DIE NICHT-SEINFRAGE.
To address the question of the meaning of "Being" has an inquisitorial
prerequisite, and that is the need to first address the meaning of "meaning" in
relation to the meaning of "Being."
The "meaning of Being," just like: "the meaning of life," or "the meaning of
God," is an ontotheologically and idolatrously loaded question, which in
itself can be perceived not as a "question" at all - but as a doctrinal
resolution, or at least an ontotheological "position-statement."
The question of the meaning of "Being" has two distinct semantic inferences.
The use of the word "meaning" in this connection suggests that firstly there
is something called "Being," which has: "meaning," and secondly that "Being"
is in itself meaningful, from which contentious connotations of the much
sought after "purpose" so beloved of the transcendentalist and the religious can
be extrapolated. A consideration of the possibility that "Being" has
neither "meaning" nor "purpose" does not form any part Heidegger's so-called
inquiry into the "question of Being" at all. In fact Heidegger's "questioning" is
not a "questioning at all - although he makes a good fist of convincing us
it is, by the constant drip-drip employment of the words: "questioning" and
"examining."
The reality is that Being and Time is not a questioning book - it is a
repetitious transcendentalist assertion - a pontificating ingemination and
re-statement of a two thousand-year old given, which was neither forgotten nor
ignored.
The legitimate questionability of "the question of nature of beings" - as
the various ways in which "that which exists" exists is beyond question, and I
would be the last one to quibble with such worthwhile enquiries. To question
the nature of the way a being or beings exist/exists is to question the
nature, state or existential condition of the myriad individuate entities of which
mankind is aware and which are capable of being questioned and examined by a
questioning humanity.
What is not capable of being questioned is the non-question of the "Being"
of beings, for whilst beings undoubtedly exist, the "Being" of beings does not
- it is Die Nichtseinfrage, or mother of all non-being questions. All that
can be addressed is the notion that some human beings entertain the bizarre
notion that they and everybody and everything else "has" a "Being" as well as
being beings. This last mentioned problem is not an ontological question at all
- it is a lingual-psychological question. Heidegger's real question should
have been:
"Why is it that in certain people as representational products of their
childhood conditioning and absorption, such chimeras as the "ontological
difference," becomes an attachment or weird "fond regard" to a notion of a
transcendental or supplementary "existence of existence?" Or put another way, why does
the notion of "Being" become a fixation, a kind of hypnosis, (which they
mistakenly perceive as a latterly cognised intellectual evaluation,) which
narrows down consciousness to a stage when this belief or faith is manifested as
an interiorised part of the sublingual psychological system. How come that in
adulthood they gradually morph into the willing willers willing to will the
will to believe in there own "Being?" Was Heidegger's a manifestation of a
commitment to "Being" - a commitment to himself - a love affair - with
himself? Being a physical runt with heart problems, did it help drag him out of his
feelings of inferiority and angst by the seat of lederhosen? What made the
Cathlic ingrate Heidegger such a social inadequate? What made him get
everybody's back up? What caused the grumbling and disgust, which led to his
dismissal as Nazi Rector of Freiburg? Why was he so lacking in empathy - so
obsessed with Hitler? Why so obsessed with himself? What caused his desire to
become the leader in what amounted to a mutual metaphysical masturbation society?
The noetic use of linguistic communication necessitates that the person
deals with the meaning of words as understood and cognised by the majority of the
language group that comprises the society in which such utterances are made
regarding the experiences to which they refer and not to the words
themselves. Nevertheless, owing to the differences in circumstances of their early
youth and the limits of the range of experience and intellectual capability,
various people have, different sets of facts, and arrange them differently, and
this gives rise to numerous different systems of ontological cognition and
contexts with respect to which words will have different meanings. Thus though
the same word "being/"Being"" is used, it is construed differently from
person to person, and the same meaning may be the result of the use of a
dissimilar words such as "existing" or "existence" or "presence." Certain people are
intellectually compromised or damaged antecedently through no fault of their
own. Like all such social problems much of the problem has its origin in the
home as much as the peer groups and educational experience. What can be done
to help the mentally walking wounded transcendentalists in our western
society? Will drugs be developed to help them? Can government funding and the
taxpayer be expected to provide the pecuniary resource? Are our mental
institutions large enough to cope with the influx of recidivist transcendentalists
and religious maniacs? What about the young and recently infected? Should the
"carriers" in our university philosophy departments be removed and be placed
in philosophical quarantine?
Are we to have transcendentalist Leper Colonies - Madagascar has been
mentioned? Would obligatory mental health warnings on the flyleaves of what are
considered "dangerous philosophical materials" be any help? Should the
possession of literature such as Being and Time and Being and Nothingness result in
an automatic conviction? Should such material be classified as philosophical
pornography? Should the newly infected be given priority and fast-track
service to psychotherapy and withdrawal counselling? If the west is to survive,
the recent outbreak of irrationalism, both in the centres of political
power, and in the hinterlands of the western "developed" countries at large should
be given the same priority as AIDS, and hospitalisation should be immediate,
perfunctory and mandatory. Where is the money coming from? As Lenin said:
"What is to be done?"
The legitimate ontological question - the question of the nature of the
physical modalities of "that which is physical" is a question and an activity
which man has successfully laboured to understand since his early hominid
period. It is the subject that continues to engage scientists in their
interrogations of entitic behaviour in modern times. The unravelling of DNA and the
publication of the book of the human genome are outstanding examples of the
successful outcomes of man's curiosity and inventiveness.
Set against this awe-inspiring success story in man's questioning of the
nature of beings - Heidegger's questioning of the nature of "Being" appears
risible and non-sensible. Why?
The main reason is that although Heidegger couches his questioning as an
enquiry or an interrogation of the nature of "Being," it is in fact not an
enquiry or a questioning at all - but rather a posturing and a positing. Even
more seriously it is an asseveration that there is a "Being" of beings to be
questioned in the first place. Out the outset of his "questioning of "Being" in
the opening chapter of "Sein und Zeit," he simply informs us that
"It is said that "Being is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As
such it resists attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus
indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it and also already
understands what they mean by it. Thus made ancient philosophising uneasy and
kept it so by virtue of its obscurity has become obvious, clear as day; and
that whoever pursues it is accused of an error of method. At the beginning of
this inquiry the prejudices that implant and nurture ever anew the
superfluousness of a questioning ~ cannot be discussed in detail. They are rooted in
ancient ontology itself. That ontology in turn can only be interpreted adequately
under the guidance of the question of Being, which has been clarified and
answered beforehand. One must proceed with regard to the soil from which the
fundamental ontological concepts grew with reference to the suitable
demonstration of the categories their completeness. We therefore wish to discuss these
prejudices only to the extent that the necessity of a recovery" of the
question of the meaning of Being becomes clear."
What is clear in the above passage from Heidegger's introduction of the
concept of "Being" is that although he bemoans the fact that in the common mind
there is considered to be a superfluousness or lack of any need for a
questioning of the "nature of "Being, " the prejudices that implant and nurture ever
anew the superfluousness of a questioning - cannot be discussed in detail. We
must stop at this point and ask ourselves: "Why not? Why not embark in a
more serious way at the outset of his investigation and question the public
attitude towards the notion of "Being." Why not a few pages, why not even a few
paragraphs, why not even a few sentences, why not even a few words on the
question of WHY humanity is supposed to have forgotten or neglected the
"question of "Being," and where is the evidence that this is so? Why not ask
ourselves out loud: "Why has "Being" been forgotten? Why has "Being" been
neglected?" Is it true what Heidegger is saying - or is it an outright lie? According
to all reports veracity was not one of his finer points, so an examination of
his claims is certainly in order as far as the Geoffrey Archer of Philosophy
is concerned. [Reference to Lord Archer, convicted and imprisoned liar, well
known to the British public and bosom friend of Margaret Thatcher the
Milk-Snatcher.)
Why does the commonality consider any questioning of "Being" to be
superfluous? Has it been forgotten because people didn't consider it to be worth
remembering? Was the concept neglected because it wasn't there to be attended to
in the first place? Why was it that humanity had to wait over two thousand
years for the philosophical messiah Heidegger to be born, son of a humble
sexton and sometime carpenter in Messkirch [the Bethlehem of the Black Forrest) to
come along and disinter the Dead Sea scrolls of "Being" from the desert of
neglect?
He makes it quite clear that for him ontology in turn can only be
interpreted adequately under the guidance of the question of Being, which has been
clarified and answered beforehand. What he is in fact doing at the outset of his
"inquiry," is to make it clear that this book: Being and Time, is not to be
an investigation of the REALITY or UNREALITY of "Being" for if he thought
that the question of "Being" WASN'T real - he wouldn't have bothered writing the
book in the first place. This is a man with an agenda - this is no detached
academic.
Nor are we to expect that this work of his is to be an enquiry into whether
in fact the ontological reality of "Being" is acceptable as a meaningful or
valid subject of academic scrutiny.
For him it is enough that the people have long believed that there is a
djinn who lives in the bottle.
Though for years they have ignored the bottle and forgotten about the djinn,
Heidegger insists on investigating the nature of the djinn and not the
question of whether there is really a djinn that exists who actually is corked up
in the bottle.
No, it is made plain at the very commencement that the book is to be but a
criticism of the fact that "the "nature of Being" hasn't been scrutinised with
enough rigour since the times of the pre-Socratics, and though for him it
forms the most important ground upon which the whole of ontology is based, it
has been woefully neglected and forgotten. There is in effect no "Seins-Frage"
at all - the questioning of Sein is passed over in silence. There is no
raising or facing up to the main criticisms of the interpretation of the Ancient
Greek word "Ousia" fore example, no comments upon the differences of opinion
between the transcendentalist Hellenists and the non-religious camp who
stoutly maintain that there is no convincing textual evidence that Ousia meant
anything more than "property." He is silent about the fact that the Greeks had
no word for "existence" and were forced to Einai in various semantic
contortions in order to express various existential meanings. No. He simply
accepts that "Being" is a cognitive reality and as such provides a legitimate
subject of enquiry.
If we look in vain for any challenging of the Aristotelian notion of
"substance." No recognition of the fact that non-being is a physical and
metaphysical impossibility. If non-being were possible there would be non-being
[nothingness] and there is not. The actuality of the things that are things is
everywhere present; one has only to look around them, If this existential
imperative of nature were not true there would be non-things and there are not, to
entertain notions of non-objects and nothingness is to balance on the lip of
madness - that thin line of the grey matter that divides the adventurously
imaginative and intuitive from the out and out loony.
The primitive crudity of the non-question "Why is there something rather
than nothing?" becomes apparent if one considers that there is in nature an
existential imperative that something must exist, for the simple reason that it
is impossible for something not to exist, or not "not exist."
How can this existential imperative be evidenced with hard physical
validation? Look around you. Knock your head against the wall if you require further
substantiation.
If there was no such existential imperative there would be nothing physical,
and the fact that there is nothing which is not physical is the second piece
of convincing evidence and veridical proof.
Let those who proclaim otherwise produce the nothingness they claim exists
or does not exist and put their ontological money where their mouth is. The
ball is very much in the court of Heidegger and his thurifers, for when
confronted, they inevitably respond that the "meaning of "Being" does not so much
refer to the objects or entities which exist but to the "Being" of these
beings. In other words they have convinced themselves [or been convinced in their
infancy by others] that being [existence] has a "Being" or that "existence"
has an "Existence." Yes, OK, one immediately thinks of an ontology on the
same level as Carrol's "Walrus and the Carpenter," but one has to treat such a
phenomenon of faith seriously, for there are thousands of such people who
believe these things and they have infested our universities and institutions of
higher learning - to ignore them is a big mistake which could lead to the
complete collapse of the west. In an inter-transcendentalist world war - the
weaker less committed transcendentalism will be overwhelmed. There is only
two ways for the west to go - to initiate a stronger, more ruthless, more
committed form of transcendentalism to oppose the stronger eastern version, or to
dispense with transcendentalism completely and release the forces of a mighty
secular counterforce of pragmatic rationalism to defend a newly constituted
and invigorated western society.
In other words the so-called "Die Seinsfrage " isn't a "frage" at all - it
is an ontological position-statement combined with a didactic exhortation to
adopt a political authenticity which is in accord with the political appetites
and actions of the ontologist himself.
Heidegger's Nichtseinfrage has as an existing and essential constituent or
characteristic, the presupposition of an ontological duality, or "difference"
as he insists on calling it. Therefore it follows that any questioning of the
unquestionable proceeds from an answer rather than a question. Heidegger
is very skilled in posing his answer in the form of a question and many people
are completely unaware of this feature of his rhetoric.
The "question of "Being" should begin with a questioning of whether or not
"Being" has a reality which can be questioned at all. In order of ontological
importance, the question of the "Being" of being is a secondary and inferior
line of interrogation, for the ongoing experience of beings whilst they are
present in the world being the beings they are can be safely left in the
hands of sociologists, anthropologists, physiologists, geographers and all the
other representatives of the human sciences and earth sciences, without
encroaching on the important schedules and activities of ontologists such as
Heidegger. After the mess he made of the Rectorship, I doubt whether he should have
been entrusted with anything, other than perhaps the greasing of the pivots
and the bell-strikers in the campanile in the tower of St Martin's church in
Messkirch, though that would probably have ended up be the campanologists
being crushed to death by the tumbling of bells - but that is another matter.
Yes, it would be far better for all concerned if ontologists of Heidegger's
ilk restricted themselves to a consideration of semantic antiquities such as
"essences" and "properties" and other such historical curiosities of language
and primitive belief, rather than proclaiming that the dictates of "Being"
had anointed the German race as the natural leaders of humankind, and that
certain other races were inferior, that is of course when they were not
preoccupied with their octopus efforts at world-wide economic domination.
Never at a loss to point out the obvious, Heidegger is however surprisingly
correct when notices that the conception of a metaphysical ontological duality
has been the aim of all metaphysical thinking since ancient times. Of
course they only called it a "soul" or a "spirit"- or the doctrine that reality
consists of two basic opposing elements, often taken to be mind and matter (or
mind and body), or good and evil, so presumably that disqualifies them from
full enlistment in the Being Brigade?
Where he is wrong of course is in his claim that the question of "Being" was
neglected or forgotten.
The truth of the matter is that as far as the metaphysical tradition and
religion is concerned there has never been any question about the notion, and
those that did think it questionable often ended up being burnt alive for their
pains. "Being" has ALWAYS been thought of as being an unquestionable given
- an authentic given which Heidegger perpetuates in its indubitability. It
is precisely the man Heidegger who poses as the interrogator who conceals it
from interrogation, it is Heidegger who preserves its suppression as a
question and proclaims its indisputability as a notion, and who finally ensures the
continuance of its neglect as a contestable ontological "problem."
End Part One.
Regards,
Jud
Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
E-mail Discussion List:
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--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
To address the question of the meaning of "Being" has an inquisitorial
prerequisite, and that is the need to first address the meaning of "meaning" in
relation to the meaning of "Being."
The "meaning of Being," just like: "the meaning of life," or "the meaning of
God," is an ontotheologically and idolatrously loaded question, which in
itself can be perceived not as a "question" at all - but as a doctrinal
resolution, or at least an ontotheological "position-statement."
The question of the meaning of "Being" has two distinct semantic inferences.
The use of the word "meaning" in this connection suggests that firstly there
is something called "Being," which has: "meaning," and secondly that "Being"
is in itself meaningful, from which contentious connotations of the much
sought after "purpose" so beloved of the transcendentalist and the religious can
be extrapolated. A consideration of the possibility that "Being" has
neither "meaning" nor "purpose" does not form any part Heidegger's so-called
inquiry into the "question of Being" at all. In fact Heidegger's "questioning" is
not a "questioning at all - although he makes a good fist of convincing us
it is, by the constant drip-drip employment of the words: "questioning" and
"examining."
The reality is that Being and Time is not a questioning book - it is a
repetitious transcendentalist assertion - a pontificating ingemination and
re-statement of a two thousand-year old given, which was neither forgotten nor
ignored.
The legitimate questionability of "the question of nature of beings" - as
the various ways in which "that which exists" exists is beyond question, and I
would be the last one to quibble with such worthwhile enquiries. To question
the nature of the way a being or beings exist/exists is to question the
nature, state or existential condition of the myriad individuate entities of which
mankind is aware and which are capable of being questioned and examined by a
questioning humanity.
What is not capable of being questioned is the non-question of the "Being"
of beings, for whilst beings undoubtedly exist, the "Being" of beings does not
- it is Die Nichtseinfrage, or mother of all non-being questions. All that
can be addressed is the notion that some human beings entertain the bizarre
notion that they and everybody and everything else "has" a "Being" as well as
being beings. This last mentioned problem is not an ontological question at all
- it is a lingual-psychological question. Heidegger's real question should
have been:
"Why is it that in certain people as representational products of their
childhood conditioning and absorption, such chimeras as the "ontological
difference," becomes an attachment or weird "fond regard" to a notion of a
transcendental or supplementary "existence of existence?" Or put another way, why does
the notion of "Being" become a fixation, a kind of hypnosis, (which they
mistakenly perceive as a latterly cognised intellectual evaluation,) which
narrows down consciousness to a stage when this belief or faith is manifested as
an interiorised part of the sublingual psychological system. How come that in
adulthood they gradually morph into the willing willers willing to will the
will to believe in there own "Being?" Was Heidegger's a manifestation of a
commitment to "Being" - a commitment to himself - a love affair - with
himself? Being a physical runt with heart problems, did it help drag him out of his
feelings of inferiority and angst by the seat of lederhosen? What made the
Cathlic ingrate Heidegger such a social inadequate? What made him get
everybody's back up? What caused the grumbling and disgust, which led to his
dismissal as Nazi Rector of Freiburg? Why was he so lacking in empathy - so
obsessed with Hitler? Why so obsessed with himself? What caused his desire to
become the leader in what amounted to a mutual metaphysical masturbation society?
The noetic use of linguistic communication necessitates that the person
deals with the meaning of words as understood and cognised by the majority of the
language group that comprises the society in which such utterances are made
regarding the experiences to which they refer and not to the words
themselves. Nevertheless, owing to the differences in circumstances of their early
youth and the limits of the range of experience and intellectual capability,
various people have, different sets of facts, and arrange them differently, and
this gives rise to numerous different systems of ontological cognition and
contexts with respect to which words will have different meanings. Thus though
the same word "being/"Being"" is used, it is construed differently from
person to person, and the same meaning may be the result of the use of a
dissimilar words such as "existing" or "existence" or "presence." Certain people are
intellectually compromised or damaged antecedently through no fault of their
own. Like all such social problems much of the problem has its origin in the
home as much as the peer groups and educational experience. What can be done
to help the mentally walking wounded transcendentalists in our western
society? Will drugs be developed to help them? Can government funding and the
taxpayer be expected to provide the pecuniary resource? Are our mental
institutions large enough to cope with the influx of recidivist transcendentalists
and religious maniacs? What about the young and recently infected? Should the
"carriers" in our university philosophy departments be removed and be placed
in philosophical quarantine?
Are we to have transcendentalist Leper Colonies - Madagascar has been
mentioned? Would obligatory mental health warnings on the flyleaves of what are
considered "dangerous philosophical materials" be any help? Should the
possession of literature such as Being and Time and Being and Nothingness result in
an automatic conviction? Should such material be classified as philosophical
pornography? Should the newly infected be given priority and fast-track
service to psychotherapy and withdrawal counselling? If the west is to survive,
the recent outbreak of irrationalism, both in the centres of political
power, and in the hinterlands of the western "developed" countries at large should
be given the same priority as AIDS, and hospitalisation should be immediate,
perfunctory and mandatory. Where is the money coming from? As Lenin said:
"What is to be done?"
The legitimate ontological question - the question of the nature of the
physical modalities of "that which is physical" is a question and an activity
which man has successfully laboured to understand since his early hominid
period. It is the subject that continues to engage scientists in their
interrogations of entitic behaviour in modern times. The unravelling of DNA and the
publication of the book of the human genome are outstanding examples of the
successful outcomes of man's curiosity and inventiveness.
Set against this awe-inspiring success story in man's questioning of the
nature of beings - Heidegger's questioning of the nature of "Being" appears
risible and non-sensible. Why?
The main reason is that although Heidegger couches his questioning as an
enquiry or an interrogation of the nature of "Being," it is in fact not an
enquiry or a questioning at all - but rather a posturing and a positing. Even
more seriously it is an asseveration that there is a "Being" of beings to be
questioned in the first place. Out the outset of his "questioning of "Being" in
the opening chapter of "Sein und Zeit," he simply informs us that
"It is said that "Being is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As
such it resists attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus
indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it and also already
understands what they mean by it. Thus made ancient philosophising uneasy and
kept it so by virtue of its obscurity has become obvious, clear as day; and
that whoever pursues it is accused of an error of method. At the beginning of
this inquiry the prejudices that implant and nurture ever anew the
superfluousness of a questioning ~ cannot be discussed in detail. They are rooted in
ancient ontology itself. That ontology in turn can only be interpreted adequately
under the guidance of the question of Being, which has been clarified and
answered beforehand. One must proceed with regard to the soil from which the
fundamental ontological concepts grew with reference to the suitable
demonstration of the categories their completeness. We therefore wish to discuss these
prejudices only to the extent that the necessity of a recovery" of the
question of the meaning of Being becomes clear."
What is clear in the above passage from Heidegger's introduction of the
concept of "Being" is that although he bemoans the fact that in the common mind
there is considered to be a superfluousness or lack of any need for a
questioning of the "nature of "Being, " the prejudices that implant and nurture ever
anew the superfluousness of a questioning - cannot be discussed in detail. We
must stop at this point and ask ourselves: "Why not? Why not embark in a
more serious way at the outset of his investigation and question the public
attitude towards the notion of "Being." Why not a few pages, why not even a few
paragraphs, why not even a few sentences, why not even a few words on the
question of WHY humanity is supposed to have forgotten or neglected the
"question of "Being," and where is the evidence that this is so? Why not ask
ourselves out loud: "Why has "Being" been forgotten? Why has "Being" been
neglected?" Is it true what Heidegger is saying - or is it an outright lie? According
to all reports veracity was not one of his finer points, so an examination of
his claims is certainly in order as far as the Geoffrey Archer of Philosophy
is concerned. [Reference to Lord Archer, convicted and imprisoned liar, well
known to the British public and bosom friend of Margaret Thatcher the
Milk-Snatcher.)
Why does the commonality consider any questioning of "Being" to be
superfluous? Has it been forgotten because people didn't consider it to be worth
remembering? Was the concept neglected because it wasn't there to be attended to
in the first place? Why was it that humanity had to wait over two thousand
years for the philosophical messiah Heidegger to be born, son of a humble
sexton and sometime carpenter in Messkirch [the Bethlehem of the Black Forrest) to
come along and disinter the Dead Sea scrolls of "Being" from the desert of
neglect?
He makes it quite clear that for him ontology in turn can only be
interpreted adequately under the guidance of the question of Being, which has been
clarified and answered beforehand. What he is in fact doing at the outset of his
"inquiry," is to make it clear that this book: Being and Time, is not to be
an investigation of the REALITY or UNREALITY of "Being" for if he thought
that the question of "Being" WASN'T real - he wouldn't have bothered writing the
book in the first place. This is a man with an agenda - this is no detached
academic.
Nor are we to expect that this work of his is to be an enquiry into whether
in fact the ontological reality of "Being" is acceptable as a meaningful or
valid subject of academic scrutiny.
For him it is enough that the people have long believed that there is a
djinn who lives in the bottle.
Though for years they have ignored the bottle and forgotten about the djinn,
Heidegger insists on investigating the nature of the djinn and not the
question of whether there is really a djinn that exists who actually is corked up
in the bottle.
No, it is made plain at the very commencement that the book is to be but a
criticism of the fact that "the "nature of Being" hasn't been scrutinised with
enough rigour since the times of the pre-Socratics, and though for him it
forms the most important ground upon which the whole of ontology is based, it
has been woefully neglected and forgotten. There is in effect no "Seins-Frage"
at all - the questioning of Sein is passed over in silence. There is no
raising or facing up to the main criticisms of the interpretation of the Ancient
Greek word "Ousia" fore example, no comments upon the differences of opinion
between the transcendentalist Hellenists and the non-religious camp who
stoutly maintain that there is no convincing textual evidence that Ousia meant
anything more than "property." He is silent about the fact that the Greeks had
no word for "existence" and were forced to Einai in various semantic
contortions in order to express various existential meanings. No. He simply
accepts that "Being" is a cognitive reality and as such provides a legitimate
subject of enquiry.
If we look in vain for any challenging of the Aristotelian notion of
"substance." No recognition of the fact that non-being is a physical and
metaphysical impossibility. If non-being were possible there would be non-being
[nothingness] and there is not. The actuality of the things that are things is
everywhere present; one has only to look around them, If this existential
imperative of nature were not true there would be non-things and there are not, to
entertain notions of non-objects and nothingness is to balance on the lip of
madness - that thin line of the grey matter that divides the adventurously
imaginative and intuitive from the out and out loony.
The primitive crudity of the non-question "Why is there something rather
than nothing?" becomes apparent if one considers that there is in nature an
existential imperative that something must exist, for the simple reason that it
is impossible for something not to exist, or not "not exist."
How can this existential imperative be evidenced with hard physical
validation? Look around you. Knock your head against the wall if you require further
substantiation.
If there was no such existential imperative there would be nothing physical,
and the fact that there is nothing which is not physical is the second piece
of convincing evidence and veridical proof.
Let those who proclaim otherwise produce the nothingness they claim exists
or does not exist and put their ontological money where their mouth is. The
ball is very much in the court of Heidegger and his thurifers, for when
confronted, they inevitably respond that the "meaning of "Being" does not so much
refer to the objects or entities which exist but to the "Being" of these
beings. In other words they have convinced themselves [or been convinced in their
infancy by others] that being [existence] has a "Being" or that "existence"
has an "Existence." Yes, OK, one immediately thinks of an ontology on the
same level as Carrol's "Walrus and the Carpenter," but one has to treat such a
phenomenon of faith seriously, for there are thousands of such people who
believe these things and they have infested our universities and institutions of
higher learning - to ignore them is a big mistake which could lead to the
complete collapse of the west. In an inter-transcendentalist world war - the
weaker less committed transcendentalism will be overwhelmed. There is only
two ways for the west to go - to initiate a stronger, more ruthless, more
committed form of transcendentalism to oppose the stronger eastern version, or to
dispense with transcendentalism completely and release the forces of a mighty
secular counterforce of pragmatic rationalism to defend a newly constituted
and invigorated western society.
In other words the so-called "Die Seinsfrage " isn't a "frage" at all - it
is an ontological position-statement combined with a didactic exhortation to
adopt a political authenticity which is in accord with the political appetites
and actions of the ontologist himself.
Heidegger's Nichtseinfrage has as an existing and essential constituent or
characteristic, the presupposition of an ontological duality, or "difference"
as he insists on calling it. Therefore it follows that any questioning of the
unquestionable proceeds from an answer rather than a question. Heidegger
is very skilled in posing his answer in the form of a question and many people
are completely unaware of this feature of his rhetoric.
The "question of "Being" should begin with a questioning of whether or not
"Being" has a reality which can be questioned at all. In order of ontological
importance, the question of the "Being" of being is a secondary and inferior
line of interrogation, for the ongoing experience of beings whilst they are
present in the world being the beings they are can be safely left in the
hands of sociologists, anthropologists, physiologists, geographers and all the
other representatives of the human sciences and earth sciences, without
encroaching on the important schedules and activities of ontologists such as
Heidegger. After the mess he made of the Rectorship, I doubt whether he should have
been entrusted with anything, other than perhaps the greasing of the pivots
and the bell-strikers in the campanile in the tower of St Martin's church in
Messkirch, though that would probably have ended up be the campanologists
being crushed to death by the tumbling of bells - but that is another matter.
Yes, it would be far better for all concerned if ontologists of Heidegger's
ilk restricted themselves to a consideration of semantic antiquities such as
"essences" and "properties" and other such historical curiosities of language
and primitive belief, rather than proclaiming that the dictates of "Being"
had anointed the German race as the natural leaders of humankind, and that
certain other races were inferior, that is of course when they were not
preoccupied with their octopus efforts at world-wide economic domination.
Never at a loss to point out the obvious, Heidegger is however surprisingly
correct when notices that the conception of a metaphysical ontological duality
has been the aim of all metaphysical thinking since ancient times. Of
course they only called it a "soul" or a "spirit"- or the doctrine that reality
consists of two basic opposing elements, often taken to be mind and matter (or
mind and body), or good and evil, so presumably that disqualifies them from
full enlistment in the Being Brigade?
Where he is wrong of course is in his claim that the question of "Being" was
neglected or forgotten.
The truth of the matter is that as far as the metaphysical tradition and
religion is concerned there has never been any question about the notion, and
those that did think it questionable often ended up being burnt alive for their
pains. "Being" has ALWAYS been thought of as being an unquestionable given
- an authentic given which Heidegger perpetuates in its indubitability. It
is precisely the man Heidegger who poses as the interrogator who conceals it
from interrogation, it is Heidegger who preserves its suppression as a
question and proclaims its indisputability as a notion, and who finally ensures the
continuance of its neglect as a contestable ontological "problem."
End Part One.
Regards,
Jud
Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
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