File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0111, message 43


Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 19:03:28 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Zollikon: Unconscious


Cologne 09-Nov-2001

Michael Staples <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com> schrieb  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.
> MS:
> >>> --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.
> 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).
> MS:
> >>> 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.
> ME:
> 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.)
> MS:
> >>>Yes.
> ME:
> Further down in your post it seems that "ordering principle" means something
> like a guiding principle for Dasein leading its life.
> MS:
> >>>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.
> ME:
> 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?
> MS:
> >>>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?
> ME:
> 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.
> MS:
> >>>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.

Michael,
This thread is threading.

Yes, beings can presence without my understanding them. Not understanding is
also a mode of understanding. Significance can draw a blank.

In taking up "ordering principle" I had in mind a point of origin governing how
my existence is cast, i.e. the bigger picture. Your example of hammering a nail
is more specific, i.e. a particular concrete practical action (pleonasm), the
smaller picture. You ask, "Does the ordering of my actions involved with
hammering a nail have to be thought of as having a point of origin?" The short
answer is, yes, it does. Why? Hammering with the hammer is an instance of
practical know-how. To hammer in a nail, I have to know how. The aim of
hammering, its end or _telos_, is the hammered-in nail. The means for hammering
are the hammer and the nail. The point of origin for the hammering is my knowing
how to hammer. This know-how resides in me, and from this origin, the activity
of hammering is guided to its goal of the hammered-in nail.

Getting back to the bigger picture of my self-casting, the practice of hammering
may belong to my projected project, or it may not. E.g. I may cast myself as
building a house for myself with my own hands out in the country. The
traditional debate in Anglo-Saxon philosophy about free will and determinism is
really about the temporality of existence. The past has been and has cast me
into a situation; the future is still open for the casting of my projects.
Having been cast, I am also myself casting. Pre-cast, I am fore-casting. My life
is also involved with others; I am broad-casting.

If hammering in nails belongs to my existential project, then I act as a point
of origin determining an outcome (the hammered-in nails). But, in so doing, I
have freely cast myself as a hammerer. The role of hammerer belongs to my
self-casting. Such belonging of a role to my self-casting constitutes part of my
identity. Individual identity is a matter of belonging to a way of life into
which, partly, I have been cast and also, partly; which I have freely shaped and
cast myself through individual decisions.

Traditionally, metaphysics has been bent on finding out the necessity (that
which cannot be other than as it is) underlying everything that happens in the
world. To make sense, the world had to be traced back to an underlying
principle, a governing point of origin ordering the universe. This is
ontotheology. The Christian god was posited as the final source, the hidden
anchor for the universe providing sense for everything that is. In the modern
age, this underpinning by a god has been loosened somewhat. Space has been made
for scientific explanations in which grounds are sought in other beings, which
are then causes. Leibniz posited his famous principle: "Nihil est sine ratione."
"Nothing is without a reason." Everything that is can be traced back to a a
reason or ground in terms of which its existence (est) can be explained.
Scientific explanation comes into competition and conflict with the Christian
ontotheological underpinning of world by the Christian god. In both ways of
thinking, whether scientifically or according to Christian theology, world is
thought, oblivious to being and its open truth, ontogenetically as arising from
a causal origin and thus there is competition, say, between the Big Bang
cosmological theory and the story of godly creation.

Hegel's idealism tries to reconcile these two competing alternatives by showing
that scientific understanding can be erased, saved and raised to absolute
reason, which Hegel conceives as God's thought before the creation of the world.
The absoluteness of absolute reason resides in it being thinking thinking
itself, without any relation to external givens. With the attainment of such
human philosophical insight into absolute reason, the necessity of how the world
is is seen and human being is reconciled with the state of the world. The
'enemy' to reason with its inexorable necessity is, for Hegel, "Willkuer und
Zufaelligkeit", "arbitrary will and contingency". For Hegel, arbitrary will is
will acting without insight into reason and thus capriciously. Contingency is
that which eludes the insight of reason, i.e. contingency simply happens without
reason and therefore marks a barrier beyond which reason cannot penetrate. Human
freedom, for Hegel, lies in the insight of human reason into necessity which can
be achieved through philosophy.

But if the world were un-reasonable or beyond reason (_epekeina tou logou_)?
This would amount to admitting the finiteness of human understanding and human
existence. If no absolute reason can be posited, and if my individual existence
cannot be traced back to an underlying point of origin, then the challenge for
human being is to be open for and to deal with the (sometimes dangerous) play of
contingency.

Michael
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