On Wed, 2 Aug 1995 PhilMill@xxxxxxx wrote:
Phil. Your thoughts here are very powerful, and I think there's something
right about them. I do think being-towards-death should be grounded in
something more fundamental, as should the possibility of authentic and
inauthentic being-towards-death.
One point where we might disagree is that I do not believe it is part of
Heidegger's philosophy that being-towards possiblitites in general should
be grounded in discourse. Rather, it is grounded in temporality, since it
constitutes one of the structural components of care (namely, existence).
At least, that's how I've been able to make sense of it so far.
Nonetheless, surely there must be something about Dasein's capacity for
discourse that can help us understand the possibility of in/authenticity.
I'm still really at the stage of just making stabs in the dark at this
one, but I have a hunch that inauthenticity does have discourse as at
least one of the conditions for its possibility, for in our inauthentic
expoerience of death, our understanding of it (both visceral and
straightforwardly conceptual) could be said to be inauthentic in the
Husserlian sense-- not really given to us in the fullness of what it is,
but only understood in simple, easy way as a peculiar sort of present-at
-hand _thing_. Part of what contributes to this levelling-off of our
understandings is our capacity to talk about and otherwise symbolically
represent things, experiences, ourslelves, etc., without their actually
being directly given in experience. In this way the word or the the
representative image becomes partially divorced from what it is about, and
so our understandings of things in terms of words and representations
become pale shadows of what their subject matter is really like.
Note that the account I'm trying to develop can work iff experience and
cognition are fundamental and language is derivative. So none of the
Sellarsians and Rortyians would go for this interpretation. So, what do
you think? Would the above serve as a decent explanation, or is it flawed
somwewhere? Is it an accurate interpretation of what Heidegger was up to,
or have I gotten carried away by some of my own philosophical convictions?
Yours,
David Schenk.
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Phil. Your thoughts here are very powerful, and I think there's something
right about them. I do think being-towards-death should be grounded in
something more fundamental, as should the possibility of authentic and
inauthentic being-towards-death.
One point where we might disagree is that I do not believe it is part of
Heidegger's philosophy that being-towards possiblitites in general should
be grounded in discourse. Rather, it is grounded in temporality, since it
constitutes one of the structural components of care (namely, existence).
At least, that's how I've been able to make sense of it so far.
Nonetheless, surely there must be something about Dasein's capacity for
discourse that can help us understand the possibility of in/authenticity.
I'm still really at the stage of just making stabs in the dark at this
one, but I have a hunch that inauthenticity does have discourse as at
least one of the conditions for its possibility, for in our inauthentic
expoerience of death, our understanding of it (both visceral and
straightforwardly conceptual) could be said to be inauthentic in the
Husserlian sense-- not really given to us in the fullness of what it is,
but only understood in simple, easy way as a peculiar sort of present-at
-hand _thing_. Part of what contributes to this levelling-off of our
understandings is our capacity to talk about and otherwise symbolically
represent things, experiences, ourslelves, etc., without their actually
being directly given in experience. In this way the word or the the
representative image becomes partially divorced from what it is about, and
so our understandings of things in terms of words and representations
become pale shadows of what their subject matter is really like.
Note that the account I'm trying to develop can work iff experience and
cognition are fundamental and language is derivative. So none of the
Sellarsians and Rortyians would go for this interpretation. So, what do
you think? Would the above serve as a decent explanation, or is it flawed
somwewhere? Is it an accurate interpretation of what Heidegger was up to,
or have I gotten carried away by some of my own philosophical convictions?
Yours,
David Schenk.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
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