Allen and Rene questioning recently:
>Might we say that subjectivities are "essentially" interchangeable?
I think so. But the problem remains: wherein and where-by are all
subjectivities what they are?
Extraordinary question, Rene (but also about the most ordinary of occurrences).
To paraphrase only slightly, thereby perhaps making the question a bit less
extraordinary,
Wherein and where-by are all subjectivities given as what they are?
Phrased this way the "wherein" and "where-by" more obviously come to be
located in language, or speech, to be more exact. When one speaks, the central
ambiguity of subjectivity, of being a subject, is introduced in and
through one's way of saying what one says. One cannot speak without saying
what one has to say this way or that.
Once spoken, what is usually considered the subjectivity of the
subject, is now explicit, is given material, tangible form. The cat
is out of the bag!
Enter "rhetoric." Through the rhetorical possibilities available to
say one's saying this way or that
one attempts to hide one's "subjectivity" by saying one's saying as
if it were not just one's
way of saying, but the saying of what is. This move requires
conventions of proof, method.
. .SCIENCE. Philosophy, Heidegger claims, is unique amongst the
human practices "invented" to
deal with this problem of subjectivity, in that it proves nothing,
and is therefore useless to any
endeavor outside of itself because it says what it says with the full
recognition that its saying is no
more than a basic movement of factical life.
But as as the basic movement of factical life that it is, the saying
of philosophy insists on
continually throwing its own subjectivity into question, by way of
moving towards its
essential interchangeability with all other subjectivities. This
questioning guarentees
incompleteness because of the impossibility of reaching this
interchangability in and through
one's saying, even though it( the interchangeability of
subjectivities) is "essential" to
the thinking/existential analytic of Dasein.
I think I managed to keep the
ambiguity essential, but whether I did or not ...
Allen,
The pre-BT lectures, notably the earliest, sometimes seem to be
closer to the late Heidegger, than to the BT period. H seemed to
have wanted to leave them, or at least the very early, out of the
Gesamtausgabe, but Gadamer has been their defender against the author
himself.
Hi Rene,
Gadamer loved the Heidegger of the earlier lectures for being a teacher, his teacher.
I understand this way of philosophizing as the teacher placing his own facticity in question,
and giving his students a way to join him in this questioning. He (Heidegger) is still concerned to excite,
to arouse and most importantly to teach(which right now I'm interested in looking into: What did it mean to teach philosophy, for the early heidegger?) In B and T and for quite a time thereafter, I sense
a presumptive professorial "standing over" the object of study, which no longer directly includes himself and his students in the discourse.
It's some time ago now since i looked into them, but what i
remember is someone resolutely determined to get out of the subjectivity
he knows himself in.* (Gadamer admitted that at first he didn't understand)
Specifically i remember the ruinancy (Verfallenheit), which is an
overall, total character of the factical situation, and that
a possible countermove should not be spoiled by opposing something
positive over (against) it (he already had dissected the fraud of
theological solutions, spoke later of the total bankruptcy of the
institution he had found, ..had lost himself in)
A countermove against overall ruinancy cannot but come FROM WITHIN
ruinancy itself, never from the outside. (here would be the ambiguous)
Oudemans has treated this very well in his article on formal indication.
Formal indication, of course, is the possible way out of subjectivity.
Nicely put Rene. I agree, the formal indication comes from within by giving form to
the expressedness (Ausdrueklichkeit) of the very phenomenon of inwardness, the "fact" that
in order to be interpreted it must "take on" explicit form. This form, as you suggest, serves as an indication (Anzeige) of the total character of the factical situation, above and beyond ( or, perhaps, below'and beneath) any particular "content" it holds in an individual dasein. To put it somewhat
differently, the only way "out of" subjectivity is further into it. Subjectivity itself holds the
key which is made accessable by the capacity of subjectivity to put itself in question by means of
the careful-est method of phenomenology, i.e. the formal indication.
* The foreword in GA 63, Hermeneutics of facticity, not spoken during lecture,
leaves no doubt over the corruption, he sees in everything, notably the
university. The Nietzschean ending: Let them die of themselves, those who
only care for - pseudos. The lie-theme is aparently present from the very beginning,
and already casting its shadow on factical life.
But like the shadows in the cave, the university setting can, in a sense, "point the way"
towards the light, being the un-lighting proper to it. There's a place later on, I can't rememer
where, where Heidegger makes a case for the modern university being the proper place for
the development of philosophical discourse.
And if that is subjectity - not only
encompassing the modern man-subject, but also medieval subject/substance
and Greek hypokeimenon, then we are dealing with Being and, if we leave
it out as a subjectivity in your sense, we would have missed everything.
Being is now only accessible as Gestell, that's what i think Heidegger
means, when, in the letter to the student, he writes that most only want
the thinging things and gods, but don't want to hear about Gestell.
Gestell, the Wesen of technique, is nothing technical. It is wherein
all (subjective) stellen, positioning, is gathered, and which does not
want to show itself. In order to lift (lichten) this hiding - die
Lichtung des Sichverbergens - one must see the abyss of all ground,
sub-ject. See that Being IS ground AND abyss. The ambiguity essential.
but did i understand you correctly?
Of course I'm not sure. But now I get to ask, whether my way of going about
your question understands you correctly. I think I managed to keep the
ambiguity essential, but whether I did or didn't, there I must leave it, while
I go to lunch.
We seem to be on different levels. Is this "interchangeability of subjectivities"
something (early) Heideggerian or Scultean?
Perhaps because of the very teacherly openings the early texts provide, I might very
well "over-read" some of what he says. The "interchangeability of subjectivities" I
read out of his notion that the formal indication "indicates" similarly across differences
in individual content:
"The phenomena are viewed on the basis of the bearing of the formally indicating sense. But even though it guides the phenomenological deliberation, contentwise, it has nothing to say." (from The Phenomenology of Religious Life)
So the ways ( the "form," the "how") in and through which dasein's subjectivity permits itself to be discovered/expressed/interpreted makes our respective subjectivities, phenomenologically speaking (by means of the formal indication), "interchangeable."
In direct answer to your question, that would seem to locate the idea
in the early Heidegger as over-read by Scult.
I hope that brings us back to at least nearer to the same level.
Best regards,
Allen
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