Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 11:59:53 -0500
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: RE: expansion



Allen and Rene questioning recently:
>
>  >Might we say that subjectivities are "essentially" interchangeable?
>>
>>    I think so. But the problem remains: wherein and where-by are all
>>    subjectivities what they are?
>
>
>
>Extraordinary question, Rene (but also about the most ordinary of 
>occurrences).
>To paraphrase only slightly, thereby perhaps making the question a bit less
>extraordinary,
>
>   Wherein and where-by are all subjectivities given as what they are?
>
>Phrased this way the "wherein" and "where-by" more obviously come to be
>located in language, or speech, to be more exact.  When one speaks, 
>the central
>ambiguity of subjectivity, of being a subject, is introduced in and
>through one's way of saying what one says. One cannot speak without saying
>what one has to say this way or that.
>Once spoken, what is usually considered the subjectivity of the
>subject, is now  explicit, is given material, tangible form.  The cat
>is out of the bag!
>
>Enter "rhetoric." Through the rhetorical possibilities available to
>say  one's saying this way or that
>   one attempts to hide one's "subjectivity" by saying one's saying as
>if it were not just one's
>way of saying, but the saying of what is.  This move requires
>conventions of proof,  method.
>. .SCIENCE.  Philosophy, Heidegger claims, is unique amongst the
>human practices "invented" to
>deal with this problem of subjectivity, in that it proves nothing,
>and is therefore useless to any
>endeavor outside of itself because it says what it says with the full
>recognition that its saying is no
>more than a basic movement of factical life.
>
>But as as the basic movement of factical life that it is, the saying
>of philosophy insists on
>continually throwing its own subjectivity into question, by way of
>moving towards its
>essential interchangeability with all other subjectivities.  This
>questioning guarentees
>incompleteness because of the impossibility of reaching this
>interchangability in and through
>one's saying, even though it( the interchangeability of
>subjectivities) is "essential" to
>the thinking/existential analytic of  Dasein.
>
>I think I managed to keep the
>ambiguity essential, but whether I did or not ...
>
>
>   Allen,
>
>   The  pre-BT lectures, notably the earliest, sometimes seem to be
>   closer to the late Heidegger, than to the BT period. H seemed to
>   have wanted to leave them, or at least the very early, out of the
>   Gesamtausgabe, but Gadamer has been their defender against the author
>   himself.

Hi Rene,

Gadamer loved the Heidegger of the earlier lectures for being a 
teacher, his teacher.
I understand this way of philosophizing as the teacher placing his 
own facticity in question,
and giving his students a way to join him in this questioning.  He 
(Heidegger) is still concerned to excite,
to arouse and most importantly to teach(which right now I'm 
interested in looking into:  What did it mean to teach philosophy, 
for the early heidegger?)  In B and T and for quite a time 
thereafter, I sense
a presumptive professorial "standing over" the object of study, which 
no longer directly includes himself and his students in the discourse.



>It's some time ago now since i looked into them, but what i
>   remember is someone resolutely determined to get out of the subjectivity
>   he knows himself in.* (Gadamer admitted that at first he didn't understand)
>   Specifically i remember the ruinancy (Verfallenheit), which is an
>   overall, total character of the factical situation, and that
>   a possible countermove should not be spoiled by opposing something
>   positive over (against) it (he already had dissected the fraud of
>   theological solutions, spoke later of the total bankruptcy of the
>   institution he had found, ..had lost himself in)
>   A countermove against overall ruinancy cannot but come FROM WITHIN
>   ruinancy itself, never from the outside. (here would be the ambiguous)
>   Oudemans has treated this very well in his article on formal indication.
>   Formal indication, of course, is the possible way out of subjectivity.


Nicely put Rene.  I agree, the formal indication comes from within by 
giving form to
the expressedness (Ausdrueklichkeit) of the very phenomenon of 
inwardness, the "fact" that
in order to be interpreted it must "take on" explicit form.  This 
form, as you suggest, serves as an indication (Anzeige) of the total 
character of the factical situation, above and beyond ( or, perhaps, 
below'and beneath) any particular "content" it holds in an individual 
dasein.  To put it somewhat
differently, the only way "out of" subjectivity is further into it. 
Subjectivity itself holds the
key which is made accessable by the capacity of subjectivity to put 
itself in question by means of
the careful-est  method of phenomenology, i.e. the formal indication.


>



>    * The foreword in GA 63, Hermeneutics of facticity, not spoken 
>during lecture,
>    leaves no doubt over the corruption, he sees in everything, notably the
>    university. The Nietzschean ending: Let them die of themselves, those who
>    only care for - pseudos. The lie-theme is aparently present from 
>the very beginning,
>    and already casting its shadow on factical life.

But like the shadows in the cave, the university setting can, in a 
sense, "point the way"
towards the light, being the un-lighting proper to it.  There's a 
place later on, I can't rememer
where, where Heidegger makes a case for the modern university being 
the proper place for
the development of philosophical discourse.





>
>>    And if that is subjectity  - not only
>>    encompassing the modern man-subject, but also medieval subject/substance
>>    and Greek hypokeimenon, then we are dealing with Being and, if we leave
>>    it out as a subjectivity in your sense, we would have missed everything.
>>    Being is now only accessible as Gestell, that's what i think Heidegger
>>    means, when, in the letter to the student, he writes that most only want
>>    the thinging things and gods, but don't want to hear about Gestell.
>>    Gestell, the Wesen of technique, is nothing technical. It is wherein
>>    all (subjective) stellen, positioning, is gathered, and which does not
>>    want to show itself. In order to lift (lichten) this hiding  - die
>>    Lichtung des Sichverbergens  -  one must see the abyss of all ground,
>>    sub-ject. See that Being IS ground AND abyss. The ambiguity essential.
>>
>>    but did i understand you correctly?
>>
>
>Of course I'm not sure.  But now I get to ask, whether my way of going about
>your question understands you correctly.  I think I managed to keep the
>ambiguity essential, but whether I did or didn't, there I must leave it, while
>I go to lunch.
>
>    We seem to be on different levels. Is this "interchangeability of 
>subjectivities"
>    something (early) Heideggerian or Scultean?
>


Perhaps because of the very teacherly openings the early texts 
provide, I might very
well "over-read" some of what he says.  The "interchangeability of 
subjectivities" I
read out of his notion that the formal indication "indicates" 
similarly across differences
in individual content:

"The phenomena are viewed on the basis of the bearing of the formally 
indicating sense.  But even though it guides the phenomenological 
deliberation, contentwise, it has nothing to say." (from The 
Phenomenology of Religious Life)

So the ways ( the "form," the "how") in and through which dasein's 
subjectivity permits itself to be discovered/expressed/interpreted 
makes our respective subjectivities, phenomenologically speaking (by 
means of the formal indication), "interchangeable." 

In direct answer to your question, that would seem to locate the idea
in the early Heidegger as over-read by Scult.

I hope that brings us back to at least nearer to the same level.

Best regards,

Allen


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