Heidegger

Michael Eldred wrote:

>Joseph Polanik

>>Michael Eldred wrote:

>>>ME: … the simple intuition, “I am”, confront the philosophical
>>>questioner with the quandary of what “am” means.

>>JP: we both accept the statement ‘I am’ as true; and; we both ask
>>’what’ about something; but, notice how the road forks at this point.

>ME: Of course to pose questions we usually ask “What is…?” (although
>using the word ‘what’ easily can be avoided by saying e.g., “Let us
>pose the question concerning…).

that will almost always introduce unnecessary ambiguity as to *which*
question is being posed.

>Using ‘What … ?’ does not preclude making its own meaning into a
>question, which precisely has been done in the philosophical tradition.

in any event, I have no objection to making ‘what’ an object of inquiry.
indeed, if you’ll recall, I’ve previously posted some material
concerning the difference between asking ‘what am I?’ and asking ‘who am
I?’

>My original statement from which you have snipped a part reads: “Just
>as with the simple observation that “It is” confronts the philosophical
>questioner with the quandary of what “is” means, so, too, does the
>simple intuition, “I am”,confront the philosophical questioner with the
>quandary of what “am” means.”

>>JP: you proceed from this point by asking, “what does ‘am’ mean?”. I
>>proceed from this point by asking, “what is the referent of ‘I’?”.

>ME: You can’t dissect ‘I’ from ‘am’ in this way because ‘I’ already
>belongs to “all that is”

the referent of ‘I’ is included in ‘all that is’.

>so asking the question concerning ‘I’ simultaneously implies a
>clarification of ‘I am’. Similarly, asking the question concerning ‘am’
>only makes sense as a clarification of ‘I am’.

so far, this would not be objectionable.

>And ‘I am’ can only be clarified in connection with the overarching
>question concerning being

‘I am’ can be clarified by choosing a root predicate of which there are
three reasonable candidates in english: ‘existence’, ‘being’ and
‘reality’. you have assumed without questioning that one must choose
‘being’; and, given this article of faith, it may make sense to you to
claim that “‘I am’ can only be clarified in connection with the
overarching question concerning being”.

however, questioning this article of faith leads to the recognition that
one must choose a root predicate; and, this renders irrelevant the
linguistic history of the word chosen for the root predicate.

do you deny this? do you deny that all of your speculations concerning
the meaning of ‘being’ become irrelevant when someone chooses
‘existence’ or ‘reality’ as their root predicate?

>ME: My observation was that in referring to “all that is”, one can
>already say that it is. ‘Is’ is already the predicate predicated for
>”all that is”.

here you are simply making up a rule of grammar to suit yourself. ‘is’
by itself is not a predicate; but, its implicit complement would be a
predicate.

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

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 http://what-am-i.net
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Posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 11:50 am
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