Heidegger

> Heidegger thus fails to notice that feeling is the modulation of
> emotion and hence the active antidote to “moods.”

My guru says that the energies of sensations, feelings and desires produce
the emotions. As such, I consider feelings as one of the ingredients of
emotions. Heidegger analyzed emotionality in general, and he was not zooming
in on the specific components of the emotions, because he was not doing
psychology, but philosophy. And, he was not trying to produce a very
comprehensive (all-including) philosophical anthropology.

> That is because there is no distinction drawn between the “real world”
> and the personal individual.
> Hence, “moral conscience” is thus reduced to a super-ego predicated in
> social collectivity.

I think that Heidegger is more individualistic than you think. He says that
moral conscience is the call of the Dasein for living up to its own
potential, i.e. a call to actualize its Self. As such, Heidegger’s concept
of conscience is structured around the Self. Guilt is produced through
absorption in the they, failing thus to be true to one’s Self. There is
still the question if the Self is merely individual, or it is pre-wired for
social existence (the existence of peers). E.g., as my computer could be
considered something existing by itself, yet it is wired to the internet,
being thus a participant to the internet.

> Van Gogh was certainly such a finacial failure but hardly an artistic
> failure.

Agreed.

> Again, no distinction is drawn here between the collective
> rule book of conscience and the indivudal conscience predicated as the
> will to artistic authenticity.

Well, the idea behind being a “true” individual is that individuals are
rare, while the mass is large. Good artists are an exception to this rule,
but again… very few are able to become good artists, the rest remain
just… wannabees. And it is very sad to see somebody wasting his/her life
with delusions of being a huge artist, when he/she has no chance of being
so. It is like the seeds of a plant I saw in a nature documentary: if all
its seeds would produce viable plants, the whole Earth would be covered only
with such plants. So, for each seed that attains such purpose, there are
many many others fail to attain it. This is a statistical evidence, and we
know that statistics applies to large groups, it means little in isolated
cases.

> No! It was because he was a hypocrit

Well, if that were true, it would have been a lot easier for him to just
produce the hydrogen bomb, instead of letting Teller do that. I am inclined
to believe that he was genuinely scared and shocked by what he saw in the
films documenting the effects of the atom bomb.

> Then “true warriors” are somehow deficient when in comes to conscience?

Not necessarily. But one’s conscience is different from another’s
conscience, since they have to actualize different Selves. A true warrior’s
conscience could be defined by a honorable victory, and depends on the
warrior himself to what extent is he prone to compromise honor in the
pursuit of victory.

> What kind of a little boy’s view do you have of what you generalize as
> a true warrior? Would this mean that Gen’l Eisenhower had no moral
> conscience?

Well, there’s a saying “Shit happens”. And when shit does happen, one needs
the warriors to intervene. So, I guess that Eisenhower’s conscience was
tweaked for such kind of interventions. In the traditional view of the male
role, it was considered ok that a man is a warrior. So, the upbringing that
Eisenhower received produced his Self in a manner that one could honorably
lead armies and still be true to one’s Self.

But, my grandfather said that Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon were just a
murderous as Hitler. Soldiers’ main job is to kill people and when one draws
the balance, what does it matter that the victims were wrong or right,
friends or foes? The idea is that people get killed, and the whole idea of
killing them the proper way could be just a rationalization for killing. It
is a good thing that Hitler was defeated, but the price for it was huge
(millions of people killed by either side). It was like the human species
was in zugzwang, and that the only alternative to bloodshed was bloodshed.

> Therefore, authenticity is more complicated (and more painful)
> than Osho
> implies.
>
> And quite incomplete by how you rationalize as much.

You are a bit cryptical in what you say, can you elaborate more on giving
such answers?

Greetings,

Tudor

Posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 6:00 am
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