dentist].
The experience I refer to is presumably no different from the 
experience(s) we all have. I still affirm the 'truth quality' of 
adequation, but not an adequation that is identical to an object. Rather, 
adequation to the object with an eye toward the nature and limitation of 
the medium expressing the adequation (this would include the medium of 
thought no less than, say, the medium of sculpture). As for the clearing,
I do not understand why it needs to be accorded the status that Heidegger
speculates it may have; why can't experience (in general) itself serve as
the playground, and the mobilities, relations and differentiations within
the playground serve as instances of clearing? Do we need to withdraw into
the hope of a world-historical transformation, with all of its dramatics 
(ie. America}Germany{Russia, metaphysics, etc), or is it not the case that
the world-historical is a relatively vast and qualitatively complex 
structure operating within the playground, among the relatively minute 
histories of the dentists? 
--------------------------

D: 'Becoming itself' would never be toward becoming this or that, but a
lifelong repetition or enactment of one's potential, which is nothing:
an act without identity (therefore, an act that is not act-ual, ie.
referred to an ideal or form or limiting suprasensible entity of which
the act is the attempt to realize). Here we see Dasein's temporality
implying the abyss of time itself. We want a 'concrete' account of
temporality, but this concreteness cannot be concrete in any 'actual'
sense. This is difficult, if not impossible.

H: It is impossible. We must not forget that Dasein is essentially
fallen. Dreyfus's question: "Why [...] are we the kind of beings that
can't face being the kind of beings we are?" (334). The answer: its
nothingness and meaninlessness are unbearable for Dasein because it is
that being that is concerned about its Being.

Kindest regards,
Henk

D2: I am only wondering if the step toward a temporalizing of temporality
itself is necessary. Is time more than a structure of entities? Heidegger
always says yes, but I'm not sure that I agree with him. 

Yours,

Daniel


PS: Email may allow for the practically instantaneous transmisson of
epistles, but sometimes I cannot keep pace with the high response-speed
that it seems to engender in many of those who use it. Think of this post
as one that has gone through the regular mail (like in the Ol' Days..).





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