Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 08:45:12 -0700
From: Kenneth Johnson <poochiegraig-AT-home.com>
Subject: Re: philosophy 101 diaphanous thoroughfare



Michael Schrieb:

>A little belated, having just returned from a holiday in Oz. This is not
>just an
>issue of turning up one's nose or not, but of whether Dreyfus' commentary on
>_Being and Time_ introduces (lit.: leads in) the reader to a view of what
>Heidegger had in view. I take it that a common man's interest in
>philosophy is,
>like the philosopher's, to learn to think.
>
>I don't have any William James or C.S. Peirce on my bookshelves, so let me
>quote
>Encyclopaedia Brittanica on pragmatism:


Good morning Michael, _very_ nice to hear your written voice here again!!!

For some reason and in a general way your thoughts on pragmatism and
dreyfus below flash a couple N things to mind, and since these also center
on the xself let me use them also to make a little polemic there too:


Man as the most endangered animal - he needed help and protection, he
needed his peers, he had to learn to express his distress and to make
himself understood; and for all of this he needed "consciousness" first of
all, he needed to "know" for himself what distressed him, he needed to
"know" how he felt, he needed to "know" what he thought. For, to say it
once more: Man, LIKE EVERY LIVING BEING, THINKS CONTINUALLY WITHOUT KNOWING
IT [only those, btw, who have the Xself experience, _know_ this "other"
thinking - intimately]; the thinking that rises to _consciousness_ is only
the smallest part of all this-the most superficial and worst part-for only
this conscious thinking _takes the form of words, which is to say signs of
communication_, and this fact uncovers the origin of consciousness.

In brief, the development of language and the development of consciousness
(_not_ of reason but merely of the way reason enters consciousness [here
the X experience again}) go hand in hand. Add to this that not only
language serves as a bridge between human beings but also a mien, a
pressure, a gesture. The emergence of our sense impressions into our own
consciousness, the ability to fix them and, as it were, exhibit them
externally, increased proportionately with the need to communicate them to
_others_ by means of signs. The human being inventing signs is at the same
time the human being who becomes ever more keenly conscious of himself. It
was only as a social animal that man acquired self-consciousness-which he
is still in the process of doing, more and more [the X as the ultimate of
this "more".

----

"Life no argument" -  We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we
are able to live - with the postulation of bodies, lines, surfaces, causes
and effects, motion and rest, form and content: without these articles of
faith nobody could now endure to live! But that does not yet mean they are
something proved and demonstrated. Life is no argument; among the
conditions of life could be error [GS 121]

---

"The four errors" - Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw
himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary
qualitites, third he felt himself in a FALSE order of rank with animal and
nature, fourth HE CONTINUALLY INVENTED NEW TABLES OF VALUES AND FOR A TIME
TOOK EACH OF THEM TO BE ETERNAL AND UNCONDITIONAL, so that now this, now
that humand DRIVE and state took first place and was, as a consequence of
this evaluation, ennobled. If one deducts the effect of these four errors,
one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness and 'human dignity'. [GS
115]

[I realize the X experience is not couched inside the "terrific" depthspeak
of a Heidegger (nor in the deeptrain style of his commentators) and so this
casts it off and away into the merely practical mode of thinking
presentations, not worth the salt - but - - if you deepsters, said
respectfully, were to actually "try" it hands on, and open yourselves to
its absence of mystery and presence of utter magic - - - -]

-k
======

>"school of philosophy, dominant in the United States during the first
>quarter of
>the 20th century, based on the principle that the usefulness, workability, and
>practicality of ideas, policies, and proposals are the criteria of their
>merit.
>It stresses the priority of action over doctrine, of experience over fixed
>principles; and it holds that ideas borrow their meanings from their
>consequences, and their truths from their verification. Thus, ideas are
>essentially instruments and plans of action."
>
>What underlies pragmatism is the ontological casting of the subject as human
>beings in action rather than the subject as human beings understood as the
>seat
>of consciousness. Pragmatism is one variant of the metaphysics of subjectivity
>in its modern sense in which humans have come to be the beings underlying
>(sub-jectum) everything else.
>
>Compare the final, parenthetical lines of the opening paragraph of Dreyfus'
>exposition in _Being-in-the-World_, which is subtitled: _A Commentary on
>Heidegger's 'Being and Time', Division I_, motivating why the question of
>being
>has to be raised again:
>
>"(Remember through this difficult section that what Heidegger has in mind when
>he talks about being is the intelligibility correlative with our everyday
>background practices.)" (BitW p.10)
>
>This parenthetical remark is supposed to help the novice reader find a way
>into
>the question of being. But, although itself accessible, does it open up what
>"Heidegger has in mind" or does it close it off again? The intelligibility
>Dreyfus refers to is Dasein's, and this is said to be "correlative with our
>everyday background practices", which are again Dasein's. Heidegger, however,
>has in mind Dasein in the world, and this world is not constituted in the
>first
>place by Dasein's practices, whether background or not, but is enabled
>first and
>foremost by the dimension within which Dasein's practices and its
>understanding
>are situated, namely: _alaetheia_. Heidegger has _alaetheia_ in mind from the
>early twenties on. It goes under various names including: "the truth of
>being",
>"time", "timespace", "world". What Dreyfus calls "intelligibility"
>(understanding) is enabled a priori by the being of beings in everyday life
>opening up as such to Dasein, and this opening up (Erschlossenheit) takes
>place
>in the dimension of _alaetheia_.
>
>_Alaetheia_ or the openness of being is the diaphanous dimension within or
>through which phenomena can appear. "Diaphanous" in this context does not mean
>simply "transparent", but "through-showing", i.e. it refers to the
>dimension or
>'thoroughfare' through which phenomena (that which shows itself of itself) can
>show themselves to Dasein, which is able to take them in in understanding.
>(Remember: Dasein is not a subject underlying the world with its
>practices, but
>a being peculiarly open to and belonging to the opening of world.)
>
>_Alaetheia_ is the diaphanous thoroughfare for the phenomena, that dimension
>through which the light of the phenomena passes to Dasein and which is always
>overlooked and skipped over in all metaphysical thinking, including
>pragmatism.
>
>When Dreyfus sets up "everyday background practices" as the foil against which
>being is to be made coherent, he is drawing a veil over the open dimension
>which
>Heidegger's thinking has in mind. Heidegger therefore asks in his introduction
>to SuZ, "What is it which has to be called a 'phenomenon' in a pronounced
>sense?
>What is according to its essence _necessarily_ the subject of an _express_
>demonstration? Obviously it is something that, at first and for the most part,
>does _not_ show itself, which is _hidden_ but at the same time is something
>which belongs essentially to what shows itself at first and for the most part,
>and that in such a way that it constitutes its sense and ground." (SuZ:35) And
>Heidegger wrote in the margin of his copy of SuZ to "sense and ground":
>"Wahrheit des Seins", i.e. "truth of being".
>
>It is the truth of being that has to be brought to light in phenomenology,
>that
>diaphanous dimension allowing all seeing and understanding which remains "at
>first and for the most part" "hidden", invisible.
>
>Early on in SuZ, Heidegger writes: "Being-in-the-world, although
>experienced and
>well-known in a pre-phenomenological way, becomes _invisible_ by way of an
>ontologically inappropriate interpretation." (SuZ:59) The issue is whether
>Dreyfus, by recurring to the underlying (i.e. sub-ject-ive) background of
>everyday practices, has written a commentary certainly accessible to students'
>initial understanding, but which, in the end, again makes the diaphanous
>phenomenon of being (its truth, openness) invisible.
>
>Regards,
>Michael
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