Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 00:15:44 +0800 Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy - Gestell/Gewinnst From: Malcolm Riddoch <m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au> On Tuesday, December 2, 2003, at 12:54 AM, Bakker, R.B.M. de wrote: > Malcolm wrote: > > What is ontical is what is known, and what is known are factical > entities, or beings as a whole, > > > Things yes, but not das Seiende im Ganzen (world), which is only > disclosed in fundamental mood. Agreed, the whole is not generally known in the sense of an authentic disclosure, I meant 'known' in the sense of the aggregate of everything that can theoretically be said to be something. This knowing, the sum of ontical knowledge in the sciences and so on is finite but only because, as you say, it opens onto the infinite possibilities for knowing everything that is yet to be uncovered, and we'll never know the infinite as a whole. That's god's realm and unfortunately he's apparently dead. > We can never bring the whole of > things in front of us, just as we cannot bring the whole of our > Dasein in front of us, because to Dasein belongs as extremest > possibility: being-no-more. > (cf. also Husserl's Abschattung) The being of Dasein is disclosed in the structure of care which already constitutes Dasein's authentic potentiality-for-Being-a-whole. The possibility of authentic disclosure in BT is the possibility of disclosing the whole of Dasein and this holistic disclosure is based on the anticipation of death, of being-no-more. But this ontological disclosure of the whole isn't a theoretical knowing about Dasein, it's not a logical predicate of a subject, and Heidegger's notion of finitude is of a different order to scientific knowledge although that seems to be what you are wanting to say as well. > We have, first, to re-think (because it is already-thought) this > metaphysical structure, in order to be able to estimate - by way > of destruction - Heidegger's no longer metaphysical concepts of > finiteness, possibility (etc.) in BT. Yes, that's the necessity of his Destruktion but it's an ongoing necessity on the basis of which he posits his disclosure of being. It's a twofold path of thinking, of self-critique and phenomenological construction, that never ends. We are always on the way, and that seems to be our nature, there is no end to being-true apart from death which can't even be an end for itself. > SuZ par 5, p. 15: > "Das Dasein ist zwar ontisch nicht nur nahe oder gar das nächste - > wir sind > es sogar je selbst. Trotzdem oder gerade deshalb ist es ontologisch > das Fernste." BT, p. 36/15 (Macquarrie Robinson) "Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us - even that which is closest: we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest". > When it is so, that the ontical (near) IS the ontological (remote), > and Dasein > even is this connection of ontics and ontology, then ontological > distinction a la > rigueur would mean: schizophreny. And so it is. Schizophrenia as far as I know is a catastrophic failure of cognition with affective and hallucinatory disfunctions, a dreadful malady and probably not particularly helpful in disclosing the ontological difference in Dasein. I'd personally say that the authentic disclosure is much more of a silent meditative way of bringing the phenomenon of one's own lived experience of time (as time) to light. For you is that disclosure a sort of splitting of the personality? I guess I have much more of a scientific (as 'pre-empirical') interpretation of it. > (The modern primacy of Seiendes (the extant) above Sein, is itself > ontologically > founded: in the sense of being as being extant. It works so that we > think that > there are only things and nothing else, and that also we are just a > thing) Ontically, our selves and the familiar everyday world we live in is something we know intimately, cos that's who we are from birth to death. I think it's this intimate familiarity that makes it so difficult knowing how to even approach the problem of the ontological structure of one's own familiar everyday understanding of the world and oneself. Even simply thinking Dasein as a holism of self and world, or especially as subject and object, already falls into the familiar way of taking something apart from everything else as a 'thing' to be thought about, but the 'thing' here is the thinking itself as such, and we're back at the hermeneutical circle. I think it's this assertive aporia that makes the ontological dimension such a distant prospect for one's understanding as it necessitates a different understanding of what truth means: Truth as the disclosure of concealing unconcealment rather than as logical assertion, or meditative as opposed to theoretical truth. > Why do you think will-to-will and nazism have a special > relationship? > When Heidegger saw that the nazi's were not interested in the > direction > his thinking took - they appreciated rather Staudinger's > direction - > he knew all hope for a change had become idle. And that means: > will to > will was now inevitably everywhere, doesn't it? Well for me the special relationship is simply the fact of his Nietzsche interpretation in which will to will comes to the fore precisely as a critique of the failure of Nazi leadership and its perversion of will to power. He wasn't a Russian communist nor an American democrat, he was a German nationalist living through the Nazi revolution, how much more special can you get? The disappointment with this failure that leads to the pessimism of his notion of 'will to will' means that, yes, for Heidegger will to will was now inevitably everywhere. But that absolutising move from Nazi will to will encompassing all other forms of the uniformity of leadership and the uniform subjectivity appropriate to its order is itself a problem and not something I think we should simply accept as a given. This is where my moral problem with Nazism gets in the way of simply following Heidegger's lead. For me something fundamental happened in the history of being with the collapse of Nazism, something much more optimistic than the collapse of the last hope for humanity to face up to the problem of technology. If you accept that the disaster that was WW2 defines an extremity of human suffering, an extremity of evil, then something good happened on a very fundamental level when totalitarianism came up against the democratic idealism of human rights, peace, racial equality and so on. And yes I realise that actual democratic systems aren't all that different from Nazism and Stalinism in a lot of respects, and I think democracy is also infected with the amorality of the will to will and its militarism, but at least this 'grand experiment' still allows for a degree of freedom, a modicum of the true the good and the beautiful no matter how much we rail against its modern perversion. I think there's a fundamental moral dimension to human being beyond Nietzsche's amorality of the good and bad of will to power. I also think this morality is embedded in the Care structure of Dasein but unfortunately Heidegger's pragmatism gives us few leads here, only the anti-democratic hopelessness of his silent gods. Regards, Malcolm --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005