From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 18:59:00 EDT
Subject:  Heidegger on Kant for Rene Part Two.



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 Heidegger on Kant for Rene Part Two

Rene:

If you say: I cannot *verify* this 'is', I can only *verify*, check, whether
something is there or not, you have already decided what 'is' means.

Jud:
I you or I or anybody else says: "I cannot verify this is" it would be very
ungrammatical English.[not a criticism of your abilities] We might create the
sentence:
"I cannot verify that this is so" or "I cannot verify that this is the case,"
but the subject of any verification would be an antecedal one, [something
that had been spoken of before or earlier - something like:

"The River Amster is frozen over from one bank to the other."

Therefore the statements: "I cannot verify that this is so" or "I cannot
verify that this is the case," would refer to the truth or falsehood of the
predicational information attributed by the IS-mechanism to the River Amster
that it was:
" Frozen over from one bank to the other."

The "IS-word is no way connected to the fact that there exists a river called
"the Amster," other than the fact that it points to the words that predicate
one of the ways that it exists, because that information has already been
provided by the existential sententional mentioning of "The River Amster" as
the extantialised  by the utterance of the subject of the sentence.
Remember the BE-word only ever addresses the WAY an entity [The River Amster]
exists ["frozen over from one bank to the other."] and not the FACT that it
exists. (Except  if your name is God, Dr Eldred, Heidegger, or William
Shakespeare, [once only in his whole output].)

Rene:
That is: what it HAS to mean, because where is written that 'is' must mean
'extant', and what 'extant' means? Who is ordering?

Jud:
No Rene - when "is," (or was, were, are, being, will be) is written in a
sentence, it points to the words, which DESCRIBE the WAY a thing is extant,
not the fact that it is extant in the first place.

Rene:
The point is not: do we have a right to bring up ungraspable things like
being and time, because that is a rhetorical question, but how come we have
no idea of them, how come that the doings of billions never were, but now are
directed to futilities and imbecilities, merely busy with things.

Jud:
Any discussion of the concepts of "Being" and "Time" is an important subject,
and highlights for us how careful we have to be when we use words which have
no real referents in the world that we can touch, feel, smell, see, and hear,
whether with our own senses or with the help of instruments. The discussion
is also valuable in that it allows us to question the ideas of ancient
peoples -  like the Greeks, who though brilliant, innovative, and to whom we
own a tremendous debt, nevertheless had their limitations, like any other
members of the human species.  Because our western philosophy was founded and
grounded by the Greeks we constantly turn towards them and pore over their
ideas.
First because the ideas they broached are seminal, ever-present ideas that
will never "go away" and are omnipresent, but also because we have become
ensnared in their nomenclature, which is often ambiguous and indeterminate.

The fact that this subject of ontology and philosophy does not engage the
interest of the masses is partly the fault of our educational systems and the
philosophical and religious establishment, which has always seemed to portray
the subjects as esoteric and confined to and understandable by only an
enlightened inner circle.  I am all in favour of demystifying ontology and
philosophy, which I believe that like the Juridical system, could do with a
good spring-clean of many of these fusty old words which we have inherited
from the Greek and Latin languages


Rene:
Would I take people and things sec, without seeing them fitting in a wider
possibility, and I do that very often, then I am a lunatic among lunatics. Or
is anyone seriously maintaining that car-driving, mobile (debile) phoning,
watching tv, signing an insurance contract, in themselves, are something more
than lunacy?

Jud:
You are an intellectual Rene - a man of outstanding mental ability. The
others to whom you refer lack your ability, your vision.  For many reasons -
some because of lack of opportunity, some because of deliberate choice, some
because of lack of sufficient intelligence - the masses do the things they do
and act the way they act. Please don't think that because I see through
transcendentalism for what it really is that I do not agree with your
analysis and frustration at what you witness around you in the world.  You do
not need to be a metaphysician or a Heideggerian to see that it stinks. I
have read Kafka and Dostoyevsky and practically anyone else you care to
mention - I'm street-wise Rene. For me, and I say this not unkindly, I
believe that transcendentalism, particularly the mystical brand of
Heideggerian transcendentalism, aids and abets the continuance of existential
ambiguity, for if the beliefs by our intellectuals in "existence" of
"existence" and "Being" and all these other fantastic reifications are
encouraged in the masses, then who can blame them if they worship nonsense
like: "The Blair Witch Project" and the plethora of:  "Tales of the
Supernatural," etc?

Rene:
Then please go and read some Kafka. "America" is my favourite. Heidegger
says, it is forgetfulness, or: being-away. But this proposition is something,
it points to possibilities. Although at first it gives you nothing but the
possibility to hear that silence, that reigns amidst all sounds, and that,
says Heidegger, is not at all a matter of an elite, but in all of us.

"To hear the soundless, it takes a hearing, that everybody of us has and that
nobody is using rightly." ("The leap from being", 7th hour, beginning)

Jud:
When Heidegger writes poetically like that I enjoy reading him, and yes, when
Heidegger avoids anything relating to ontology, [which he doesn't understand]
he can be quite an enjoyable read.  I admire poetical and imaginative
writing, and have no desire to change it .

Even Heidegger's eccentric and unconventional uses of "I am" have their place
in literature, though they are na=EFve, gauche and inelegant [and not real
philosophy.] The name of the game is to enjoy his writing, but not to take it
seriously, to treat it as you would poetry, appreciate its metaphor - its
systemic creativeness as an ontological oddity - enjoy the reifications as
brain fodder and sheer escapism - but continually bear in mind that it is all
make-believe in the end.

Without being disrespectful - there are similarities in Heidegger's world to
the world of Narnia - it is peopled by strange creatures and a special
language  forged by Lewis from ancient Norse just  for the purpose. Daseinia
is  the escapist  philosophical land of Narnia, where you will meet mystical
creatures like Dasein, discover the ancient Teutonic forests and clearings
still haunted by Greek thinkers, and the mystical "appearances" and
self-revealings of inanimate entities magically brought to life.  In the
pages of Being and Time we can learn about the history of this strange and
wonderful land where the "Question of the Golden Being"  has been forgotten,
with its origins in the Greek "inception" - a self-contained system and
occult domain, with its own specially-created antique language and
ontological observances and hallowed habits of thinking.


Over fifty years ago, Martin Heidegger created a land of wonder and
enchantment called Daseinia, and since then millions of readers have
discovered the wondrous world that exists beyond the back of the ontological
wardrobe in Heidegger's study..

Heidegger once wrote that the idea for the Being and Time book came to him
from images: "A faun carrying an umbrella, [Kierkegaard? ] A queen in a
sledge, [Nietzsche?] A magnificent lion."[Hitler?] From these mental pictures
he created the Land of Dasein - Daseinia, a land populated with a rich
diversity of phenomenological beings, some very like their counterparts in
our world, some derived from his knowledge and love of myth and fairy tale,
and some, like Dasein himself, purely his own invention [ screenplay based
upon an idea by Hegel.]

But I am joking here Rene - you know me - I'll never change.

To be serious, when Heidegger eases his foot off the reificational
accelerator a bit, he often makes sense in a pleasantly didactic sort of way,
[like MichaelP on a good day.]
I like reading what you write Rene.

Rene:
Oh, I've forgotten death...

Jud:
Don't worry - death won't forget you - or me. :-(


Cheers,

Jud.

<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A>
Jud Evans - ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY.
<A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com/">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A>

Cheers,



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