Being Prioritized
March 4th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Being Prioritized :: Being Prioritized :: Claim 1 :: Being Prioritized
Anthony Crifasi wrote:
>jPolanik wrote:
>>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.
>Eternal skepticism is the enevitable and unavoidable result *if*
>being-inside is prioritized over being-alongside.
okay, perhaps you have clarified the conditions under which the alleged
double-bind takes place; but, you haven’t proven that all philosophers
who prioritize being-inside over being-alongside will fail either by
questioning as deeply as Descartes and Husserl or by not questioning as
deeply as Descartes and Husserl.
what is the criteria by which you say those who fail to question as
deeply as Descartes and Husserl fail as philosophers? surely it is not
some measure of whether they agree with Heidegger?
>Heidegger isn’t talking about developmental or temporal priority when
>he prioritizes “they” over “I”. He’s talking about phenomenological
>priority. A *mature* human spends most of the day coasting along acting
>according to what “everyone” agrees to, thinking what “everyone” says
>about things, reading what “they” read, etc. When walking past a car,
>even if no individual is around, it’s still “someone’s” car - that’s
>integral to the very identity of the car as a car in the first place.
>So the THEY is first and foremost, and the “I” appears only upon
>analytical reflection and removal from everyday acting.
I mostly agree with your description of the phenomenology of the average
‘mature’ individual; but, I would only give this ‘phenomenological
priority’ if I was doing some sort of phenomenological anthropology for,
say, the Animal Planet cabel channel where they have frequent
documentaries of the everyday life and behavior of various non-human
primates.
the very fact that reflective self-awareness is both rare and (so far as
we know) uniquely human, makes it intensely interesting to philosophers;
and, I see no reason why they should not begin with this phenomenon
rather than with a sociological or anthropological view of a human
community.
in any case, unless Heidegger has somehow banned asking ‘what am I?’,
one simply must de-prioritize being-alongside. it is not capable of
addressing that question in the sense in which it is the first-person
analogue of the question ‘what is the structure of a human individual?’.
as noted in an earlier post, if I translate some of Heidegger’s
statements into the first person, I get something like “I am myself this
entity” or, more simply, “I am *this*” — the awareness that prompts
the next question: how do I determine that I, this entity that I myself
am, am a dasein instead of a mind, spirit, soul, a group of neurons, a
quantum phenomenon or whatever?
the phenomenological anthropology that results from prioritizing
being-alongside doesn’t seem to address this question.
is such a question askable within Heideggerian philosophy; or, does
Heideggerian philosophy (whether intentionally or unintentionally)
obscure the question of being (as I define being): is there an I-3?
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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