File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0111, message 25


From: "Michael Staples" <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com>
Subject: RE: Zollikon: Unconscious
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 18:44:43 -0800




> ME:

But is this an image? An image would be a representation of
something in consciousness.

>>>MS: Small question -- Is that which is imaginal always a representation
of something in consciousness? Can an emotion or a feeling or an
non-representational understanding be of the imaginal?

>But my small everyday project of typing an e-mail is
how I am casting myself into the very near future.

>>>Imagining yourself? Or is it here that you are making the point that this
is specifically not imagining yourself? Is "casting" different from
"imagining"?

In such casting I am already
with my PC and the e-mail program _themselves_.

>>>and imagining cannot be this? Or is this a terminology thing. Does the
definition of imagination force the issue of representation of something in
consciousness upon us here?

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).

>>>OK. Sounds like I need to re-orient my use (and understanding) of the
term image.

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?

>>>Well...off to the drawing board again.


Michael S.




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