Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:54:38 -0700
From: Mike Staples <mstaples-AT-argusqa.com>
Subject: Re: Self-evidently so ...


Laurence Paul Hemming wrote:

> part of the complication here is that I am not at all sure Heidegger
> thought
> "God is a being" - in fact I'm convinced he didn't.

Me too.

>  Certainly God does not
> "exist" (cf. for instance, GA40: "Trees are, but do not exist, God is,
> but
> does not exist ..." there are statements of this kind in a number of
> places) - only Dasein as such exists (existence meaning being that
> being for
> whom the being of being can be an issue).

I have heard many interpretations of the term existence before, but
yours is very nicely put. I had not quite thought of existence in quite
this way before. Do women exist?

It is so strange. This statement, paraphrased, is on page 14 of Dreyfus'
Being-in-the-world. I have it all marked up and highlighted. And yet, it
had not occured to me quite this way. But let me ask a basic question
here again: If the tree does not exist, and its Being is in part tied to
Dasein, then in the abscence of Dasein, what could we say bout the tree?
We cannot say that it  exists in the abscence of Dasein...because it
never existed in the first place. We cannot say that it is still
"there", because without Dasein there is no "there" there. And we cannot
say that it still "is" because the "is" is the "there" that isn't there.
So, what can we say about the tree in the abscence of Dasein? Is there a
simple aswer here?

Michael Staples







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