I hardly know where to start, there are so many interesting things being
batted about right now. A couple of questions for Lois and David. I'll try
to be brief. I'll probably fail :-)
1) Lois: I think your remarks on disclosure are on target, but I would
make sure to put a certain spin on it. I think it's not just "truth as
disclosure" but more "truth as disclos-ING." (I predict you're going to
agree with this.) It makes a difference if you really want to get away from
realism-idealism; truth is something we experience. I think this is one of
hardest things to get one's mind around (I'm constantly failing!). This
becomes crucial later on, on my reading, for the critique of the
Gestell/technology that we're enclosed in somehow, where we see everything
AS a resource well, standing in reserve for our use (including utlimately,
we ourselves, eg, human capital, etc.). That experience is "true," maybe
vulgarly pragmatic, but nonetheless the hand we are dealt. Technology in
the deep sense has its truth and can't be argued with (like using a
costs-benefits analysis to argue against daming the Rhine, using modus
ponens to argue against formal logic). This does seem to me to be
non-idealistic, in the sense that something "outside" us is setting the
understanding's parameters. What I have trouble getting (among so many
things!) is, for lack of a better way to put it, the question of agency in
all of this: here we are truth-ing (disclosing, that is, always at the same
time concealing and revealing, right?), sort of "on for the ride," as it
were. Sorry for the simple question, but who/what is taking me on the ride?
Language? Rede (discourse)? the Gestell? Being? In asking this, I feel
that I've gone astray somehow and am back into a kind of thinking not
available for H. Where am I erring, then, when I raise that question? Why
precisely should I not be looking for an "agent"?
2) David (thanks for your BT notes, BTW!): when I say that finitude is the
precondition for the oscillations between authenticity and inauthenticity, I
mean to make that claim in the transcendental, Kantian sense that I think H.
employs in BT and elsewhere, that is, in the sense of what presupposes what.
If you're asking in the sense of what OCCASIONS the shift, it seems you are
asking in the sense of looking for a noun for a verb (and you get into the
worries I raise in my 1) above. (Remember the Nietzsche phrase about still
believing in God because we have faith in grammar?) Finitude doesn't CAUSE
it, then, in the usual sense, but has a certain logical priority. All roads
do lead to temporality in BT. This is a boring way of saying what H. does
in 74: "Dasein understands itself with regard to its
potentiality-for-Being, and it does so in such a manner that it will go
right under the eyes of Death, and in order thus to take over in its
thrownness that entity which it is itself, and to take it over wholly." An
authentic anticipation of one's ownmost potentiality-for-Being, combined
with a steadfast resolve "under the eyes of Death" drives out accidental and
provisional possibilities--"dispersing all fugitive Self-concealments (BT
62)." What remains (viz, the "situation") is inherited yet chosen.
Finitude is the "reason" for any movement between
authenticity-inauthenticity: eg the various forms of fleeing toward
inauthenticity, and back in the other direction, going "under the eyes of
death" toward authenticity. Make any sense?
David
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
David Blacker
Illinois State University
djblacke@xxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
batted about right now. A couple of questions for Lois and David. I'll try
to be brief. I'll probably fail :-)
1) Lois: I think your remarks on disclosure are on target, but I would
make sure to put a certain spin on it. I think it's not just "truth as
disclosure" but more "truth as disclos-ING." (I predict you're going to
agree with this.) It makes a difference if you really want to get away from
realism-idealism; truth is something we experience. I think this is one of
hardest things to get one's mind around (I'm constantly failing!). This
becomes crucial later on, on my reading, for the critique of the
Gestell/technology that we're enclosed in somehow, where we see everything
AS a resource well, standing in reserve for our use (including utlimately,
we ourselves, eg, human capital, etc.). That experience is "true," maybe
vulgarly pragmatic, but nonetheless the hand we are dealt. Technology in
the deep sense has its truth and can't be argued with (like using a
costs-benefits analysis to argue against daming the Rhine, using modus
ponens to argue against formal logic). This does seem to me to be
non-idealistic, in the sense that something "outside" us is setting the
understanding's parameters. What I have trouble getting (among so many
things!) is, for lack of a better way to put it, the question of agency in
all of this: here we are truth-ing (disclosing, that is, always at the same
time concealing and revealing, right?), sort of "on for the ride," as it
were. Sorry for the simple question, but who/what is taking me on the ride?
Language? Rede (discourse)? the Gestell? Being? In asking this, I feel
that I've gone astray somehow and am back into a kind of thinking not
available for H. Where am I erring, then, when I raise that question? Why
precisely should I not be looking for an "agent"?
2) David (thanks for your BT notes, BTW!): when I say that finitude is the
precondition for the oscillations between authenticity and inauthenticity, I
mean to make that claim in the transcendental, Kantian sense that I think H.
employs in BT and elsewhere, that is, in the sense of what presupposes what.
If you're asking in the sense of what OCCASIONS the shift, it seems you are
asking in the sense of looking for a noun for a verb (and you get into the
worries I raise in my 1) above. (Remember the Nietzsche phrase about still
believing in God because we have faith in grammar?) Finitude doesn't CAUSE
it, then, in the usual sense, but has a certain logical priority. All roads
do lead to temporality in BT. This is a boring way of saying what H. does
in 74: "Dasein understands itself with regard to its
potentiality-for-Being, and it does so in such a manner that it will go
right under the eyes of Death, and in order thus to take over in its
thrownness that entity which it is itself, and to take it over wholly." An
authentic anticipation of one's ownmost potentiality-for-Being, combined
with a steadfast resolve "under the eyes of Death" drives out accidental and
provisional possibilities--"dispersing all fugitive Self-concealments (BT
62)." What remains (viz, the "situation") is inherited yet chosen.
Finitude is the "reason" for any movement between
authenticity-inauthenticity: eg the various forms of fleeing toward
inauthenticity, and back in the other direction, going "under the eyes of
death" toward authenticity. Make any sense?
David
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
David Blacker
Illinois State University
djblacke@xxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------