File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0111, message 45


From: "Michael Staples" <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com>
Subject: RE: Zollikon: Unconscious
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 07:32:07 -0800




Michael,

>>>I've been giving much thought to our conversation. To backtrack a bit, I
see what you mean by the use of "Image". In fact, the more I stay with this
"thread" the more I realize the problem of trying to think a new idea with
words that have old meanings attached. I mentioned Hillman at some point. A
fatal mistake I think he made, and one which H. did not make, was in hanging
onto the traditional words like "Image". He gave it his own meaning, to
include things like emotions and feelings, and tried to focus on the image
as the thing-in-itself..."imagined" pain, for instnce was not thought of as
being a representation of something else. But (and this is a big 'But') the
baggae from "Image" came right along with the word and merely confused the
issue.


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.

>>>I was thinking that there is a difference between "Order" and "An
Ordering Principle". Saying that my existance has a certain order is one
thing. Saying that there is "An Ordering Principle" which orders it, implies
a subject-like order-er. I had in mind the first example.

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.

>>>Hammering the nail has a component of know-how, with an aim of hammering
and a telos. This occures at the level of what Dreyfus calls non-expert
know-how. But it also has a component of know-how that occures at a much
deeper level...at the level of background information about being in the
world, which is a non-thinking (ratio) know-how. Seems to me that the first
category of know-how involves a point of origin concerning aim and
telos..."I want to get the nail into the wood, and in order to do that, I
need to pick up the hammer and smack it down on the nail...and so on." This
involves not just "Order" to the activity, but "An Ordering Principle" (Me)
that provides a purpose and an outcome to the activity. The second category
of know-how involves "Order" but no particular purpose...it is merely the
fact that I am a part of the world into which I am thrown that informs my
ability to make sense of hammers and nails. Would you say that we are now on
the same page here?


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.

>>>This isn't quite clear to me, Michael. It will take some thought on my
part. Perhaps I can come back to this, because it sounds extraordinarily
interesting!


If hammering in nails belongs to my existential project, then I act as a
point
of origin determining an outcome (the hammered-in nails).

>>>Ah HA! So we ARE on the same page.


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.

>>>Yes, perhaps this is what I had in mind with my comment about determinism
v. free will.


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.


>>>Well, you are heading directly for my target. You may recall that the
question I have been struggling with since I signed onto this list six or
seven years ago has been, in a nutshell, "What can be an appropriate goal
for psychotherapy?" As a psychotherpist, this would seem to be an
appropriate question? But the answer has been somewhat elusive. Your last
paragraph is to the point. To paraphrase: "...if my individual understanding
of what is normal or functional cannot be traced back to an underlying point
of origin, then the challenge for me is to open for and to deal with the
play of contingency." But this proves to be no easy task.

Most psychopatholoy in the Jungian and Freudian worlds deal with a view of
the psyche based on an unconscious. Precisely what is meant by "problem" or
"unconscious" varies, or is at least not well defined. The DMS-IV, which is
the manual used in the U.S. to define psychopathologies admits at the onset
that it has no reliable definition for what is "Normal". They don't know
what it is, but they know it when they see it.

There are always those who have tried to guide me to one source or
another..."Why don't you try reading XXX, or have you ever tried reading
YYY?" But the result is always the same -- dissapointing. The
Phenomenological Psychologists (e.g., Boss) have been no exception.

A difficulty for me in our discussions concerning the unconscious is the
fact that over the years I have built up an enormous network of
interconnected meanings associated with the idea. So, when you say something
about the idea of the unconscious, it can take days for me to run through
some of these interconnections, thinking them through, wondering how this
new idea impacts my understanding not just of leaving the metal strainer out
of the coffee pot, but how it affects my entire understanding of the
relationship between that which is known versus that which is not known --
but still acts dynamically within my world. So a few days might go by, then
I return with "Well...now how does this work here???"

The tapestry of meanings I have built up are such that in the end, there is
little to do but lay waste to them all and rebuilt from the ground up. That
is why I am focusing on the basic notion of the unconscious. That's the
bedrock for psychology.

Michael S.





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