Heidegger

michaelP wrote:

>Joe goes along this path:

>>1. Heidegger attributes a first-person perspective to dasein and
>>illustrates its use by having dasein utter ‘I am’ — the same
>>statement Descartes says is necessarily true. I don’t think we’re
>>going to be able to discuss the ultimate philosophical catastrophe,
>>sinking into the quagmire of SIS, without wondering how this
>>statement, ‘I am’, is true when dasein says it; but, false when
>>Descartes says it.

>Firstly, I’m not aware of Heidegger ‘perspectivising’ any kind of
>’person’ when speaking dasein-speech;

Heidegger writes: Because Dasein has in each case mineness, one must
always use a personal pronoun when one addresses it: ‘I am’, ‘you are’.
[BaT. M & R trans. p 68]

>secondly, da-sein is neither a thing nor a state of affairs, rather an
>open-ness to be-ing, rather more: that might be a good way to think
>da-sein instead of identifying da-sein with some notion of an
>individual human-thing (whilst it is the case that da-sein might appear
>as/in a human-body/spirit-thing, this being {the appearance as/of a
>thing} is what *covers* its da-sein {like the cover of a book:
>Heidegger reads the book, if you like}).

are you able to present or express any of these ideas in the first
person; and, if so, would you do so?

>Furthermore, as Anthony has said, da-sein mostly appears as ‘the they’
>in its everydayness and not the “I” of “I am” where such an “I” is
>virtually synonymous with the ‘ego’ (of psychology, of post-Cartesian
>thinking, of commonsense).

I question any unthinking, automatic identification of the referent of
‘I’ in ‘I am’ as an ‘ego’, a ’self’ or any other noun. this is the
insight behind the CPI, the Claim of Partial Ignorance: I know that I
am; but, not what I am. it takes *additional* knowledge (beyond knowing
*that* I am) to say *what* I am.

asking ‘what am I?’ is a way to question the automatic identification(s)
of ‘I’ as [some noun] one has acquired previously in life; and, having
questioned those identifications, to seek a more appropriate answer.

>Thirdly, (forgive me if I missed it earlier) what is “SIS”?

SIS = Skepticism Idealism Solipsism

‘the quagmire of SIS’ is my shorthand for the fate of philosophy that
Anthony says is inevitable if anyone is permitted to ask ‘what am I?’

[Anthony (from his post of 3/10)]: “Someone who does not understand the
philosophical prioritization of Them over *me* will doom philosophy to
skepticism, idealism, and solipsism, because the question ‘What am I?’
immediately raises the question of how I (known first) know about Them
(known after me) at all. Every attempt to philosophically answer the
latter question so far has ended up either dissolving Me (Hume) or
dissolving Them into Me (Husserl).”

>Fourthly, Heidegger’s thinking is far more subtle and incisive than you
>perhaps are giving it credit for and his thinking is not at all averse
>to stepping into “quagmires” and not avoiding ‘voids’ and
>contradictions (vicious and viscous circles); rather it engages them
>and reveals their structures. Remember in Plato’s myth at the end of
>the _Politea_ that those who step into the field of _lethe_ need to
>drink a little of the waters of the river (called _Ameles_ = carefree)
>in order to return with the capacity to engage _a-lethia_,
>philosophical ‘truth’, dis-closure…

yes, I remember the tale of the soldier of Er as retold by Plato at the
end of _the Repulic_; but, I remember it differently. having choosen
their new lives, returning souls were marched across a barren plain in
scorching heat until they arrived at the river Lethe. those who had
learned wisdom in their previous lives drank as little as possible so
they would remember the realm of Being whence they came while living in
the realm of Existing. that remembering shows itself as the
philosophical activity we call unconcealing, unhiding or unforgetting
— alethia.

Joe

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

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

Posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback