Heidegger

Cologne 29-Nov-2006

michaelP schrieb Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:55:21 +0000:

> MichaelE wrote not so recently:
>
> > Heidegger’s determination of human being (Dasein) as exposure
> > (Ausgesetzheit) to nothingness hits the mark. Nothingness is unlocatable in
> any
> > being. It is beyond the limit that defines a being _as_ a being — the
> infinite
> > without determination.
>
> Michael, I’m not so sure that “beyond the limit” is the “infinite without
> determination”. Perhaps the limit, the finitude, the bound of a
> being-as-being, its de-finition, is not the infinite (the boundless) but
> merely the not-that of the being, its edge, the other side of its edge,
> rather, but the other (side) of *it* (s edge): its other, thus belonging to
> its self, thus utterly finite too (determined by its self, its de-finition).
> Not that being, certainly, but only the not-being of that being, its
> (ownmost) not…
>
> As Heidegger shows in The Anaximander Fragment, the apeiron (the
> not-bounded) is not the formless infinite but the ‘process’ of coming into
> be-ing and going out of be-ing, the refusal of the standstill, the exact
> opposite of the usual formulation of be-ing as eternal constancy.
>
> Or am I performing more crap ontological exercises?

ME: Yes, I think you’re right, Michael, to point out the inadequacy of my
formulation, which is easily misunderstood. When Heidegger uses being and
nothingness as synonyms, this can only be the open clearing without any
determinations, and this is, strictly speaking, not “beyond the limit”, but prior
to any limit, before the inscription of any contouring determination into being.
Being=nothingness is closer to us, not further away in a yonder, and therefore
invariably overlooked.

What is beyond the limit of a finite, defined being is simply an other being.
Omne determinatio est negatio (Spinoza). What defines a being _as_ a being are
negations, e.g. a meadow is not a forest, not a desert, etc. The determination of
something is always vis-à-vis another being which is a negation, a limit. The
otherness of the other being is not indifferent to the first being, the
something, but is part of its own determination. The something is thus related to
the other being in its otherness, i.e. it _is_ the other being that it is not,
and is thus alterable. It is moved by the contradiction that it is itself and
also its other, its negation. Something alters to become another being, which in
turn alters into another being, and so on ad infinitum. This is what Hegel calls
“die schlechte Unendlichkeit”, “bad” or “pernicious infinity”.

“Genuine infinity” (wahrhafte Unendlichkeit) is attained by noticing that
something is already itself the other of its other, already a negation, so that
when it is altered through change into an other, it “just goes along with itself”
(”geht … nur mit sich selbst zusammen” Enz.I §95). The other being alters,
becoming the other of the other, thus regaining being, but as the famous
“negation of the negation”. In remaining itself through the movement of becoming
other, determinate, finite being has become being-for-itself (Fürsichsein),
genuinely infinite.

This is a crucial and difficult transition in the movement of thinking in Hegel’s
Logik at which the merely finite, real being that is defined merely by its
qualities becomes ideal, infinite.

>From what you say about Heidegger’s interpretation of _apeiron_, it can be seen
that there are uncanny resemblances between Heidegger’s and Hegel’s lines of
thinking, presumably because both learned deeply from the ancients Greeks, and
both trained the phenomenological eye.

Or something roughly like that.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
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_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_-
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>
>
> regards
>
> michaelP
>

Posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
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