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
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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 :-)"
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