Let me preface this by saying that this is all exploratory and tentative
>from my end of this discussion.
On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, CHRISTOPHER DOSS wrote:
>
> Mr. Blancato,
>
> Is it proper to speak of anything 'constituting' something evil
> as evil?
I don't know. Yes, it does sound Husserlian and maybe Nietzschean. But I
don't lose sight of the *active* role of "constituting" on the part of
Dasein. Even the "first cut" of interpretation has a history, a
responsibility, and Dasein has its skills in accepting and disclosing the
given, etc., there never is a "pure datum", I suspect.
This sounds Husserlian but not particularly Heideggerian --
> I imagine he would speak of the givenness of something as something,
> thereby avoiding having to pick out a constituting subject or structure
> as the source of meaning (I know, in a way this source is Dasein, but
> Dasein doesn't seem to generate or constitute meanings so much as
> inextricably find itself entangled in them, almost like a passive
> conduit).
A bit *too* passive, I think, at least by the account you're pointing to.
I use the word *constitute* because for me it does conjure a sense of
thrownness and entanglement: constitution is not creation, though Dasein
has its craft of constitution. The "I constitute" is really more an "it
constitutes in me, I am part of the constitution as a thrown-projectional
locus". I'm not meaning to invoke a subject-object schema, though I don't
mind invoking some element of intention. Perhaps I'm not saying this
clearly. I simply see the constituting moment, in its intentionality, as
relatively *small*, but also quite diverse.
>
> It sounds as if you want to say that (in the context of SZ anyway)
> death, for instance, is only an evil when Dasein decides that it
> is and is not an authentic self-giving of the entity in one of its
> aspects (or is not an authentic self-giving of the Seinkoennen in
> question in the case of death).
Right: I see what you're saying. I definitely think that Dasein is more
thrown than that, and I don't mean to give it the characterization that it
"sets out and chooses" what it will see through its "evil lights", etc.
But, on the other hand, I will suggest that *there are* "evil lights", and
various other *moods* and intentions. And these moods and intentions have
their ways and variability in terms of intention and choice. My tendency
is to say that *violence* does this constituting, not Dasein, *a la* a
formulation such as "violence violences", though I only use this to maybe
my point here. Violence is a kind of "worlding", I think.
You seem to take 'otherness' as a
> primary, neutral phenomenon (or negative super-phenomenon) onto
> which evil or some other characteristic is grafted artificially like
> an accident in a substance. Which would seem like a perfect point
> of entry for a Hegelian critique: x, the other, is taken as y, evil,
> but the taking of x as an x implies the previous givenness of s
> a super-x which was then taken as x, and so on ad infinitum...
Right: I think this is a very good criticism you are making, though that's
not how I mean otherness. Otherness is indeed a neutrality (or what I'm
sometimes given to call a "neutral good"). And, no, it isn't a substance
onto which a color like "evil" or "nifty diversity" is grafted on. I don't
know the Hegel stuff, sorry to say. The primary "ground" as I see it is
in-between the actual and the pure neutral, of which the "actual" as such
is in fact a species, maybe. This between is the space of
essential-existence, which may be more "insistent" than eksistent. The
*journey* to the "other as other" has a ground, a history. The
*identification * of the other as other, and seeing the *varieties* of
otherness, of which "the evil" is a species, is a matter of thought's
quest and, in this case, possibly the intervention in violence. It should
be noted that I don't mean to associate the evil and otherness as such;
rather, the identification of otherness as such has tended to arise in the
contestation with totality and particular forms of violence. Here there is
no particular, actual violence to speak of, though we can use the Iraq
example or many others: it is of the thinking of violence to think in
this way, grasping an otherness beyond the specific other. We can
*recongize ranges* without positing a "grafting" or a "pure superform".
And we can extend, arrest, divert, or otherwise change our constitution of
things, *to some extent and in various ways*, *according to the
recognition of the range of possibilities* (e.g., "evil", "different",
"strange", "wonderful", "goofy", "mysterious") in the destinal or
fated/thrown self-grasping of otherness-as-such in nonviolence, *if it
takes place*. We can then, of course, violently submit that Dasein, a
Dasein, a group of people, a national Dasein, etc., has simply "grafted"
"evil" out of a range of possibilities it has surveyed. Or we can
undertake, if we see a need and so desire, to work to enable such a
"surveying of the range" where violence takes place. Or we can work at a
certain "fundamental" level to clarify how it is specifically *of
nonviolence* to *open opening itself*, etc. In this "opnening of opening",
alternativity becomes an issue for itself. I'm not putting this very
well, I think.
>
> Please correct me if this is a misreading,
> Christopher Doss
>
>
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>
Regards,
Tom B.
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"I'll take my coffee without sugar produced in slave labor camps, third
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