In this page from the blog philosophical conversations the comments turn to the question of whether Heidegger's way of thinking changed in the 1930's.

I don't think there is a great rupture between B&T, WiM?, and the later Heidegger. The later Heidegger is exploring other areas within the same broader theme. In the 1920's, rising through the university system as Husserl's assistant his thought was in the context of phenomenology. Later he focused more the directly on ontological matters.

This passage from "Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy" connects being-towards-death and Heidegger's later concerns via temporality:

In making possible the disclosiveness of the “there,” temporality is the “ground” of the disclosure of a world, of things in the world, and of Dasein as being-in-the-world. This ground is not anything permanent but rather is a temporal event. It is also not reducible to presence, since it discloses in its finitude, permeated by nothingness, in Dasein’s authentic being-towards-death.
In Contributions, Heidegger rethinks the disclosive and finite character of the temporality that constitutes the meaning of being in Being and Time in the notion of truth. He unfolds truth as the unconcealing-concealment of being.

I don't believe the later Heidegger refutes that "Being-towards-death is essentially anxiety"; found in B&T. In the Contributions, the big enchilada of the later Heidegger, he's turned from hermeneutics and phenomenology to focus more directly on ontology. Turned from working in the context of Kant and Husserl to studying the Pre-Socratics and Aristotle.  ¶ 10:37 PM 0 comments

  Iain Sinclair has a new book out in the UK and the Guardian has a nice write up on him.

Psychogeography is a talismanic term that Sinclair understands to have been cannibalised from French situationism. 'For me, it's a way of psychoanalysing the psychosis of the place in which I happen to live. I'm just exploiting it because I think it's a canny way to write about London. "

Situationism is a popular thing to cannibalize, so many have gnawed on its bones already. I was thinking of psychogeography this weekend, bike riding the dog for a run through empty subterranean parking garages of corporate metroplex, the streets blocked by dozens of emergency vehicles on drill.

Iain's alright. I've read his Ripper book. He tend to go off on stream-of-consciousness tangents though. And London has a lot of lived in history to inspire the psyche. A fecundity missing in the sterile engineered company metropolis; empty on weekends.  ¶ 10:45 PM

  In an essay titled The Political Problem of Islam Roger Scruton makes this claim:

Al-Qa'eda offers them a new way of life which is also a way of death--an Islamist equivalent of the 'being-towards-death' extolled by Heidegger, in which all external loyalties are dissolved in an act of self-sacrificial commitment.

This is deeply flawed. The traditional Christian and Islamic belief is that the soul is immortal and the body is some transitional phase. After death the soul continues on its journey to God or paradise or hell. In the middle ages Europeans considered life to be merely staging area before purgatory, and there was no purpose to life besides preparing for the next stage--try not to sin too much. The Islamists believe that if they martyr themselves they'll go straight to Paradise and get their 40 virgins; a straight legacy from Hassan i Sabbah's motivational bag of tricks.

Heidegger is onto something else. There is no soul after death. Death is the final terminus for humans. Humans should be aware of that and take it into consideration. That is a categorically different orientation towards death from the religious one. To connect the two is simply a big mistake.

Being-towards-death has nothing to do with "loyalties" or "sacrifice." "Being-towards-death is essentially anxiety" says Heidegger in B&T, p. 310. That ontological morsel was the basis of Sartre's brand of existentialism, which influenced many of the novels and films of second half of the XXth century. Even today novelists like Alan Warner and Michel Houellebecq till new furrows in its soil.
  ¶ 10:32 AM 0 comments

  Here's an article from Guerilla New Network, Postmodern Crusade: What Bush learned from fascism, that makes the case that Heidegger's behind American right-wing fundamentalism, neo-con-ism and Bush-ism.

On the other hand, here's an article from the Weekly Standard, Postmoden Jihad, saying that Heidegger is behind leftism, post-modernism, and Islamism.

Whew! Can they both be right? Probably not. Can they both be wrong? Probably. Don't like someone else's thoughts? Don't forget to blame Heidegger first!

  ¶ 10:34 AM 0 comments

  There's a patch to remove "unacceptable symbols" from Windows Xp. The symbols removed are the Star of David and the swastika, the Hindu symbol that means "let good prevail"--from the Sanskrit Su (good) and Asati (to exist). I expect that the next step is that Office apps will not allow you to type politically-incorrect words.  ¶ 10:45 AM 0 comments

  Found this passage in on the Aristotle's "authoritarian ontology" in Toward a Dynamic Conception of ousia: Rethinking an Aristotelian Legacy

To apply the political term 'authoritarian' to an ontological account may at first seem to be a simple category mistake. However, this first impression fails to recognize that many of the terms that have come to take on exclusively ontological meaning are saturated with ethical and political connotations: for example, 'arche' means 'ruler' and 'political office' as well as 'beginning' and 'principle; 'ousia,' can mean 'property' or 'that which is one's own,' as well as 'being' or 'substance' (Liddell and Scott 1968, 1274-5); even the term 'katagoria,' from which we derive 'category,' has political significance insofar as it means to accuse someone of being something or other in a public place (agora). From its beginning, ontology has always intimately related to ethics and politics.

I'd always read that everything (epistemology, history, science) was ultimately based on ontology, so it's interesting to read that ontology is based on ethics and politics. Is ontology political?
  ¶ 8:05 PM 0 comments

  I found this index of logical fallacies while looking for the formal reasons why a politician's arguments were incorrect. If campaign speeches were stripped of all the logical fallacies listed in the link they would be over immediately.  ¶ 9:27 AM 0 comments

  Derrida appearing in London yesterday and the Financial Times wrote a story.

For Derrida, language is a network of differences; the meaning of a word entails understanding what it does not mean.

That's what Saussure wrote about signifiers in his Course on General Linguistics, acknowledged by Derrida. The signifier is a purely relational unit and in language there are only differences, without positive terms.

Deconstruction - the method that made him famous - attempts to expose these differences in order to subvert established ways of thinking.

This isn't half bad, noting that deconstruction is a method, something that is done, although the "in order to subvert" is a bit strong. The intent is to dig deeper, and not necesssarily to be subversive. It's about reading the text outside of the box of the traditional metaphysical "ways of thinking."
  ¶ 4:48 PM 0 comments

  I found this article by Daniel Pipes, The Roots of Iraq's Rebellion a little disingenuous:

The pattern is striking: For over four centuries, from 1400 to 1830, Europeans expanded around the world, trading, ruling, and settling -- but distinctly in places where Muslims were not, such as the Western Hemisphere, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Australia. In a clear pattern of avoidance, the imperial powers --Britain, France, Holland, and Russia especially -- took control of far-away territories, while carefully avoiding their Muslim neighbors in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Essentially the colonialists avoided deserts with nothing to exploit. They had no problem colonizing the exploitable parts of southern Asia with large Muslim populations. It was only towards the end of the colonial age, when Germany and Italy were grabbing the left-overs that the earlier colonialist had skipped, that the European powers grabbed what was left, the deserts inhabited by Moslems, for geo-political reasons.  ¶ 9:38 AM 0 comments

  In Metaphysics V.II Aristotle describes the four "causes" of things.

1) The stuff the thing is made out of; e.g., gold.
2) The thing's form; e.g. a goblet.
3) How the thing became; e.g. a goldsmith made it.
4) The thing's purpose; e.g. for drinking out of.

Applying the above to software we have (1) the data applications are made out of, (2) the form of the application in its user interface (In most business applications literally the application's forms.), (3) how the application was conceived, designed, built, and delivered, and (4) the feature set of the new application, its usefulness as a tool, is it's purpose.  ¶ 10:02 PM

  Investigating essential properties.

This article on Derrida sums up a morsel of the Course on General Linguistics like this:

"Saussure defines language as a system of signs. He argues that signs are arbitrary and conventional and that each sign is defined not by some essential property but by the differences that distinguish it from other signs. Saussure contends that the sign is a purely relational unit and that in language there are only differences, without positive terms. This is a principle wholly at odds with logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence. It maintains, on the one hand, that no terms of the system are ever simply and wholly present, for differences can never be present. And on the other hand it defines identity in terms of common absences rather than in terms of presence. Identity, which is the very connerstone of any metaphysics, is made purely relational. "

So, given two classes, customer and sales lead, their identity is not in that they each have some essential property, say credit rating or telephone number, but instead their identity is in their differences. A customer may have credit rating and a sales lead not.  ¶ 10:18 AM 0 comments

  fusiV kruptesqai filei

physis loves to hide

Potential things hidden by those things we perceive.

Magicians use this, hiding things by showing us other things.

  ¶ 10:05 PM 0 comments

  One more D Cup for I go, to the valley below.

Hey, Mr Lingerie Man . . .: "Asked in 1965 what might tempt him to sell out, Dylan replied: 'Ladies undergarments'. "

And more analysis of this pendulous affair: Tangled Up in Boobs.

Here's the actual ad.

Little known factoid: I once worked for Victoria's Secret.

And after that titillating break, back to Luomo. "Come on and put some clothes on." {Ob. cit.: Cold Lately -- The Present Lover.}
  ¶ 8:10 AM 0 comments

  I was looking for the three types of truth statements and came across this page, The Essence of Truth (aletheia) and the Western Tradition in the Thought of Heidegger and Patocka by Vladislav Suvák, and decided to keep this fragment around by posting it here.

In later works, especially in On the essence of truth, Heidegger underlines a ‘hierarchy’ of three levels of truth. We can roughly summarize this hierarchy, which Heidegger appropriates from the Nicomachean Ethics, as follows.

1. The lowest level of truth is propositional truth. Here truth is taken to be the correspondence (adequatio) or agreement between a proposition, and thus the intellect, and a thing. Truth is logos apophantikos: The predicative assertion in its two forms of kataphasis and apophasis (affirmation and denial).

2. The next highest level of truth is the ontic. Propositional truth itself presupposes that beings show themselves to us. ‘How something shows itself’ is a more primordial characteristic of truth than the simple criterion of correspondence. In other words, the being-true of the assertion is a derivative mode of the primordial happening of truth on which it is grounded. This is also the first level of unconcealedness. Dasein first finds beings as unconcealed before the question of correspondence can emerge. Heidegger appropriates from Book 6 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics the different ways beings can be uncovered by Dasein. The human psuche (Dasein) can be uncovering in the five ways being-in-truth: techne, episteme, phronesis, sophia, and nous.

3. The last level of truth is the ontological. This refers not to the unconcealedness of particular beings, but rather the Being of these beings. It refers to the event of openness itself which makes possible Da-sein’s own openness to beings and the openness of beings themselves. Here Heidegger re-appropriates Aristotle’s notion of to on hos alethes (Being as truth).

  ¶ 11:34 PM 0 comments

  From Abraham Mansbach's 20th WCP: Heidegger's Critique of Cartesianism:

The traditional view of truth is based on the view of human beings as essentially cognitive creatures, who represent the world of objects through ideas and concepts expressed in assertions. In this world view, truth denotes the correspondence between those mental or linguistic representations, on the one hand, and objects, facts or events in the world, on the other.

Heidegger argues against it is that it is impossible to validate such a correspondence and, moreover, that no one would even try. Instead, he maintains, for there to be a correspondence between ideas or statements and objects, the objects must first become manifest. The truth is their manifestation: their disclosure or uncovering, alhJeia rather than correspondence.

Along with replacing the concept of truth as correspondence with the concept of truth as alhJeia, Heidegger creates a hierarchy of truth in which assertion - which traditionally had been identified with truth - is relegated to the lowest rung, preceded by Being on the first rung and by man on the second. In Heidegger's view. for beings to be manifested, the existence of a common background against which the manifestation occurs is required. The common background in which all beings appear is Being. In the hierarchy of the various meanings of truth, the privileged, primary level is reserved for Being.

The privilege of Being is the privilege of the customer. For the customer discoverability is key. The customer installs some software and its features are hidden. The customer bought some software to help them do something. How to use it? The features need to be discovered, become unconcealed. Then man can use the software. Finally the software can be used to make or validate assertions.  ¶ 10:01 PM

  Nitpickers ("Roman mercenaries spoke Common Greek, not Latin!"), atheists, and the little ones in South Park, can say what they want about Mel Gibson and his movie, but he can sure can pick songs with the word dark in the title. Songs Inspired By The Passion of the Christ is number 95 on Amazon. Is this the best chart ranking Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen has ever had? It's also quite clever not to pick something from Slow Train or Saved, but instead to go to Dylan's darkest album. One of the reviewers on Amazon is correct to expect 16 Horsepower and Cowboy Junkies to fit right in there too. Perhaps even a Palace song? Pity they didn't commission new songs from the artists. Then there would be a reason to actually buy the thing. Amusing how the reviews break down into the Jesus and music fans raving about different tracks. Note there are no "Christian Rock" acts because that's just some marketing gimmick; the kitsch Christian parents allow their kids to listen too. The real Christian music in the USA is Country and Gospel. Pity Johnny Cash didn't make the cut.  ¶ 8:44 AM

  Beyng Watch
"Erasmus, beyng more occupied in spying other mens faultes, than declaryng his own aduise, is mistaken of many, to the great hurt of studie, for his authoritie sake."

From The Scholemaster (Book II) by Roger Ascham.  ¶ 11:07 AM 0 comments

  I found this quote from GA65 in this article The new beginning (Anfang) in the Martin Heidegger's thinking by Daniel Ferrer.

“The other beginning has to be realized totally from within Seyn as enowning (Ereignis) and from the essential swaying of its truth and its [truth’s] history (cf., e.g., the other beginning and its relationship to German Idealism)”.

I'll have my Ereignis straight, hold the Hegel.
  ¶ 10:18 PM 0 comments

  Here's an article about perusing the new University of California Press catalog. It complains about the lefty tendencies of most of the books. I get a few university press catalogs and things aren't as dire out there as that example indicates. Books of serious scholarship are still published. But faux-radical lefty trendiness is the norm. Even MIT Press has its pro-situ collection. All that old stuff should be documented, but like Mark E. Smith said, "Yeah, well, don't make a career out of it." Acting anti-establishment is the established norm. What might have been exciting in 1968, is now the "Man."  ¶ 8:12 PM