From: "Andrew Glynn" <aglynn-AT-idirect.com>
Subject: Re: Existential Death
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 10:07:06 -0400




> Since no one else is taking this subject up and I need to work up a few
> ideas for the last chapter of my thesis I'd just like to toss a few ideas
> out to see what the list thinks -
>
> As part of his critique of the second division of BT in _Being in the
> World_ Dreyfus suggests that the joyful defamiliarizing angst of death as
a
> mode of authentic understanding is a strange way to go about disclosing
the
> existential structure of average everydayness, the point being that we
> don't generally go about our everyday work in this mode of feeling (in the
> sense of Befindlichkeit). I like Dreyfus' approach here, the existential
> analytic is set up to disclose the mundane, the everyday, but when it
comes
> to its ecstatic temporality everything gets a bit...ecstatic? This early
> authentic method doesn't seem to remain with the things themselves as they
> give themselves.

I disagree with Dreyfus here, Heidegger does begin with the things
themselves, but in order to reach a being that is neither present-at-hand
nor ready-to-hand has to resort to other maneouvres.  Authenticity and
resoluteness and their implications are consistently referred back to their
appearance in the world of 'fallen' man, keeping the analytic as close as
possible to the phenomenological ideal.

> And for Heidegger looking back what is actually disclosed in BT is the
> fundamental experience of the *oblivion* of being. So I guess angst as a
> method is part of this oblivion, and this ties in nicely with his 30's
> Nietzsche writings where he starts out by stating that Friedrich basically
> got to where BT is founded ie the interpretation of being as time, at
least
> that's the basic premise at the beginning of his lectures. Yet by the late
> 30's the ealy optimism about will to power turns into the pessimism of
> machination as an obliteration of the open clearing.

Machination seems to be more the 'covering over' of the open clearing rather
than its obliteration.  Lichtung remains at all times a possible event.
Unfortunately for interpreters of Nietsche, as Heidegger later realized, the
superhuman is closely aligned with the subhuman in its reliance on instinct
(whether interpreted biologically or ontologically).  Kenneth's XSelf seems
extremely suspect to me for that reason.

> But authenticity in the later Heiedgger is still related to Ereignis, only
> now it turns on the releasement and silence of Gelassenheit. My difficulty
> with BT is that these themes, die Lichtung, silence and letting be are
> already there in the existential analytic, but they're tied up with this
> strangely willful anticipatory mode of authentic angst.

Gelassenheit doesn't signify silence to me, it is an active mode of letting
be that preserves the origin in constantly coming to meet it.

> So I've been wondering if there's another way of interpreting angst here,
> one that remains faithful to the later Heidegger's method and that doesn't
> require me to work up a defamiliarizing joyful freedom towards death but
> instead approaches death with more of a sense of ... piety maybe? Might
the
> humility of angst offer authentic access to ecstatic temporality and its
> openness?

The humility of angst is one crucial aspect often overlooked, another
possibility I've been exploring is the loss of the personality in terms of
personae generated by the Ego, with the concomitant loss of the Ego itself
and a return to the self (in the sense that we say "so & so has a lot of
character", the Ego substitutes itself and its personae for the authentic
self and character of the individual Dasein.

Cheers
Andrew

> Any thoughts would be welcome.
>
> Malcolm Riddoch
>
>
>
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