Heidegger

Bernx at aol.com wrote:

>*The fallacy here is to confound “thinking” with “experience,” the
>speculation that Descartes didn’t know the difference between thinking
>and experience and “really” intended *experience* when he used the term
>*cogito.* The evidence to this is the lack of *is* and the predicate of
>being in Hebrew and Arabic that is active when experience rather than
>thinking serves consciousness. As a result there are some 5000 separate
>words in Arabic to indicate “camel” in all its possible states simply
>because the predicate of being is abscent linguistically qua
>consciousness. “Thinking” remained dormant and whose first signs of
>expression was that of the pre-Socratic philosophers and *physiologoi.*
>Hence, *prosus* (”right on” as the extention of logic to abstraction)
>displaced the mode of mythopoeic expression whose ground was
>experience. “Thinking” was thus a Greek invention epitomized as Nous or
>world mind, qua Anaxagoras, to accommodate the new found process of
>”thinking” and the displacement of mythopoeic “experience” whose
>emphasis is in feeling and sensation. But it is only in the mode of
>thinking that logical abstraction is possible if not displacing
>experience (to this day!). Thus, it is sort of cluckish to assume the
>Cartesian cogito was really intended to express experience, more so
>that the philosopher was not *thinking* in either Hebrew or Arabic. It
>is not possible to *experience* the predicate of being although that
>seems to be the intent of the notion of dasein whose attempt is to
>compromise the exclusivness of *Thinking* and find onself “out there”
>in the world of feeling, sensation and that old time experience couched
>as it is in mythopoeic experience. Indeed, the idea of dasein
>incomfortably has its ground and mode of abstraction in *prosus.**
>
>*Bernard *

intellectual archeology can generate fascinating insights; and, I am
very interested in tracing present disputes to their Hebraic/Hellenic
roots; but, I will leave that for another day. at the moment, I’m only
going to dig back to Descartes.

I believe that Descartes made a valiant attempt to use ‘thinking’ the
way that we would use ‘experiencing’. in the third meditation, where he
summarizes the findings of the second, Descartes writes:

“I am a thing that thinks: that is, a thing that doubts, affirms,
denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, loves,
hates, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory
perceptions; for as I have noted before, even though the objects of my
sensory experience and imagination may have no existence outside me,
nonetheless the modes of thinking which I refer to as cases of sensory
thinking, do exist within me — of that I am certain.” [CSM II, 26]

this passage should make it clear that Descartes is using ‘thinking’ as
the name for the entire class of subjective experiences (one of which is
‘thinking’ in the restrictive sense of reasoning deliberately, affirming
this and denying that). unfortunately, a persistent theme among some
commentators is that Descartes was *only* talking about thinking in the
restricted sense in which thinking is just reasoning.

Nietzsche writes”

“When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence ‘I think’,
I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult,
perhaps impossible, to prove; … and, finally, that it is already
determined what is to be designated by thinking — that I know what
thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is,
by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening
is not perhaps ‘willing’ or feeling’? In short, the assertion ‘I think’
assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states
of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of
this retrospective connection with further ‘knowledge’, it has, at any
rate, no immediate certainty for me.” [Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil.
23]

Heidegger continues this misreading of Descartes; and, in _What is a
Thing_, even performs for us the process whereby the unrestricted
meaning of ‘thinking’ (as experiencing) is transformed into the
restricted meaning of ‘thinking’. the passage is too long to be quoted
in its entirety; but, here are some excepts.

“Insofar as thinking and positing directs itself towards itself, it
finds the following: *whatever* whatever may be asserted, and in
whatever sense, this asserting and thinking is always an ‘I think’.
Thinking *is* always an ‘*I* think’, *ego cogito*. therein lies: I am,
*sum*. *Cogito, sum* — this is the highest certainty … In ‘I posit’
the ‘I’ as the positer is co- and pre-posited a that which is already
present, as the being. The Being of beings is determined out of the ‘I
am’ as the certainty of the positing.”

[Heidegger next distinguishes his formula, ‘cogito, sum’, from the one
attributed to Descartes, ‘cogito; ergo, sum’. he then discusses briefly
the way that Descartes’ philosophy changed our understanding of subject
and object. finally, Heidegger concludes … ]

“The I, as ‘I think’, is the ground upon which hereafter all certainty
and truth are based. … the ‘I’ thus becomes the accentuated and
essential definition of man. Up to that time, and even later, man was
conceived as the *animal rationale*, as a rational living being. With
this peculiar emphasis on the I, that is, with the ‘I think’, the
determination of the rational and of reason now takes on a distinct
priority. For thinking is the fundamental act of reason. With the
*cogito-sum*, reason now becomes *explicitly* posited according to its
own demand as the first ground of all knowledge and the guideline of the
determination of the things.”

[these quotes are from “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics” an
except from _What is Thinking_ contained in _Martin Heidegger: Basic
Writings_ by David F. Krell. p 278-81.]

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 Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback