File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0301, message 27


Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 17:39:40 +0000
Subject: Re: "EXISTENTS" NOT "EXISTENCE"
From: "michaelP" <michael-AT-sandwich-de-sign.co.uk>


> THIS MESSAGE IS IN MIME FORMAT. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.

--MS_Mac_OE_3124892380_668351_MIME_Part

mP:
sayeth gary (& jud): 
"EXISTENTS," NOT "EXISTENCE" 
and etc... 

well, 'tis true, to the extent that existents (beings) are, existence
(being) [is] not, since being [is] the being of beings (in each and every
case): I doubt that heidegger would disagree. So...? And, being is not an
abstraction but rather the most concrete, the uniquely unique...

Jud:
A breakthrough at long last? You seem to be saying  [anti-Platonically] that
being,  or as the Greeks called it "ousia" [I prefer to write "Being"] is in
fact the physical substance of which the human body  and the rest of  cosmic
entitative materiality is constructed, and is not some  terribly difficult
to describe abstractionalist illusive "soul" or "spiritual" essence which
plays hide and seek with  with us Daseins like everybody on this list has
been talking about for the last hundred years?

Clarification please?

mP:
No, sorry, not a breakthrough -- I've been saying this over and over for
several years on this list -- and I most certainly am not saying that being
is physical substance (a certain interpretation of ousia, itself
questionable although largely accepted), nor "abstractionalist" (?) ...
"soul" or "spirit", etc. Substance, soul, spirit, ego, matter, g-d, subject,
will, etc are themselves precisely metaphysical ways of covering up being in
the name of beings (each of which the aforementioned lists); e.g., if at one
time being could be thought as the presence (or better, presencing) of a
present being, it (presence) is soon congealed into some thing present once
more, so that some highly general or ubiquitous or common or underlying
(etc) being comes to be seen and posited as the very presence of the (and
every) present being, thus hiding being as the presencing of the present.
This is why I have said repeatedly that "being" is not the name of any thing
(being); being is untranslatable (my 'first thesis on being'). The reason
why Heidegger spoke of the nothing so much in his 'What is Metaphysics?' was
because his audience was the scientific faculty, and for them being is
nothing because not a being, and science only studies and accepts
beings/things, and something that is not a thing is -- nothing (i.e., for
science, not-thing = nothing, thus for Heidegger to speak of being meant he
had to (for them) speak of the nothing because it means nothing to them).

Take an appearance (of... X); now think the being of that appearance of X
as... the appearing of that appearance of X, not the appearance itself (a
being); think of a thing, a something; now think not the thing but the
thinging of the thing: being. And so on. No talk here of abstractions, of
souls, of spirits, of substance or matter, etc. It is only difficult to
describe because (our...) language is bound up and cast into describing
beings; perhaps it is nonsense to want to describe being, rather perhaps one
should simply stop describing: just stop. Being is the perhaps very
indescribable power of describing. One of course can try to describe being,
i.e., once again hide it in a metaphysical operation that brings it back
into the safety and niceness of things, of beings once again: missing the
point once again. It, nonetheless, is extremely difficult to translate
thinking beyond or over metaphysics, if not impossible: metaphysics (and its
language of things, substances, will, matter, subject, cause, fact, etc) is
perhaps an always essential moment in its overcoming itself in the same
sense that illusion is essential to truth and sophistry is a necessary
moment of the sophon (of Heraclitus). One certainly cannot get beyond
metaphysics through belief or non-belief, through rejection or acceptance,
through fellowship or standing-alone, etc. The metaphysics of presence
(effectively the thinking of the west of several millennia) can only be
overcome (verwindung) by thinking its presencing, its coming to pass, its
passing to come...

reagrds

michaelP

"Michael is something that must be overcome :-)"

--MS_Mac_OE_3124892380_668351_MIME_Part

HTML VERSION:

Re: "EXISTENTS" NOT "EXISTENCE"
mP:
sayeth gary (& jud):
"EXISTENTS," NOT "EXISTENCE"
and etc...

well, 'tis true, to the extent that existents (beings) are, existence (being) [is] not, since being [is] the being of beings (in each and every case): I doubt that heidegger would disagree. So...? And, being is not an abstraction but rather the most concrete, the uniquely unique...

Jud:
A breakthrough at long last? You seem to be saying  [anti-Platonically] that being,  or as the Greeks called it "ousia" [I prefer to write "Being"] is in fact the physical substance of which the human body  and the rest of  cosmic  entitative materiality is constructed, and is not some  terribly difficult to describe abstractionalist illusive "soul" or "spiritual" essence which plays hide and seek with  with us Daseins like everybody on this list has been talking about for the last hundred years?

Clarification please?

mP:
No, sorry, not a breakthrough -- I've been saying this over and over for several years on this list -- and I most certainly am not saying that being is physical substance (a certain interpretation of ousia, itself questionable although largely accepted), nor "abstractionalist" (?) ... "soul" or "spirit", etc. Substance, soul, spirit, ego, matter, g-d, subject, will, etc are themselves precisely metaphysical ways of covering up being in the name of beings (each of which the aforementioned lists); e.g., if at one time being could be thought as the presence (or better, presencing) of a present being, it (presence) is soon congealed into some thing present once more, so that some highly general or ubiquitous or common or underlying (etc) being comes to be seen and posited as the very presence of the (and every) present being, thus hiding being as the presencing of the present. This is why I have said repeatedly that "being" is not the name of any thing (being); being is untranslatable (my 'first thesis on being'). The reason why Heidegger spoke of the nothing so much in his 'What is Metaphysics?' was because his audience was the scientific faculty, and for them being is nothing because not a being, and science only studies and accepts beings/things, and something that is not a thing is -- nothing (i.e., for science, not-thing = nothing, thus for Heidegger to speak of being meant he had to (for them) speak of the nothing because it means nothing to them).

Take an appearance (of... X); now think the being of that appearance of X as... the appearing of that appearance of X, not the appearance itself (a being); think of a thing, a something; now think not the thing but the thinging of the thing: being. And so on. No talk here of abstractions, of souls, of spirits, of substance or matter, etc. It is only difficult to describe because (our...) language is bound up and cast into describing beings; perhaps it is nonsense to want to describe being, rather perhaps one should simply stop describing: just stop. Being is the perhaps very indescribable power of describing. One of course can try to describe being, i.e., once again hide it in a metaphysical operation that brings it back into the safety and niceness of things, of beings once again: missing the point once again. It, nonetheless, is extremely difficult to translate thinking beyond or over metaphysics, if not impossible: metaphysics (and its language of things, substances, will, matter, subject, cause, fact, etc) is perhaps an always essential moment in its overcoming itself in the same sense that illusion is essential to truth and sophistry is a necessary moment of the sophon (of Heraclitus). One certainly cannot get beyond metaphysics through belief or non-belief, through rejection or acceptance, through fellowship or standing-alone, etc. The metaphysics of presence (effectively the thinking of the west of several millennia) can only be overcome (verwindung) by thinking its presencing, its coming to pass, its passing to come...

reagrds

michaelP

"Michael is something that must be overcome :-)"

--MS_Mac_OE_3124892380_668351_MIME_Part-- --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005