Nik. Happy referendum-ing. My pal, Roger Michaud, a Heideggerian in
Montreal is pretty unhappy with the vote.
Thanks for the long and learned post. I agree with everything you say,
but want to make a quick point. Dasein is its own possibility, yes, but
it is so only in that it is fallen and thrown into its being. Heidegger
is also pretty insistent about this, a formulation he derives from
medieval thelogy about the finitude of human being.
If we were to stop with the idea that Dasein is its own possibility, then
we would be basically saying that it is a Deity, that like God we can
create the world with a Word. We'd have a Hegelian formulation in which
Dasein produces its own essence. Instead, while its true that Dasein's
possibilities are not "outside" it, they are so only in so far as it is
permitted to Dasein to dwell in a world in which it may be comported
towards the "in ahead of itself." The "ahead of itself" is Dasein's
essence as you say -- (I'm trying to remember your post; I lose all my
screens when I write) -- but this essence is not something produced or
chosen. Right?
The term I used that you objected to, "press forward into possibilities,"
is Heidegger's own, from the Section in B&T you referenced on
"understanding": "Why does the understanding -- whatever may be the
essential dimensions of that which can be disclosed in it -- always press
forward into possibilities? It is because the understanding has in
itself the existential structure which we call _"projection"_. With
equal primordiality the understanding projects Dasein's Being both upon
its "for-the-sake-of-which" and upon significance, as the worldhood of
its current world. . . . " (from M&R's trans, p. 185). Earlier (p. 120),
in the section of the Worldhood of the World, he says "In the _act of
understanding_ [Verstehen]. . . the relations indicated above [the
relation of Dasein to the horizon within which the world is to be sought]
must have been previously disclosed; the act of understanding holds them
in this disclosedness." And later: "Dasein, in so far as it _is_, has
always submitted itself already to a "world" which it encounters, and
this _submission_ belongs essentially to its Being."
These possibilities are Dasein's own, but how they are so is the
mysterious point of departure for Heidegger's project. Have you read the
Blanchot essay? The brooding upon death, making it a category to be
confronted, seems like Sartre, and even to a small extent like Dreyfus --
but not really like Blanchot.
Thanks again for the post,
Michael
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Montreal is pretty unhappy with the vote.
Thanks for the long and learned post. I agree with everything you say,
but want to make a quick point. Dasein is its own possibility, yes, but
it is so only in that it is fallen and thrown into its being. Heidegger
is also pretty insistent about this, a formulation he derives from
medieval thelogy about the finitude of human being.
If we were to stop with the idea that Dasein is its own possibility, then
we would be basically saying that it is a Deity, that like God we can
create the world with a Word. We'd have a Hegelian formulation in which
Dasein produces its own essence. Instead, while its true that Dasein's
possibilities are not "outside" it, they are so only in so far as it is
permitted to Dasein to dwell in a world in which it may be comported
towards the "in ahead of itself." The "ahead of itself" is Dasein's
essence as you say -- (I'm trying to remember your post; I lose all my
screens when I write) -- but this essence is not something produced or
chosen. Right?
The term I used that you objected to, "press forward into possibilities,"
is Heidegger's own, from the Section in B&T you referenced on
"understanding": "Why does the understanding -- whatever may be the
essential dimensions of that which can be disclosed in it -- always press
forward into possibilities? It is because the understanding has in
itself the existential structure which we call _"projection"_. With
equal primordiality the understanding projects Dasein's Being both upon
its "for-the-sake-of-which" and upon significance, as the worldhood of
its current world. . . . " (from M&R's trans, p. 185). Earlier (p. 120),
in the section of the Worldhood of the World, he says "In the _act of
understanding_ [Verstehen]. . . the relations indicated above [the
relation of Dasein to the horizon within which the world is to be sought]
must have been previously disclosed; the act of understanding holds them
in this disclosedness." And later: "Dasein, in so far as it _is_, has
always submitted itself already to a "world" which it encounters, and
this _submission_ belongs essentially to its Being."
These possibilities are Dasein's own, but how they are so is the
mysterious point of departure for Heidegger's project. Have you read the
Blanchot essay? The brooding upon death, making it a category to be
confronted, seems like Sartre, and even to a small extent like Dreyfus --
but not really like Blanchot.
Thanks again for the post,
Michael
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------------------