Subject: RE: More Meaning Again
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 13:23:48 -0500


thank you, Michael. I have returned to SZ and to "Thinking" and will come
back with questions after I have had a chance to think again about this.

Michael S.

> ----------
> From: 	artefact-AT-t-online.de[SMTP:artefact-AT-t-online.de]
> Reply To: 	heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Sent: 	Sunday, November 15, 1998 3:39 AM
> To: 	heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> 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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