All or Nothing at All - Part Two


Part Two

Jan:
Anyway Wittgenstein's whole point is that words do not in any sense uniquely
refer to things or objects in the outside world.

Jud:
It would be a pretty boring Old World if they DID Jan. But in certain cases
words ARE highly defined - in court for example certain legalisms are
perfectly understood by all lawyers and judges. Yes they can do so in ordinary
conversation. If I say that President George Bush has just been elected President
of the United States I am uniquely referring to President George Bush, and
you are uniquely aware of the PRECISE person and the country I am referring to.
When I write *Jan* and *Jud* in this message, * YOU KNOW and the other
members of this list know precisely the individual that we are referring to.
Wittgenstein [like in so many things] was wrong.


Jan:
If we want to understand how languages function, we must appreciate that
language-use is very much intertwined with our concrete and practical ways of
living and that words receive their meaning in a dense web of expression.

Jud: Yes, humankind developed language in that way - we didn't suddenly wake
up one morning and discover we could chatter away to each other nineteen to
the dozen. Words are communicative tools and they need to fit in with our
activities and concerns.

Jan:
Therefore, according to Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word lies in not in a
fixed reference to a given object, but in its use in a certain life-form.
[Lebensform] This was Wittgenstein's long winded, constipated way of talking
about language usage and the way that words can have different meanings and
nuances in different societies and sub-societies, in family groups, works
groups, academic groups etc.

Jud:
Yes you are right. For me Saint Witt was just a time-wasting windbag.
Commonalties dressed up as profundities - an old trick [I am beginning to sound
like Rene. ;-)
*Life-form? * Life-form? * What's he on about? Was Wittgenstein a wino? As
long as the meaning of the word *ringing* is perfectly understood by all the
members of the *Birmingham Pigeon-Fanciers Club, * or we know what the word
*Dasein* means when used by Heideggerians, or the meaning of the term
*smierchnaya* as understood by every member of the *Novo Sibersk Slug Racing*
fraternity, then that is fine. If we don't know, and we wish to find out what they
mean by: *Dasein* or *ringing* or *smierchnaya* we are perfectly free to ask.

Jud
I am not THEY Jan.

Jan:
Okay, but as I said above, if we want have a meaningful discussion about
materialism, nominalism, Marx, Heidegger or whomever, we must have some
sensibility of the history of philosophy and be able to demarcate and defend our own
position as clear as possible vis a vis the traditional context wherein we
are thinking. When you claim you are a materialistic nominalist, you can expect
we are going to question you about the merits of this position, as much as
you are invited to question the 'principles' of Heideggerian philosophy. And
thus philosophical questioning here is an ongoing quest, necessary knowing and
learning from old territories, Apollonian harmonizing of Athens, as well as
conquering and marking out new territories, Dionysian uprising of Persephone.

Jud:
Fair enough Jan. It might be better if I drop the *materialist* label
altogether - for plainly I am NOT a materialist. Apollonian harmonizing? Dionysian
uprising of Persephone? Sounds like one of Tympan's boring
stream-of-consciousness private blogs he inflicts upon the list? That stuff is better off on
one of the many *Greek Myths lists* surely? What have Greek gods and Goddesses
got to do with philosophy?

Hint for Greekists:
Greek-Mythology This list discusses Greek Mythology. All subscribers are
encouraged to ask questions and to provide answers. All aspects of Greek
Mythology are covered, from the Gods to the heroes, from the Titans to all myths,
including Ancient Greek philosophy. Please remember there are minors on this
list as well, so do NOT use vulgar language or include sexually explicit
content.

Jud: [previously]
Why? I have [with certain important ontological reservations] just agreed
with them?

Jan:
Okay, it's good that you have agreed with them, but why then do you need
your extra, i. e. your tautologies? Modern day materialists and nominalists
don't need tautologies in their respective ontologies, my question was simply:
why do you need them? Why do you take refuge to such an ancient and deeply
transcendental way of expression and reasoning if you at the same time keep
rejecting and abhorring those transcendentalisms?

Jud:
I don't particularly NEED tautologies as such, it is just that that
particular tautology or truism is a very apt and neat way of explicating the
ontological actuality of entities, rather than the twisted, flawed (and actually
rather sweet and amusing) H and H notion of *object givenness.*

Because I do not accept the doctrine that all items in the world are
composed of matter.

Jan:
Ahh, but this means that you have changed your mind, because not so long ago
you fiercely defended that there only existed matter/energy in the cosmos
and nothing else. You are slowly becoming a modern phenomenologist I see, glad
to have you on board Jud ;-)

Jud:
Sorry to disappoint you Jan ;-) As you know - I only employ the abstract
words *matter* and *energy* as short cuts. ;-) I prefer the term *that which
exists. * I see this as a progression of coarse materialism towards the more
cogent and refined philosophy of nominalism as the final, ultimate and unique
philosophy of actuality and anti-transcendentalism.

Jan:
Watch out, by claiming that your line of thought will bring the "final,
ultimate and unique philosophy" you're becoming quite close to a very dogmatist
position.

Jud:
Thanks for the warning Jan - what you say is perfectly true.


Jud [earlier]
Heidegger from BT: opening chapters] "Being" is the most "universal"
concept: To on esti malista katholou panton, Iiiud quod primo cadit sub
apprehensione ets cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis aprehendit.
"An understanding of Being is always already contained in everything we
apprehend in beings. But the "universality" of "Being" is not that of genus. "Being"
does not delimit the highest region of beings so far as they are
conceptually articulated according to genus and species: oute to on genos ["Being is not
a genus"]. The "universality" of Being "surpasses." of genus.”

This is no questioning of the universal concept of Being - this is a
statement of unquesting acceptance of it.

Jan:
No Jud, you have completely misunderstood what Heidegger is trying to say
here in the opening chapters of SuZ. Our initial point of debate was your claim
that Heidegger takes Being [Sein] as an "a priori". But he clearly states:"
..., dass in jedem Verhalten und Sein zu Seiendem als Seiendem a priori ein
Raetsel liegt."[SuZ: 4], by which he means to say that the "a priori" in our
understanding and relationship to Being is that it's a "mystery".

Jud:
To claim that something is a *mystery* is to claim that there is such a
thing as *mysteriousness* That sort of thing belongs to the Greek-Mythology list
too. To claim that there is such a thing as a *mystery* or *mysteriousness*
is NOT a questioning - it is the establishment of a position in which *the
mysterious* IS HELD to be something true.. In a sense to say this IS WORSE that
saying that there is such a thing as Being.

Jan:
The above passage you quoted is the first of the three types of traditional
prejudices [Vorurteile] regarding the concept of Being that Heidegger found
in the history of western philosophy; the other two are that this concept is
indefinable [undefinierbar] and self- evident [selbstverstaendlich]. So far as
the tradition has thought in and accepted these prejudices, Heidegger is
very unsatisfied with its answers because the question of the Being of beings
is, according to him, never posed in its proper sense, namely as the question
of the Being of man.

Jud:
I already accept that Heidegger WAS questioning the traditional concepts of
dealing with *Being, * [indefinability, self-evidence etc.] What he is/was
NOT questioning however is the whole concept of *Being* and *Mystery* as an
ontic or ontological actuality, residing anywhere else other than as a
psychological construct of the human mind. He was SUPPOSED [together with Husserl] to
reject *psychologists, and to be working for the END of metaphysics, but
immediately embarks [unquestioningly] on a intellectual journey which would
resurrect pychologisms and metaphysicality and place it back fairly and squarely
in the forefront of western philosophy.

Jan:
Traditional philosophers have always thought that Being could first and most
notably be found in the Being of things (i. e. natural artefacts), but for
Heidegger this is the wrong point of departure. He wants to approach Being
from within so to say, from being-human itself, because human beings are the
most close to Being, for they are the ones that pose and contemplate on this
question in the first place.

Jud:
Precisely Jan - he is not interested in any questioning of *Being* per se,
but only in the ways in which *Being* [according to him] was referred to by
the ancients, must henceforth be referred to and cognised of from that day
forth [the day that BT was published]

Jan:
Questioning itself is a mode-of-Being-a-human-being.

Jud:
We don't need a Heidegger or anybody else to tell us this. Do we? Did he
think that there was one person on earth who didn't already know this?
Everything WE DO - every time WE BREATHE is itself a mode of being a human-being

Jan:
Where tradition thought to find the Being of beings in the essences of
nature [phusis],

Jud:
There is no: *Being of beings* and there is no *nature [phusis], * There is
only that which is natural [which exists] and that which is *phusical* [which
exists.] There is NOTHING that is *unnatural* or *unphusical.*

Jan:
Heidegger hopes to find it in the existence of human beings.

Jud:
*Existence* is a myth [this time a Latin one rather than a Greek one} - only
that which exists exists. *Existence* is only a general [blanket] term for
*all of those entities that exist, * and *all of those entities that exist*
don't exist - only the entity which exists in the way it exists exists. Jan:
The second difference with the traditional approach to Being is Heidegger's
methodology. He does not want to study Being of human being with the
traditional scientific apparatus of analytical and positivist techniques aimed at
observing and describing the ontical aspects of human being, from a certain
scientific ontology. Jud: Why not - that mode of thinking brought us from Plato's
cave to Cape Kennedy? It gave us medicine. Heidegger was a weakling that
probably would not have survived without medical [scientific] help? HIS
[Heidegger's] mode of studying the unstudyable {Being} is to introduce an insoluble
ontological conflict between an imagined, universal (Daseinic) concept of the
*Being* of a cow, which is NOT universal at all - but Euro-centric - and the
individual Dasein's concept of the *Being* of a cow which is individual to each
person you ask. He got himself into a terrible ontological pickle, and I
don't see a big rush of Heideggerians on this list rushing to sort out his
problems for him? BTW I only use the example of *cow* to illustrate the complete
unworkability of the *Dasein* wheeze, there are THOUSANDS of other examples I
could use.

Jan:
Heidegger's method is a phenomenological hermeneutics that tries to get in
view the most original pre-ontical and pre-ontological domains of human
existence.

Jud:
*Pre-ontical?* What does that mean? Before the *Big Bang?* There can be
nothing *most original* -there can only be *the original* in the same way that
something cannot be *very true.* - it can only be true. How can *human
existence* be *pre-ontical? There cannot have been a *pre-ontical domain* of human
existence, for in order for mankind to exist as a humans rules out the
possibility of there being a domain when they didn't exist as humans? There could
have been and WAS a period BEFORE human beings existed, but that wasn't the
original pre-ontical domain of human existence - it was the ontical domain on
earth before the advent of human beings. Now you have me REALLY puzzled? ;-)

Jan:
His approach is directed at a pre-scientific experience, which is the utmost
concrete, and a direct self-understanding and self-finding of our Being as
human beings.

Jud:
How can we *find* *Being* if it doesn't exist to be found? How can we find
*Being* if *Being* is *all things to all men* and how do we find the *Being*
of a cow when we don't venerate cow-dung- but the next-door neighbour Sanjit
Patel does? How can we take the idea of *Dasein* seriously and generalise like
Heidegger does when he says that *Dasein thinks this - and Dasein thinks
that* when patently *Dasein* DOES NOT do anything of the sort - we ALL cognise
of beings DIFFERENTLY. The *Being* of the Rhine Dam is a blessed provider of
electric power for some, a bloody eye-sore for others, a welcome tourist
attraction for others, an obstruction to navigation for others, and a convenient
way of getting from one side of the river to the other for the traveller.

Jan:
To give descriptions of this newly opened and manifold territory of one's
understanding of this Being a human being [Seinsverstaendnis] Heidegger invents
a whole new set of concepts, namely his terminology of the *existentialia*
[Da- sein; In-der-Welt-sein; Mit-sein; In-sein etc.].

Jud:
We DON'T NEED these *inventions* from the heart of darkness of the Black
Forest. We already understand what a human being is, because WE ARE ONE
OURSELVES. Most of all we don't need these silly German neologisms of *being in the
world* every person on the planet is aware that he or she is on the planet and
not on the moon or the planet Mars. Every person on the planet is WITH
someone in SOME way - even if they live alone they go to a shop occasionally and
are *with* the girl at the checkout desk. What has the sociological variations
of people's life-styles got to do with philosophy? What's the point of
inventing a stand-in for humanity and then to attribute to it erroneous and
laughable generalisations such as humanity {Dasein} thinks this - or humanity does
this - when plainly humanity DOES'NT do this and do that - it does this and
does that in ENTIRELY DIFFERENT ways. Some eat cow-shit - other's don't. Some -
think Heidegger is the bee's knees - other's don't. Some think that the sun
shines out of Bushes' fundament - some don't. Dasein is a complete and utter
load of old rubbish, HOW CAN ANYBODY take it seriously?

Jan:
One of, or maybe the most important ground-trait and horizon of the human
existentialia is their temporality [Zeitlichkeit]. The sense of being human
means first of all being-in-time, as concrete humans we are in an original sense
'time- travellers', we understand our sense of self-being as self-time
(don't we often say of ourself that we: have time, will make time, lost time, gain
time, spoil time, give time, do something or nothing with our time etc.).
[Als der Sinn des Seins des Seiendes, das wir Dasein nennen, wird die
Zeitlichkeit aufgewiesen. SuZ: 17].

Jud: [despairingly}
Of COURSE we exist temporally. Of COURSE we are aware of ourselves. What in
the world is NEW about that? Did Heidegger ACTUALLY BELIEVE he was telling
humanity something NOVEL when he came out with stuff like that?

Jan:
Our perception of time however is very unique and personal and most times
(sic.) unconscious, as also with our perception of being. Being and time,
according to Heidegger are therefore the most universal [allgemeinste],
indefinable and empty characteristics of being human, but also -at the same time- the
most concrete, personally unique and singularly near [jemeinig] experience of
being-there-and-here-in-the-world [Die frage nach dem Sinn des Seins ist die
universalste und leerste; in ihr liegt aber zugleich die Moeglichkeit ihrer
eigenen schaerfsten Vereinzelung auf das jeweilige Dasein. SuZ: 39].

Jud:
He was WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! The most concrete, personally unique and
singularly near [jemeinig] experience of being-there-and-here-in-the-world is being
whoever or whatever PERSON you exist as in the world. We experience the idea
of time differently depending on how INVOLVED we are in the events that
*punctuate *time. * If we are intensely involved in what for us is a major event
which we are enjoying, time can SEEM to pass very quickly. If we are intensely
involved in what for us is a major event which we are NOT enjoying, time can
SEEM to pass very slowly TIME doesn't exist - we exist, and in existing
experience EVENTS [modalities of our own existing and our existing in relation to
other entities Time doesn't exist. Only eventuating entities exist initiating
and responding to eventualities - some benign [which seem to *pass* quickly
and some malignant which seem to *drag.*

Jan:
Reading SuZ is reading a very personal and unique account of what Heidegger
thought and sensed about the question of Being, and specifically in the Being
of human being. SuZ must never be understood as a dogmatic treatise on the
nature of man, or some final declaration on the essence fundamental ontology.

Jud:
Being and Time is really an ontoblog about his misconceptions regarding two
notions which neither exist nor do not exist.

Jan:
Personally I read SuZ more like a novel about the human condition. The truth
of SuZ is Heidegger's personal evocation, written in the context of and in
co-respondence with the important issues of western philosophy, both a
harmonizing with and a breaking away from the tradition. Some say he utterly failed,
others say the opposite. I think it is up to the individual reader to decide
this for him- or herself.

Jud:
I read it as an early example of a pedestrian blog. In that sense it has a
certain historical interest and importance as a curiosity. It reminds me a bit
of The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. Heidegger too is
very Pooterish in his manner. Pooter in Lederhosen. The Diary of a Nobody is a
classic of English [it is VERY ENGLISH] humorous literature. "The Diary of a
Nobody" like *Being and Time* follows the trials of a Victorian middle-class
man, Charles Pooter. Pooter's attempts to make his way in society despite the
handicap of having no sense of his own ridiculousness, is very like
Heidegger's German middle-class confused country-boy from the Heimat and his
ontological naivety in the big city.

Jan:
Jud, I know you have often said that you find Heidegger's language and
thinking quite childish, simplistic and naive. And in a certain sense I very much
agree with you on this; Heidegger's thinking and language (esp. in SuZ if you
read behind/beneath the philosophical jargon) is very pure, innocent and
direct; it is an refreshing approach which is free and un-contaminated of the
scientific concepture of 2000 years of western dogmata and Academia, it tries to
find and speak the thought of the pre-Socrates, moulded in a child-like and
unexpected spontaneous language. As a father you must remember the
fascinating phrasing children use when see something new; or as Jesus once said, it's
better to be like the children thence heavenly grace will surely await you.
[Mt. 18:1-5]

Jud:
I like the sincerity of your writing Jan. Yes, what you say about the
insouciant words of children is SO true - my youngest {Marius aged 4] just climbed
on the back of my chair and whispered *I love you* in my ear. I am very
moved, but that does NOT mean that I expect my philosophers to be childlike and
naive. It would be different if the childlike Heidegger were pointing out that
the philosophical tradition [like the emperor] has no clothes - but HE DOES
NOT. He ACCEPTS the notion of *Being* and almost in an innovative Japanese way
- modifies it and markets the idea as something NEW. He is like Wittgenstein
in many ways in that he wraps old ideas [generalities which everyone is
already aware of] in new language which, if you have the interest and perseverance
to unravel it, contains nothing more repackaged old-fashioned catholicities
[Daseinicities] presented as *new thinking* and *new questioning,* which in
reality [upon close examination are not *questionings* at all - but obvious
asseverations of facts as believed in by him. Then Being is *granted to us in a
bastard format for it is perceived by us through the imperfect
instrumentality of our senses as transacted by the *consciousness* as per the infamous
theory of *object givenness. * [Although why a toilet-pan would want to *give
itself* to a human being nobody knows]

Jan:
The fact that a toilet-pan is given [both as vorhanden and zuhanden] means
that it is there, recognizable for you in a meaningful shape and context, f.
i. in your bedroom; if not, you would shit on the floor. A Hottentot on the
other hand might perceive your toilet-pan as something quite different f. i. a
cooking pot. For the Hottentot your toilet-pan is also 'vorhanden', but it is
not 'zuhanden' given for him as a toilet-pan.

Jud:
A toilet pan is NOT *given* unless someone *gives* it to you as a present.
Otherwise it is part of the payment or mortgage when you buy the house. It is
*ready to hand [or bottom] because you HAVE PLANNED IT TO BE SO - or the
architect who designed the house set it out that way and even chose the colour.
I am not actually addressing the question of *givenness* [which implies a
*giver) I am addressing the ontological joke of *object givenness* where my
version of the *Being* of the toilet pan is for purposes quite different from
that of the Hottentot who cooks his yams in it - and how this conflicts with the
Husserlian and Heideggerian notion of the *Unity of Being* when plainly there
is nothing remotely *UNITED* about it at all with all the dung worshipping
Daseins on the Indian Sub-Continent and the lavatory-bowl lickers of Southern
Africa cognising of differing versions of *Being* from Heidegger in his
clinically-clean, Germanic bathroom, with its vistas of cattle grazing in green
fields before being transported to the abattoir and ending up as being the
*Being* of Schwarzwald Rindfleisch on the plates in Heidegger's dining room.
Jud: I am still waiting patiently for your explanation as how the truth of Being
can be accessed from the multitudinous throng of individually transacted
versions of it, and how on earth it can be accessed via the non-existent [and
thereby non-conscious - non-instantiating] Dasein with a spurious universal
version of the truth of Being that immediately nullifies, invalidates negates
and renders useless the individual with his or her differing versions? Please
answer this profound criticism.

Jan:
For Heidegger being-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-sein] means that human beings
are originally and primordially directed to, present at and thrown in the
world. This primordial being-there comes always before any form of perception of
this world. Perceptions in seeing, hearing, touching etc. are, so to speak,
second order acts. It's the same with consciousness, to be conscious of
something in the world, you must first already be in the world; consciousness,
thinking, remembering, judging etc. too are second order acts.

Jud:
I am not interested [right now] in being in the world - I am addressing
*Being* Jan. This is not directed at YOU Jan but Heidegger. Please try and
address the question of the variations of *Being* as individual instantiations of
*object givenness.* Jan: Merleau-Ponty once said: perception means already
believing, having faith, in a world [PP: 288]. Jud: One doesn't NEED to have
*faith* or to *believe* in a/the world.
*Faith is only required when one feels the need to belive in something for
which there is no evidence. Plainly the existing world is EVIDENCE A 'PLENTY -
so we are in no need of *faith.*

Jan:
Thus our being in the world is in first instance a pre-personal,
pre-conscious and pre-perceptional affair, and the 'givenness' of the objects of our
perception or in our consciousness receive their essential sense from this
preconditioned domain of being. Heidegger's existentialia try to give a
description of the (pre-) ontological structures in which the being of human being is
primordially immersed; take f. i. the notion of care [Sorge], a mother's care
for her child is not an object of her perception, neither is it a product of
her consciousness, a mother does not suddenly think 'hey, let me take care of
my kid now'.

Jud:
I just shared your paragraph with my wife. She disagrees Women are *natural*
mothers yes - but they are to a large degree socialised into motherhood as
little girls and give dolls and cots etc. Women are capable of perceiving of
their love and responsibilities for their children and consciously decide to
care for them rather than leaving them and going out to nightclubs. I think
that Heidegger was spouting the N----- attitude to women here - disparaging
them as unperceiving Hausfraus - robotic breast-feeders for the Fatherland. I
don't think this would go down very well with modern women [or modern men for
that matter] Jan: Her mood (feeling, urge etc) of caring is always already
there, in-care she becomes conscious of herself and her child, in-care she
directs her perception and behaviour. Jud: What about the women who are NOT like
this - What about the 60% of married women with children who have careers and
leave the *care* to baby-sitters* and relatives? I think poor old Heidegger
would be seen as an old -fashioned male chauvinist piggy-wiggy by modern
females - don't you Jan?

Jan:
Yet care [Sorge] is not some limiting faculty or curtailment of human
behaviour, it's the opposite, care is originally a form of creativity, a
possibility of freedom; look at the way mothers are inventive and creative when it
comes to caring for their children. Freedom and openness are not products of our
consciousness or our perceptions, no, they are originally given and receive
their possibility from Being, as our primordial being-human in-the-world. I
believe you have ignored this Heideggerian argument completely.

Jud:
But Jan, how can care be originally given and receive there possibility from
*Being* when *Being* is simply [according to Heidegger] the product of our
consciousness, the way we are conscious of the world and the beings we
encounter in the world? Surely this is a circular argument? The *Being* we create
through the process of *object givenness* is the same *Being* that is *given?*
Surely we are *giving ourselves* this *object givenness* we are the *givers.*
To assert that there is something called *Being* from which *gives* us the
concepts of Freedom and openness is to equate *Being* with *God* which is a
confirmation of what I have claimed for a long time Namely that *Being* is
simply *God* in disguise. There is nothing wrong with that for those that are
turned on by hidden Gods - but I prefer to call a spade a spade and a God a God.
:-)

Yours,

Jud


Regards,

Jud

Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
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