On Tue, 28 Nov 1995, Robert V. Scheetz wrote:
> Me too. Why "Death, care, falling, ...structures of Dasein?
> instead of elan, reason, exaltation...? Aren't H's core concepts
> rather idiosyncratic, or arbitrary, and dogmatic?
>
> Seems he projects the biological event, death, onto ontology
> as the Null; as the Scholastics did with generation and life, as
> God. "Nothing" is a concept like "God," perfectly vacuous except
> as indicating the unknowable, ineffable; and since he makes the Nihil
>the matrix
> and repository of Being, it feels like a kind of ironic Thomism.
> feels like he's reworking a Q text (Western onto-theology)
> liberally eliding and transforming, but careful to elucidate his
> notion of the mysterium and kerygma.
Yes! I like these connections you make here, to Thomism. As I
understand it, Heidegger was influenced by this view, profoundly.
If ontology is grounded in the nullity of death, or nullity as Dasein's
dying, then it seems a fair question to ask *why* death or
nothingness 'is' -- is this not the question for which
fundamental ontology clears the ground? For an understanding of
this, we move out from ontology, into metaphysics: Fundamental ontology
fails as its own ground. The project is abandoned.
This is where I am headed: Is it fair to read the
_Intro to Metaphysics_ as the further exploration of this *why* question,
the question regarding the primordial ground for ontology?
The question with which _Intro..._ begins is "Why are there essents
rather than nothing?" (keeping in mind that for Heidegger, the reverse is
the case, since most primordially nothing 'is' ), and this is the question
which Heidegger brackets out of B&T, the question he goes around and
therefore does not escape, in virtue of centrifungal forces.
And in his philosophical meanderings ("chemins qui ne menent nulle part")
he arrives at the unexpected place, the horizons of ontology. Death,
however provocative, is highly unsatisfying, yes? Death and dying cannot,
ultimately, lend meaning to Being. An account of change through time, of
creativity is needed instead.
The relation between death and dying, and creativity is inverted in
B&T. But its suggestion is there in the directionality of the call of
conscience -- in calling forth to the possibility of the impossibility
which is death, it harkens back to nullity or nothingness.
Nothingness is not simply privation, but in its positive aspect,
there are essents because of creation out of nothing -- and in the face of
creation, thauma, the greek wonder lost upon us.
My humble thoughts, which I do not direct,
but which do nonetheless direct me.
rita
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