Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 05:07:38 +0800
Subject: Re: Being and Time-section one
From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch-AT-central.murdoch.edu.au>


Hi,

> Joan Stambaugh or MacQuarrie and Robinson?
> Does it matter for our purpose?
> I've got the Stambaugh [yes, yes, I know].
>
> Bob

Doesn't bother me either way really, I like Stambaugh's translation but 
I use MR's cos it's what I've always used. I read it alongside a nice 
old 1949 6th edition of SZ, although my German is rather limited. If we 
use the German pagination we should be alright.

> outline what you mean by traditional logic?
> if 2 +2 = 4?
> ...
> can you relate this to what I wrote earlier, or to the text?
> explain 'thisness' - a neologism I hadn't come across before - is this 
> a
> translation of a term in S und Z?
> Paul

Sorry, I just jumped ahead and outlined the first section (pages 2-4 in 
the Deutsche). In this section Heidegger makes 3 points as to why the 
question of being hasn't been asked seriously in previous philosophical 
traditions in that it's generally been glossed over as a 'universal', 
'indefinable' and 'self-evident' concept.

'Thisness' or 'this-here-now' and other derivatives are bandied about 
as a gloss for 'being', or more properly for Dasein (one's own 
being-here/there), it's not a technical term of Heidegger's. Hegel's 
version which Heidegger quotes is the 'indefinable immediate' 
(unbestimmte Unmittelbare) which really says nothing much at all.

The logical problem is to do with Aristotle's categories and the fact 
that 'being' is neither a class nor a genus but the unity of all 
possible classes. And as such a universal concept it can't be described 
in terms of any particular being or thing. Maybe one of the 
Aristoteleans on this list would like to summarise the argument here...

As to whether or not we might want to conflate being with consciousness 
I think you'd want to be rather careful of the definitions you make. In 
a very general sense it's kind of relevant in terms of the immediacy of 
what is given to our senses but Heidegger spent a lot of energy and 
time throughout his entire career rebuffing any such conflation. The 
trouble is that the term 'consciousness' is itself a rather ambiguous 
one and is already defined in various ways in different philosophies, 
predominantly in a subjective sense. Defining being as consciousness 
just confuses the matter I think, although they're undoubtedly related 
in what they generally refer to. Then again if you define consciousness 
as a temporalising process of intentionality in a non-subjective sense, 
as Husserl did, then I think you're much closer to what Heidegger is 
getting at with his notion of the temporality of Dasein.

Apart from that, Heidegger's text is so densely packed he goes from 
Plato through Aristotle to the mediaeval scholastics, Kant and Hegel in 
just 4 pages. So I guess it's a very concise overview of the trajectory 
of his critique of the history of philosophy as it stood in the late 
twenties. Nietzsche doesn't make it in there until much later, around 
the more 'ecstatic' sections dealing with the joyful freedom towards 
death of authentic temporality, but not in a critical sense at all.

All of this is just my own generalised ramblings, I just thought I'd 
throw them out there for comment.

Cheers,

Malcolm



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