File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_2000/nietzsche.0003, message 127


From: "D. Diane Davis" <d-davis-AT-uiowa.edu>
Subject: RE: Tips on how to be an overman
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 05:43:02 -0600


Scott, thanks for an interesting post. Let me stop you at one point, though,
for a bit of dialogue. You write:

[snip]
> Heidegger places blame where there is none; Hense, his attraction to Kant.
> Their is no universal "ought", only the necessary belief in "ought" by
those
> who need to believe it. Their is no inauthentic, only "I will". To will
> depersonalization is necessary for new growth, only as a means to the
> discovery of that growth that the depersonalization was a sign of.

Here. . . .I don't know, Scott. There seems to be more at play in what H.'s
up to in the inauthentic than you're granting. No, there is no universal
"ought." But that's really not what H. is saying, imho. The inauthentic for
H is "everyday absorption in the 'world.' "  "The everyday publicness of the
'they'...brings tranquillized self-assurance," H. says, which means that
dasein forgets its finitude, it's radical singularity and inevitable
mortality. But when anxiety strikes, "everyday familiarity collapses," and
Dasein feels "uncanny," unhomelike. What hits Dasein in anxiety's attack is
the excessive generosity of Being, a generosity that overflows hermeneutic
safeguards and prompts a "heady vertigo," evicting Dasein from the homelike
shelter of its "average everydayness."  And what is Dasein anxious about?
Being-in-the-world itself. Because being IN the 'world' means
being-without-shelter. No foundations, no assurances, no linguistic
guardrails, no universal 'oughts,' -- in a word: no "home." This "everyday
absorption in the 'world' " allows Dasein to forget who it is, to forget
that it is, in fact, finite, which means it is sheer uncanniness. And in
anxiety this is what Dasein flees: its own being-in-the-world. The guilt
comes in there, Dasein is guilty in asmuch as it denies it's finitude, which
it necessarily does ALL the time in order to, you know, go to work, carry on
a conversation, etc. You are not guilty for busting some universal 'ought'
but for refusing to answer the call of your own finitude. . .

This exposition of finitude is, of course, something that several
contemporary philosophers have picked up and run with, and I think it's an
incredibly valuable insight. But I also think that the whole thing becomes
really complicated. . .and incredibly problematic as H works it through. B/c
H himself does some mighty panicky *fleeing* by making a moment of
identification, extraction from the 'they,' his moment of authenticity,
leaving (I would argue) both finitude and 'the other' in the dust. That is,
he ends up trusting a voice or call of *conscience*, and he should
definitely have learned from N. that that would be a no no, a mis/take. (N:
"But why do you listen to the voice of your conscience? And what gives you
the right to consider such a judgment true and infallable? For this faith -
is there no conscience? A conscience behind your 'conscience'?")

Just my two cents as I down my morning coffee. ;) Thanks for making me start
thinking so quickly this morning, scott.

best, ddd
______________________

     D. Diane Davis
     Rhetoric Department
     University of Iowa
     Iowa City, IA 52242
     319.335.0184

     d-davis-AT-uiowa.edu
     http://www.uiowa.edu/~ddrhet/





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