File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0303, message 433


From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: the o/o gulf (1)
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:16:01 +0000


Rene de Bakker wrote:

> >>Well, what he says is that we always again 'degrade' our own way of
> >>being in terms of behavior or objectifiable states, which in everyday 
>life
> >>is not good, nor bad, but inevitable. Like you did automatically
> >>when you heard the word: feeling.
> >
> >I never said that feelings are good or bad!
> >I simply said that they are FACTICAL
>
>Even and foremost the term 'factical' is ambiguous.
>Seinsverstaendnis, for which the whole of BT is there,
>is, in the beginning of the book, introduced as a 'fact'.
>What that means, what kind of fact it is, is in no way
>determined or determinable with the o/o distinction, when
>this distinction itself is formulated in terms of factical/
>ontological. While it will be obvious, that the factual understanding
>of Being   -everybody succeeds, as everybody succeeds in dying-
>is another kind of fact than the fact that now the sun shines, or the
>last/first fact that WtP is, in Nietzsche's view.
>
>Maybe we can agree that the relation of the ontic and the ontological
>is never a priori clear. When you say they should not be conflated a 
>priori,
>I agree, but only when is added that they should also not be distinguished
>a priori.

I believe you mentioned some text in which Heidegger specifically expresses 
misgivings about the o/o distinction because it might lead to an "a-priori 
condition" interpretation. Can you tell me where exactly that text is, or 
perhaps post one or two paragraphs? I don't have the GA volumes.

BUT, the alternate "way" that you mentioned does not seem to me to be 
different from what he says in SuZ section 16. There is says that the world 
shows itself when equipment becomes unusable, thereby interrupting our 
absorption in the work, so that the "towards-which" of the equipment and all 
the contextual relations is explicitly noticed.

>(We don't even have a distinct idea of o/o relation in metaphysics
>btw, 'ambiguity', 'opaqueness' a.o. are not at all negative valuations,
>when I use them, Anthony)
>
>For instance the love above.
>It is love at the presence (Gegenwart) of the DASEIN (my capitals)
>of a loved human, not, writes H, at the presence of a mere person.
>You could say: Dasein is ontological, person is ontic. And I think,
>to begin with, that's something. One always has to begin with an
>opposition, otherwise there is only the staring at something
>massive and abstract, like "love".

Again I would like to see that text specifically to which you are referring. 
I can't be sure whether Heidegger is using "love" in some non-ontic sense or 
not, like discourse or call or conscience, etc., until I see the context. 
But keep in mind that for Heidegger, anxiety is precisely "the staring at 
something massive and abstract" - its own pure potentiality for Being, which 
is "massive" in the sense that it is the potentiality for any way whatsoever 
that we can be, and "abstract" in the sense that it is not a concrete 
entity.

>Now when we go for the ontological, does that mean that the
>person is disregarded? H takes love as Augustinus: I want
>you to be, volo ut sis. But who is the you? I mean, it cannot
>be some abstract entity, like humanity, or 'our fellow-man',
>or our comrades-in-species etc. The problem is precisely,
>that those who use these ontological qualifications (widest
>sense) are ducking the concrete person. Crede experto:
>Naumburger virtue. Nietzsche is always there, because
>behind the ontological lurks will-to-power.
>
> >Look, do you or do you not grant that according to what Heidegger says at
> >least 7 or 8 times, anxiety CANNOT be about any factical entity in the 
>world
> >(since it is about Dasein)? That is what I am objecting to, because John 
>is
> >reducing anxiety to worry about the collapse of some ontic facticity, 
>such
> >as a mother's child or the ecosystem.
>
>Why sticking to rightness? I'm not gonna spoil my reading of John Foster
>with this sort of rigidity.

Rene, you can't insist on this distinction between the truth of rightness 
and the truth of openness while at the same time insisting on the ambiguity 
of the o/o distinction. After all, the truth of rightness is factical, 
whereas the truth of openness is ontological. So the very distinction you 
are making between these two kinds of truths presupposes the very 
distinction that you are trying to say is ambiguous in the first place! So 
if you don't want to spoil your reading of John Foster with the "rigidity" 
of the o/o distinction, then you also can't spoil your reading of ME with 
the very same "rigidity" of the truth-as-rightness/truth-as-openness 
distinction.

Anthony Crifasi

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