File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0111, message 24


Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 22:16:57 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Zollikon: Unconscious


Cologne 05-Nov-2001

Michael Staples <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com> schrieb Mon, 5 Nov 2001
06:20:04 -0800:

> Hello Michael, thank you for your thoughts.
>
> You wrote:
> ME:
> Consider a simple parapraxis such as a slip of the tongue. When my tongue
> slips,
> I say something unintended and call something to presence that was unintended.
>
> In retrospect I can see that I was with those things which slipped out in what
>
> my tongue said. This shows that things can come to presence for me without me
> intending it by a subjective act of directing my attention. Insofar, I am not
> a
> subject underlying all my actions.

> MS:
> >>>One point for the notion of unconscious acts not necessitating the
> subject/object framework?
> ME:
> Another example: I am making coffee with the espresso machine. When it spurts,
> I
> realize that I have fogotten to put the coffee into the metal strainer in the
> espresso machine so that only water comes out. I had been lost in throughts,
> somewhere else, when making the coffee. This example shows that in being
> practically involved with one thing at hand (_pragma_), I am absorbed by
> another
> far away. I can be intensely present with something that is not physically,
> bodily present but which is somewhere else, in the past or the future..
> MS:
> >>>Yes, I think it would describe the sort of relationship I was talking
> about where I am involved with both instances (making the coffee, and being
> absorbed with something else far away). Where Freud would chime in here is
> by suggesting that leaving out the metal strainer had some sort of purpose
> that was motivated by the secondary subject (i.e., the unconscious subject).
> In this scenario, Jan's recent posting comes to mind...not so much in terms
> of cause/effect, but in terms of postulating an "unconscious motivation".
> This, I think, is where the issue really lies...postulating an "uconscious
> motivation" which requires this sort of secondary subject (someone has to be
> doing the motivating...so the unconcsious is presumed to be a 'mind' of it's
> own). Here, the secondary subject that is part of you (whether inner or
> outer) "made" you leave out the metal strainer for some reason. Finding the
> reason requires a hermeneutic approach to interpreting the event.
>
> However, there can be an alternative to this sort of secondary subject
> business that does not negate the whole idea of meaningful unconscious acts,
> it seems to me. Through the same hermeneutics, one can look at the
> phenomenon of leaving out the metal strainer and allow the event to unfold
> itself phenomenologically. Lets say, for instance, that your attention is
> now drawn to the fact that only the water is coming out of the coffee
> machine. You notice that the reason for this is that you forgot to put in
> the metal strainer. You think of the metal strainer and an image of your
> coming day emerges in which you see yourself sitting at your computer,
> typing in a note to the Heidegger list. And then you notice a feeling
> somehow associated with this image of yourself and your computer, that
> sticks with you for several minutes. And from this feeling, you notice that
> another image is emerging...that suggests that you have forgotten something
> else (much the same as forgetting to put the metal strainer into the
> machine). And by holding this feeling, you notice that you forgot to send an
> important birthday card to your closest friend, and that you just had time
> to do it this morning...if you ran down to the post office right now.
>
> One interpretation here is the first...the Freudian...that a secondaring
> subject within you motivated this entire show. Another is that there is some
> sort of interconnection of meaningful "known-but-not-thought" activity going
> on here that does not necessitate the postulation of a second subject, but
> acknowledges the sort of primordial understanding of the flow of being (?)
> that underscores the conscious manifestation of meaning. So, you "recognize"
> or discover the meaning of the event.

Michael,
You sure had early-bird thoughts today.
Yes, the presencing of beings in Dasein's experiential awareness does not
require that it be invariably imputed to a subject, human or otherwise,
conscious or unconscious. Things, too, show up or withdraw without us doing or
being motivated by anything at all.

Moreover, my parapraxes, i.e. actions that are done 'next to' (_para_) a
consciously intended action (e.g. to make coffee), do not have to be attributed
to an unconscious motivation. I can simply be distracted by something else
presencing for me, and it may be useful in the situation to then focus on what
it was that absorbed my attention and allowed the act of putting coffee into the
metal strainer to recede into hiddenness, forgotten. Or it may be simply a
damned nuisance that I was absorbed with other thoughts (e.g. what to write in
an e-mail) whilst making my morning coffee. The particular situation decides in
practical life (as Aristotle says).

You've now elaborated and extended the example of forgetting to put coffee into
the metal strainer for the espresso machine. I notice that only water is coming
out of the machine, not coffee and I realize that I have forgotten the coffee. I
had been planning to take my coffee to the PC to type an e-mail for the
Heidegger list. But is this an image? An image would be a representation of
something in consciousness. But my small everyday project of typing an e-mail is
how I am casting myself into the very near future. In such casting I am already
with my PC and the e-mail program _themselves_. They are futurally present for
me, but still being withheld by this temporal dimension of future.

Now, the forgetting to put coffee into the metal strainer jolts me into an
inkling that I've also forgotten something else. I knew there was something I
had to do today. Instead of allowing myself to be distracted by what I want to
write in my e-mail, I need to pull myself together and  concentrate on the
pressing tasks immediately at hand. This focusing of attention allows my
friend's birthday, which I had momentarily forgotten, to presence. Yes, his
birthday's tomorrow! I'll have to send a card.

All this has nothing to do with images (representations) but with being-with
things in different modes of presencing (past, present, future) and absencing
(e.g. forgetting, being distracted). Thinking in terms of images is
metaphysically 'natural' because the temporal mode of the present (or the now)
is given priority. Thus, a present image stands for what is to come (e.g.
writing an e-mail). But it is the writing of the e-mail _itself_ that is present
for me, but in the mode of the withheld future. (The other temporal dimension,
the past, is the refusal of presence, in contradistinction to the future as the
withholding of presence.)

In German it is easy to make a distinction between the present that is present
now, at the moment (Gegenwart), and a broader understanding of presence that
encompasses all three temporal modes (Anwesenheit). In English one could
distinguish between presence here-and-now, on the one hand, and presencing and
absencing in general, on the other, i.e. absence is also a kind of presencing.

As Jan says, quoting Heidegger (but this is no mere promised land):

"J   Doch mit Ihrem <<Nein>> deuten Sie an, dass auch Sie das
      Erscheinen nicht im griechischen Sinne denken.

F   Sie haben recht. Worauf es hierbei ankommt, ist schwer sichtbar
      zu machen, weil es einen einfachen freien Blick verlangt."
                                      [from Unterwegs zur Sprache, p.133]

"J But with your 'no' you are hinting that you too are not thinking 'appearing'
in its Greek sense.

Q You're right. It's hard to make the point here visible because it demands a
simple, free, unobstructed view."

The hardest thing in phenomenological thinking is to think simply, with a simple
view of the phenomena themselves, instead of having recourse to theoretical
constructs that obstruct the view. That's what we need to practise, and it is
worlds apart from regular academic discourse, which revolves around authors'
names.

By the way, I like your literally Freudian slip in "the Freudian...that a
secondaring
subject within you motivated this entire show" Is the unconscious the second,
daring subject postulated by Freud in a kind of theoretical construction?

Michael
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