File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0111, message 168


From: "Michael Staples" <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com>
Subject: RE: Zollikon: Unconscious
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 08:33:30 -0800




Hi Michael, you wrote:

For someone engulfed by a mood of depression it can be important to "find
the
words", as you say. The words articulate the understanding somehow
associated
with the mood which has overcome the person and has downcast it into how it
finds itself now, and in this sense, words delineate the mood, give it an
outline, bring it to stand so that it does not only engulf. These words may
allow the depressed person's past, how they have been, to come to language
and
thus gain shape.

>>>Perhaps I could expand this. I'm thinking of what you said about
listening to what the words say in themselves, and of the relationship
between language and temporality. Perhaps you could give me your thoughts on
this, but let me add a few of my own first: In returning once again to
Kockelmans I find several passages that elaborate your implication that the
words say something in and of themselves --

1. "The meaning of things is resally discovered," and "One moves around in
the routine network of mutual relations, in which used things refer to one
another and thus receive and give meanings to one another."

2. Language (for H.) is no longer a tool, but itself speaks, and man's
speaking is merely a response to its speaking, a response which presupposes
that Dasein must learn to hear and listen...

3. In words and language, things become and are...

5. if Being withdraws in the beings which it reveals, then it also withdraws
in the words with which beings are brought to language...the domain of the
unsaid, which is the hidden wealth of what is said. It is as if it were a
noiseless voice which speaks within the words to which we attend in thought.


I'm ruminating on the process of psychotherapy here, on the process of a
talking in which "we are in this together." Drawing together several
strings, I see first that in a situation where I become a part of a world
sharing by opening to another, we set out to listen to the words, as they
show up -- not created by us as individual subjects, but discovered by us in
the shared openness...from out of the blue. Throught the words and language,
things become and are. And then there is a passage from Michael Inwood that
points to temporality:

"...by breathing new life into the past one loosens its dead grip on the
present, and uses it purposefully to fact the future (BT, 386)"


Could we say that finding the words both articulates an understanding, and
alows language to speak through Being's temporal modes of presencing. And
that listening to the words that speak through use from the past that
gathers into the present, we breath new life that loosens a dead grip on the
present? That it clears the way for the Augenblick, which is an authentic
event in which I can "see" in the blink of my eye, what is mine?

You mentioned some time ago, with regard to my friend who found theology,
what sounded like an issue of authenticity. You said, if I recall, that
ideas or thoughts come up (come upon us) from out of the blue. And in this
case my friend saw what came up as somehow belonging to him...somehow his
own. Here, you also say that:

"the Augenblick is
'authentic' (eigentliche) presence in the sense of enabling one to _be_ the
author of one's very own existence, i.e. of deciding in favour of one's self
and
coming to own one's self, to be one's own person."

So the relationship between the temporal, that is tied to the augenblick in
its association with the authentic present, is indeed associated with the
finding of the right words, and hearing what they say of themselves:

"The special
moment of the Augenblick (perhaps akin to Gk. _kairos_) is a moment of
decision
(crisis in the literal sense, from Gk. _krinein_, 'to discriminate, to
differentiate') enabling resolve to cast one's self. It opens a possibility
toward the future, which can also be missed. Heidegger says, the mood of
anxiety
(or depression?), in which the world of things to be taken care of becomes
meaningless, "keeps the Augenblick ... in suspense". (SuZ:344) As this
opening
for deciding how to cast one's own self into the future, beyond a
conventional
self-understanding based on unarticulated expectations..."

What about this recognition of ownership, of authentic ownership? What is
this recognition about? I am presented with a theology program. I see
it...in the twinkling of an eye (a tw-inkling of an eye) I recognize it as
"mine". I sieze it, and dwell within it. I find words for it. I follow its
path, its thread of meaning. I walk its path, ontically living out this
meaning...living through its meaning.

Michael S.




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