2 things:
1) At the risk of stating the obvious, isn't the condition of possibility
for authenticity-or-inauthenticity finitude, temporality? Or is everyone
understanding that to be the case and just wondering what it means? I
suggested a counterfactual (Borges, etc.) where we imagine if we were not
mortal, if authenticity (or inauth.) would be possible for us. I suggest
the answer is "no." (Following the Nietzsche thread, maybe the eternal
recurrence would therefore preclude authenticity, or occlude the distinction
altogether, and this is why it is so monumentally scary.) The game has to
end for whatever is going on in the game to have any meaning, to put it
simply. For my money, Gadamer provides an entre toward understanding this,
as he extends his mentor's prioritization of historicity, Bildung. To be
"in time" is to be historical (nb. how authentic selfhood might be said to
be "in time" or "on time," in the sense of "just in time"--I love how you
get these new metaphorical links in translation!), and as in
Gadamer-Heidegger, we do not understand historicity as a limitation
simpliciter, "prejudice" in the perjorative sense (the Enlightenment view,
no?) but as an enabling condition of the understanding, of any meaning
whatever. You can't fuse horizons without horizons, without boundedness,
that is to say, you can't CREATE without finitude. I've been reading Mircea
Eliade, and I am wondering if H. might have embraced the understanding
hinted at, widespread in fact, by certain traditonal cultures of what you
might call the Dream Time, or the Great Time (in illo tempore) a
pretechnological experience of temporality in which meaning is tied very
much to life cycles (birth, death, puberty rituals, etc.) and that this is
not being "trapped." Again, do we see some of the critique of technology
foreshadowed here? (Sorry if this strays too much from "close reading" of
45; if so, I'll try to get back on track.)
2) Lois, could you please elaborate your interesting paragraph below:
>On the other hand, I have a problem with our thinking of the
>authentic/inauthentic model as though these were based on a real (i.e.,
>metaphysical) distinction in reality rather than an uncovering of a
>dimension of experience based on this creative metaphorical language.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
David Blacker
Illinois State University
djblacke@xxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
1) At the risk of stating the obvious, isn't the condition of possibility
for authenticity-or-inauthenticity finitude, temporality? Or is everyone
understanding that to be the case and just wondering what it means? I
suggested a counterfactual (Borges, etc.) where we imagine if we were not
mortal, if authenticity (or inauth.) would be possible for us. I suggest
the answer is "no." (Following the Nietzsche thread, maybe the eternal
recurrence would therefore preclude authenticity, or occlude the distinction
altogether, and this is why it is so monumentally scary.) The game has to
end for whatever is going on in the game to have any meaning, to put it
simply. For my money, Gadamer provides an entre toward understanding this,
as he extends his mentor's prioritization of historicity, Bildung. To be
"in time" is to be historical (nb. how authentic selfhood might be said to
be "in time" or "on time," in the sense of "just in time"--I love how you
get these new metaphorical links in translation!), and as in
Gadamer-Heidegger, we do not understand historicity as a limitation
simpliciter, "prejudice" in the perjorative sense (the Enlightenment view,
no?) but as an enabling condition of the understanding, of any meaning
whatever. You can't fuse horizons without horizons, without boundedness,
that is to say, you can't CREATE without finitude. I've been reading Mircea
Eliade, and I am wondering if H. might have embraced the understanding
hinted at, widespread in fact, by certain traditonal cultures of what you
might call the Dream Time, or the Great Time (in illo tempore) a
pretechnological experience of temporality in which meaning is tied very
much to life cycles (birth, death, puberty rituals, etc.) and that this is
not being "trapped." Again, do we see some of the critique of technology
foreshadowed here? (Sorry if this strays too much from "close reading" of
45; if so, I'll try to get back on track.)
2) Lois, could you please elaborate your interesting paragraph below:
>On the other hand, I have a problem with our thinking of the
>authentic/inauthentic model as though these were based on a real (i.e.,
>metaphysical) distinction in reality rather than an uncovering of a
>dimension of experience based on this creative metaphorical language.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
David Blacker
Illinois State University
djblacke@xxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------