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