File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0304, message 271


Subject: RE: Levinas
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 14:26:09 +0200
From: "Bakker, R.B.M. de" <R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl>


Understand it first, Rene. Your analysis in terms of Kant shows that you are 
misunderstanding both Heidegger and Levinas from the start. The former 
limits knowledge by denying that we can encounter the Other, while the 
latter two limit knowledge precisely by affirming our encounter with Others 
and making this prior to knowledge. Your historical argument is therefore 
completely off the mark, because Kant's denial of any possibility of 
encountering the Other naturally leads to a subjectivization of ethics, but 
this does not result if our encounter with the Other is NOT denied and the 
ethical is CONSTITUTIVE of this very encounter! That is what Levinas does.


Anthony,

In the CONSTITUTIVE is the subjectivity. Maybe you see better when Husserl
and his grounding of intersubjectivity is compared. Heidegger's Mitsein is
never constituted. Dasein is never constituted. (they are 'given'
pre-ontologically)

I don't understand: "Kant's denial of any ...." etc. As far as rational, all
people ARE conjoint. The history-less comparing of philosophers is the problem.
Already when I hear the word 'interpretation', I get the feeling everything
is lost. Heidegger's point is that Dasein cannot 'be', as long as subjectivity
reigns. Kant is one of those few who made a decisive step in the genesis
of subjectivity: transcendental questioning, that is: questioning
in  terms of conditions of possibilities. You read Heidegger as a bettered
Kant. This has also been *my* first interpretation of Heidegger. Kant:
things must be things for us, and can't be things in themselves - the 
character of ENCOUNTERING as an essential character of a thing. Not that they
are (extant) and then encounter us. This explains Heidegger's interest in Kant,
and his opposition to neo-Kantianism. He has discovered Kant anew, but with it
a contortion went along. This contortion, which he soon admitted, has its ground
in that he maintained that Kant was on his way to radical finity (sensuality),
but resiled. But soon he saw, that this possibility was OUTSIDE Kant's perspective,
outside the METAPHYSICAL perspective. Which brings in Nietzsche and a more
fundamental 'criticism' of metaphysics, which can be no criticism anymore,
because 'Geschichtlichkeit' is going to be part of what he thinks. (Geschick)
And the deeper 'subjectivity' is seen in Kant, the more his philosophy is seen
as the way being gives itself, namely metaphysically as the being of beings.
Being-alongside then too is something 'prior' to representation, but the sense
of this 'prior' is to be thought anew, and not, without thinking, accepted.
What if this 'prior' has to do with the pre- of the pre-ontological?
Then the prior cannot be thought anymore in transcendental terms.
These are questions that already are posed in GA26, probably already in GA25.

I don't want to refrain you from going the same 'wrong' way, that Heidegger
went, on the contrary, but I only want to show what happens if one has no idea
of these relations. What happens, inevitably, is that your overcoming of
metaphysics remains metaphysical. Denying that metaphysics is nihilistic,
has as a consequence, that your own notions become metaphysical, that is:
nihilistic. This blindness, which is nothing personal, but something *I* would
call ontological, is peculiar to wtp. 'Interpretation' then becomes immediately
pointless, because a specific, non-fortuitious interpretation has already
been accepted. This, according to Heidegger, belongs to 'subjectivity', that
it locks itself up in itself. What prison functions better than one in which
one feels free? 

regards rene

Las cadenas que más nos encadenan son las cadenas que hemos roto. (Porchia)

The chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken.  
 







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