Heidegger

Cologne 15-Apr-2008

Jan Straathof schrieb Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:54:43 +0100:

> >”Verstehen is immer gestimmtes,” translated by M. as “Understanding
> >always has its mood.” But some moods are clearer than others. I can
> >be in a particular neurotic mood, that is, a mood pecularly and
> >uniquely my own. I have come to understand that mood, even though
> >I’m not always able to control it. But I can remember, re-imagine a
> >moment just past when my neurotic mood changed suddenly and left me
> >relatively “clear.” With the two moods side by side, I could
> >recapture the mood of relative clarity and think from there. My
> >question is, is it possible to think a kind of objectivity, that is
> >autonomously, that is independent of one’s neuroses? It would seem
> >so.
>
> Hi Allen,
>
> The translation of Heidegger’s “Verstehen is immer gestimmtes.”
> [SuZ:142] as “Understanding always has its mood.” is problematic,
> because it now seems as if Heidegger is saying that “understanding”
> has some kind of (additional) property viz. a “mood”. I don’t think
> that that is correct. What Heidegger imo wants to convey here is that
> understanding *is* of itself a kind of mood. (btw. the word “mood”
> as translation of “gestimmtes, Stimmung etc.” is not helpfull either,
> it’s leaning to much on the side of psychological categories; better
> would be imo “attuned, attunement”.)
>
> The way i understand Heidegger here is that “thinking, remembering,
> (re)imagining, recapturing, questioning etc” are all ‘moods’ by and in
> itself. And the most basic or ‘objective’ mood in Heidegger’s SuZ is
> being-in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein). Have to run now, MichaelE
> can certainly enlighten us more on these tricky translations.
>

ME: I agree that “gestimmt” is better rendered with “attuned”, which
connotes a kind of resonance between Dasein and its world. “Verstehen is
immer gestimmtes.” would therefore be “Understanding is always attuned.”
The word used in SuZ is “Befindlichkeit” (rather than Gestimmthiet), i.e.
HOW Dasein finds itself in the world (in a given situation into which it
has been cast), i.e. a quality of being-in-the-world for which the word
“mode”, and therefore “mood”, is suitable. In vernacular German, one says
e.g., “Ich befinde mich in einer schwierigen/guenstigen Lage,” i.e. “I
find myself in a difficult/favourable situation”.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ _-_-_-_- artefact at t-online.de _-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred (c)_-_-
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 10:00 am
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