Ok, I want to give this a shot. Not a scholarly shot, but hopefully a
thoughtful one. The inexorability of Heidegger's style, which is
*everywhere* in his writing, closes off this issue (which I am about to
address, and which others have taken stabs at) in a way that seems very
hard to pinpoint. But that may be part of what is involved in the
question of style. Style as "form" seems to be part of *that within which
points take place* (although for Derrida, in Spurs, the stylate object is
something that has both a pointed/pointing function as well as an
apotropaic one). When we say "style", however, even as concerns the
*style of the delivery of a point*, it is not *the point itself*.
In any event: the question of authenticity and the "they": Why death? Why
not love? The alienated structure of fallen Dasein's Being ostensibly
requires death to pull it out of the they, perhaps with a certain shock.
I think, however, that there is also a basic possibility of
"authenticity in love", where the "in order to's" and "for the sake
of which's" lead, or can lead, in a certain kind of thinking
(resolute or otherwise) into a "return" (fort/da?) wherein
this world of concerns is authenticated through the meaning of love. I
mean this on an *existential* level, and not a psychoanalytic one, at
least as concerns the "unconscious", which might not have anything to say
about this but is also not obviated here.
I.e., The *hammer* is *for* building which is for making the thing I make
for my work which is for supporting my family which is for my love
relationship with my lover and my kids, etc. I putter in the workship,
or I work in the shop to make money. Death seems to show up
*temporality* in certain ways. Anxiety and death *do* go together, but
*death* is not the one and only royal road to authenticity. Which is not
to say, as per Brown, "Life Against Death" (which of course is the rule
of neither Life nor Death, but of Polemos). And what of love? What goes
with love as anxiety goes with death? Joy, perhaps?
So Death illuminates the condition of one's thrown being in the world and
projection. For Heidegger, it is in a certain way *required* for
authenticity. (It may be.) Without death, perhaps one would...just stay
in the theyself, or in the workshop, too, and never come back to oneself.
But wouldn't one get lonely? Wouldn't one in a certain way starve without
love? Wouldn't the "for the sake of which" relations lose their meaning
and power? It would seem the authenticating function of thought-love can't
do it, as one might be inclined to "put off love" forever (though
I don't see how this is so).
Nor can we imagine that one *can* stay permanently fallen in the
theyself, though obviously dis-ease can be diagnosed in various ways,
stable bad formations, etc. This then means that there is the
*possibility of thought and thoughtlessness*, of care and carelessness.
But why Death in the *way* Heidegger brings this in? And why *not Death*?
Realizing her mortality, the character on Norther Exposure suddenly
*takes care of her affairs* with greater sureness, efficiency, and these
affairs are, ostensibly, the more important ones, affairs of the heart
and personal pain, loss in friendship, etc. She also gets an ulcer, which
puts an end to it (on the show), but that's irrelevant, perhaps. Death
puts in a weight, a certain urgency, a possibility, which is part of
things. We can't guess that it will teach her one thing about love, nor
can we imagine that love wouldn't also teach in such a way. Nor can we
imagine that we can or should do without one or the other. Though
Heidegger obviously thinks so.
No, the question is: why must Death be that which brings her to caring?
Why not love? Love was *already there*, supposedly. Then came Death, and
she was given to thought. Or else: thought can come, and there can be the
authenticating disalienation of realizing the Truth of Love, and Death,
and whatever else.
Questioning *begins* before the truth is learned, in Being and Time.
Thinking begins without finding itself authentically. Ostensibly. Of
course, death (and the unmentioned love) was/is always already there.
Which is to say that the work of Being and Time is one of
*clarification*. The Being which Dasein has as an issue for itself in
Being and Time is *being at all*, ultimately: the possibility of no
longer Being (if this can even be formulated at all). But in addition to,
and probably before, in every case, is the *manner of being*, which is an
issue for Dasein as well. From the source of an ostensibly groundless
philosophical questioning, being happens upon itself fatefully. As a
matter of luck. But only if, in the first instance, the "clean start" (as
we find this dreamed of from Descartes to Husserl to Heidegger) is not so
clean, what then? If on the contrary, the philosophical question is not
clean at all, is perhaps the dirtiest, most loaded question, the most
extreme manifestation of Dasein's concern with itself, it's world, its
being (how and at all), what does this mean for the progression and
"discovery of death" in Being and Time?
Somehow the closure of the question of *style* in Heidegger (and Derrida
notes that Heidegger ignores that setting of the point, the underline,
the italics), through the *assertion* of style in Heidegger gives a
setting, a stage, a theater in which no disruption of a certain
"suspension of disbelief" is tolerable/tolerated/brooked. The closure of
questioning through the most extreme for of questioning, in the arena of
questioning seeking to render virtually *everything* to lend a hand in
the work world of the mis en scene of the progression of thinking
Heidegger undertakes and invites us to undertake.
What is alienated in that foreclosure is *of a piece* with the failure of
Dasein to follow the progression of love. It is found, as well, in the
referential system of the workshop, as if it had no door to the rest of
the house, as if the workman didn't, after all, want nothing more than to
return from puttering about to have dinner with the wife and kids. We go
from: the strict alienation and self-referentiality in untility of tools
to Death, with nothing in between. And love is lost in the process. Guilt
is supposed to save the day.
The thing to do here is not to "turn to psychoanalysis", though one can
do that, too. But perhaps first one can be *astounded*. One an find this
*interesting*.
Maybe Heidegger thought he was "saving" love, through silence. There is
whole tradition concerning the error-filled nature of "man's"
attempts to speak the deepest truths. But again, this obviously isn't the
case with Death, for Heidegger. No, it looks to me more like he is simply
ignoring a whole region of being, perhaps the most important one. The
problem, of course, is that one can not, today, mention love without
instantaneously invoking the "whole tradition" (as if they were one) and
various institutional formations, discourses, everyday understandings,
etc., concerning love, and like ontology, this means invoking a history
of errors, in part. So perhaps what is called for is "reinventing love",
as per Kristeva. But then, she was the one who said, "Heidegger, in spite
of everthing..." (I think.)
And isn't that really where we find ourselves today? Doesn't a certain
"in spite of everything" continue to produce our loveless society, our
astounding death rates, the facile forgetting of 200,000 Iraqis killed in
the Gulf, the US prison system (!), the fact that as many children have
been killed violently in the US as Americans were killed in Vietnam and
Korea combined? There was, I recall, something like a "summer of love"
somewhere back there, even, we are told again and again, a "revolution"
of some kind. But, *in spite of everything*, well, look for yourself.
Look.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
thoughtful one. The inexorability of Heidegger's style, which is
*everywhere* in his writing, closes off this issue (which I am about to
address, and which others have taken stabs at) in a way that seems very
hard to pinpoint. But that may be part of what is involved in the
question of style. Style as "form" seems to be part of *that within which
points take place* (although for Derrida, in Spurs, the stylate object is
something that has both a pointed/pointing function as well as an
apotropaic one). When we say "style", however, even as concerns the
*style of the delivery of a point*, it is not *the point itself*.
In any event: the question of authenticity and the "they": Why death? Why
not love? The alienated structure of fallen Dasein's Being ostensibly
requires death to pull it out of the they, perhaps with a certain shock.
I think, however, that there is also a basic possibility of
"authenticity in love", where the "in order to's" and "for the sake
of which's" lead, or can lead, in a certain kind of thinking
(resolute or otherwise) into a "return" (fort/da?) wherein
this world of concerns is authenticated through the meaning of love. I
mean this on an *existential* level, and not a psychoanalytic one, at
least as concerns the "unconscious", which might not have anything to say
about this but is also not obviated here.
I.e., The *hammer* is *for* building which is for making the thing I make
for my work which is for supporting my family which is for my love
relationship with my lover and my kids, etc. I putter in the workship,
or I work in the shop to make money. Death seems to show up
*temporality* in certain ways. Anxiety and death *do* go together, but
*death* is not the one and only royal road to authenticity. Which is not
to say, as per Brown, "Life Against Death" (which of course is the rule
of neither Life nor Death, but of Polemos). And what of love? What goes
with love as anxiety goes with death? Joy, perhaps?
So Death illuminates the condition of one's thrown being in the world and
projection. For Heidegger, it is in a certain way *required* for
authenticity. (It may be.) Without death, perhaps one would...just stay
in the theyself, or in the workshop, too, and never come back to oneself.
But wouldn't one get lonely? Wouldn't one in a certain way starve without
love? Wouldn't the "for the sake of which" relations lose their meaning
and power? It would seem the authenticating function of thought-love can't
do it, as one might be inclined to "put off love" forever (though
I don't see how this is so).
Nor can we imagine that one *can* stay permanently fallen in the
theyself, though obviously dis-ease can be diagnosed in various ways,
stable bad formations, etc. This then means that there is the
*possibility of thought and thoughtlessness*, of care and carelessness.
But why Death in the *way* Heidegger brings this in? And why *not Death*?
Realizing her mortality, the character on Norther Exposure suddenly
*takes care of her affairs* with greater sureness, efficiency, and these
affairs are, ostensibly, the more important ones, affairs of the heart
and personal pain, loss in friendship, etc. She also gets an ulcer, which
puts an end to it (on the show), but that's irrelevant, perhaps. Death
puts in a weight, a certain urgency, a possibility, which is part of
things. We can't guess that it will teach her one thing about love, nor
can we imagine that love wouldn't also teach in such a way. Nor can we
imagine that we can or should do without one or the other. Though
Heidegger obviously thinks so.
No, the question is: why must Death be that which brings her to caring?
Why not love? Love was *already there*, supposedly. Then came Death, and
she was given to thought. Or else: thought can come, and there can be the
authenticating disalienation of realizing the Truth of Love, and Death,
and whatever else.
Questioning *begins* before the truth is learned, in Being and Time.
Thinking begins without finding itself authentically. Ostensibly. Of
course, death (and the unmentioned love) was/is always already there.
Which is to say that the work of Being and Time is one of
*clarification*. The Being which Dasein has as an issue for itself in
Being and Time is *being at all*, ultimately: the possibility of no
longer Being (if this can even be formulated at all). But in addition to,
and probably before, in every case, is the *manner of being*, which is an
issue for Dasein as well. From the source of an ostensibly groundless
philosophical questioning, being happens upon itself fatefully. As a
matter of luck. But only if, in the first instance, the "clean start" (as
we find this dreamed of from Descartes to Husserl to Heidegger) is not so
clean, what then? If on the contrary, the philosophical question is not
clean at all, is perhaps the dirtiest, most loaded question, the most
extreme manifestation of Dasein's concern with itself, it's world, its
being (how and at all), what does this mean for the progression and
"discovery of death" in Being and Time?
Somehow the closure of the question of *style* in Heidegger (and Derrida
notes that Heidegger ignores that setting of the point, the underline,
the italics), through the *assertion* of style in Heidegger gives a
setting, a stage, a theater in which no disruption of a certain
"suspension of disbelief" is tolerable/tolerated/brooked. The closure of
questioning through the most extreme for of questioning, in the arena of
questioning seeking to render virtually *everything* to lend a hand in
the work world of the mis en scene of the progression of thinking
Heidegger undertakes and invites us to undertake.
What is alienated in that foreclosure is *of a piece* with the failure of
Dasein to follow the progression of love. It is found, as well, in the
referential system of the workshop, as if it had no door to the rest of
the house, as if the workman didn't, after all, want nothing more than to
return from puttering about to have dinner with the wife and kids. We go
from: the strict alienation and self-referentiality in untility of tools
to Death, with nothing in between. And love is lost in the process. Guilt
is supposed to save the day.
The thing to do here is not to "turn to psychoanalysis", though one can
do that, too. But perhaps first one can be *astounded*. One an find this
*interesting*.
Maybe Heidegger thought he was "saving" love, through silence. There is
whole tradition concerning the error-filled nature of "man's"
attempts to speak the deepest truths. But again, this obviously isn't the
case with Death, for Heidegger. No, it looks to me more like he is simply
ignoring a whole region of being, perhaps the most important one. The
problem, of course, is that one can not, today, mention love without
instantaneously invoking the "whole tradition" (as if they were one) and
various institutional formations, discourses, everyday understandings,
etc., concerning love, and like ontology, this means invoking a history
of errors, in part. So perhaps what is called for is "reinventing love",
as per Kristeva. But then, she was the one who said, "Heidegger, in spite
of everthing..." (I think.)
And isn't that really where we find ourselves today? Doesn't a certain
"in spite of everything" continue to produce our loveless society, our
astounding death rates, the facile forgetting of 200,000 Iraqis killed in
the Gulf, the US prison system (!), the fact that as many children have
been killed violently in the US as Americans were killed in Vietnam and
Korea combined? There was, I recall, something like a "summer of love"
somewhere back there, even, we are told again and again, a "revolution"
of some kind. But, *in spite of everything*, well, look for yourself.
Look.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---