Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 13:05:00 EDT
Subject: Re: SELF TALKING TO SELF



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In a message dated 06/10/2002 15:15:20 GMT Daylight Time, gospode-AT-yahoo.com 
writes:

Subj: SELF TALKING TO SELF Date: 06/10/2002 15:15:20 GMT Daylight Time From: 
gospode-AT-yahoo.com (Gary C. Moore) Sender: 
owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Reply-to: 
heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Gary:
I found your statement one of those observations where you point out the 
obvious and makes me wonder why I missed it myself: To experience attunement 
presupposes something with which to be attuned, and 'to be attuned' 
presupposes a measure of adjustment. Because the environment cannot "adjust 
itself," it follows that any "adjusting" and "tuning" must be our own work, 
whether consciously or sub-consciously. I guess "attunement" is attractive 
because it implies music, poetry, etc. But what you say applies perfectly. It 
has to be that way. The phrase "state of mind" is still somewhat disagreeable 
to me, though you have a perfectly good use for it. I can think of words 
other than "state" with all of its observational connotations, that is, 
someone is observing me or I am observing myself as an object like a 
butterfly pinned to a display board. "Situation" and "condition" possibly do 
a bit better but actually sound awkward and strangely off point. So I guess I 
have to settle with "state of mind" as least bothersome overall. Any 
suggestions from anyone?

Jud: 
I suppose that when we use the word "state" rather than "mode" we are 
referring to the perfective [completed] sense - the sense of having "arrived" 
at a certain existential way-station on our journey to oblivion? To be 
depressed suggests a stative condition with overtones of continuity, whereas 
he is laughing has more the import of a passing phase which changes quickly 
[although the verb is actually in the continuous present]. For example it is 
possible to be in a state of long term depression lasting days, weeks or even 
years, but one couldn't be in a state of laughing for more than a few hours 
without becoming physically exhausted and being forced to stop. I expect now 
that some clever-arse will come up with an example of a laughing-marathon 
from the Guinness Book of Records laughed for 4and a half days [may someone 
slipped him a copy of B & T] but I doubt it. Perhaps "attitude of mind" or 
"intellectual orientation," though the latter sounds a tad clumsy.

Jud:[previously]
 Personally see the connection between stimmung [mood or atmosphere] and 
ontological considerations from a number of angles, but in perhaps different 
ways. The apprehension of our own moods or momentary dispositions are 
existential modalities of appreciating or apprehending our own existential 
modalities, for although mood and modality are etymologically co-derivatives 
they are not the same, and in fact a mood is a mode but a mode is not 
necessarily a mood. For example, one of the modes of human existential 
behaviour is playing ice-hockey, but this activity would never be described 
as a "mood", whereas being in a suicidal mood could be described as being in 
a certain existential state or modality of moodyness. 

GARY C MOORE: 
This is extremely interesting. Then can you have both a "mood of mind" as 
well as "mode of mind"?

Jud: 
I think modality is usually thought of as a physical condition or manner 
actual behaviour as we interface with our environment - the hockey stick and 
ball and our opponents and the ice - whereas mood is a psychical [mental] 
feeling. Therefore a modality of moodiness as observed in another person 
often bespeaks more of how that person's internalised state of "being in a 
mood" affects us and other third parties.

Gary:
I assume "mode" always implies "intent", i. e., something in you is doing 
something for a clear purpose. 

Jud: 
Not necessarily so - your body can be in a digestive mode after your evening 
meal - a mode which you may be unconscious of while you watch the TV. 

Gary: 
When you have learned how to play ice-hockey well, then you can play to a 
large degree without thinking about what you are doing but one would never 
say one does not KNOW what one is doing. In this case, the less one needs to 
think about it the better one knows how to do it. This is one of the main 
things Hubert L. Dreyfus writes about, i. e., "coping skills," "background 
practices," something like statistics where you see X happens in a certain 
situation more than Y and therefore points to something you need to pay 
attention to in terms of living successfully or simply surviving at all and 
yet it is not really conceptually clear exactly what is involved. If you have 
to act, pressed by necessity, you go with what you have and are familiar 
with. But you would really rather know exactly what is involved. It is 
precisely in "background practices" where you have "beliefs," assumptions 
learned as a child under the press of necessity and coercion that guides 
their way of thinking and action successfully in society, but are 
presuppositions that cannot be coherently defined.

Jud:
 It is indeed strange that we both addressed this area independently, for one 
of the areas I addressed in my last message to you  was the effects of 
antecedence and the fact that we can't escape from the past - something which 
Heidegger fruitlessly attempts through Dasein, not realising that there is an 
inescapable past tense of Dasein [Dagewesen.] I am interested in the 
acquisition of assumptions learned as a child under the press of necessity 
and coercion but more interested in the phenomena of why so few people can 
break the connection and start to think for themselves. Much of what passes 
for intellectual discussion on the internet is no more than raking over the 
dead leaves of other people's autumns [as you mention lower down in this 
message in the next passage] One of the delights of communicating with you is 
that you are one of the few people on the internet who actually have some 
ideas OF YOUR OWN which I find so refreshing. So different from the reams of 
endless repetitive quotations one gets from others.

Gary: 
Being adjusted to society seems to be the easiest way to get along, but 
essentially you are letting dead people give you your thoughts and values (my 
you is always anonymous like one and maybe even a way I am talking to myself, 
a key concept in Plato and Aristotle). But in surviving in this manner 
delivers you up helplessly to the dead powers (dead not only in the sense of 
deceased but also unthinking, unfeeling, generally parasitical through their 
dead living using your mind. One might say the average or ordinary person 
within us is totally inhabited with the dead purposes of dead people). 

Jud: 
This is precisely what I was getting at above.

Gary: 
This is precisely how I felt when I got my draft notice and decided, 
Quixotic!  Whimsically, contrarily, to volunteer instead. It may have been 
stupid to do, but it was MY stupidity and I knowingly choose it as if somehow 
I took my fate out of other peoples hands even though I knew in reality I was 
voluntarily delivering myself over to them. Silly, but in that same 
situation, if it came again, I might well do the same thing at least to gain 
the illusion of self-control. Therefore, detaching yourself somehow from your 
state of mind the words imply this is something that is really not you and 
being able to think outside all boundaries of the socially acceptable and 
normal is a passion for me even though I am well aware that my rebellion 
merely takes on a background practice of the minority, a "rejected background 
practise," and repeats exactly the way a rebel is suppose to think and is 
expected to feel. I am still caught in the web

Jud: 
Strangely - I did the same thing exactly, and for the same reasons back in 
1952. I signed on as a Regular Soldier [and received four times the pay of 
the conscripts]. To a large extent I have struggled free from the web of 
"societal expectance" with one exception,and that is in the area of ad 
homonym [like the one from the half-wit refugee from the sixties who is 
barely literate] I find it extremely difficult to ignore, and it is I suppose 
my Achilles heel. I just can't abide with idiots and morons attacking the 
person rather than attacking the ideas. I NEVER attack Heideggerians by name, 
except when they attack me. Heidegger himself [now dead] is fair game as far 
as I am concerned  - for all hypocrites are legitimate targets. I don't know 
whether your media has reported that the ex-Prime-Minister of Britain John 
Major who was responsible for launching a "Back to basics" campaign aimed at 
restoring decency and "family values" has just been exposed as having a 
5-year adulterous relationship with his Minister for Agriculture? Yes, who 
cares? And nobody WOULD care if he hadn't been sacking other men in his 
government for doing exactly the same thing whilst he was shafting Edwina 
Curry. That's the way I see Heidegger. At the same time I find his writings 
interesting because they provide a focus for everything that I consider to be 
evil. So in a way you could say that Heidegger is my Hannibal Lector - 
dangerous, evil -  but ultimately fascinating.

regards,

Jud Evans.





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