From: "Michael Staples" <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com> Subject: RE: Zollikon: Unconscious Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 18:14:45 -0800 ME: I stumbled over your phrases "presenced significance" and "presencing of significance". Significance is the meaning of something, i.e. how we understand something that is present. The presencing (and absencing) of beings is prior to (not temporally) understanding them. >>> --i.e., they can still be present even if I don't understand them. Or, they can still be present even if their significance is not present to me. Re: "order to this being in the world" and "ordering principle". Here I suppose you mean in part the distinction between background and foreground? There is no "objective background". Foreground is the opening of world that is the focus of my attention. My focus of attention can shift, thus making what was background into foreground and vice versa. My attention is absorbed by what has to be done (how I have cast myself into the future), but can, for instance, be deflected by something going wrong (e.g. discovering that only water is coming out of the espresso machine). >>> No argument from me here. I thought I said "as-if" it were objective. But in the struggle to eradicate all notion of the objective, perhaps even this is too loose. Getting back to the example of coffee-making as a parapraxis: It was my individual action and omission, and my individual discovery that I had forgotten to put coffee into the metal strainer. All this has to pass through my individual Dasein. But the process of making coffee using an espresso machine is not only individual. There are certain general steps to follow to achieve the desired product, a cup of coffee. So anyone familiar with espresso machines will immediately understand the example, and understand what went wrong. The technique of how to make espresso coffee is a shared 'productive' knowledge, and insofar not at all individual. (To say this in an Hegelian way, the particular act of making coffee involves also a universal or general moment which has to pass through my singularity in a specific instance to be real.) >>>Yes. Further down in your post it seems that "ordering principle" means something like a guiding principle for Dasein leading its life. >>>Well, I suppose we need to be careful here. I do not mean a guiding principle as a secondary subject who guides me. Although, I made a point out of saying that this ordering principle can quite often seem as if it were such. Surely you could not argue against the kind of ordering principle that manages, or alows me to manage (a reciprocal relationship?) the practice of hammering a nail. There is an order to this activity. But is there an "ordering principle" ordering my existence? A principle (Gk.: _archae_) is a point of origin governing what comes thereafter. Is there such a point of origin governing the direction my existence takes? The direction my existence takes is its meaning (in German 'Sinn' is 'meaning', from 'sinnen', which also means etymologically 'to take a direction'). My existence's sense is its meaning in the sense of taking a direction in life. But is the direction taken governed by a point of origin? Or must the element of a free choice, which can radically change the direction of my existence, be given a place in becoming my self? >>>Perhaps a little of both. I don't care much for the point of origin thing. Does the ordering of my actions involved with hammering a nail have to be thought of as having a point of origin? Existence being governed by a point of origin (principle) would imply some sort of continuity and consistency, but it could be that the world suddenly opens up for me in such a way that it demands a radical change of course, a rupture, for me to take on my ownmost task in life and be my self. An "ordering principle" to existence implies some sort of necessity for the course my existence takes, but as Dasein I am finite, i.e. relative, not absolute. An accident, a coincidence, what Aristotle calls _to symbebaekos_, might contingently cross my path and open up the possibility of another course for my existence, another direction for my self. Whereas metaphysics always aimed at necessity as the highest mode of being, post-metaphysically, for finite beings exposed to the opening of world, it is possibility which is the highest instance in enabling of our being, opening up unforeseen possibilities of existing. >>>Maybe a bit too either/or here, Michael -- i.e., either deterministic, or entirely free. There is a kind of deterministic feature to hammering a nail. If you dont pick up the hammer, you ain't going to be a hammerin on the nail. And yet, I have considerable freedom in many respects. There are certain absolutes with regard to my existance. If I hammer the nail into my head, I will absolutly have a headache. But perhaps we could find a happy medium here. Michael S. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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