File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0403, message 8


Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2004 15:20:37 -0500
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Globalizing Haiti - Avoiding generalizations



----- Original Message -----
From: <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
To: <lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: Globalizing Haiti - Avoiding generalizations

Steve wrote:

> perhaps - but on the other hand it does signify the tragic-political
> fulfilment that such a position can be claimed by the right in the USA -
> which is less feasable elsewhere.  Ignoring those places of course where
> to be such is to unimaginably closer to participating in the
> 'holocaust'.

"The Holocaust"  (6 million murders by Hitler) was 60 yrs. ago.  We re-write
the past
to influence the future, if that's what is meant by "participating".

> Perhaps the "tragic-political fulfillment cannot take
> place", but the stage where it takes place is precisely all to
> imaginable.  Which is a tragedy that you are seeming to deny by arguing
> that he is talking to the "religious right"  - Maurice Samuels pointed
> out this fallacy in his 1940 book on Fascism and anti-semitism where he
> pointed out that the facists were not solely addressing themselves - for
> Bush is precisely not raising this to the "religious right" but to all
> those who may be swayed to support him because he is mirroring their
> foolish prejudices.

Agreed.  Bush wants all the votes he can get, not just votes of the
religious right.

> Beyond this  "It attests to a mutation of the
> mise-en-scene itself, that is in Heidegger's terms of the way in which
> the Being of beings gives itself to and hides itself from dasein...."
> (Lyotard)

Can your meaning be expressed in English?

A crude approximation of  "dasein"  is English: "being".

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of interpretations of  "being", and
here are a few descriptions of "dasein", many of  them worthy of a
Lyotardian
discourse:

~~~

Heidegger: Dasein rather than subject; the Preontological and Public
Character of Dasein's ontology

1. Dasein

 "This being which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one
of the possibilities of its being, we shall denote by the term "Dasein"
(Heidegger, cited in Dreyfus, 12-13).

2. Dasein's self-interpreting (or ontological) way of being: Existence

"Its [Dasein's] ownmost being is such that it has an understanding of that
being, and already maintains itself in each case in a certain
interpretedness of its being" (Heidegger, cited in Dreyfus, 15).

"Understanding of being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein's
being.  Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological"
(Heidegger, cited in Dreyfus, 16).

"Only self-interpreting beings exist" (Dreyfus, 15).

3. Dasein is not a conscious, self-sufficient, transcendental subject.

"One of our first tasks will be to prove that if we posit an 'I' or subject
as that which is primarily given, we shall completely miss the phenomenal
content of Dasein" (Heidegger, cited in Dreyfus, 13).

Cf. Descartes and Kant.

4. Existence is ontologically prior to subject/consciousness/intentionality.
It is the condition of the latter's possibility and intelligibility.

"To be a conscious subject or self is neither necessary nor sufficient for
human existence, rather the reverse" (Dreyfus, 15).

5. Dasein's self-interpreting way of being (Dasein's ontology) is
preontological.

"Dasein has grown up both into and in a traditional way of interpreting
itself: in terms of this it understands itself primarily and, within a
certain range, constantly" (Heidegger, cited in Dreyfus, 16).

". the understanding of being human in an individual's activity is the
result of being socialized into practices that contain an interpretation not
exhaustively contained in the mental states of individuals" (Dreyfus, 17).

"In sum, the practices containing an interpretation of what it is to be a
person, an object, and a society fit together.  They are all aspects of what
Heidegger calls an understanding of being.  Such an understanding is
contained in our knowing-how-to-cope in various domains rather than in a set
 of beliefs that such and such is the case.  Thus we embody an understanding
of being that no one has in mind.  We have an ontology without knowing it"
(Dreyfus, 18).

"Heidegger calls the shared agreement in our practices as to what entities
can show up as a preontological or pretheoretical understanding of being"
(Dreyfus, 19).

Examples: (a) Japanese baby/American baby; (b) masculinity/femininity; (c)
distance-standing practices

6. Dasein's preontological understanding of itself is social or public.

Human beings "begin to exist as they are socialized into the understanding
of what it is to be a human being that is already contained in social
practices" (Dreyfus, 23).

"This common world, which is there primarily and into which every maturing
Dasein first grows, as the public world, governs every interpretation of the
world and of Dasein" (cited in Dreyfus, 23).

"Each Dasein must understand itself within some culture that has already
decided on specific possible ways to be human-on what human beings
essentially are" (Dreyfus, 24).

"The everyday way in which things have been interpreted is one into which
Dasein has grown in the first instance, with never a possibility of
extrication.  In it, out of it, and against it, all genuine understanding,
interpreting, and communicating, all re-discovering and appropriating anew,
are performed.  In no case is a Dasein untouched and unseduced by this way
in which things have been interpreted" (Heidegger, cited in Dreyfus, 25).

7. Human being is self-interpretation (creating facticity over and above
factuality) and has no essence other than self-interpretation (and therefore
cannot be reduced to or defined by its facticity).

"To exist is to take a stand on what is essential about one's being and to
be defined by that stand.  Thus Dasein is what, in its social activity, it
interprets itself to be.  Human beings do not already have some specific
nature.  It makes no sense to ask whether we are essentially rational
animals, creatures of God, organisms with built-in needs, sexual beings, or
complex computers.  Human beings can interpret themselves in any of these
ways and many more, and they can, in varying degrees, become any of these
things, but to be human is not to be essentially any of them.  Human being
is essentially simply self-interpreting" (Dreyfus, 23).

"Homo sapiens has factual characteristics, which constitute its factuality.
Man is the result of cultural interpretation; his culturally defined
characteristics constitute its facticity.  Now we will see that, precisely
because Dasein's way of being makes facticity possible, it can never be
defined by its facticity" (Dreyfus, 25).

~~~~~~~~~

The "dasein" of Gibson's Jesus ("Passion") has earned more that $200 million
in two weeks - brace yourself
for sequels.

regards,
Hugh
-



   

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