Hello, everyone:
This message has now been sent to THINK.NET twice. In case there's some
problem with that list, I'm also posting it here at Village. Hopefully,
the THINK.NET address will be working soon.
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Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 17:19:18 -0500 (CDT)
From: David Schenk <djschenk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "heidegger@xxxxxxxxx" <heidegger@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: $5 of _Being and Time_.
Hi:
Since there is some interest in a slow readings and no one has made any
counter-suggestions of other possible readings, I'm just going to plow on
ahead with a quick gander at the first chapter in the second part of the
introduction.
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One of the first things that strikes me about $5 is that it is almost the
only place in the book where Heidegger tells us anything informative about
Temporality [temporalitaet]. One of the biggest questions I have about
Temporality, aside from exactly what we are supposed to take it to be, is
whether it constitutes the horizon for understanding _all_ of Being in
general, or just for understanding the Being of stuff that isn't Dasein.
I mean, is zeitlichkeit supposed to be just a specific form or way of
temporalitaet, a Dasein-oriented species of temporalitaet, if you will?
Or is it rather the complement of temporalitaet such that temporalitaet
only applies what is not Dasein and zeitlichkeit only applies to what is
Dasein? If the latter, then both concepts would be species of a single
more fundamental concept of time. If the former, then temporalitaet just
is the fundamental concept of time. Part of the trouble I always have
with these notions stems from Heidegger's failure to develop and explain
the concept of temporalitaet to any great extent. Even in _The basic
Problems of Phenomenology_ we read precious little about the three
schemata of temporalitaet. He doesn't even give us the names of two of
them; just praesenz.
That much aside, I find myself in full agreement with his claim that time
is the horizon for any understanding of Being and also for any genuinely
ontological understanding of Dasein (the Being of Dasein = care, the
meaning of care = temporality [zeitlichkeit]). I have long been of the
opinion that the importance of time in Heidegger's philosophy, and the
remarkable philosophical creativity with which he puts it to use, has been
greatly underestimated. Even in the preliminary definition of Dasein that
he gives in the introduction, the concept of time is subtly at work. If
having its Being at issue for it is what makes Dasein Dasein, is this not
tantamount to saying Dasein means being always out in future, concerned
with (its) fate? So the very notion of Dasein, even in its most imprecise
form, is dependent upon the concept of time. Furthermore, I think what is
most remarkable about Heidegger's Daseinanalytik is that Dasein is
distinctive insofar as it is primarily in the future, and that this is
only possible insofar as Dasein in its very being is in every case outside
of itself, insofar as Dasein is fundamentally ekstatic. (I guess so that
it is a being that is essentially more a kind of interlacing movement than
a *thing*. Dasein is then defined by what it _does_, not by its place in
the genus/species chart, by its occurrent properties, nor even by its
dispositional properties.)
Well, that's it for now, though I might make another post about the intro
to Div 2 sometime tonight. It all depends on how far I get.
-David Schenk.
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