File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0304, message 45


From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: the o/o gulf
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 01:56:00 +0000


Malcolm Riddoch wrote:

>>But like the fighting Yanks and Brits in Iraq not wanting to be lured into 
>>the labyrinthine backstreets of Baghdad, I have no wish to be snared into 
>>the quagmire snarl of H-speak. :-)
>
>Thank gods for that, maybe you both would now like to comment on section 2 
>of Being and Time? Or is that simple reading beyond either of you?

At least Jud is not denying the need to reply to my objections to his 
beliefs. I.E., He's "thinking," remember?

>methodological, authentic angst as a state of mind is something you are 
>definitely supposed to 'feel', 'experience' or 'live through', it comes and 
>it goes as it falls back into inauthenticity. Angst is an 'ontical' feeling 
>through which you can apparently disclose - if you follow Heidegger's 
>silent, meditative existential method - the dynamic temporal structure of 
>one's own existence. Everything is ontic, what else is there? You can 
>describe an ontological structure ('being') but it is found nowhere else 
>than in actual beings as a whole, in this 'ontic' or rather 'factical' 
>world and one's self.

Saying that anxiety is ALWAYS FOUND in ontic beings is not the same as 
saying that anxiety is itself ontic:

"...anxiety, as a basic state-of-mind, belongs to Dasein's essential state 
of Being-in-the-world, which, as one that is existential, IS NEVER 
PRESENT-AT-HAND but is itself ALWAYS IN A MODE OF FACTICAL BEING-THERE - 
that is, in the mode of a state-of-mind." (SuZ 189)

First, note that he says that anxiety belongs to Dasein's ESSENTIAL STATE OF 
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD, and therefore what he is talking about here cannot 
possibly come and go, any more than Dasein's essential state of 
being-in-the-world can come and go. Secondly, note that he explicitly says 
that anxiety IS NEVER PRESENT-AT-HAND, even though it is always IN A MODE OF 
factical Being-there. So it is never found apart from a factical 
Being-there, but that is true of ANYTHING about Dasein - does that mean that 
Dasein is therefore essentially ontic, as John Foster said (that 
being-in-the-world is a feeling)?

Perhaps your misunderstanding comes from the text that occurs two paragraphs 
later (the paragraph at the very beginning of SuZ 190):

"Moreover, under the ascendancy of falling and publicness, 'real' anxiety is 
rare. Anxiety is often conditioned by 'physiological' factors. This fact, in 
its facticity, is a problem ontologically, not merely with regard to its 
ontical causation and course of development. Only because DASEIN IS ANXIOUS 
IN THE VERY DEPTHS OF ITS BEING does it become possible for anxiety to be 
elicited physiologically."

First, note his scare quote marks around the word "real," as in "real" 
anxiety. Yes he is here talking about a "real" phenomenon which comes and 
goes, but this phenomenon is "real" in comparison to the REAL anxiety that 
he described two paragraphs earlier: "a basic state-of-mind" that "belongs 
to Dasein's essential state of Being-in-the-world, which ... is NEVER 
PRESENT-AT-HAND but is itself always in a mode of factical Being-there." So 
like everything else about Dasein, anxiety is always found in a mode of 
"real" (factical) Being-there, but this is still posterior to REAL anxiety 
as an essential state-of-mind belonging to Dasein's essential 
being-in-the-world.

The same conspicuous scare quotes around "real" occur in the next paragraph 
too:

"Even rarer than the existentiell fact of 'real' anxiety are attempts to 
Interpret this phenomenon according to the principles of its 
existential-ontological Constitution and function. The reasons for this lie 
partly in the general neglect of the existential analytic of Dasein, but 
more particularly in a failure to recognize the phenomenon of state-of-mind. 
Yet the factical rarity of anxiety as a phenomenon cannot deprive it of its 
fitness to take over a methodological function in principle for the 
existential analytic. On the contrary, the rarity of the phenomenon is an 
index that Dasein, which for the most part remains concealed from itself in 
its authenticity because of the way in whcih things have been publicly 
interpreted by the "they," becomes disclosable in a primordial sense in this 
basic state-of-mind."

Anthony Crifasi

>Heidegger's already discussing this special relation between being/beings 
>in section 2 of BT:
>
>"Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards 
>which we comport ourselves in any way, is being [seiend]; what we are is 
>being and so is how we are. Being [Sein] lies in the fact that something 
>is, and in its Being as it is [Sosein]; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in 
>subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the 'there is' [es gibt]" 
>(Heidegger, SZ, p. 6-7).
>
>Perhaps if we return to the text we can clarify your misunderstanding 
>Anthony?

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