Being Prioritized
March 3rd, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Being Prioritized :: Being Prioritized :: Being Prioritized :: Claim 1
Anthony Crifasi wrote:
>Joseph Polanik wrote:
>>>So you are asking why Heidegger prioritizes being-alongside over
>>>being-inside.
>>not exactly. Heidegger, like anyone else, can choose where to put his
>>attention; but, choosing one viewpoint to the exclusion of the other
>>doesn’t seem like a well-balanced approach to me.
>I never said he excluded the other. I said he *prioritizes* one over
>the other.
the argument you give for prioritizing being-alongside over being-inside
is clearly exclusionary. you argue that any philosophy that takes note
of being-inside will fail; either, because it does not “question as
deeply as philosophers like Descartes and Husserl do”; or, because it
*does* question as deeply as Descartes and Husserl questioned — and
then gets stuck in eternal skepticism which you say is inevitable and
unavoidable.
>>unless Heidegger has somehow prohibited others from expressing his
>>(Heidegger’s) philosophy in the first person, anyone may translate
>>”Dasein is an entity which in each case I myself am” into something
>>like “I am myself *this* … whatever this is”. anyone who makes such
>>an observation may ask the obvious follow-up question ‘what am I?’.
>>the question is not about the relation (being-in vs being-alongside)
>>to the world. it is about the internal structure of I, this which I
>>am.
>Beginning in section 25, Heidegger explicitly argues that what “I” am
>is not originally “me,” but “they.” In more colloquial terms, human
>consciousness is most fundamentally contextual, and only subordinately
>individual - only after ripping away “other” voices do we then end up
>with an isolated self.
as an empirical statement concerning human developmental psychology,
Heidegger’s claim (the ‘I’ is in the ‘it’ or ‘they’) may describe one
stage in the individuation process. as I recall there is an earlier
phase in which the infant fails to realize that the world is outside
itself (the ‘it/they’ is within the ‘I’). in any case, if/when the
individuation process successfully runs its course, we end up with an
individuated self (assuming ’self’ is the correct noun to use for
*this* … I, here, standing out from yonder world).
this still doesn’t tell us what a human is; although, it does tell us
that a mature human is individuated.
at the end of section 27 Heidegger writes: “there is ontologically a gap
separating the selfsameness of the authentically existing Self from the
identity of that ‘I’ which maintains itself throughout its manifold
Experiences”.
it seems clear to me that ‘the I and its experiences’ is Heidegger’s way
of speaking about the I-2, the phenomenological experiencer, and its
experiences; although, one might question the claim that the I-2
maintains a constant identity.
the I-2 that reads Heidegger can come to know “I-2 am not the
‘authentically existing Self’; so, what then am I-2?”.
it seems from the context of the past several sections that the I-2 and
authentic Self might be related as the false self that must come to know
the true self — which is itself but with a more accurate understanding
of itself. if so, it is difficult to see how the I-2 can come to know
itself as that which it is without questioning those beliefs about
itself that it previously acquired — including those that it acquired
as a child before the capacity for philosophical reflection and inquiry
fully developed.
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
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http://what-am-i.net
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