Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 21:38:22 -0400
From: Daniel Melvin <"dmelvin-AT-capecod.net"-AT-capecod.net>
Subject: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time


Michael Eldred wrote:
> 
> Cologne, 26 June 1998
> 
> Mike Staples schrieb:
> > Mike Staples wrote:
> >
> > > Very nice response to my quandry, Michael. As always, I enjoy
> > > participating in your thinking. Recall that my reason for questioning
> > > this body relationship of Dasein's is directly linked to action...what
> > > action to take under circumstances where the body and the...what,
> > > "mind"
> > > or "psyche"...are involved.
> >
> > Once again I am confused by my own words. There is a part of me that
> > says I cannot speak of the body as different from the psyche, and a part
> > of me that feels I need to. Perhaps it would be better to speak of
> > Dasein as a "whole" as opposed to the body as a "part" of Dasein; as a
> > revealing of a mode of Dasein that makes itself particularly accessible
> > as an object. Is this consistent with what you said in your last
> > posting, Michael?
> 
> There’s nothing to prevent the body from being made into an object by a certain
> way of thinking, and this kind of thinking is what prevails today. As I said to
> Greg, I think it preferable to say that Dasein is essentially embodied, and that
> existence is essentially a ‘bodying’.
> 
> One of H.’s formulations has always stuck in my mind (?): “We don’t see because
> we have eyes, but we have eyes because we can see.” This is pretty drastic! The
> “seeing” that is referred to here is an ontological seeing, and that is what is
> most difficult to see! As Kant already knew, the subject is dependent on things
> being given to its senses in an intuition for it to know anything at all about
> the world, but from the other side, the subject has an apriori transcendental
> knowledge of the world before any empirical experience of it. This is the
> ontological opening of the world (for Kant: of objects in their objectivity),
> independently of sense organs and senses.
> 
> We have access to the world, i.e. the world is open to us in its truth, by us
> simply existing in it, i.e. by us simply going about our daily business. The
> things that surround us show themselves to us in multifarious ways, and the
> proof of this is that we can handle our everyday world in a literal sense, e.g.
> pick up the telephone receiver, put the groceries in the supermarket trolley. If
> the things of everyday life are essentially ontologically “zuhanden” (to hand),
> then Dasein itself is also essentially ontologically a ‘handing’ and ‘handling’
> of what is to hand.
> 
> If you think phenomenologically about words in English such as “manipulate”,
> “manufacture” (make with the hand), “manage” (cf. OED), “handle”, “impede”,
> etc., you will find many modes of bodying in them. “Impede” means originally in
> Latin “to shackle the feet”. All these words need to be translated into a
> fundamental ontological dimension which could clarify how Dasein’s existence,
> its modes of being-in-the-world, are various modes of ‘bodying’. The
> understanding of being analyzed in SuZ as Zuhandenheit (to-handedness) is a
> disclosure of beings in the way they can be appropriately handled, i.e. Dasein's
> ontological understanding of being is always an understanding appropriate to a
> finitely embodied, bodying being.
> 
> You don’t have to be labourer to be bone-weary, for example. What does this have
> to do with gravitational aspects of Dasein?
> 
> Ever felt like kicking something when you’re existence is impeded? Why do we
> like to smash things when we’re frustrated? There is an essential ontological
> resistance (not just an ontic resistance) to being-in-the-world which makes
> existing into a struggle and a burden. The obverse side to this is that
> existence can experience phases of elation and easy-riding, but this is only
> possible because existence is fundamentally ontologically impeded.
> 
> Maybe, as a first step, we need to get used to taking a cue from language (open
> our ears to the ringing of stillness) in following up just how embodied our
> existing is, i.e. that our ways of existing are always at the same time ways of
> bodying.
> 
> > It is important that as we go, our feet keep to
> > the right path. ... And that isn't
> > just some metaphor either. It is very easy to fall on these Heideggerian
> > paths.
> 
> We need to appreciate that there are only metaphors in metaphysical thinking --
> and that takes time. Language is always pointing things out to us, if only we'd
> (learn to) look. Mostly, preconceptions and unchallenged habits of thinking
> (we are thoughtless) stand in the way.
> 
> Michael
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