Hello, everyone:
I wanted to post this last weekend, but I am quite busy right now and
didn't have the opportunity. Anyway, I'm posting it now because if I
don't there is an excellent chance the readings will just fizzle out.
I also wanted to reiterate that a slow readings of _Introduction to
Metaphysics_, or _On The Way To Language_, or _What Is Called Thinking?_,
or whatever else might strike people's fancy can and ideally should be run
simultaneously with the temporality readings. Perhaps if someone would
like to get such a readings started...?
Finally, I wanted to just make a tiny aside about one of Heidegger's
argumentative strategies. I have been reading _Relativity_, and it struck
me that both Heidegger and Einstein employ the following strategy to make
their cases:
(1) Show how the competing, commonsensical interpretation of things _is_
in fact valid for a restricted domain of application, though it is
ultimately flawed.
(2) Show how this commonsensical misinterpretation devolves from the more
fundamental, accurate, but radical understanding that gets at the way
things _really_ are.
I find this an entirely admirable way of going about trying to make one's
case. If one means to show that a certain commonsense interpretation of
things is flawed in one way or another, it is not enough to give arguments
and perhaps even a bit of empirical evidence against that interpretation.
One's new theory must also explain why the old theory seemed to work and
explain how the old theory's practical efficacy can be derived as a
consequence of the new theory's being true. Finally, of course, one must
show how the new theory is in accord with the phenomena the old theory
could not explain. This kind of strategy is far from uncommon in science
and in philosophy of science, but I have never heard anyone call attention
to Heidegger's use of it. I think it deserves further study.
Well, anyway, here's Chapter 3.
----------------------------------------------
*$61*
Chapter 3 involves two basic tasks. First, it provides a phenomenological
account of anticipatory resoluteness such that death and conscience work
together in a single moment of dasein's authentic being-a-whole. This
then enables a properly grounded account of the ontological meaning of
care, which is the second task. Temporality is shown to be the
metaphysical ground of care, and this then leads to a reformulation of the
Daseinanalytic in terms of temporality. Between the performance of the
first and second tasks several essential questions of philosophical method
are reconsidered and resolved (or at least, Heidegger thought them
resolved at that time).
[BT352/SZ304] "The primordial phenomenon of temporality will be held
secure by demonstrating that if we have regard for the possibility,
totality, unity, and development of those fundamental structures of Dasein
which we have hitherto exhibited, these structures are all to be conceived
as at bottom 'temporal' and as modes of the temporalizing of temporality."
Q: Shouldn't it only be those possible different ways of being Dasein that
correspond to different _modes_ of temporality? What is only _part_ of
Dasein's essential constitution should equally be only part of
temporality's essential constitution, shouldn't it???
*$62*
Q: Is there any possible way in which resoluteness can know the constancy
of its being-guilty without thereby also knowing something of its
uttermost potentiality-for-being, being-towards-death? I guess my
question is, is being-towards-death really hidden in all and every
being-ahead-of-itself of Dasein? I am not wondering whether Heidegger
thinks this to be the case, for it seems clear that he does. Rather, I am
wondering if this indeed the case.
[BT353-54/SZ305-6] It took me a while to figure out this argument, but I
think I have it:
(1) Being-towards-death is shown as an existential possibility in II.1.
(2) Resolute wanting-to-have-a-conscience is adduced as existentiell proof
of Dasein's possible authenticity in II.2. Now, on BT353-54 there are two
more argumentative steps.
(3) (2) --> (1). That is, being-towards-death is implied in being-guilty.
(4) Since (2) is a possible way of Dasein's maintaining itself
(existentiell), specifically an authentic (radically self-transparent)
one, it must have radical self-transparency about its potentiality-for-
being-guilty, which requires commensurate transparency about the nature of
potenitality, that is, it must be _anticipatory_ resoluteness.
*$63*
One tangent here: Phil Miller previously argued that it was not so crucial
to get Dasein into view as a whole or to establish its possible
authenticity, but that chapters 1 and 2 are really designed to show how
for Dasein its past and future are embedded in every present moment, in
every 'now.' I am currently of the opinion that this is not so. I take
Heidegger on his word when he says the meaning of care cannot be laid bare
until authenticity and being-a-whole are clarified. My reason for this
lies in what i think authenticity is (*in part*) about. I have often
described authentic existence as Dasein's having radical
self-transparency, radical clarity as to the nature of its own being. If
I am right about this, and if I am also right that the importance of
death, guilt, and conscience is the extent to which they bring Dasein
maximally viscerally face-to-face with its own nature, its own being, then
the meaning of care can only be established with phenomenal assurance from
the vantage point of anticipatory resoluteness. Only thus can the
ontology of Dasein reliably determine the exact nature and structure of
its subject matter.
[BT361/SZ313] Here we have a nifty little argument at the bottom of the
page: Because Dasein surely does understand itself, no matter how vaguely
or distortedly it may do so, this fact alone _proves_ that Dasein is not
just a presnt-at-hand thing, for what is merely present-at-hand, or for
that matter even what is ready-to-hand, does not and cannot have the
character of understanding.
QUESTION: [BT362-64/SZ314-16] Does anyone understand his argument for the
necesarry circularity of all existential analysis?? How would a formally
circular argumentative structure be _required_ in all accounts of the
structure and foundations of care? Why would a demand for a non-circular
argument strip Dasein of its care-structure? I mean, absolutely _nobody_
talks of "presuppositionless" philosophy anymore, so it can't be _that_
that Heidegger thinks commonsense is demanding. Granted every
Daseinanalytic must have a set of premises with which to begin, but this
most definitely _does NOT_ amount to a formally circular argument. So
what is going on, here???
*$64*
This is a truly beautiful section. I spent a lot of time going over this
one and I must say I was duly impressed. Several of its arguments are
crafted with such clarity and plausibility that the lines of reasoning in
the murkier sections are very nearly redeemed.
[BT365, paragraph 2/SZ317-18] Since the Self belongs to the essence of
Dasein, which is existence, then the Self too must be understaood
existentially. Now, I have already argued that Heidegger conceives Dasein
as fundamentally _performative_ in the Austinian sense, that to "be"
Dasein is to "do" or "make" Dasein, so to speak.
But it is on this basis that I disagree with Dreyfus' interpretation of
Heidegger as a kind of transcendental behaviorist, or whatever. Dasein's
fundamentally performative nature does not simply mean that it is what it
does and that its self-understanding is made just through its actions.
No. It means that Dasein _is itself_ a certain kind of activity, and one
that is never finished, complete, and stable in its being; it means that
Dasein "works itself out," performs and consitutes itself in its "what it
is" _before_ it takes any definite action, before it exhibits any outward
behavior, and it does so in its essential being-towards some possibility
or possibilities of itself. In a sense, I think Heidegger's account of
Dasein is much more fundamental than any of the behaviorist and pragmatist
interpretations of him. The Daseinanalytik explains why behaviorist and
pragmatist accounts of the self seem plausible and possess some
explanatory power, but it goes much deeper than they do or can.
Anyway, since Dasein is essentially performative and since the Self
"belongs to" the essence of Dasein, the Self too must be understood as
something that is done, performed, and never just a self-contained sort of
"mentally and temporally extended" stuff analogous to the
spatio-temporally extended stuff with which we should all be reasonably
familiar.
The arguments against Kant's theory of the Self are what I find most
impressive in $64. It is much more carefully, clearly, and thoroughly
developed than certain other parts of Division Two.
My first question, which was what really helped me to clarify this
section, was "exactly how does Heidegger think Kant slipped back into the
'ontology of the substantial' in his accoun t of the Self?" The answer I
came up with is that kant conceived the Self as something admitting of
stable, constative, being-what-it-is, whereas Heidegger thinks it is at
bottom _utterly_ performative. [BT366/SZ318] That is what he means when he
says Kant conceives the "I" as subject, as "the selfsameness and
steadiness of something that is always present-at-hand." [BT367/SZ320]
That is also what grounds the dilemma Heidegger points to in Kant's
theory-- how does this "I" 'cling to' or 'accompany' our phenomenal
"representations"? If both Self and representation are conceived as funny
sorts of self-standing, p-at-h, extant _things_, then the manner and
necessity of their connection becomes terribly mysterious, even
inexplicable. But if the Self is not p-at-h, but performative,
_existing_, then there must be that through which it performs itself, so
to speak, and therefore the "I" necessitates not only "I think," but "I
think something within-the-world." If the Self is essentially
performative, then it can only _be_ as being-in-the-world. This is the
principal advantage of certain direct realist theories of perception,
especially those that conceive the Self as being empty, bereft of
phenomenal content apart from its object (this is similar to Sartre, G.
E. Moore, myself, Panayot Butchvarov, and numerous others); they make any
divorce of self from world quite simply impossible, unintelligible.
Consciousness or Dasein can only be known and understood, is only
possible, in terms of the world in which and through which it constitutes
itself. This provides a basis for rejecting skepticism about external
reality, though in itself it is not enough. In connection with this, I
found footnote xix extremely helpful.
My next question, which cropped up on BT368, was "why would Dasein so
misinterpret itself? Why should fallen Dasein interpret itself in terms
of the Real, the substantial, and not in some other way?" This amounts to
asking why dasein is fallen. I think the answer is just that Dasein is
practical, that it concerns itself with things, with intentional objects,
and that because those objects _matter_ to it (because the being of Dasein
is care), Dasein gets "wrapped up with" them. This sort of explanation
applies to being-with as much as it does to being-in. Fallen Dasein
interprets itself in terms of the 'they' because again it is essentially
directed "outward" towards others and becomes absorbed with them, thereby
coming to understand itself in terms of them. In both cases, it is this
being-outside-of-itself, this fundamentally ecstatic absorption in its
"intentional" objects, that causes Dasein to come to misinterpret itself
in the way it does. Dasein's ordinary misinterpretation of itself is
grounded in the very essence of its being.
[BT369/SZ322] I really don't understand this paragraph, especially the
latter part of it. What is the "constancy of the Self in the sense of its
having achieved some sort of position"? And how does "Self-constancy"
existentially signify _anticipatory resoluteness_? Any suggestions?
FINAL PARAGRAPH OF $64: Care is not founded in a persisting Self, but
rather our Selfhood is founded in care. Now this is very strongly
reminiscient of Sartre's account of the self in _Transcendence Of The
Ego_. It has long been believed that the unity of consciousness and of
lived experience must be grounded in a metaphysically irreducible self, a
transcendental ego, or an absolute "Ich." As I understand them both,
Heidegger and Sartre want to insist that the reverse is true, that there
is no transcendental ego generating the unity of our streams of
consciousness, but that the unity of our streams of consciousness (or just
the unity of our fundamentally temporal Dasein) generates or "constitutes"
the ego.
*$65*
Now, in trying to really get clear on what Heidegger is driving at in
saying the clarification of the meaning of care amounts to clarifying the
"upon which" of the projection of Dasein's being, I must ask is the "upon
which" essentially the same as a phenomenological horizon? If so, what
distinguishes a phenomenological horizon from Kantian "conditions for the
possibility of x," apart from the manner in which we come to know them?
Or is that just what a Husserlian horizon is, a set of conditions for
something's intelligibility arrived at through phenomenological
reflection?
Anyway, the meaning of care is that whereby (against the backdrop of
which) it is first made intelligible.
[BT371-72/SZ324-25] If the meaning of some x must always be the "upon
which" of its projection, then we come to the absurd consequence that all
understanding of meaning is in terms of something else. The meaning of x
is never within x itself but always in that "upon which" the being of x
has been projected. But this is simply not the case. While it may be
especially helpful to understand some x in terms of its genus, or its
phenomenological horizon, or its conceptual components, or in terms of the
necessary conditions for its possibility, there is also such a thing as
understanding x just in and through x itself. Whatever else I may know of
the blackness of my pen through genera, phenomenological horizons, and the
such, there is also something distinctive that I know of it only through
it itself. That is to say, some knowledge is gained through direct
acquaintance and nothing else. Some concepts are fundamental and are not
understood in terms of any other concept(s).
[BT372-74/SZ325-26] Here is where we first read that the foudnation of
care is time. Dasein's existence, its being-towards some possibilities of
itself has for the condition of its possibility Dasein's ability to _come
towards_ itself in its possibilities. This phenomenon of coming-towards
is the primary and fundamental future [Zu-kunft]. Dasein can be-towards
its possibilities only because it _is_ only as futural, as
coming-towards-itself.
Similarly, Dasein's factical thrownness into the world, its being a thrown
basis of itself, is grounded in its fundamental past-- what Heidegger
calls Dasein's "having been" or "been-ness." The idea is that facticity
and thrownness can only be part of Dasein insofar as it _takes over_ its
thrownness, insofar as dasein enacts itself in terms of what it already
was.
PROBLEM: [BT373] I understand how Dasein's having been is dependent on
its futurity, but how is the reverse also true (as Heidegger surely thinks
it is)??
POSSIBLE ANSWER: In any moment of its existence, Dasein is towards its
possibilities only insofar as it understands itself through and as having
such-and-such possibilities and not others; its entire projective
self-understanding depends on its having certain possiblities open to
itself and having others _closed off_. Now, Dasein's possibilities can be
closed off to it only on the basis of facticity, thrownness. There is no
possibility of a projective self-understanding that is not factically
thrown. In understanding itself as being x, Dasein implicitly equally
understands itself as not-y. If it were not a thrown projection, Dasein's
self-understanding would have all "possibilities," including jumping to
the moon, show up for it as equally possible. But manifestly this is not
the case and cannot be the case with anything that has Dasein's kind of
being (care). This si borne out with special vividness in authentic
existence, in anticipatory resoluteness.
Anticipatory resoluteness is not a way of being in utterly private
isolation, but a way of being-in-the-world and so as such Dasein is always
taking action, taking hold of what is environmentally around it .
Resoluteness is never detached and therefore it is always a _way_ of
taking hold of one's environment and circumstances. So both in
inauthentic andf authentic existence Dasein is always somehow dealing
with, taking hold of what is to-hand, which is possible only on the basis
of _making present_ (what in _BPP_ is called "enpresenting").
[BT374/SZ326] I'm afraid I really don't understand what Heidegger means by
saying having been [Gewesenheit] arises from the future in such a way that
the future which "is in the process of having been" then "releases from
itself the Present" [Gegenwart]. I mean, I get the image of the movement
between the three ecstases, but I have no idea how it is all supposed to
make sense and what arguments could support his claims here. It's all
very mysterious...
Now, reminding myself that Zeitlichkeit is quite specifically the
fundamental time or time-ishness of _Dasein_, I guess some small part of
the answer lies in the fact that Zeitlichkeit is the way in which Dasein
"works itself out," it is not an account of time as such. But this
doesn't really help so much, because I still just don't see how this could
function as the fundamental structure of Dasein's way of working itself
out. How is the having been a result of, or at the very least something
that arises from Dasein's futural coming-towards-itself?? I just don't
get what this is supposed to _mean_; I can't seem to get any proper
concept of it.
HMMM... Well, if the future is a sort of possibility-projection, a
"possibilizing," then Dasein constitutes itself as being a certain way
through such projection, and this then determines it or clarifies its
constituted essence as being "along a certain path" and not some other.
In this "not," then facticity wells up within Dasein's being. Now the
puzzle is: how does this process of projective facticity-making give rise
to the present [Gegenwart], to making-present?
About the only answer I've come up with so far is just that the necessary
conditions for Dasein's capacity for interacting with and having dealings
with things within the world are met through and only through facticity's
welling up in Dasein's projective coming-towards-itself. That, at elast,
makes _some_ sense (though not nearly enough). The problem is, i seem to
recall it being part of Heidegger's view that each ecstasis conceptually
implies the other two. If that's so, then why should temporality be
understood in terms of justy _this_ kind of movement (from future, through
past, into present) if the only way of understanding that movement is in
terms of some sort of conceptual implication? There must be something
more than just conceptuo-logical implication grounding and explaining
heidegger's account here.
Now on BT375 we see temporality traced out within the structure of care in
general, while just previously it was revealed through an analysis of
anticipatory resoluteness. What was the motivation for revealing it
wihtin anticipatory resoluteness first? I think the answer to this goes
some way toward explaining why heidegger found it necessary to analyze
death, guilt, and conscience before moving on to the meaning of care. In
authentic existence Dasein has radical clarity of understanding about
itself. It is only when in the grips of this clarity that Dasein has an
accurate grasp of the true nature and structure of temporality as the
ground of care. After all, it is only in such an instance that Dasein
even has an accurate grasp of its own care-structure.
Since existentiality is essentially futural, the primary sense of
Zeitlichkeit is also the future, not the Present.
The unity of the care-structure is grounded in temporality. The latter
explains the former and not _vice versa_. At one point, it was only
through the unity of care that I was able to understand the unity of
temporality, but manifestly this is not what Heidegger has in mind.
Rather, the idea is that time is only intelligible as a unity and it is
only in terms of such a unity that we can first make sense of something
like a future, a past, and a present. It is then in terms of this unity
that the unity of care becomes intelligible.
[BT377/SZ328] I am still at a loss for how we should understand the claim
that "temporality temporalizes itself." Anyone with half a brain would
agree that time is not an entity, a _thing_ of some funny sort which then
contains other things, like a cookie jar. I do not know of any
philosopher living or dead who would dispute this much. But then neither
is time an _event_, for events always only occur within time-- time is not
an event itself, but the underlying structure of all events. So what is
this "temporalizing"?
This next paragraph makes much more sense to me. Temporality is the
primary ekstatikon because each of its parts can only be understood in the
context of the other two. I suggest this is actually true of ordinary
clock time as much as it is of temporality, though we usually don't notice
it. For temporality this situation is more drastic-- not only is it the
case that each ecstasis can only be undetsood in the context of the other
two, but each ecstasis only _is_ as outside itself into another ecstasis.
Each ecstasis is nothing more than a pure outside-of-itself, it just _is_
a removal to---. Furthermore, temporality as the unity within which alone
each ecstasis is adequately conceived is nothing more than the complex
interlacings of these removals to---.
[BT377/SZ329] "temporality is not, prior to this, an entity which first
emerges from itself; its essence is a process of temporalizing in the
unity of the ecstases." Perhaps the best we can do for making sense fo
the "temporalizing" of temporality is just to understand it as the
fundamental conceptual structure underlying Dasein's performative essence.
It is because temporality is such a process of temporalizing that Dasein
is, in its very being, fundamentally performative. Howzat sound?
QUESTION: What does "a potiori fit denominatio" mean??
In the various modes of the temporalizing of inauthentic temporality, the
priority of the future is obscured to varying degrees, though evidence
attesting to its priority is still to be found even in the most lvelled
off mode. It is only because there is such evidence that an accurate and
adequate Daseinanalytic _can_ begin with dasein's average everydayness.
-----------------------------------
Right. This message has taken me all day to write up, so the stuff on
finitude and $66 will just have to wait until I'm able to walk in a fully
upright position again. As it stands, my back will not allow such
behavior. That is the factical concretion of my situation, so I'll just
have to deal with it.
Cheers,
David Schenk.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------