Malcolm writes:
"Authenticity can thus only be conceived in terms of a 'shift' from an
inauthentic absorption in our daily affairs, a shift 'out of' our familiar
indifference to being and into the 'truth' of what really is, if this shift
_dwells_ within its own essential inauthenticity."
--- I think your approach here is good and
captures some of what Heidegger is doing. I'm
still quite stuck in this issue that the
divisions are themselve in fact rather crude:
the supposed fallen/thrown, pre-ontological
self might in fact not simply be "lost in the
everyday world". It is very, very hard to
articulate the problem I see here (hard for
me), and I have the strong suspicion that this
difficulty constitutes precisely *how* this
particular blind spot operates. What is covered
over here is that in fact it may be that this
"everyday" self is not so everyday at all. If
we grant that some people in fact do think
about death, have had close loved ones die
(which is not nothing with regards to one's own
death), that for some people reading literature
is in fact something they do everyday, that
popular songs are imbued through and thorugh
with some pretty heavy, if often crude,
ontological stuff, then what is this "everyday"
self? What is the status of authenticity? Does
anyone see the problem I'm pointing to here?
I'm not saying that the categories can't
obtain; I think they are in certain ways very
good. But this everyday self as Heidegger
*portrays* it is such a machine, whereas in
fact people do all sorts of things everyday, or
everyotherday: make love, argue with lovers and
friends, hug, think of the upcoming vacation,
read Proust and Stephen King, attend political
protests, worry over their jobs, love their
kids, beat their kids, call their moms on the
phone, lose their wallets, etc. It's a dumb
list, I realize, but quite true. We can go into
such a list, one's own life and so forth, and
say: this is authentic, this is not, this is
fallen, this is not. But there is a very
powerful operation here, and tendency, to let
the category *impose* rather than aiding a
phenomenologically sensitive understanding.
For Heidegger, the one who does not read *his*
analytic might, at the most, have an
occasionall moment of joy or anxiety. But
really, what of the joy of a musician, who
practices and performs these incredible pieces
*every day*? Or anything you want to throw in.
This leads me to something I'll just call,
provisionally, the "posed" configuration of the
Heideggerian *self*. Posed can be: im-posed or
sup-posed, and maybe ex-posed. If you stay
strongly with Heidegger's through-thinking of
BT, it "works" provided that you either: dim
down, or avoid examples of, your own divergence
from the overal configuration. It helps if you
live a very bourgeois life and are not in the
process of changing jobs or getting a divorce.
This really invokes the famous investigation
problem of partical/wave physics. You come into
yourself investigating, looking for: a largely
inauthentic self looking for the light of
authenticity, and 'lo and behold, that's what
you find. But: wait a minute? Is that what was
really there? (Hey, that's cute: particle =
inathentic, wave = authentic...:-) )
Part of the crucial issues here is how this is
not a "do anything" space in the "worldly"
sense. It is precisely on the basis of this
that there is, generally, a certain "freedom of
categorization". The whole logic and condition
of conversion can serve as a fruitful example
for how this works: just as one can convert to
so many things: he became a marxist, she became
a born-again christian, now he's into this
environmental stuff, she got into religion X,
all of a sudden, everything's psychoanalysis
ever since he started reading X, or even, the
Furher says...This condition is there and very
important. It is at the same time the condition
of the possibility of so many scandals of
Western Philosophy.
Once one "gets" this general "categorical
freedom" and reapproaches Heidegger, I think it
vastly changes how one takes the text. It
doesn't in any way *refute* the text, aside
from, perhaps some implicit assumptions
concerning its own generality or universality,
but it opens a range of ways in which the
observer and thinker can either be true to
phenomena or not, and even ways in which the
one thinking BT can be either violent or
nonviolent. The question of violence has to be
brought up and maintained. Here the weakeness
lies in BT as a movment which deemphasizes (but
surely doesn't eliminate) the moral. Consider,
for example, when Heidegger says, "...not even
in the most violent of interpretations." Yet,
and here is something that I am indeed
suggesting: Heidegger's implicit and general
characterization of the "average person" is
itself a violent interpreation and im-position,
in which the phenomenologist goes into the
subject matter and in fact super-imposes the
categories he is looking for, rather than
recognizing the phenomena and letting them
speak.
This may seem to personal for some, but as a
child I was exposed to profoundly and highly
repetitive tramautic circumstances. These
brought me within inches of my life (or so it
seemed to me then) again and again. It colored
my world in a thousand different ways. Such
experiences were, in a certain way, everyday
for me. And what of people living in conditions
of, for example, political torture, etc.
I don't know that this really bears on the
question some are asking right now: what are
the conditions of possibility of
in/authenticity, but I think in some ways it
might.
In terms of the question of "its already-
understanding", it might be here that we can
ask: what is the status? Just how "vague" is
this everyday understanding. How
"preontological" is it? Surely one doesn't have
to use the word "ontology" in order to attain
authentic ontological understanding. How is
such a clarification possible? In this regard,
I think Heideggers language, and especially,
his *style* must be understood as just that:
language and style. Not "sheer language" or
"all and only language". I don't mean to get
into that at all. But it is one style: rather
Germanic, very Aristotelian, etc. And, no, one
does *not* have to study Aristotle for 10 years
in order to read Nietzshce, contra Heidegger's
quip on this.
Generally: Heidegger's style, despite its
internal protestations agains violent
interpretation, might in fact be violent, but
certainly *forceful*, and in any case, hides
from view its ownmost observer-observed
interaction.
---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
"Authenticity can thus only be conceived in terms of a 'shift' from an
inauthentic absorption in our daily affairs, a shift 'out of' our familiar
indifference to being and into the 'truth' of what really is, if this shift
_dwells_ within its own essential inauthenticity."
--- I think your approach here is good and
captures some of what Heidegger is doing. I'm
still quite stuck in this issue that the
divisions are themselve in fact rather crude:
the supposed fallen/thrown, pre-ontological
self might in fact not simply be "lost in the
everyday world". It is very, very hard to
articulate the problem I see here (hard for
me), and I have the strong suspicion that this
difficulty constitutes precisely *how* this
particular blind spot operates. What is covered
over here is that in fact it may be that this
"everyday" self is not so everyday at all. If
we grant that some people in fact do think
about death, have had close loved ones die
(which is not nothing with regards to one's own
death), that for some people reading literature
is in fact something they do everyday, that
popular songs are imbued through and thorugh
with some pretty heavy, if often crude,
ontological stuff, then what is this "everyday"
self? What is the status of authenticity? Does
anyone see the problem I'm pointing to here?
I'm not saying that the categories can't
obtain; I think they are in certain ways very
good. But this everyday self as Heidegger
*portrays* it is such a machine, whereas in
fact people do all sorts of things everyday, or
everyotherday: make love, argue with lovers and
friends, hug, think of the upcoming vacation,
read Proust and Stephen King, attend political
protests, worry over their jobs, love their
kids, beat their kids, call their moms on the
phone, lose their wallets, etc. It's a dumb
list, I realize, but quite true. We can go into
such a list, one's own life and so forth, and
say: this is authentic, this is not, this is
fallen, this is not. But there is a very
powerful operation here, and tendency, to let
the category *impose* rather than aiding a
phenomenologically sensitive understanding.
For Heidegger, the one who does not read *his*
analytic might, at the most, have an
occasionall moment of joy or anxiety. But
really, what of the joy of a musician, who
practices and performs these incredible pieces
*every day*? Or anything you want to throw in.
This leads me to something I'll just call,
provisionally, the "posed" configuration of the
Heideggerian *self*. Posed can be: im-posed or
sup-posed, and maybe ex-posed. If you stay
strongly with Heidegger's through-thinking of
BT, it "works" provided that you either: dim
down, or avoid examples of, your own divergence
from the overal configuration. It helps if you
live a very bourgeois life and are not in the
process of changing jobs or getting a divorce.
This really invokes the famous investigation
problem of partical/wave physics. You come into
yourself investigating, looking for: a largely
inauthentic self looking for the light of
authenticity, and 'lo and behold, that's what
you find. But: wait a minute? Is that what was
really there? (Hey, that's cute: particle =
inathentic, wave = authentic...:-) )
Part of the crucial issues here is how this is
not a "do anything" space in the "worldly"
sense. It is precisely on the basis of this
that there is, generally, a certain "freedom of
categorization". The whole logic and condition
of conversion can serve as a fruitful example
for how this works: just as one can convert to
so many things: he became a marxist, she became
a born-again christian, now he's into this
environmental stuff, she got into religion X,
all of a sudden, everything's psychoanalysis
ever since he started reading X, or even, the
Furher says...This condition is there and very
important. It is at the same time the condition
of the possibility of so many scandals of
Western Philosophy.
Once one "gets" this general "categorical
freedom" and reapproaches Heidegger, I think it
vastly changes how one takes the text. It
doesn't in any way *refute* the text, aside
from, perhaps some implicit assumptions
concerning its own generality or universality,
but it opens a range of ways in which the
observer and thinker can either be true to
phenomena or not, and even ways in which the
one thinking BT can be either violent or
nonviolent. The question of violence has to be
brought up and maintained. Here the weakeness
lies in BT as a movment which deemphasizes (but
surely doesn't eliminate) the moral. Consider,
for example, when Heidegger says, "...not even
in the most violent of interpretations." Yet,
and here is something that I am indeed
suggesting: Heidegger's implicit and general
characterization of the "average person" is
itself a violent interpreation and im-position,
in which the phenomenologist goes into the
subject matter and in fact super-imposes the
categories he is looking for, rather than
recognizing the phenomena and letting them
speak.
This may seem to personal for some, but as a
child I was exposed to profoundly and highly
repetitive tramautic circumstances. These
brought me within inches of my life (or so it
seemed to me then) again and again. It colored
my world in a thousand different ways. Such
experiences were, in a certain way, everyday
for me. And what of people living in conditions
of, for example, political torture, etc.
I don't know that this really bears on the
question some are asking right now: what are
the conditions of possibility of
in/authenticity, but I think in some ways it
might.
In terms of the question of "its already-
understanding", it might be here that we can
ask: what is the status? Just how "vague" is
this everyday understanding. How
"preontological" is it? Surely one doesn't have
to use the word "ontology" in order to attain
authentic ontological understanding. How is
such a clarification possible? In this regard,
I think Heideggers language, and especially,
his *style* must be understood as just that:
language and style. Not "sheer language" or
"all and only language". I don't mean to get
into that at all. But it is one style: rather
Germanic, very Aristotelian, etc. And, no, one
does *not* have to study Aristotle for 10 years
in order to read Nietzshce, contra Heidegger's
quip on this.
Generally: Heidegger's style, despite its
internal protestations agains violent
interpretation, might in fact be violent, but
certainly *forceful*, and in any case, hides
from view its ownmost observer-observed
interaction.
---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------