Heidegger

GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:

>jPolanik@nc.rr.com writes:

>>using the phrase ‘human being’ prejudices the inquiry into the
>>question of being. compare the following two questions:

>>[1]: is there Being or a being within a human?

>>[2]: is there Being or a being with a human being?

>>question [2] is prejudicial because the form of the question suggests
>>the answer. in fact, [2] bears a striking resemblance to the question
>>’when did you stopped beating your wife?’ posed by a prosecutor. the
>>question *assumes* the defendant had been beating his wife over a
>>period of time. this question is highly prejudicial if asked before
>>the allegation of wife beating is proven.

>This is precisely the introductory presumptuous format of _Being and
>Time_ provided by the Nazi pseudo-questioner Heidegger.

>The so-called /Question of the nature Being/ is a, ‘when /did you stop
>beating your wife-type question/ posed by Heidegger. The assumption is
>that there is such a */Being* of beings/ that a /question of *Being/*
>can be asked of/about in the first place.

>In the same way that the prosecutor brands the accused as a wife-beater
>by framing his question on the assumption that the accused has been
>beating his wife for some time, the little Fascist phrases his question
>on the taken-for-granted, commonly acknowledged hypothesis that it is
>not the FACT of *Being* that is undergoing questioning, but the nature
>and *meaning* of *Being.*

>*But already when we ask, /What is ‘Being’?/ we stand in an
>understanding of the *is* without being able to determine conceptually
>what the *is* means.* (Heidegger B&T.)

when Heidegger finally turns his attention to the task of defining what
‘is’ means in _Basic Concepts_, a transcript of lectures given in 1941,
what emerges is a dialectic of being as ‘fullness’ and being as
‘emptiness’ — a predicate that is informative and non-informative at
the same time.

after examining a number of prosaic examples (’this man is from Swabia’,
the god is in the garden’, ‘the goblet is silver’, etc.), Heidegger
concludes:

“The previously cited propositions suffice, then, to demonstrate that
the ‘is’ derives its meaning each time from the being that is
respectively represented, addressed and articulated in the proposition.
Only thus can it full the emptiness that is otherwise, and indeed
characteristically, inherent in it from case to case, and present itself
in the appearance of a fulfilled word.” [29]

“That the ‘is’ has the character of the copula shows clearly enough the
extent to which its meaning must be characterized by emptiness and
indeterminacy. For only thus can the ‘is’ suffice for the various uses
that are constantly demanded of it in discourse. The ‘is’ remains not
only actually an empty word, but due to its essence — as a connecting
word — it may not be loaded down beforehand with any particular
meaning. Its own meaning must therefore be totally ‘empty’.” [30]

this conclusion, together with Heidegger’s claim that ‘is’ asserts
‘being’, leads us understand that ‘being’ is a non-informative predicate
(a merely logical predicate in Kantian terminology).

however, Heidegger is not done; for, he understands quite well that the
conclusion just reached would doom the ontological difference:

“In this difference, we ‘have’ before us two differentia: beings and
being. If, however, one of the two differentia in this difference,
namely being, is only the emptiest universalization of the other, owes
its essence to the other, and if consequently everything that has
content and endures shifts to the side of beings, and being is in truth
nothing, or at best an empty word-sound, then the differentiation may
not be taken as completely valid. For it to be valid, each of the two
’sides’ would have to be able to maintain a genuine and radical claim to
essence from out of itself.” [30]

so, following an examination of the metaphysical aspects of workers and
soldiers, he decides to re-open the inquiry into the meaning of ‘is’.

he considers a fragment of verse from Goethe, “Above all summits / is
Rest”, and concludes that there is a fulness, a ’surplus, of meaning
which he then attributes to ‘being’.

this leaves him with conflicing conclusions. rather than treating this
conflict as a contradiction, Heidegger embraces both aspects and
concludes the lecture by giving a series of paradoxical ‘guidewords for
reflection upon being’:

* Being is the emptiest and at the same time a surplus.

* Being is the most common of all and at the same time uniqueness.

* Being is the most intelligible and at the same time concealment.

* Being is the most worn-out and at the same time the origin.

* Being is the most reliable and at the same time the non-ground.

* Being is the most said and at the same time a keeping silent.

* Being is the most forgotten and at the same time remembrance.

* Being is the most constraining and at the same time liberation.

the paradox comes from trying to embrace a contradiction: treating
‘being’ as both informative and non-informative at the same time.

when any of these claims is predicated of ‘Being’ it makes Being into a
being about which the predication is false.

“Being is every time, with every attempt to think it, converted into a
being and thus destroyed in its essence; and yet being, as distinguished
from all beings, cannot be denied.” [69]

Heidegger persistently overlooks the obvious: that the word used as the
root predicate of a given philosophy is non-informative.

Joe

Note: Quotes from Basic Concepts are from Heidegger, Martin. 1998/1941.
Basic Concepts. (trans by Gary E Aylesworth). Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

Posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback