Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 11:34:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: henry <healanthenry-AT-aol.com>
Subject: Re: Questioning the Question




allen scult wrote on 6/18/04, 2:06 PM:

 >
 > The following is submitted in a condition even more raw than usual:
 >
 > I'm reading Cavell on Wittgenstein and thinking about how community,
 > especially philosophical community-or more especially THIS
 > community-- is constituted to the extent that we can speak WITH one
 > another at all. By speaking with one another, I mean that some of us
 > presume that Heidegger speaks for us, at least insofar as we presume
 > he is not merely projecting his own way of being conscious onto ours.
 > He presumed a similar presumption which I presume enabled him to
 > speak for himself as a Dasein in the way that he does.


The "with" can be looked upon as an assumption, and I expect it is, but 
it is more than that.  The "with" is the elastic nature of being, on 
this list and everywhere. It is also the overarching characteristic that 
contains the Heideggerian "speaking for." And all of this is arbitrary, 
inexact, voluntary, 'with' the vast part of it hidden. And it seems it 
cannot be understood these days more accurately than under the rubric of 
"will to power."  [or "will to will" for those for whom heidegger speaks 
this coherently]





 >
 > What gives Heidegger the "right" to speak of  Dasein as he does-as if
 > it's any more than a projection?  More importantly, why do I trust
 > him, give him the right, to "speak for me" at least most of the time.

Heidegger gets the right to speak 'with' us by way of will to power, on 
many different levels... he's won arguments, he's made sense, we hear 
his voice, understand his positions, are drawn to dialogue with him, and 
so on. Heidegger is a text and one that has been centralized by us in 
our world of [nothing but] texts.

I'd say H speaks for me in that I comprise a part of a group Dasein that 
includes H as text, and somehow this 'list'.


 >
 > This is almost a "primal" matter of philosophy, one which Cavell
 > suggests, at another level, preoccupies Wittgenstein when he argues
 > for the impossibility of a "private language."  In Cavell's words:
 > "What is the presumption which asks us to look to ourselves to find
 > whether we share another's secret consciousness?  What gives one the
 > right?"


I happen to be a set of symbols electronically appearing on a screen 
that does not make much sense of consciousness, like Heidegger, so the 
question appears more simple to me: How is it that beyond expertise in 
shared cultural practices, we can "intuit" more meaning than is offered 
about each other? Where does that come from? It is beyond right and 
wrong because there is so much of it very little is disclosed in ways 
that can provide judgments of true and false about these 'intuitions'.



 >
 > He goes on to say this line of questioning is wrong for philosophy,
 > because philosophy "ought to point away from the self not towards
 > it." (20)  But in this very pointing away, the question is preserved,
 > for it is saying that the philosophy of which it is a part is not
 > mere projection.  I may explain other philosophizing as one kind of
 > projection or another but not my own, nor
 > those that speak for me.  The presumption of those philosophies, by
 > the very fact that it is Heidegger's presumption, mine, and perhaps
 > yours, remains an open question--no, the open question-- which is at
 > the core of said philosophies.
 >


The common feature that bedazzled Wittgenstein and Heidegger about the 
world is this disclosedness, and they looked upon it and thought about 
it uniquely, Heidegger following Husserl through phenomenology, 
Wittgenstein following ... well his own genius bouncing off the odd 
moment in anglo philosophy where positivism and ordinary language came 
to the fore almost together... hence this interpretive view of world 
disclosure that provides accurate enough approximations of all sorts and 
kinds which reveal the truth of being... and is fundamental to the 
appearance of "more rigorous" formal descriptions that now seem 
dependent on this world of approximations and hermeneutics.

And so we're back to he "with."  We agree, or at least agree to 
disagree, and then begin to agree to disagree and agree in multiple ways 
of understanding, misunderstanding, and all referenced by shared 
understandings, accurate 'intuitions' and the disagreements that nearly 
breakdown the conversation and reveal further intuitions.

It is a lot like going mad, I imagine.  Gee thanks, Allen...



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