Heidegger

Jud on Descartes:

> If we apply our new-found existential analysis to Descartes’ famous cogito
what do we get?
>
> ‘I think therefore I am’ becomes a redundancy. Why? Because the mere
> utterance of the personal pronoun ‘I’ is sufficient to existentialise the
> subject. Even without Descartes’Äô
>
> choice of his ’special’Äô existential modality ‘think’ the one word ‘I’
> statement is enough to introduce a being who:
>
> 1. Speaks English.
> 2. Is educated to such a standard that he or she is aware of the function
> of the pronoun ‘I’ which is a function-word that is used in place of a
> noun or noun phrase and is a highly specialised self-referential which
> refers to a human speaker or writer.
>
> Therefore Descartes; original intention which was to begin in the manner of
> a tabula rasa could have been accomplished simply be thinking of or
> opening his mouth and saying the word ‘I.’

OK, Jud, but I think that you have fundamentally misunderstood Descartes’
saying. For me he is saying that the human subject from now on be viewed as
being the prime subject and a subject being whose be-ing is totally subsumed
into thinking, that the human (philosophical) subject being be viewed as
nothing but a thinking being, that such a thinking being be the ground of
all other (non-thinking) beings. His dictum for me says that I (the human
subject being, not me ‘personally’) am (have my be-ing) only as a thinking
being. That philosophy (what ‘I’ am in the cogito)be grounded only in the
thinking (the be-ing) of the thinking being; that all other ’sub-jects’ be
ob-jects for the thinker’s sub-ject-hood, that they are (have their be-ing)
only insofar as they can be thrown against my be-ing to see what, as it
were, ’sticks’ (clear and indubitable, etc); that their be-ing be ob to my
(the philosopher’s) sub- jection.

In this, Descartes is not uttering a redundancy but rather instituting and
inaugurating a new casting of both beings-as-a-whole and the human
(philosophical) being (as the pre-eminent subject, whose sole be-ing
consists in being a thinking being). That there is nothing at all obvious in
this inaugural saying, that it is not in the remotest equivalent to merely
speaking (anything) at all (saying “I” for example, or even silently
mouthing): this judgement of a certain nihilism, I would, however, reserve
for those who when speaking seriously cannot say anything without negating
what they are saying (thus terminating, if not beginning, in analytical
silence whatever the energetic and endless mouthings); but this is not the
case with Descartes’ saying.

regards

michaelP

Posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 5:45 am
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