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. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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