From: "Paul Murphy" <Villanova-AT-btopenworld.com>
Subject: Re: Being and Time-section one
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 17:36:43 +0100


I can see materialist grounds for being - we are born, knowledge is pumped
into us, and we spew that knowledge back out.  Attempts at eccentric
reformulation of that knowledge, or originality of eccentric reformulation,
we call intelligence or thought.  Being is not a pre-given.  Working at a
McDonalds counter and robotically doling out Big Mac meals is not being.
Only in thought do we attain being, an attempt to re-order the knowledge we
have, or to re-formulate the things that educationalists have taught us,
which don't often seem to match up to the world we live in.  Animalistic
functioning - shitting, fucking, sweating, running, sleeping, dying - these
are not being either, they are bodily functions, the body is mutable, time
bound, decaying, transient - only thought is in some way less transient,
though still pretty transient.  Even so, we still have Aristotle's thought,
even if his body has decayed and dissapeared, we still have Mozart's musical
notation - it is hard to think that these things are not also transient.
They will be forgotten, lost - as they almost once were - mislaid,
destroyed.  In thought we attain being - cogito ergo sum.  What is
Heidegger's addition to Cartesian wisdom?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
To: <heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 5:23 PM
Subject: RE: Being and Time-section one


> Paul Murphy wrote:
>
> >but being is not something we can quantify under a microscope, even the
> >genetic, biologistic origins of consciousness are not understood, even
> >today.  Might we conflate being with consciousness?  What can we
> >counterpoint or contrast being with, essentialism, genetic accounts of
the
> >origins of consciousness, or biblical accounts, creation myths of African
> >nations, Celtic legends, Wagnerian opera, folk songs, fairy tales,
dreams?
>
> Heidegger's most general counterpoint or contrast against Being is beings.
> He says that Being has always been confused with some particualar being.
The
> things you list above are some instances of this. Some of the more obvious
> examples of this are: medievals identified Being with God (a being), and
> characterized all other beings as participations of God's Being; modern
> materialists identified Being with matter, so that the ultimate ground of
> any existent must be material principles; idealists identified Being with
> some kind of consciousness. These are examples of some ways throughout
> western history in which Being has been conflated with some particular
> being.
>
> Anthony Crifasi
>
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