Heidegger

Jud,

Apparently we agree about many things except when it comes to essentials (qua
esserire).
Cheers;
Bernard

In a message dated 8/6/2008 9:09:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
GEVANS613 at aol.com writes:

In a message dated 03/08/2008

_Bernx at aol.com_ (mailto:Bernx@aol.com) writes

_GEVANS613 at aol.com_ (mailto:GEVANS613@aol.com) writes:

Interesting take on Being and Becoming by Apollonius of Tyrana.

_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/apollonius01.htm_
 http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

Bernard writes:
Apollonius’ interpretation is a quaint and populist reiteration of
Aristotle’s concept of entelechy just as Heidegger’s overbearing and convoluted notion
of dasien

Jud:
Strangely enough Bernard I write something upon the subject of *convolution*
further down.

Bernard:
Heidegger’s overbearing and convoluted notion of … is the same for the
elitist pretensions of modern hyper-intellectuals (”philosophers?”).

Jud:
I can always depend upon you for a welcome dose of commonsense. It goes
without saying that my modus operandi is to distance myself as far as possible from
such modern pied-piper-hyper-intellectuals.

Bernard:
In all cases, however, the notion of being and becoming may be traced back to
Anaximander’s apocrisis of apieron and the latter of which is coined as prima
materia, ousia, “prime being” or that which is full only in potentia and
needs be “winnowed out” (apocrisis) as beings in appearance (morphe).

Jud:
His suggestion that the beginning or first principle is an endless, unlimited
mass (apeiron), subject to neither old age nor decay, which perpetually
yields fresh materials from which everything which we can perceive is derived is
satisfyinly current in the view of most modern cosmologists (dark matter.)

It also provides another evidentially convincing proof that the meaning of
*ousia* for the Greeks was *material* (as in material property of goods) and
not in the fantasy version of the Hellenists who translate the word in the crude
sense employed by *trannies with a agenda.*

Bernard:
The simplistic notion of being into becoming becomes so much scrambled eggs
in Heidegger’s SundZ and suited only for the hardboiled eggs of the modern
pro-denken mind.

Jud:
Bravo! Me too.

Bernard:
Like Aristotle I prefer my eggs sunny side up but after which Thomas of
Acquinas got to it as so much egg-drop soup in the Aurora Consurgens that served as
the comic book illustrations serving his approach to alchemy. Thus, what
started out as a subtle body in Aristotle’s prima materia wound up the hard as the
rock hard Lapis of alchemy. Accordingly, Heidegger’s SuZ would have benefited
the modern mood (mode) of ghefhul if he had illustrated it with either his
own doodles or the help of Salvidor Dali.

Jud:
Heidegger was in a sense the philosophical version of Dali. Greatly
imaginative - an affinity for doing unusual things likle Heil Hitlering, to draw
attention to himself and his eccentric philosophical manner which draws more public
ridicule other than from the ontologically challenged.
Sorry by the way for the delay in replying to your breath of fresh air, but
with the help of my three young boys who are on school holidays at the moment,
I have been working hard on the removal of twenty-years of growth of a mixture
of Russian vine, ivy, and honeysuckle from the roof of my garage.
A hell of a job, but an interesting opportunity to observe the vegetative
domain of nature’s fight for *the survival of the fittest.*

Russian vine (polygonum aubertii) which is a twining perennial having racemes
of fragrant greenish flowers is the dominant species. Ivy comes second. The
most beautiful and aromatic honeysuckle comes a poor submissive survivalist
third. It is interesting the way that in amongst the chaotic tangle of competing
plant-life - each individual species did not self-harm or attack itself. Each
convoluting species automatically recognises itself (perhaps chemically or by
physical contact?) even at the lower levels of the mickle, beneath the
combined taxonomic mass of intertwined, inter-speciate twigs and tendrils.

Sometimes, opportunistically, to gain advantage, a species will wind itself
around another of its own parental furcates, woody siblings or bifurcated
offshoots for support, but never in a detrimental way that eliminates its own
supporting siamese connective branch. It seems that *the will to thrive,* the
*life-force,* *the conatus* as (Leibniz and Mad Madge [Margaret Cavendish] called
it) is ruthless, but not eliminative in seeking advantage over the variegated
parts of its own holism.

Sitting there, my hands aching with the constant cutting of the woody fibres
caused me to muse upon the possibility that perhaps all living organisms whose
component parts are thought to exist in an apparent holistic balance of
mutual dependency, in fact exist in a kind of beneficially induced contestation.
Could there be a rivalry for nutriments between the various parts of plants and
the organs and body-parts of human beings, and other animals, which is
*ruthless,* but by a mechanism of inbuilt genetic compromise falls short of
initiating necrosis at the first sign of mutual extinction of the macro unity and
diverts part of the nutritional flow to weaker areas of the assemblage of parts?

Is all biological life a compromise or an successful existential equilibrium
between an allopoiesistic process, whereby a system is concerned with
producing something other than the system itself? For example is an individual branch,
an individuate hand, a liver or a brain primarily concerned with its own
respective requirements - in contrast to an autopoiesistic process, which is
characterised as a self-governing and self-maintaining unity which contains
subservient, component-producing processes genetically dedicated to the greater
holism?

Such a new *symbio-poiesistic theory* (a neologism I have coined, for I have
never heard such ideas expressed elsewhere) would add further interesting
ontological dimensions to modern concepts of autopoiesis and allapoiesis. The term
symbiosis has been applied to a wide range of biological interactions. The
symbiotic relationship may be categorised as being mutualistic, parasitic, or
commensal in nature. A cell, an organism, and perhaps a corporation are examples
of autopoietic systems - the process whereby an organisation produces itself,
but perhaps organisations are in fact disguised symbiotic relationships?

Although a wart, a cancerous tumour, a carbuncle is undoubtably a part of the
person (note the physicians attributive term *your cancer*) and does not
*belong* to somebody else – it is often characterised as being invasively
*foreign* to the human bodily structure. Is this because the relationship is one of a
unilateral dependency on the part of the overtly *selfish* cancer, rather than
a commensal sharing of the nutritional blood supply with the host? This is
evidenced by the fact that the cancerous growth can be removed without the host
body dying – yet the tumour itself is considered dead flesh as soon as the
surgeon separates it from its venous host. But a human hand or leg can be
surgically separated from the body. It too dies quite quickly without a blood supply.
It figures therefore that the contributive hand was as much dependent upon
the host body as the *defiantly* non-contributive *foreign* tumour.*

How then, and in what way, are the *normal* cells within an organism to be
legitimately considered a *property* of the body and which part of the body is
to be considered the *proprietor* or seigniorial *owner of the organic and
ontologically dependent parasitic mass? It can be argued that whilst the hand is
parasitically dependent on the body for blood – it does make a contribution to
the body in that it helps facilitate the physical existence of the host –
whereas the tumour is a negative non-contributive presence. But the cancer cells
are not *to blame* – they are simply a different variety of *guest organism*
from the *healthy* cells.

Are cellular systems in fact disguised symbiotic relationships? Is cellular
behaviour a form of inquilinism - using a second organism for food and housing?
Are human body cells epiphytic guests or *nutritional pirates* that may
waylay and intercept substantial amounts of mineral and chemical nutrients that
would otherwise go to the host body?

An autopoietic organisation is an autonomous and self-maintaining unity which
contains component-producing processes. The components, through their
interaction, generate recursively the same network of processes which produced them.
What I am musing about concerns the nature of the interaction between the
elements which themselves form this network of processes which *bring forth* the
greater unity. If, for example we compare the finely tuned balance between the
activities of individual human members of society we might perhaps conclude
that selfishness and otherness are just variants of narcissism, namely a devils
compact of sociopathy and co- dependency.

But perhaps what we call *selfishness* and *narcissism* are no more than
clumsy or ill-concealed manifestations of conatus, and people who are really
clever and dedicated to selfishness, in that they realise the damaging or negative
aspects of overt self-interest, are simply more careful in concealing their
egocentricity?

I do not mean that some of the more flourishing tendrils are more *merciless*
or *ruthless* than their fellow cirri in their fight for access to sunlight
and the nutrients from the soil in the human sense - but in the *life-force* or
*conatic* sense. As yet I have not come across any examples where the more
*merciless* tendrils, which often twist themselves around their fellow-creepers,
have strangled their *relatives* to death.(like some humans occassionally do)
They employ their own dead body-parts for support as a matter of course, but
I have fond no evidence of where they appear to have *deliberately* cut off
the supply of nutrients by squeezing the other branch in a tight tourniquet.

This contemplation of a Russian vine raises all kinds of philosophical and
ontological questions. What are the implications for generosity and selfishness?
Is altruism no more than a clever, self-serving device to elicit individual
and societal approval based upon the expected future benefits for the *selfish
gene?* Is *morality* no more than a holding device (a la Nietzsche) to protect
the weaker transcendentalist tendrils from the self-assertive, agnostical,
ruthless briers of *being?* Could religion, which is ubiquitous throughout
humanity, be a mechanism to support the advantages of mutuality by way of
supporting the frailer twiglets against the strong in the struggle for genetical
advantage. A strategy to support the weak for the benefit of the whole?

But wait, so often in history the strong have usurped the levers of religious
power and turned them against the weak for the benefit of the enstrengthened
strong? So often the combined forces of monarchs’ laws reinforced with
Bishops’ ex-cathedra back-up is to the disadvantage of the weaker members of society.
In both world wars both the Allied and German religious hierarchy were urging
war and blessing the combatants, and Pope Pius was said to favour Mussolini
and the Nazis and to be less than helpful towards the Jews. The
Reichskonkordat, of 1933, between Germany and the Holy See, while thus a part of an overall
Vatican policy, was controversial from its beginning.

It took me three days to cut off all the foliage and throw it down to the
ground, but now I am faced with a huge tangled pile of vegetation. Weather
permitting I sit there for hours with garden secetuers cutting and black-bagging it
and then I drive to the local Refuse Dump and start again. There is no ingress
for any kind of mechanised collection of the mass (a dumper truck or
whatever) for the heap is at the side of the garage behind a wall and not in the
access drive

The (local authority) refuse dumps are highly organised in Britain now. By
law all the various types of garbage - food, paper, bottles and glass, bricks,
cloth, stones and soil, metal, plastic, TVs, white-goods, garden vegetation all
have to be separated by the depositor. Domestically, here in the North at
least, if you happen to leave the lid of your bin or bins open outside your home
you are fined. People complained at first when these laws were introduced, but
now it has been accepted and become part of natural behaviour.

Anyway sitting here for hours cutting vine is not a complete waste of time. I
enjoy physical work and I listen to music and MP3 files of philosophical
interest - and anything is a welcome break from ineffable but eminently f - able
Heidegger.

BTW. For purposes of paraphrastic avoidance (adjectivally re-jigging
sentences) I have placed *scare quotes* around most abstractions.

regards,

Jud

Posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 6:01 am
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