Heidegger

Jud,

Heidegger’s understanding of truth rests on a simple fact: that beings must
appear before we can say anything about them. In other words, there is
something that we may call a truth (because it is more originary and the
basis of ‘propositional’ truth) that is inherently necessary for the
traditional notion. In fact, the very possibility of ‘correspondence’ is
predicated on the appearing of a being that is somehow adequately ’similar’
to my proposition (though, of course, this adequatio is seen differently).

But the appearing of a being is a complex phenomena, one that was incredibly
important for all of Heidegger’s work: how do beings appear? Let’s take a
simple example, that of a baseball bat. Part of the ‘being’ of a baseball
bat, what makes the bat *what it is*, is determined by the context, by its
being found in a nexus of practices, rules, motivations, and other objects.
For example, the baseball bat’s being, in its appearing as a baseball bat,
is understood in tandem with the practices of pitching, hitting the ball,
and running bases; it is understood within the norms that it must be made of
a certain kind of material (and not others), that it cannot be used against
other players, that one has certain limits on where one can stand in the
batter’s box; it is understood with the motivation of hitting the ball in
order to score points and perhaps with the greater motivation of being the
best team (or, more personally, the best hitter); it is understood in a
relationship to a baseball field, to a baseball, and to certain physical
boundaries. All of these are part of our understanding of the being of the
baseball; when I say, “This *is* a baseball bat,” I do not mean some
meaningless mass of atoms, but an object that is understood within a certain
context that makes it a baseball bat.

To better understand this, consider our understanding of the baseball bat
within another nexus of significations: that of a museum, like the Baseball
Hall of Fame. Here the baseball bat appears as something different. While it
still appears within the nexus of the game of baseball, it is no longer seen
as something that I can take up and use, as the norms and motivations of the
museum context would decry such a move (I can see the headline now:
“Disgruntled Reductionistic Philosopher Desecrates Babe Ruth’s Bat, Claims
it is ‘Really’ Just a Mass of Atoms”). There is something significant in
this shift: the baseball bat is no longer seen as one possible object that I
can use to hit a ball in order to hit a home run. Rather, the baseball bat
now appears in its singularity–it is *the* bat that Babe Ruth used to hit
his last home run; it has a particular grain with nicks and imperfections
here, here, and here. When I’m in the batter’s box the bat does not appear
as this singular object: I could just as easily have used another one with
roughly similar heftiness and utility (I don’t really care how much it
*really* weighs according to physics, as long as I can ‘heft’ it well); it
is “just a bat.” But now it appears as a singular object, one that cannot be
replaced with some mere mass-produced replica that has the same
significance; such a replacement would change its significance.

The point here is that the baseball bat cannot appear as both: the museum
context does not allow for it appear as an object that I can ‘really’ pick
up and use (or else it would no longer *be* a museum piece) nor does the
baseball game context allow for it to appear as a singular object (as it is
merely seen as something ‘in order to’ do something else; its singularity is
not my concern, even if it is my ‘lucky bat,’ which would require another
phenomenological analysis). Furthermore, there are practically an infinite
number of other contexts where the bat’s being would be understood
differently, both by human and non-human beings. It is because of the
multiplicity of ways that the baseball bat’s being can be constituted that
it is at bottom an enigmatic object: it need not appear in any particular
way, but could always appear in a way that can surprise me or rupture my
preconceptions of ‘what it is.’ This, of course, is the basis of Heidegger’s
understanding of being as the ‘nothing’–it is that which escapes all
attempts to make a being present, as for any given ‘presencing’ (forgive the
‘obscure’ Heideggerian term) there are still an indeterminate number of ways
that it can still be presenced. This is also important for Heidegger’s
understanding that being is not a being; any being is understood within a
context, but being itself transcends all possible contexts and is hidden
behind every context. I cannot give a final pronouncement on “this is what
the bat ‘really’ is in its full transparency” because I do not know all the
ways that the bat can appear, ways that are perhaps inaccessible to me at
this time (or at all times).

There are other important matters having to do with Heidegger’s notion of
‘attunement’: that when I am in certain states of mind/moods, when my body
has a certain tension in its limbs, when I am concerned in a particular way
within the world (e.g., fear) then objects appear in different ways. A
better way to put it, and one that is more in line with Heidegger’s thought
and the extensive psychological work done in inattentional blindness, is
that the way I set myself within my world (my poise) makes certain aspects
of the objects within that world salient and ‘covers over’ other aspects. In
a real sense, I see what I set myself to see, or perhaps what I want to see
(put in more ontic terms). In Heidegger’s terms, I see what I attune myself
to see, I make present what is in line with my attunements. Thus, when
playing baseball I do not have the same poise as when I’m interacting with
the baseball bat in the museum, which then influences how the bat appears.

“But,” you will no doubt say, “the bat really is just a mass of atoms and
you are merely projecting a subjective meaning onto it.” But let’s examine
that claim: the very concept of “atoms” that you employ itself depends on a
particular context, namely that of physics. The appearing of atoms (in line
with your understanding of them) depends on various practices, rules,
motivations, and other objects: practices related to ’scientific methods’
(which differ depending on what kind of being they are examining); rules
that dictate ‘what one is looking for’ prior to any given experiment (one of
Heidegger’s seminal breakthroughs in “The Thing”); motivations to understand
the world of subatomic particles; and objects like electron microscopes,
particle accelerators, and other kinds of atoms (depending on what kind of
atom we are currently examining). Each of these are important for how the
atom appears, and how it does not appear: who is to say that our current
method is exhaustive or that another method may not reveal some hitherto
unknown aspect of the atom (the history of science is rife with such
examples)? Who is to say that the rules/norms that determine that we are
looking for mass, spin, and velocity really nail what is essential to the
atom, whereas some other norm would reveal it in an entirely new light
(again, the history of science is rife with such examples)? Lastly (yes, I
know I passed up motivation, but that is secondary to my point), who’s to
say that our current technology or our understanding of the multiple types
of atoms is itself correct or exhaustive (especially when physics itself is
in a period of crisis on such matters:
)?

In short, your counter-argument (or possible counter-argument, though I
imagine you would bring it up) itself depends on an intricately
contextualized, historical, and finite context wherein your claim that it is
“*just* a mass of atoms” is itself intelligible, and perhaps wrong (nature
seems to have a knack for providing counter-examples to ‘obvious’ theories
of nature). The atom does not (and, I would argue, cannot) appear except
within these nexus of significations, which puts you directly within
Heidegger’s thought on truth and meaning.

I anxiously await your counter-arguments. Oh, and since you asked that I not
use Heidegger’s particular terminology (I think I did quite well on holding
up to that request), I would request that you not mention anything related
to Heidegger’s Nazi affiliations as they simply deter from the matter at
hand (we don’t want any red herrings here).

Kevin Winters

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Posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 12:50 pm
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