Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 12:39:47 +0100
Subject: Re: More Meaning Again


Cologne 15 November 1998

Michael Staples schrieb:
>
> I was hoping that someone on the list (Michael? Henry?) could respond 

Michael, I’ve been snowed under this week, in part by having to translate an 
analyst’s report on one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies. 

Anyway, to get back to your example with the stop sign: 

> > When I see a stop sign, the sign indicates that I
> >  stop. Of course this is too simple. It also indicates that I should step on
> > the break, and that I should adjust my focus, and that I should shift my
> > awareness to accomodate a change in speed, etc. and so on. So it doesn't
> > ONLY indicate one action. It points to a tapestry of other meanings that
> > point as well (and I would like to loose this view of pointing pretty
> > soon).

It’s worthwhile looking up SuZ on this, Sections 17 and 18, which are situated 
within the problematic of the worldliness of the world. Section 17 deals 
explicitly with “Referral and Signs”, so your stop sign would fall under that. 
“Signs, however, are to start with themselves equipment whose specific character 
as equipment resides in _pointing_.” (SuZ S.77) Your example of a stop sign has 
similarities with Heidegger’s example of the pointer on a car, the first version 
of blinkers and brake lights. A stop sign is good for providing orientation in 
the world. Being good-for... or serviceable is the being of equipment at hand. A 
stop sign opens up the world and makes drivers aware of a dangerous situation at 
a crossing. The braking is a response to this danger signal. In the case of a 
traffic sign, there is always a spatial component to how the sign opens up and 
provides orientation in the world. By providing orientation, signs assist Dasein 
in taking care of things in daily life. Heidegger calls “taking care of things” 
“besorgender Umgang” (SuZ S.79). Signs (like equipment in general) as 
pointing-equipment open up a possibility of Dasein’s existence insofar as Dasein 
understands the signs as signs. 

A stop sign does not open up to a dog and provide orientation for it, because it 
does not understand a sign in its being AS a sign -- but maybe just pisses on 
it. 

Heidegger’s analysis of signs in SuZ is a prelude to treating “Bewandtnis und 
Bedeutsamkeit” in the following Section 18. How is “Bewandtnis” translated into 
English? “Bedeutsamkeit” is meaning or significance. 

The English translation has to solve the problem of how to render “Bewandtnis 
mit... bei...” (S.84) as the ontological determination of equipment, i.e. how 
equipment _in its being_ is open to Dasein.

The long paragraph on SuZ:84 which starts something like “Bewandtnis () is the 
being of beings within the world...” employs once again the famous example of 
the hammer and hammering. One thing referring to another in the interconnected 
ways of going about one’s daily life forms the nucleus of what is then 
interpreted as a whole as the meaning of the world. 

A close reading of Sections 17 and 18 would indeed be worthwhile.

Michael
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