Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 17:23:59 +0100
From: Rene de Bakker <rbakker-AT-bs18.bs.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: plans and ends


Gulio, I read slowly.

At 12:32 26-10-01 -0400, you wrote:

>> When I am right when I say that Heidegger indicates 'something',
>> that doesn't want to be known, that turns away from an attempt to
>> grasp it  - and that therefore isn't objective, because there is no
>> object without a subject, and that isn't subjective, because there
>> can't be a subject without an object - then this hiddenness only
>> shows itself in the refusal of words, the refusing in words.
>> They don't catch reality anymore. Rather reality goes its own way.
>> Would the old concepts still work, that is ground reality, by showing
>> the Being of beings in beings, then there would not even be the
>possibility
>> to
>
>The refusal, as I see it, is words working through the limit of meaning, the
>direction that words would take, their end as the expression of a refusal,
>of an interference, a noise that somehow remains to be thought, the
>unthought that must be thought, what is still to be interpreted.  The
>hiddenness is expressed.
>
>The 'something'?

The searched-for. Here in GA26: Dasein, through a destruction of Leibniz'
logic.
First step: Showing, that this logic has metaphysical roots, i.c. Leibniz'
monadology.
Second step: What does it mean that metaphysical thinking searches for ground
in terms of subjectivity generally, from ancient psyche, via medieval
intellectus,
to the modern subject (sub-ject, hypo-keimenon = ground)
Third step: What is NOW 'subject', now in our epigonal situation, wherein the
subject-object relation is brought forward as something ultimate? 

P. 24: "How must that being, that stands under such laws [logical
laws, like -(A&-A) and the principle of reason], the Dasein itself,
be constituted, to be able to stand in such accordingness to laws?"   

(Heidegger always asks like this. Not only transcendentally onto something
primordial, but also asking: earlier (potius) in what sense? And showing HOW 
the primordial is present in the phenomenon seen at first. And: also
explicate, 
why the primordial doesn't appear itself primordially. 
Reading Heidegger means: doing all this oneself.)

>is refusal and hesitation connected?)

If refusal is experienced - and, although hesitating, I think I found the
track in
in GA26 - hesitation, or compulsion will become necessary. But Heidegger
doesn't do that for now, so one better forget about that. On the contrary,
he proposes a direct and real way into metaphysics ( like he planned with
Scheler)
i.e. the treatment of the overall question of Being, after the analytics of
the 
being of Dasein. BT looks, H. says, like radical atheism, but metaphysically 
spoken, nothing is decided yet about it, because the question what Dasein,
as the being, that understands being, is, how it can understand being, that
it is not itself (ontical understanding) still has to be asked. (p. 177)

Here the part, that I didn't understand at all at first, now better,
becomes relevant: 
section 10: the problem of transcendence and the problem of BT. (p. 171 ff.)

The analytics of Dasein is done, now he speaks of a metaphysics, or a
metontology,
of Dasein. In 12 points he summarizes the position of Dasein after BT. I
pick out
some, that I think are important:

-the metaphysical neutrality of Dasein
-the metaphysical isolation of man
-dispersion (Zerstreuung)  of things and men (Mitsein). Here Geworfenheit
comes in. (7)
-the concretion of Dasein in relation to the requirement of an existentiell
impetus. (11,12)
 (this is indispensable, but not the ground/possiblity of Dasein itself:
difficult reading)

Another way than BT's start with everyday Dasein and its zuhandenes Zeug.
(Also in GA29/30 he speaks of ALTERNATIVE entries to philosophy: Grundstimmung
of boredom) Also reading Leibniz is an alternative entry. 


Meanwhile he has already made an alternative entry from section 9 on (153 ff):
the Wesen of truth and its essential relation to >ground<. 
Truth as propositional truth is founded in (the truth of)
"already-being-amidst.... 
(Schon-sein-bei...) or the association with... (Umgang mit ... )
What's in the place of the dots? Vorhandenes, the extant. That which is
dis-covered in the already-being-amidst. (Notice that Heidegger speaks here 
solely of "Vorhandenes", the extant, which includes Zuhandenes, that as
such is gone!)
P. 159: This already-being-amidst belongs to the EXISTENCE of Dasein.
the being-amidst is enthuellend, ent-deckend, dis-covering. (A-letheia!)
Heidegger stresses here (and also near the end) the essential privation of
the A-,
without further comment

But to us, this only dislocates the problem, admitted that there is a
problem here,
and that it is seen. It is that of Seinsverstaendnis, the understanding of
Being,
that is on the side of Dasein as being-in-the-world. Whatever may appear,
as Innerweltiges, intra-worldly, or Innerzeitige, intra-temporal, must
already be 
understood, is already understood.
But what is called understanding, Verstaendnis, here in relation to
Vorhandenheit,
extantness? Can we say that things are extant because we understand them?
Cf. the theses before the very important supplement "Idea and function of a
fundamental-ontology" (on which later more):

1. Seiendes ist an ihm selbst das Seiende, was es ist und wie es ist, auch
wenn z.B. 
    Dasein nicht existiert. Being is by itself the being, what it is and
how it is, also when
    for instance Dasein doesn't exist. 

2. Being (Sein) >is< not, but Being is-there only (Sein gibt es nur),
insofar Dasein exists.   


>On page three of GA26 Heidegger writes that logic, a pure and simple one, a
>general logic is not a thought determination of nature nor one of space and
>history. In a way it is the thought of nothing "which nontheless means to
>think "something". In thinking of nothingness, or in the endeavor to think
>"it," I am thoughtfully related to nothingness, and thii is what the
>thinking is about" (H2-3). This seems important to me since after all the
>conclusion, or one of them, is going to be, in this text, that "the world
>"is" nothing".

Thinking is thinking something. This is self-evident to all metaphysics.*

Modern logicians think they can be purely logical, absolve themselves
from any ontological claim, when they say 'a is b', because 'a' doesn't denote
a specific object, but is materially indifferent, or formal. 
Logic, that places itself outside any kind of world must become a dried-up
occupation.

*so in Kant's Principle of all synthetic a priori judgment: the conditions
of the possibility of experience are the cond. of the poss. of the OBJECT
of exp. Knowledge, to Kant, is always knowledge of something.

>Your quote on history, instantaneity is one I have been
>pondering.  The way it reads in English is that historical recollection
>(geschichtliche Erinnerung) is only that as moment focused reflection
>(Augenblicklichen Besinnung). When Heidegger picks his moments in the
>history od ideas it is just to get at an understanding of moment focused
>reflection, a moment of vision, the ectasis of temporality. Wether looking
>at past ideas, the future, or the present, the obsessive focus is a moment
>of reflection in the here and now. You put recollection and a moment of
>vision together and you get the "original unity" around pages  H10-11, end
>of section two. Heidegger writes that you get, "the unity of the temporality
>of the philosophizing factical Dasein itself; [and that] the full
>problematic must be unfolded this unity" (H10-11). This is important because
>getting to H56-57, it is very much a visio as a praesens intuitus (of the
>eternal now, nunc stans), that is in question. In the Scholastics the
>veritas primas, the absolute (meaning something like absolved, separated,
>freed up) intellect of God is the origin of truth. Without understanding
>this doctrine Heidegger writes that it is not possible to have an
>intelligent understanding of Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel, or I would add
>Heidegger. This list never goes this deep historically which is too bad. I
>would love to interpret Thomas, Suarez, Avicenna or al-Farabi with Heidegger
>terminology. Being modern or neokantian is easy, seeing the transition from
>the Scholastics is harder.

Indeed. Hegel says, and Heidegger quotes this many times, that with Descartes'
conscience, philosophy has reached the mainland, the 'territory' of
conscience.
Before that, in Hegel's view the Absolute was rendered 'objectively'. 
During the 19th century, the era of historicism, this has become a
commonplace. 
Movements like neo-thomism, in which Heidegger found himself in his young
days,
were a reaction to that. 
I don't think you mean, that the instantaneity of Dasein can be won by
retrieving Thomas'
'theology'. The exposition of Leibniz' doctrine of the judgment brings it back
to its metaphysical origins, i.c. the self-development of the monad, which is
a mundus concentratus, with the medieval 'scientia dei'  and medieval
'possibilitas' as leading ideas. 

But Heidegger calls the exposition: a destruction. Only own asking shall be
awakened.


> It requires pretty much living through a long
>conversation. The Italians seem to be the only ones with the depth and sense
>of history to be able to do it. Giorgi Agamben always makes the connections
>from the Scholastics to modern discussions but he is alone. Before that it
>was only Heidegger and one wonders how well he did it; but it's not possible
>to see this unless one reads and thinks in Scholastic terms.

Yes, but to see that, you have to destruct them, the only way through which
your own 'motive' gains ground. Because Thomas, like Plato, is incorporated
in us. Our 'actuality' wouldn't be there without his 'actus purus',
although it has
become almost its opposite. Nietzsche would agree: without Christianity
no will to power! Without Christianity probably also nihilism, but inevitably
a MORAL nihilism, as Nietzsche says Buddhism is.

>Anything else is just following the master's voice and making the same
generalizations
>about the history of ideas that he did

Right, apart from that he doesn't make generalizations and that it isn't
about the history of ideas. 

>The project undoes itself
>because it's grounding on nothingness and that is a "free projection" and
>truly constitutes a moment of vision, or a naked intentionality to put it in
>Scholastic terms; a possibility, a seed that is yet to develop. In this way,
>Da-sein is the potency of an origin, a vital moment... That is pushing it
>don't you think?

Let me first read more.

>A projection upon a for-the-sake-of which amounts to an abyss works
>just the same as Heidegger's being-towards-death but also Dasein going
>towards it's ownmost can-be, potency of its origin. There, and you put this
>together with phenomenological seeing as the moment of vision of BT and you
>get H1 in a nutshell, a nut, yes I like this, a nut...

According to Thousand-and-one nights, a great gift from our Arabic friends, 
in a little piece of (hasjisj) - it is called 'benj' - the whole world can
find place.

Rene  


-----------------------------------
drs. René de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering 
tel. 020-5252368              


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