Heidegger

Joe:
> >>in any event, saying ‘I am human’ doesn’t answer the question ‘is the
> >>human individual more than just a human body?’. In Heideggerian
> >>jargon, ‘is there Being or a being within the human?.
>
> >>so, we still don’t know what a human is.
>
> >>I still know that I am; but, not what I am.

mp:
> >I think, Joe, that one needn’t ask the post-cartesian question as to
> >whether the human (being) is more than a human body (another being
> >alongside the body-being, if you like). The very question assumes the
> >presence of at least two beings to ‘account’ for human-being: and this
> >immediately falls into the very (almost quantitative) problem opened up
> >by post-cartesian thinking (to be one or two, that is the question) to
> >which your current questioning is heir.
>
> >[BTW, “Being” {for Heidegger} is not “within {or without} the human”
> >since it is not a being, not some thing; and (a) “being” is anything
> >that can be said to be at all {for Heidegger} — just to get your
> >”Heideggerian jargon” at least proximally in the right ball park]
>
> >So, if we don’t ask the ‘one-or-two-being’ question and instead (since
> >this is a Heidegger list) go along for a moment (leaving aside the
> >post-cartesian question) with a ‘formula’ from Heidegger, roughly:
> >human-being (da-sein) is the being that puts beings (and thus be-ing)
> >into question, we can immediately see *that* you, Joe, are a human
> >being, and that ‘formula’ also answers your question of *what* you are
> >(a being that questions beings {including the being that you are
> >yourself}).
>
> >So Joe, is that not a good starting point that avoids (at least,
> >momentarily) the post-cartesian problematic of the body as something
> >wholly or partially identifiable with the human being?
>

Joe:
> the trouble with this answer (’a being’) to the question ‘what am I’ or
> ‘what is a human’ is that it is not very informative. if anything that
> is (in any sense) is a being, saying ‘I am a being’ adds no further
> information beyond what ‘I am’ provides.

Joe, you’re sort of right, but that is why the being that human being is is
qualified towards something unique, and as you say next…

> the ‘formula’ adds further information: I am this which brings into
> itself the question of being a being, is there an I-3?

Please remind me of the meaning of your terminology — I-3

> I recognize this formula (however formulated) as a definition of a mode
> of being that is distinctively human because I recognize that it
> accurately describes this I

surely, any I? any who?

> — presupposing that I am an experiencer of
> reflective self-awareness. consequently, we’re on the right track.
> however, having this formula only means that I pose a question for I to
> answer.

> you seem to think that the formula “also answers your question of *what*
> you are”.

Yes, in the sense that when one speaks of a whatness (of what something is)
one is addressing the something, somehow, but what one addresses is not the
something but its whatness (which is not it itself); one addresses and calls
up its potentiality, as it were, not its actuality, not its exact
specificity and utter uniqueness as just that thing and nothing else; rather
more its essence. Thus, if we say that what a human being is is a being (and
just that being) that questions beings (and thus be-ing), and someone
objects and claims rightly that this does not appear to be true of the
new-born child or deaf, dumb and blind kids who play a mean pinball, etc, we
can return with the reply that only new-borns and pinball wizards (human
beings) can/could ever question beings, not stones, not cows, not ‘dark
matter’, not meat, not electrons, etc.

One implication of accepting the ‘formula’ is that it would seem that this
being that essentially questions beings (as to their be-ing) has a special
relationship with beings and thus, be-ing (otherwise questioning them would
have no ground, no basis on which to begin, no ‘insider knowledge’, etc). As
Heidegger says, neither a stone nor the lizard that sits on the stone nor
the sun that warms both the stone and the sunbathing lizard relates to the
beings around them nor the beings they are themselves (although they do
react and behave, etc). The being that is human does so relate and
essentially so. To say something is something necessarily involves a
primordial understanding of be-ing {the is}. And so we’ve moved on…

Otherwise, Joe, what (!) do you mean by “what” anything whatsoever is? What
(!) kind/mode of answer might you expect of “what?”?

regards

michaelP

> Joe

Posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 6:03 am
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