Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 23:24:01 +0200
Subject: Re: Yes-Sir, Boss.
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 20 August 1998

Mike Staples schrieb:
> I had another question about something said in Boss's "Foundations". In
> the Introduction, there is this:
>
> "Since Daseinsanalysis does not look upon schizophrenia as a process
> with a dynamism more or less its own, but views the pat;hological
> syndrome as the immediate concomitant of a certain defective mode of
> being-in-the-world..."
>
> >From an ontological point of view, is there really such a thing as a
> "defective mode of being-in-the-world"?

Michael, I suppose it depends on how we can hear and understand the word 
“defective”. Where does it point? The word comes from Latin “defectus” from the 
verb “deficere”: to leave, desert, fail, etc. “deficere”, in turn, is a 
composite of “de-” and “facere”: to make, do, so “deficere” would be to “make 
away”. Thus, e.g., the moon can “make away” in its waning, the opposite being 
“crescere”: to wax. 

What could “making away” mean with regard to being-in-the-world? If existing 
means standing-out in the openness of being, making away would mean in some way 
to leave the opening, to defect from it. Heidegger writes:

“...dass nur das endlich Existierende das Vorrecht and den Schmerz hat, im Seyn 
als solchem zu stehen und das Wahre als Seiendes zu erfahren.” (Heidegger 
“Schellings Abhandlung ueber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809)” S.195)

roughly:
“...that only finitely existing beings have the privilege and the pain of 
standing in beyng as such and experiencing what is true as beings.”

Defective being-in-the-world does not have anything to do with not being in a 
standard way, with not fulfilling a norm, with being abnormal, but can only mean 
something like “making away from the open”. The privilege and pain of standing 
in the open of the truth of beyng is one way of characterizing existence, 
being-in-the-world. But standing admits also of various degrees of declination, 
right down to being completely unable to stand the standing-out in the open, 
thus keeping a world open. 

Each Dasein is a world, and its standing ek-sistence holds a world open, like a 
tent-pole holds the open space within a tent open. In understanding being, 
Dasein, as long as it exists, is called on and coerced to respond to the call of 
being. But this being-able-to-respond and meet the challenging call can go as 
far as being un-able to stand the open (since being _un_-able is still a being 
un-_able_). Dasein defects, leaves the opening. It declines to stand and to 
stand the standing, and reclines instead. In declining to ek-sist, Dasein 
retracts and contracts its world; it does not venture out, its scope diminishes. 

One phenomenon associated with this contraction of being-in-the-world is 
disinterest. Dasein becomes lethargic and is inclined to recline. 
_Dis_-interest, however, is dis-_interest_, the turning way from interest, which 
means literally “to be among beings”, i.e. to be out in the midst of the truth 
of being. 

So, a defective being-in-the-world seems to point to being unable to stand the 
pain of ek-sisting. 


Michael
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