David,
I just started musing about your question and trying to
work through an answer. I don't know if it helps or if
it work or is right, but since I bothered to write it
down, I thought I'd send it off and se if it is
helpful.
David Schenk wrote:
"What really gets fuzzy for me is how we are meant to understand this
peculiar "temporalizing of temporality" if it is nonsequential, not
reducible to all sorts of psychological stuff about memory and (ordinary)
anticipation of the future, not explained through intentionality, specific
to Dasein and not to the rest of being, and yet prior to everything of
human mental life. What in tarnation does it _mean_ to say "temporality
temporalizes"??
"...Does anyone understand this?"
---David: I think access to this might come not only from
the question concerning temporality, but the process or
means by which thinking takes up the question. Thinking is
not going to be laid bare for Heidegger, and I'm certainly
not going to do it in this response to your question, but if
you can let there be "whatever is called thinking", as you
understand it, as one understands it, and then see a general
movement of getting Dasein's Being into the comprehension or
apprehension of thinking, this might help. It is thinking
which asks, which demands: What does temporality *do*?
"Temporality temporalizes." Temporality doesn't demand this.
Temporality just does whatever it does, is whatever it is.
Thinking demands this in certain ways. It has the tendency
to think objects present at hand in curiosity, in a certain
work-thinking (and shouldn't really Heidegger's categories
be expanded; what "builds" builds things out of more than
just "curiosity", there seems to be an existentiale of a
certain kind of *work*. Perhaps Heidegger's concern and
repeated addressing of the problem of technology bespeaks a
lack in his own thought, by failing to open up something
like "work", despite or even aggravated by the workshop
example...) Ok, but anways: what does a *ball* do? It rolls,
it rolls places, bumps other balls. What does temporality
do? Does it "push things"? Does it evaporaite like water? It
is primordial, it is "plain and simple", it is elemental.
But it doesn't do things that chemical elements do. It
doesn't combine with substances. It doesn't act like a
substance. It is not enough to think that one is getting
temporality's unique character into the grasp of a thinking
that is suited to dealing with physical objects, things
present at hand. (I keep forgetting how cool Heidegger is!)
Thinking, in having a vague comprehension of being, everyday
Dasein in being and "managing", constituting and existing
*as* the understanding-temporality, as temporal
understanding, has a precomprehension of temporality. In
making this relation to "tool thinking" and "time thinking",
we might understand this more as a "trick" or a technique, a
method of analogy, though it surely makes contact with some
very, very prevalent tendencies. But it forgets that there
are likely many or at least some with some understanding of
temporality which graps itself. One must not, I think, view
Heidegger's thinking as the first and only true opening of
the comprehension of Being in an appropriate way. For some
reason, this seems very important to point out, but it
doesn't directly relate to your question.
---Thinking acts by thinking thoughts. Thinking the thought
of temporality "handles" or thinks through temporality.
Thinking does things. It asks questions, it comprehends, it
navigates and so forth. Thinking has to find the way to
handle "temporality". What does temporality do? It
temporalizes. So here is an elemental moment that requires a
certain acceptance. The problem you have, it appears to me,
is a kind of struggle concerning this acceptance. You do not
want to "accept" this thought simply because you are
supposed to do so. You do not, probably, expect to have
exactly the same thought about temporality that you have
about balls doing things that balls do (though the writings
of so many philosophers make this seem very likely, at least
for some). But you want some kind of "solid" (whoops, bad
word!) understanding. You want true comprehension. That's
what it looks like to me. If you're not getting it, you
might need to read *up to* it again, following Heidegger's
path more closely, and paying very, very careful attention
to some of the critical juncture points in the text. With
that preparation, it might come out more clearly what he
means by this sentence: temporality temporalizes.
In II.3, H writes: "*Temporality gest experienced in a
phenomenally primordial way in Dasein's authentic Being-a-
whole, in the phenomenon of anticipatory resoluteness*. If
temporality makes itself known primordially in this, then we
may suppose that the temporality of anticipatory
resoluteness is a distinctive mode of temporality.
Temporality hs different possibilities and different ways of
*temporalizing* itself."(H 304)
In the footnote for this, the translator is indicating that
an etymological play is involved with the German (I don't
know German) which works to heighten a "bringing about"
sense. This "bringing about" and "bringing to maturity" is
at the same time connected intimately (apparently) with
time. The sense of the verb is that it is "special" and
"introduced", but it appears to involve this play. I don't
know how much that is going to help. I find myself thinking
of ripening fruit and Nietzsche, and this might not be a bad
idea. What does it mean to grasp the temporality of
maturing? I'll leave aside the meaning of maturing and how
this might relate to "anticipatory resoluteness". The
temporality of a maturing fruit, of a maturing life-form, of
Dasein, but let me get back to the fruit, is not a "spirit"
(an invisible, air-like substance that moves through the
fruit). It is not the bumping sequences of chemical
reactions and cells. To understand the ripening of the
fruit, it is necessary to understand the beginning and end
of the fruit *at the same time*. The possibility for this
understanding lies in my own temporality. It is not that my
temporality "glues onto the fruit and marks the ripening
against a grid of maturation". Any such grid will be, for
Heidegger, founded on, and a derivation from and out of
everyday temporality and the existential conditions of
being, in a certain way like the fruit, between birth and
death. In me and in the fruit, though certainly in a
different way in the fruit, temporality "happens". Can we
say "happens"? Is temporality an event? Kant at least opened
the way out of this problem. No, it is *because of
temporality* (condition of possibility) that there can be an
event. Temporality shows itself as a kind of
elemental/primordial condition. Temporality is the whole
bringing about of the ripening of the fruit. It is a certain
totality of the fruit, the fruit as a whole. But it is not
the simple additions of stages. If that were the case, the
"stages" themselves could not be understood as "stages of
maturation" in which a certain "whole" could be understood.
This reaffirms the primordiality of temporality, and maybe
brings it into comprehension. Byt *why* say that
"temporality temporalizes?" If other verbs won't do (it
"happens", temporality "does things", and we have to bear in
mind Heidegger's explicit caution concerning the maintenance
of the language and passage he is developing), why say, "it
temporalizes"? Temporality has "modes of temporalization",
some of which are distinctive. Can you accept temporality as
*having* things? We know it doesn't "have things" as people
have pets or dishes. And in this having it at the same time
*is* its mode, closer to my "having a leg", or still closer,
to my having a brain, if we are to use that kind of example.
Perhaps it would have been better to say that it is
different modes, which happens when it is said that
anticipatory resoluntess *is* a mode of temporality. Or is
it? Heidegger says that a-r is a mode of temporality, and in
the same moment indicates as well that there *possible*
modes of temporalization. Possible and different modes. But
for me, the phrase "temporality temporalizes" still doesn't
"catch".
Oh, yeah: it's really important to be doing lots and lots of
examples and variations. The fruit example, or things that
happen with people, as people experience them (like a-r).
The temporal aspect as ground is constitutive and essential.
That's not so hard to get. But why say that temporality
temporalizes? Perhaps it links with intention. Intention and
action verbs go together important ways. Getting Dasein's
being a whole into its own grasp involes an understanding of
death, but at the same time the systematic avoidance of the
ontical projection of death. It has a concept of death which
is more or less strictly limited to "death by maturation" in
certain ways, it seems to me. Ok, but in any event, the
authenticating of the vague existentiell understanding but
taking up the general issue of Being has to mean engaging
the thinking of temporality and death. But temporality has
to get clarified and freed up. We'll skip all the "don't
take it as present at hand" stuff for the moment. But when
we give the verb to temporality, we have an "it" that
happens in a way that vastly exceeds the most effortful and
concerted, existential/existentiell form Heidegger can see:
a-r. Anticipation anticipates. Resoluteness resolves. And
temporality temporalizes. It does this in/through things
*like* anticipation, curiosity, and all the structures of
everyday Dasein. So you have this kind of "core self" which
has things like "will", curiosity, etc., with limited
cognitive powers that can't get back behind its moods and
connect them to previous moods, that can't know the whys and
wherefores of its changes and so forth. It knows, I know my
changes occur, but they are in some way bigger than me. This
bigger than me is temporality. I was born. I did not choose
to be born. I was born and was from that instant dying. I
didn't creat death. I can resolve, I can anticipate, I can
project, or be projection, and I can be thrown, but I can't
throw myself, choose my parents, my siblings, I can pick my
friends, but I can't pick my friend's nose, etc. Yet at the
same time there is an understanding of Being that has it
that *there is friendship*, there is birth. Shit happens.
And temporality temporalizes.
Nope, still doesn't hit it off. Temporality has possible
modes. These possible modes aren't hanging around in a
cupboard with labels on them and some guy comes over and
picks one..."Hmmm, curiosity today". Yet in a strange way,
it would seem that it does do that, that I do, to a certain
extent, "chose modes", but I choose among modes, and I don't
choose that there are modes or what they are to be. But
there is temporality. Temporality is not the happening/event
of maturation. It can only be understood ontologically.
Heidegger is not simply working in a specific development of
thought, language, and so forth; he is working at the
*brink* of it. So there is no hope for really understanding
what it means to say "temporality temporalizes" without
actually and fully reading and observing the various signal
moments of the text/thinking involved.
How about: you know you're understanding it if in some way
you are *happy* with the understanding and at the same time
you sound a whole helluva lot like Heidegger.
Let's try this: you wrote: "What really gets fuzzy for
me..." Think about this. Something there is that gets fuzzy.
Peaches get fuzzy. The fuzzy comes to the peace which we
understand as that fruit which gets fuzzy, but not right
away, but eventually. The event happens: it gets fuzzy.
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear...a soap that you wash with, and as
you use up the soap, hair appears to "grow" on Fuzzy Wuzzy.
Kids grow and get peach fuzz on their faces. Things are
clear when close up, but as a distance between you and them
grows, they appear fuzzy. Or you see things from a distance,
having never seen them up close and they are fuzzy. The last
example is not so clear. Your understanding gets fuzzy. It
is first clear, but it matures, badly, into fuzziness, while
you want clarity. These are all examples of temporality
temporalizing. It doesn't come in from the outside and
temporalize things; it temporalizes *itself*. The are
different modes of Dasein. They are bound with phenomenology
in that if there is no one there to see the peace grow fuzz,
or to watch a kid grow older, then in a certain way, it
doesn't happen. The peach does not "know" it is growing
older when it grows peach fuzz (well, they might start out
with fuzz, but you know what I mean).
Dasein matures. Living things mature. Even non-living things
might mature (the half life of a radioactive material, in a
way, but H will say this is utterly dependent on the
temporality of Dasein). Temporality doesn't mature. Is
temporality the maturing? No, the maturing is the maturing.
Maturing is a mode of temporality. A mode of something is
that thing in certain ways, but the thing that has modes is
in some way transcendent. In this sense, temporality, which
is a part of Being, is the transcendens, plain and simple.
It's being the transcendens is at the same time connected up
with the temporality, and the ontological understanding of
Dasein, as participant in being in a special way (as the
shepherd of being, as thrown projection with moods,
understanding, etc.) This nexus is the "site" of
temporality, some kind of conditino of possibility of
temporality. This will lead, it seems to me, to the question
as to why there is something and not only nothing. But in so
far as there is anything as we have this Being, then there
is this temporality as ground. Temporality temporalizes. To
say this is to grasp the Being of temporality outside of
intentional dealings with others and with things. At best,
at the *most*, Dasein can be resolute and anticipatory, and
can authenticate its ownmost being towards death which is
non-relational. If it can be towards death, it is because it
is *already* dying. Authentication doesn't create death.
Death was already there, in the ascendency of fallen dasein
as a vague awareness which haunted Dasein and lead to its
fleeing in the face of death. But when it authenticates, if
it is able to do so, death is still death. The Being of
death, already, goes with the verbal form of temporality.
Temporality temporalizes, but you don't or you do only in so
far as you are "owned" by temporality, constituted by it.
The "ownmost" of death is at the same time the realization
of being "owned" by death. If it is elemental, it is the
stuff by which metaphors are made, not a metaphor for
something else. It is not "like" the movement of someone
brushing their hair, the slow growth of hairs on a boy's or
girl's face.
But can we say, "temporality temporalizes?" Energy
energizes, a bartender I know, named Dugan, used to get
people drunk, and we would say we were "Duganized", and
temporality temporlizes. But it doesn't temporalize things
and people as if they were things present at hand which it
entered like a spirit and activated, filling up and doing
things to them. People, as people, are (grounded in)
temporality. Dasein is temporality. But can we say "people"?
We might *have* to say Dasein. Heidegger indicates as much.
And we will never have it any other way. We will not have
temporality "coming in from the wings" and temporalizing.
But we can say there are different modes of temporalizing,
different kinds of time. No question about that (??).
Temporality temporalizes as the various modes it can be.
As the ekstatical unity and the outside of itself in the
unity of being itself, what is itself as a temporal whole
has something to do with temporality. Heidegger says
"ground". Is a-r a temporization of temporality? Only if
resoluteness is temporality in a special way, it seems to
me. Only if the interrelationship between the showing of
temporality and the temporal in a thing or existent is
somehow essential. Only if the happening of anticipatory
resoluteness constitutes, already, an understanding-
temporality. Only if temporality is, in a sense,
temporality. It is possible that the temporal can not have
the suffix "-ity" unless it occurs in understanding (Derrida
calls this a "fetishization of truth") and has possibles
which are thought together and and in general. This would
seem to be verified by all of H's thinking in Being and
Time. Being is the transcendens. The thinking of being is
part of being in a special way, as the understanding of that
Being which has being as an issue for itself in which Being
has fatefully grasped itself, as that temporal being which
temporalizes in anticipatory resolutness, which exists as
thrown projection in the ekstatical unity which is outside
of itself in a whole that can come into authentically
understanding itself *as a whole* in the attestation of its
ownmost being towards death. But it doesn't die, does it?
Not right now...;-) So how can it grasp this? But does it
*need* to grasp this if it is to understand what it means to
say "temporality temporalizes?" If temporality can appear as
an "-ity" and *as a verb*, this has to do with
understanding. The thinking which cares for the development
of the understanding (and which gets fuzzy) is temporal. It
is one of several things which are temporal. Many things are
temporal, and they are temporal in different ways. Gathering
these different things together according to how they are
temporal is to view them all within the horizon of
temporality.
That is where the "-ity" comes in. But what about the "-
izes"? We take something thought of in terms of temporality,
different things which have in common that they are *being
understood/viewed in terms of what is temporal about them*,
their temporality. When we look at the *ways* of the
temporality involved in what is being viewed in this
horizon, we look at different aspect of the thing and see
them in this horizon. We might pick to examples: in the
maturing of the peach, "temporality happens or temprlizes as
maturing", while in curiosity, temporility occurs or
temporalizes as a repetition of delight or fascination in
the new, as, perhaps, a fleeing from death (maturing). Or in
a simple anticipation of coffee in the morning, temporality
temporalizes as simple anticipation which is not bound up
with something more complex and which is inauthentic in as
much as it is not unified with death, in spite of the fact
that it is *already* but perhaps unknowingly, or without a
certain admission, constituted in part by death, just as the
fruit is constituted by death. We can't say "temporality
occurs" becuase it doesn't. It is the condition of
possiblity of an occurance or event.
The word "temporalize" is ontological through and through.
If you want to take temporality from a certain vantage
point, you have to give it a word, like "temporalizes". It
may be here that the verb form just is a problem or even a
mistake. But you can probably say, at this point,
"temporality temporalizes as a-r". It is better to say that
than to say "temporality happens", as your own quotation
marks indicate.
Are we there yet?
---
************************************************************************
"It is only after one ceases to reduce public affairs to the business of
dominion that the original data in the realm of human affairs will appear, or,
rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity." -- Hannah Arendt
Crises of the Republic; lying in politics, civil disobedience on violence,
thoughts on politics, and revolution. Hannah Arendt [1st ed.] New York,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [1972] pages 142-143
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
521 Main Street
PO Box 495
Harmony PA 16037
412-453-0211
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
I just started musing about your question and trying to
work through an answer. I don't know if it helps or if
it work or is right, but since I bothered to write it
down, I thought I'd send it off and se if it is
helpful.
David Schenk wrote:
"What really gets fuzzy for me is how we are meant to understand this
peculiar "temporalizing of temporality" if it is nonsequential, not
reducible to all sorts of psychological stuff about memory and (ordinary)
anticipation of the future, not explained through intentionality, specific
to Dasein and not to the rest of being, and yet prior to everything of
human mental life. What in tarnation does it _mean_ to say "temporality
temporalizes"??
"...Does anyone understand this?"
---David: I think access to this might come not only from
the question concerning temporality, but the process or
means by which thinking takes up the question. Thinking is
not going to be laid bare for Heidegger, and I'm certainly
not going to do it in this response to your question, but if
you can let there be "whatever is called thinking", as you
understand it, as one understands it, and then see a general
movement of getting Dasein's Being into the comprehension or
apprehension of thinking, this might help. It is thinking
which asks, which demands: What does temporality *do*?
"Temporality temporalizes." Temporality doesn't demand this.
Temporality just does whatever it does, is whatever it is.
Thinking demands this in certain ways. It has the tendency
to think objects present at hand in curiosity, in a certain
work-thinking (and shouldn't really Heidegger's categories
be expanded; what "builds" builds things out of more than
just "curiosity", there seems to be an existentiale of a
certain kind of *work*. Perhaps Heidegger's concern and
repeated addressing of the problem of technology bespeaks a
lack in his own thought, by failing to open up something
like "work", despite or even aggravated by the workshop
example...) Ok, but anways: what does a *ball* do? It rolls,
it rolls places, bumps other balls. What does temporality
do? Does it "push things"? Does it evaporaite like water? It
is primordial, it is "plain and simple", it is elemental.
But it doesn't do things that chemical elements do. It
doesn't combine with substances. It doesn't act like a
substance. It is not enough to think that one is getting
temporality's unique character into the grasp of a thinking
that is suited to dealing with physical objects, things
present at hand. (I keep forgetting how cool Heidegger is!)
Thinking, in having a vague comprehension of being, everyday
Dasein in being and "managing", constituting and existing
*as* the understanding-temporality, as temporal
understanding, has a precomprehension of temporality. In
making this relation to "tool thinking" and "time thinking",
we might understand this more as a "trick" or a technique, a
method of analogy, though it surely makes contact with some
very, very prevalent tendencies. But it forgets that there
are likely many or at least some with some understanding of
temporality which graps itself. One must not, I think, view
Heidegger's thinking as the first and only true opening of
the comprehension of Being in an appropriate way. For some
reason, this seems very important to point out, but it
doesn't directly relate to your question.
---Thinking acts by thinking thoughts. Thinking the thought
of temporality "handles" or thinks through temporality.
Thinking does things. It asks questions, it comprehends, it
navigates and so forth. Thinking has to find the way to
handle "temporality". What does temporality do? It
temporalizes. So here is an elemental moment that requires a
certain acceptance. The problem you have, it appears to me,
is a kind of struggle concerning this acceptance. You do not
want to "accept" this thought simply because you are
supposed to do so. You do not, probably, expect to have
exactly the same thought about temporality that you have
about balls doing things that balls do (though the writings
of so many philosophers make this seem very likely, at least
for some). But you want some kind of "solid" (whoops, bad
word!) understanding. You want true comprehension. That's
what it looks like to me. If you're not getting it, you
might need to read *up to* it again, following Heidegger's
path more closely, and paying very, very careful attention
to some of the critical juncture points in the text. With
that preparation, it might come out more clearly what he
means by this sentence: temporality temporalizes.
In II.3, H writes: "*Temporality gest experienced in a
phenomenally primordial way in Dasein's authentic Being-a-
whole, in the phenomenon of anticipatory resoluteness*. If
temporality makes itself known primordially in this, then we
may suppose that the temporality of anticipatory
resoluteness is a distinctive mode of temporality.
Temporality hs different possibilities and different ways of
*temporalizing* itself."(H 304)
In the footnote for this, the translator is indicating that
an etymological play is involved with the German (I don't
know German) which works to heighten a "bringing about"
sense. This "bringing about" and "bringing to maturity" is
at the same time connected intimately (apparently) with
time. The sense of the verb is that it is "special" and
"introduced", but it appears to involve this play. I don't
know how much that is going to help. I find myself thinking
of ripening fruit and Nietzsche, and this might not be a bad
idea. What does it mean to grasp the temporality of
maturing? I'll leave aside the meaning of maturing and how
this might relate to "anticipatory resoluteness". The
temporality of a maturing fruit, of a maturing life-form, of
Dasein, but let me get back to the fruit, is not a "spirit"
(an invisible, air-like substance that moves through the
fruit). It is not the bumping sequences of chemical
reactions and cells. To understand the ripening of the
fruit, it is necessary to understand the beginning and end
of the fruit *at the same time*. The possibility for this
understanding lies in my own temporality. It is not that my
temporality "glues onto the fruit and marks the ripening
against a grid of maturation". Any such grid will be, for
Heidegger, founded on, and a derivation from and out of
everyday temporality and the existential conditions of
being, in a certain way like the fruit, between birth and
death. In me and in the fruit, though certainly in a
different way in the fruit, temporality "happens". Can we
say "happens"? Is temporality an event? Kant at least opened
the way out of this problem. No, it is *because of
temporality* (condition of possibility) that there can be an
event. Temporality shows itself as a kind of
elemental/primordial condition. Temporality is the whole
bringing about of the ripening of the fruit. It is a certain
totality of the fruit, the fruit as a whole. But it is not
the simple additions of stages. If that were the case, the
"stages" themselves could not be understood as "stages of
maturation" in which a certain "whole" could be understood.
This reaffirms the primordiality of temporality, and maybe
brings it into comprehension. Byt *why* say that
"temporality temporalizes?" If other verbs won't do (it
"happens", temporality "does things", and we have to bear in
mind Heidegger's explicit caution concerning the maintenance
of the language and passage he is developing), why say, "it
temporalizes"? Temporality has "modes of temporalization",
some of which are distinctive. Can you accept temporality as
*having* things? We know it doesn't "have things" as people
have pets or dishes. And in this having it at the same time
*is* its mode, closer to my "having a leg", or still closer,
to my having a brain, if we are to use that kind of example.
Perhaps it would have been better to say that it is
different modes, which happens when it is said that
anticipatory resoluntess *is* a mode of temporality. Or is
it? Heidegger says that a-r is a mode of temporality, and in
the same moment indicates as well that there *possible*
modes of temporalization. Possible and different modes. But
for me, the phrase "temporality temporalizes" still doesn't
"catch".
Oh, yeah: it's really important to be doing lots and lots of
examples and variations. The fruit example, or things that
happen with people, as people experience them (like a-r).
The temporal aspect as ground is constitutive and essential.
That's not so hard to get. But why say that temporality
temporalizes? Perhaps it links with intention. Intention and
action verbs go together important ways. Getting Dasein's
being a whole into its own grasp involes an understanding of
death, but at the same time the systematic avoidance of the
ontical projection of death. It has a concept of death which
is more or less strictly limited to "death by maturation" in
certain ways, it seems to me. Ok, but in any event, the
authenticating of the vague existentiell understanding but
taking up the general issue of Being has to mean engaging
the thinking of temporality and death. But temporality has
to get clarified and freed up. We'll skip all the "don't
take it as present at hand" stuff for the moment. But when
we give the verb to temporality, we have an "it" that
happens in a way that vastly exceeds the most effortful and
concerted, existential/existentiell form Heidegger can see:
a-r. Anticipation anticipates. Resoluteness resolves. And
temporality temporalizes. It does this in/through things
*like* anticipation, curiosity, and all the structures of
everyday Dasein. So you have this kind of "core self" which
has things like "will", curiosity, etc., with limited
cognitive powers that can't get back behind its moods and
connect them to previous moods, that can't know the whys and
wherefores of its changes and so forth. It knows, I know my
changes occur, but they are in some way bigger than me. This
bigger than me is temporality. I was born. I did not choose
to be born. I was born and was from that instant dying. I
didn't creat death. I can resolve, I can anticipate, I can
project, or be projection, and I can be thrown, but I can't
throw myself, choose my parents, my siblings, I can pick my
friends, but I can't pick my friend's nose, etc. Yet at the
same time there is an understanding of Being that has it
that *there is friendship*, there is birth. Shit happens.
And temporality temporalizes.
Nope, still doesn't hit it off. Temporality has possible
modes. These possible modes aren't hanging around in a
cupboard with labels on them and some guy comes over and
picks one..."Hmmm, curiosity today". Yet in a strange way,
it would seem that it does do that, that I do, to a certain
extent, "chose modes", but I choose among modes, and I don't
choose that there are modes or what they are to be. But
there is temporality. Temporality is not the happening/event
of maturation. It can only be understood ontologically.
Heidegger is not simply working in a specific development of
thought, language, and so forth; he is working at the
*brink* of it. So there is no hope for really understanding
what it means to say "temporality temporalizes" without
actually and fully reading and observing the various signal
moments of the text/thinking involved.
How about: you know you're understanding it if in some way
you are *happy* with the understanding and at the same time
you sound a whole helluva lot like Heidegger.
Let's try this: you wrote: "What really gets fuzzy for
me..." Think about this. Something there is that gets fuzzy.
Peaches get fuzzy. The fuzzy comes to the peace which we
understand as that fruit which gets fuzzy, but not right
away, but eventually. The event happens: it gets fuzzy.
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear...a soap that you wash with, and as
you use up the soap, hair appears to "grow" on Fuzzy Wuzzy.
Kids grow and get peach fuzz on their faces. Things are
clear when close up, but as a distance between you and them
grows, they appear fuzzy. Or you see things from a distance,
having never seen them up close and they are fuzzy. The last
example is not so clear. Your understanding gets fuzzy. It
is first clear, but it matures, badly, into fuzziness, while
you want clarity. These are all examples of temporality
temporalizing. It doesn't come in from the outside and
temporalize things; it temporalizes *itself*. The are
different modes of Dasein. They are bound with phenomenology
in that if there is no one there to see the peace grow fuzz,
or to watch a kid grow older, then in a certain way, it
doesn't happen. The peach does not "know" it is growing
older when it grows peach fuzz (well, they might start out
with fuzz, but you know what I mean).
Dasein matures. Living things mature. Even non-living things
might mature (the half life of a radioactive material, in a
way, but H will say this is utterly dependent on the
temporality of Dasein). Temporality doesn't mature. Is
temporality the maturing? No, the maturing is the maturing.
Maturing is a mode of temporality. A mode of something is
that thing in certain ways, but the thing that has modes is
in some way transcendent. In this sense, temporality, which
is a part of Being, is the transcendens, plain and simple.
It's being the transcendens is at the same time connected up
with the temporality, and the ontological understanding of
Dasein, as participant in being in a special way (as the
shepherd of being, as thrown projection with moods,
understanding, etc.) This nexus is the "site" of
temporality, some kind of conditino of possibility of
temporality. This will lead, it seems to me, to the question
as to why there is something and not only nothing. But in so
far as there is anything as we have this Being, then there
is this temporality as ground. Temporality temporalizes. To
say this is to grasp the Being of temporality outside of
intentional dealings with others and with things. At best,
at the *most*, Dasein can be resolute and anticipatory, and
can authenticate its ownmost being towards death which is
non-relational. If it can be towards death, it is because it
is *already* dying. Authentication doesn't create death.
Death was already there, in the ascendency of fallen dasein
as a vague awareness which haunted Dasein and lead to its
fleeing in the face of death. But when it authenticates, if
it is able to do so, death is still death. The Being of
death, already, goes with the verbal form of temporality.
Temporality temporalizes, but you don't or you do only in so
far as you are "owned" by temporality, constituted by it.
The "ownmost" of death is at the same time the realization
of being "owned" by death. If it is elemental, it is the
stuff by which metaphors are made, not a metaphor for
something else. It is not "like" the movement of someone
brushing their hair, the slow growth of hairs on a boy's or
girl's face.
But can we say, "temporality temporalizes?" Energy
energizes, a bartender I know, named Dugan, used to get
people drunk, and we would say we were "Duganized", and
temporality temporlizes. But it doesn't temporalize things
and people as if they were things present at hand which it
entered like a spirit and activated, filling up and doing
things to them. People, as people, are (grounded in)
temporality. Dasein is temporality. But can we say "people"?
We might *have* to say Dasein. Heidegger indicates as much.
And we will never have it any other way. We will not have
temporality "coming in from the wings" and temporalizing.
But we can say there are different modes of temporalizing,
different kinds of time. No question about that (??).
Temporality temporalizes as the various modes it can be.
As the ekstatical unity and the outside of itself in the
unity of being itself, what is itself as a temporal whole
has something to do with temporality. Heidegger says
"ground". Is a-r a temporization of temporality? Only if
resoluteness is temporality in a special way, it seems to
me. Only if the interrelationship between the showing of
temporality and the temporal in a thing or existent is
somehow essential. Only if the happening of anticipatory
resoluteness constitutes, already, an understanding-
temporality. Only if temporality is, in a sense,
temporality. It is possible that the temporal can not have
the suffix "-ity" unless it occurs in understanding (Derrida
calls this a "fetishization of truth") and has possibles
which are thought together and and in general. This would
seem to be verified by all of H's thinking in Being and
Time. Being is the transcendens. The thinking of being is
part of being in a special way, as the understanding of that
Being which has being as an issue for itself in which Being
has fatefully grasped itself, as that temporal being which
temporalizes in anticipatory resolutness, which exists as
thrown projection in the ekstatical unity which is outside
of itself in a whole that can come into authentically
understanding itself *as a whole* in the attestation of its
ownmost being towards death. But it doesn't die, does it?
Not right now...;-) So how can it grasp this? But does it
*need* to grasp this if it is to understand what it means to
say "temporality temporalizes?" If temporality can appear as
an "-ity" and *as a verb*, this has to do with
understanding. The thinking which cares for the development
of the understanding (and which gets fuzzy) is temporal. It
is one of several things which are temporal. Many things are
temporal, and they are temporal in different ways. Gathering
these different things together according to how they are
temporal is to view them all within the horizon of
temporality.
That is where the "-ity" comes in. But what about the "-
izes"? We take something thought of in terms of temporality,
different things which have in common that they are *being
understood/viewed in terms of what is temporal about them*,
their temporality. When we look at the *ways* of the
temporality involved in what is being viewed in this
horizon, we look at different aspect of the thing and see
them in this horizon. We might pick to examples: in the
maturing of the peach, "temporality happens or temprlizes as
maturing", while in curiosity, temporility occurs or
temporalizes as a repetition of delight or fascination in
the new, as, perhaps, a fleeing from death (maturing). Or in
a simple anticipation of coffee in the morning, temporality
temporalizes as simple anticipation which is not bound up
with something more complex and which is inauthentic in as
much as it is not unified with death, in spite of the fact
that it is *already* but perhaps unknowingly, or without a
certain admission, constituted in part by death, just as the
fruit is constituted by death. We can't say "temporality
occurs" becuase it doesn't. It is the condition of
possiblity of an occurance or event.
The word "temporalize" is ontological through and through.
If you want to take temporality from a certain vantage
point, you have to give it a word, like "temporalizes". It
may be here that the verb form just is a problem or even a
mistake. But you can probably say, at this point,
"temporality temporalizes as a-r". It is better to say that
than to say "temporality happens", as your own quotation
marks indicate.
Are we there yet?
---
************************************************************************
"It is only after one ceases to reduce public affairs to the business of
dominion that the original data in the realm of human affairs will appear, or,
rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity." -- Hannah Arendt
Crises of the Republic; lying in politics, civil disobedience on violence,
thoughts on politics, and revolution. Hannah Arendt [1st ed.] New York,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [1972] pages 142-143
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
521 Main Street
PO Box 495
Harmony PA 16037
412-453-0211
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