From: "Michael Staples" <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com>
Subject: RE: Zollikon: Unconscious
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 06:26:39 -0800





Michael,

Your meanderings are anything but tedious. This is most interesting.

You wrote:

The example of the word 'image' shows how language can trip up thinking if
we do
not pay attention to what the words say of themselves, what they point to of
themselves.

>>>So, you can also ask what the missing coffee in the strainer said of
itself, with no regard for the strainer as an object, or as a subjective
thought in your head? Let me just get this straight here. The strainer, and
the missing coffee are both "beings"? Do you say that an emotion, or a
feeling, or pain, or a thought is a "being" -- i.e., that which shows up in
the world?


I agree that there is a difference between "order" and "an ordering
principle".
I think we are pretty much "on the same page" with regard to this
distinction,
but I'd like to look at it more closely. I don't much like  the term
"background
information" because it does not point to what is originary and primary
here,
namely the opening of world as a network of interconnected meanings.

>>>Yes, I see that now as well.

The things
surrounding us in daily life are all understood, for the most part
implicitly,
in what they are good for. The hammer is good for hammering. Hammering is
good
for repairing the roof. The roof is good for keeping out the rain and the
weather. Keeping out the rain and the weather is for the sake of Dasein's
existence. All these meanings of things are interlinked, and the structure
of
these interlinked meanings of things, tied back to possibilities of our
existing, is what Heidegger works out as the worldliness of world. The being
of
the world is a structured totality of interlinked meanings which open up for
Dasein (human being) in practical daily life. So it is more than a matter of
information; it is a matter of the world opening up to and for
understanding,
which is vital for Dasein's existing in the world. In _Being and Time_ at
least,
the opening of world is ultimately for the sake of Dasein's existing.

>>>Can I take it that this is an example of the interconnectedness of
meaning, but that implicit meaning can refers to the likes of poetry or,
perhaps, music as well?

For the moment let us agree that any know-how can be understood as a
"principle"
or _archae_, a governing point of origin. This is important for seeing how
Dasein can control its future and _be_ a point of origin and also for seeing
how
control of what is to come also eludes human being (not just individually,
but
also collectively) because existing is not a technical matter.

>>>Not sure what the distinction here is between "control [of] its future,"
and "control of what is to come". How can Dasein control its future, but not
what is to come?


I am sure we will return to the phenomenon of casting in all its rich
manifold
of senses.

>>>Please do return to it! Sounds like this might be helpful.

I owe this Heidegger agora the stimulus for having stumbled across
this word several years ago, thus discovering its wealth of possibilities
for
indicating the dimensions of human being.

You ask very eloquently whether the goal of psychotherapy could be "to open
up
to and to deal with the
play of contingency". This could be one moment or element of a goal. Could
the
goal of psychotherapy be the ancient motto at Delphi, _gnothi s'auto_, "know
thyself"?

>>>Yes, this sounds quite good. I'm thinking about how this might look on an
insurance statement. But really, can a symptom result from not knowing
thyself? Yes, in light of what you suggest a bit further down the line. The
malady known as "Disthymia" is a kind of depression. They reference to the
thymus gland is a reference to an ancient seat of the soul, or spirit. To
loose one's soul or spirit results in an depressed attunement to the world.
And all sorts of things could be at the root of this attunement. But given
the way in which human beings are treated as "human resources" for
technological optimization in society, I often wonder how it is possible for
any of us to escape such depression (and, in fact, depression is one of the
most prevalent maladies of our age). It seems as though this sort of
technological vision of what it is to be human can literally strips the soul
away from us. If, as you say later, the balance resulting from "know
thyself" is a balance between the soul-stripping nature of our technological
society, and the needs (?) of our individual authenticity (?), then know
thyself makes a good deal of sense.


Then everything would depend on understanding this motto in its
multifaceted dimensions. If this motto is a philosophical motto, then it
amounts
fundamentally to a call to understand what human being is. Human being is
essentially exposure to the openness of the truth of being. This exposure is
finite. Finiteness here has a manifold meaning. One primary meaning is that
human being is mortal, i.e. that as finite human beings our existence is
oriented toward our own dying. Living, we are dying and will eventually die.
Within the finite time-space granted to us individually, we have the freedom
to
cast ourselves into chosen existential projects, large and small. This
freedom
is not arbitrary and freely floating, but constrained by who we have been
(and
therefore _are_), by how we have already been cast.

>>>So, with respect to free will...would not a deterministic perspective say
that freedom constrained by who we have been is only an illusion of freedom?


Another aspect of finiteness
is that we have finite understanding. Leading a life cannot mean simply
setting
goals and then taking the appropriate steps to achieve them, for that would
mean
that existing would be a technical, _technae_-like matter in the sense that
I
would be a knowing, fore-seeing point of origin governing what is to be
brought
about in my life. Understanding (and in particular, fore-knowing) being
finite
means that all my existential projects are subject to risk, since
contingency,
i.e. the unforeseen and unforeseeable, can cross my projects and make them
to
nought. Life is dangerous, and there is no underpinning, no hidden end-goal
(_telos_), providence or what-have-you mysteriously casting my role in the
background. That is the terror of existing and therefore we strive for
security,
to be 'without care', 'se cura'. The care of existing is a taking-care-of in
a
Sisyphean striving to be without care, since existence is fundamentally
exposed
to the cares of what could happen contingently. The stance we adopt toward
risk,
danger and insecurity can range from foolhardy carelessness through
pusillanimous timidity that risks nothing to steadfast, prudent
courageousness.

Re normalcy: 'norma' in Latin is the carpenters or masons square and is thus
a
rule or ruler (straight-edge, Richtscheit) that provides orientation.
Abnormalcy
means being out of whack, not conforming to the rule or usual pattern. In
our
present context, the rule pertains in a certain social world shared with
others.
Rules can range from implicit social customs and conventions through to
rigid
moral codes sanctioned explicitly by a religion. Given that each individual
existence is indivisibly mine (jemeinig), it could be that living in
conformity
with all the implicit and explicit rules holding sway in social life is
stifling
to the point of suffocation. At the other extreme, wilfully breaking all the
rules leads to social ostracism and isolation. Being one's self means
finding a
balance between these extremes, which could be a meaning of what you refer
to as
"health". We need to learn to live at some individually chosen, viable
inclination to the rules.

If we break with a telelogical notion of a self hidden deep in the
unconscious
and with notions of splinters of psyche that have to be integrated, but
nevertheless concede that all these notions point in some way to genuine
phenomena concerning human existence, then we are confronted with the task
of
translating these notions into a more phenomenally adequate conception of
human
being. The important step is to realize that the psyche is not some instance
inside us but is our exposure to finite time-space itself, our being out
there
in the world. The human psyche is the relationship to the openness of the
truth
of being. 'Time-space', 'world' and 'openness of the truth of being', among
others, are all names for the same thing each signifying different aspects
thereof.

My remark concerning the issue of determinism vs. free will being in truth a
matter of understanding the temporality of human being can be illustrated
using
the simple and innocuous example of forgetting to put coffee into the metal
strainer for the espresso machine. In this parapraxis I am distracted from
the
practical task at hand of making my morning coffee by something else that is
more powerfully present and absorbs my attention. The e-mail I plan to
write,
the thoughts occurring to me for this e-mail, obliterate the presence of
coffee,
metal strainer in the habitual action of making coffee. I go through the
habitual motions of coffee-making omitting an important step. The act of
omission occurs outside my awareness, which is absorbed by something else.
The
act of omission is unconscious, but only in the sense that I perform this
act
with a lack of awareness. There is no unconscious, second-tier subject
underlying the act of omission with its own hidden intentions. Rather, the
act
of omission is caused or determined by my attention being absorbed by
something
else, namely, the e-mail I plan to write. This distraction of attention from
the
task at hand signifies that I am not the subject underlying all that
presences
for me in my focus of attention. Rather, beings presence of themselves in my
awareness in the present. They address me of themselves. Such beings (in
this
example, the matter of the e-mail) are that with which I am concerned, which
involve me and can even distract my focus of attention. Does this mean I am
determined, unfree? Only from the viewpoint of the subjectivity of
consciousness
would this make sense.

>>>Need to think on this for a bit. Seems as though you are providing an
answer to my question above concerning determinism. So, the deterministic v.
free-will issue is rooted in the understanding of Dasein as a concscious
subject (again).


But if we admit that human being is not situated in subjectivity and that I
am
not the conscious subject of all my actions (which is shown by all the
habitual
actions we perform automatically), then it can come to light that human
freedom
resides in being able to cast oneself.

>>>Oops. Now it is probably time to revisit this word "cast".


Being unfree would then be the inability
to cast oneself and thus be one's self. Inability, as the specific negation
of
ability, is still (situated within the dimension of) ability. Human being
can
only be unfree because it is essentially free.

>>>And not the other way around? -- i.e., Human being can only be free
because it is essentially unfree? OK, dumb question. It doesn't really work
in that direction. If Human being were essentially unfree, then there would
be no room for freedom.

I would only be unfree (in the
context of the present example) if I were totally unable to concentrate on
any
task at hand and instead, for instance, were constantly preoccupied or even
obsessed by a single recurring thought or debilitated by a chronic
oppressive
mood.

>>>Which is the case with some pathologies. But can we ties this back into
the notion of balance discussed earlier? So, here the balance may not be so
much between the needs of the individual versus the oppressions of the
society...but the freedom of the individual versus the oppression of the
recurring mood (though, it may be that the recurring mood is an extension of
the oppression of the society). Still, in the first instance we would be
looking for a balance between the two needs, and in the second instance, we
are looking for freedom from the grip of the recurring mood.

Such a thought could be that of a deceased loved one. The loved one was
part of my life, is part of who I have been and therefore am. Their death
has
cast me into the situation in which I now find myself. I have to come to
terms
with this loved one no longer being part of my existence.

>>>In both cases, we are looking for a way of comming to terms with.

But this
coming-to-terms-with is an aspect of my freedom to cast my self. Only if I
pushed aside the loss of this loved one and refused to come to terms with
the
pain of this loss could it presence over the years indirectly in, say,
inexplicable, free-floating anxiety. The task of psychotherapy would then be
to
uncover this repressed loss and its pain, to recover who I have been in
order to
free myself for a renewed casting into my future. Part of 'Know thyself' is
recovering and uncovering who I have been.

>>>Ok. I see that.


Phew! I hope that these meanderings are not too tedious.

>>>But wait!! Where did you go? Your meanderings stopped. Great stuff,
Michael!


Michael S.





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