Bravely accepting the unsettling groundedness of Dasein, is what is liberating. To me this sounds kind of paradoxical, how can one be liberated by accepting the unsettling nature of Dasein, but still being constrained by Dasein, as we are still only able to do as one does? Is Dasein giving us true liberation?
I read that it was beyng that gave, but what is liberation, ontologically?
¶ 8:07 AM0 comments
Friday, July 21, 2006
In-der-Blog-sein
Solidrock posts on Heidegger in the context of Springsteen. I'm not qualified to comment. Maria de Barros is more my cup of chá, and I got to go get dressed for the gig.
¶ 1:48 PM0 comments
A kind soul has forwarded Theodore Kisiel's paper Recent heidegger translations and their German originals: A grassroots archival perspective (from a Continental Philosophy Review earlier this year) leading to much be-ing-en-the-mirth here in the bunker beneath enowning world headquarters. It begins:
What is the present situation for the translation of Heidegger’s works into English, after the major disappointment of the translation of Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), the text of 1936–38 purported to be Heidegger’s second magnum opus, after Being and Time? Reviewers of Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) from both continental and analytic camps were quick to object to the proliferation of neologisms which literally deluge many an English sentence, thereby rendering it almost laughably opaque. The reviews fault the translators, Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, for their apparent contempt of readable English prose, especially in their en-coinages of esoteric en-words like “enquivering, encleaving, enstrifing, enswaying, ensuffering, enthinging, enbeckoning, enhinting,” none of which are to be found in the rather lengthy list in the Oxford English Dictionary of obsolete and rare words bearing the prefix “en.” Even er-sehen is willfully translated as “to ensee” rather than by the readily available “to envision” conforming to current usage. The Translators’ Foreword, which provides long-winded and so obtuse justifications of their various translation decisions, is too mired in clumsy English to be illuminating to the educated reader, overtaxing even the bilingual reader. For example, the Foreword does little to clarify the Beiträge‘s “unusual syntax” dictated by its “be-ing-historical thinking,” which is introduced as “a thinking that is enowned by being in its historical unfolding”. One might accept the awkward English adjective in the phrase, “be-inghistorical [seynsgeschichtliches] thinking,” as an economical albeit teutonic way of referring to “thinking in accord with the history of be-ing” if this awkwardness were not compounded by translating the noun Seynsgeschichte (as well as Seinsgeschichte) as “be-ing-history” instead of the more accurate and telling “be-ing’s history” or, even more idiomatically, the “history OF be-ing.”
In concernful dealings, where Dasein first has a world, things are constituted by the context of equipmentality and their involvement. In the theoretical attitude, such involvement does not belong to beings. Rather, a thing is encountered as "an entity with 'mass'...a corporeal Thing subject to the law of gravity [412]. Whereas in concernful dealings, nature is projected in its readiness-to-hand, in the theoretical attitude the being of nature is projected in another way. In the theoretical attitude, nature consists in bodies that are governed by the laws of physics.
Heidegger argues, as he did in "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft," that in modern scientific projection, place "becomes a matter of indifference...a spatio-temporal position, a 'world-point' which is in no way distinguished from any other" [413]. But in Being and Time he deepens that insight. He argues that a thing's relation to its place changes in the theoretical attitude. The law of gravity holds for all beings regardless of their place, and hence no thing has any special place by which it can be distinguished from other things. The theoretical attitude homogenizes not just space and time but also the bodies that are the objects of physics. It homogenizes the objects of physics by projecting their thinghood alike. For it is the thinghood of things that is understood beforehand in the theoretical attitude.
It is on the basis of this prior projection of thinghood that "entities are disclosed in their possibility" [192] by the theoretical understanding. In the theoretical attitude, a thing is projected in its possibility as a spatiotemporally extended body constrained by laws such as the law of gravity. A hammer, for example, when not used circumspectly as a tool, regarded in the theoretical attitude as an entity with mass, is looked at in a new way, "as a corporeal Thing subject to the law of gravity' [412]. The thingness of the thing is its extension in space and time. The genesis of modern science lies in its revision of the thinghood of the things investigated by physics. Hence the genesis of modern science is precisely a metaphysical moment.
It may not be clear in every text, but here Heiddeger says that aletheia, unconcealment, does not mean truth.
Insofar as truth is understood in the traditional "natural" sense as the correspondence of knowledge with beings demonstrated in beings, but also insofar as truth is interpreted as the certainty of the knowledge of Being, aletheia, unconcealment in the sense of the opening may not be equated with truth. Rather, aletheia, unconcealment thought as opening, first grants the possibility of truth. For truth itself, just as Being and thinking, can only be what it is in the element of the opening. Evidence, certainty in every degree, every kind of verification of veritas already move with that veritas in the realm of the prevalent opening.
Aletheia, unconcealment thought as the opening of presence, is not yet truth. Is aletheia then less than truth? Or is it more because it first grants truth as adequatio and certitudo, because there can be no presence and presenting outside of the realm of the opening?
This question we leave to thinking as a task. Thinking must consider whether it can even raise this question at all as long as it thinks philosophically, that is, in the strict sense of metaphysics which questions what is present only with regard to its presence.
In any case, one thing becomes clear: To raise the question of aletheia, of unconcealment as such, is not the same as raising the question of truth. For this reason, it was inadequate and misleading to call aletheia in the sense of opening, truth.
In Lyon most of the sales assistants are quite smart. Unlike many American sales clerks, they can actually help you, at least when they choose to. There is not much unskilled labor walking around the typical FNAC store.
But this is a mixed blessing. A clerk will spend half an hour 'helping' a customer. I wait and wait. (It is worse than the Falls Church Public Library.) I do not understand their conversations. Did in fact Sartre grasp Heidegger's critique of phenomenology, and what does that mean for the purchase of a cell phone? The question has not been resolved.
Customers cannot talk for so long to a stupid person. So if you know what you are doing, you might prefer that the sales people be stupider. Stupid people will spend more time, in percentage terms, helping the already informed.
A bit about the difference Galileo made, from The Concept of Time in the Science of History.
Ancient and medieval philosophy of nature sought to investigate the metaphysical essence and hidden causes of the appearances that impose themselves on us in immediate reality. In contrast to this metaphysical speculation about nature, Galileo's science signifies something fundamentally new in its method. It seeks to gain mastery over the diversity of appearances by means of laws, and how it arrives at laws--this is its strangely new accomplishment. Because the basic tendency of physics can be seen most clearly in this method of gaining knowledge of laws, this method can be explained by using a classic example, namely, Galileo's discovery of the law of gravity. The old way of examining nature would have proceeded by attempting, through the observation of the individual instances of the appearance of gravity, in order then to infer from this the essence of gravity. Galileo did not begin with observation of individual instances of the appearance of gravity but rather with a general assumption (hypothesis) that runs: Bodies--having lost their support--fall in such a way that their velocity increases in proportion to time (v = g * t), that is, bodies fall with equally accelerated motion. The initial velocity is zero, the final velocity v = g * t. If we use the mean velocity g/2 * t, then we have uniform motion. The basic definitional formula for this is s = c * t: the distance travelled is equal to the product of velocity and time. In our case c = g/2 * t. The insertion of this value into the last formula yields s = g/2 * t^2. Galileo tested this equation against concrete instances, and it was confirmed by them. Thus the above assumption, from which the law was obtained in a purely deductive manner and subsequently experimentally confirmed, is valid. The entire train of thought was intentionally depicted in detail in order to demonstrate that nowhere in the whole examination was there talk of this or that particular body, this or that duration of time, this or that space of a falling body. The assumption v = g * t, which subsequently becomes a law by way of a conclusion drawn on the basis of the experiment that verifies it, is a general one about all bodies.
Thus two peculiar features are found in this new method: (1) An assumption is set up that makes it possible to grasp conceptually appearances in a particular field--here this means appearances of motion. (2) The assumption does not posit a hidden quality as the cause that explains the appearances but rather contains mathematically understandable--i.e. measurable--relations between the ideally conceived moments of the appearances. This manner of formulating problems that Galileo for the first time consciously used has in time gained dominance in the individual branches of physics (mechanics, acoustics, theory of heat, optics, magnetic theory, theory of electricity). In each of these fields of physics, one seeks equations in which the most general lawful relations regarding processes can be applied to the respective fields.
Heidegger saw in Hölderlin a prophetic figure, but it was Hölderlin the poet, not the philosopher, whom Heidegger had in mind. In Being and Time, Heidegger first introduces his key idea of the forgetting of the question of Being. His later thought develops this idea which leads to the thought that poetry announces a new clearing of Being. This echoes Hölderlin’s privileging of poetry with respect to conceptual thought. For Heidegger, poetry cannot name the unnameable, but it can keep open the space for it (Heidegger, 1996, 2000). However, Heidegger understands Hölderlin as showing the way to a future clearing of Being.
Theatre of Found Sounds on three timely issues in Being and Time, via David Abram.
¶ 8:09 AM0 comments
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Here's the final bit fromWhat is a Thing?, B. Kant's Manner of Asking About the Thing, I. The Historical Basis on Which Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Rests, 5. The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason, e. The Essence of the Mathematical Project (Galileo's Experiment with Free Fall).
We would certainly fall into great error if we were to think that with this characterization of the reversal from ancient to modern natural science and with this sharpened essential outline of the mathematical we had already gained a picture of the actual science itself.
What we have been able to cite is only the fundamental outline along which there unfoldes the entire richness of posing questions and experiments, establishing of laws and disclosing of new districts of what is. Within this fundamental mathematical position the questions about the nature of space and time, motion and force, body and matter remain open. These questions now receive a new sharpness; for instance, the question of whether motion is sufficently formulated by the designation "change of location." Regarding the concept of force, the question arises whether it is sufficient to represent force only as cause that is effective only from the outside. Concerning the basic laws of motion, the law of inertia, the question arises whether this law is not to be subordinated under a more general one, i.e., the law of the conservation of energy which is now determined in accordance with its expenditure and consumption, as work--a name for new basic representations which now enter into the study of nature and betray a notable accord with economics, with the "calculation" of success. All this develops within and according to the fundamental mathematical position. What remains questionable in all this is a closer determination of the relation of the mathematical in the sense of mathematics to the intuitive direct perceptual experience (zur anschaulichen Erfahrung) of the given things and to these things themselves. Up to this hour such questions have been open. Their questionability is concealed by the results and the progress of scientific work. One of these burning questions concerns the justification and limits of mathematical formalism in contrast to the demand for an immediate return to intuitively given nature (anschaulich gegebene Natur).
If we have grasped some of what has been said up till now, then it is understandable that the question cannot be decided by way of an either/or, either formalism or immediate intuitive determination of things; for the nature and direction of the mathematical project participate in deciding their possible relation to the intuitively experienced and vice versa. Behind this question concerning the relation of mathematical formalism to the intuition of nature stands the fundamental question of the justification and limits of the mathematical in general, within a fundamental position we take toward what is, as a whole. But, in this regard the delineation of the mathematical has gained an importance for us.
That's the end of the chapter on the essence of the mathematical project. The next chapter goes into the metaphysics of the mathematical, how the relevant bits of Aristotle were interpreted by Scholasticism, and the Cartesian method. This book is terrific at expanding on the scientific background for the treatment of time in Being and Time; e.g. section 69. I hope to get around to typing in a bit on Galileo from Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft (1915) and then how Glazebrook ties them all together in her book.
¶ 4:15 PM0 comments
The French newsweekly Le Point had L'affaire Heidegger on the cover last week. It's the same quizzical-owl photographMagazine littéraire used on its cover a few months ago, so I'm not going to bother scanning it in. There is a "Who is he today" article, an interview with Emmanuel Faye (whose controversial book accusing Heidegger of being more of a Nazi than generally understood was published last year), an extract from François Fédier's rebuttal ("An unacceptable calumny") published this year, and a piece from a philosophy professor on Heidegger's addition to the high-school philosophy curriculum this year. This is probably the second round of l'affaire for most of us--third, if your dentures are already-to-masticate--and I didn't find anything particularly revealing. The fact this kind of stuff shows up in a French newsweekly is the most notable feature, but then they do two years of philosophy in le lycée. I picked the issue up at the international newagent last night before a couple hours of classic rumba Congolaise from Kélélé (dynamite, but Syran Mbenza is suddenly looking a looking a lot older and very tired), so it should be available this side of the Atlantic through the weekend.
¶ 5:44 PM0 comments
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Moving along, Heidegger lists his six points on the mathematical essence of modern science.
Now if we summarize at a glance all that has been said, we can grasp the essence of the mathematical more sharply. Up to now we said only its general characteristic, that it is a taking cognizance of something, what it takes being something it gives to itself from itself, thereby giving to itself what it already has. We now sumarize the fuller essential determination of the mathematical in a few seperate points:
1. The mathematical is as mente concipere, a project (Entwurf) of thingness (Dingheit) which, as it were, skips over the things. The project first opens a domain (Spielraum) where things--i.e., facts--show themselves.
2. In this projection there is posited that which things are taken as, what and how they are to be evaluated (würdigt) beforehand. Such evaluation (Würdigen) and taking-for (Dafürhalten) is called in Greek axiow. The anticipating determinations and assertions in the project are axiwmata. Newton therefore entitles the section in which he repesents the fundamental determinations about things as moved: axiomata, sive leges motus. The project is axiomatic. Insofar as every science and cognition is expressed in propositions, the cognition which is taken and posited in the mathematical project is of such a kind as to set things upon their foundation in advance. The axioms are fundamental propositions.
3. As axiomatic, the mathematical project is the anticipation (Vorausgriff) fo the essence of things, of bodies; thus the basic blueprint (Grundriss) of the structure of every thing and its relation to every other thing is sketched in advance.
4. This basic plan at the same time provides the measure for laying out of the realm, which, in the future, will emcompass all things of that sort. Now nature is no longer an inner capacity of a body, determining its form of motion and place. Nature is now the realm of the uniform space-time context of motion, which is outlined in the axiomatic project and in which alone bodies can be bodies as a part of it and anchored in it.
5. This realm of nature, axiomatically determined in outline by this project, now also requires for the bodies and corpuscles within it a mode of access (Zugangsart) appropriate to the axiomatically predetermined objects. The mode of questioning and the coginitive determination of nature are now no longer ruled by traditional opinions and concepts. Bodies have no concealed qualities, powers and capacities. Natural bodies are now only what they show themselves as, within this projected realm. Things now show themselves only in the relations of places and time points and in the measures of mass and working forces. How they show themselves is prefigured in the project. Therefore, the project also determines the mode of taking in and studying of what shows itself, experience, the experiri. However, because inquiry is now predetermined by the outline of the project, a line of questioning can be instituted in such a way that it poses conditions in advance to which nature must answer in one way or another. Upon the basis of the mathematical, the experientia becomes the modern experiment. Modern science is experimental because of the mathematical project. The experimenting urge to the facts is a necessary consequence of the preceding mathematical skipping (Überspringen) of all facts. But where this skipping ceases or becomes weak, mere facts as such are collected, and positivism arises.
6. Because the project establishes a uniformity of all bodies according to relations of space, time, and motion, it also makes possible and requires a universal uniform measure as an essential determinant of things, i.e., numerical measurement. The mathematical project of Newtionian bodies leads to the development of a certian "mathematics" in the narrow sense. The new form of modern science did not arise because mathematics became an essential determinant. Rather, that mathematics, and a particular kind of mathematics, could come into play and had come into play is a consequence of the mathematical project. The founding of analytical geometry by Descartes, the founding of the infinitesimal calculus by Newton, the simultaneous founding of the differential calculus by Leibniz--all these novelties, this mathematical in a narrower sense, first became possible and, above all, necessary, on the grounds of the basically mathematical character of the thinking.
In Being and Time, Heidegger situates "anxiety" as the fundamental attunement or mood of Dasein. As we know from the reading group over The Open, however, Agamben makes a good case that in later writings, boredom comes to seem more fundamental even than anxiety. What I propose in this post is to make a crucial clarification to Heidegger's existential analytic, one that may well lead to a complete rewriting. My contention is that while he was right to move away from anxiety as the fundamental attunement, Heidegger overshoots the mark in the shift toward boredom. We cannot fully understand the meaning of Being until we grapple with the truly fundamental attunement of Dasein, that attunement that is located between boredom and anxiety: namely, awkwardness.
University presses should wake up and smell the blogs.
[T]he most valuable thing in an “information economy” is not information, which is abundant. Rather, it is attention. Attention is a scarce resource: the supply is limited and difficult to renew. That, in turn, makes it important to be able to tap whatever pools of attention already exist. And doing so effectively requires some exploration.
Years after Heidegger's death, another incident shed some light for me (as one who knew nothing about soccer) on the extent to which this former left wing of the Messkirch team was still interested in the old sport. The manager of the theater in Freiburg, Hans-Reinhard Müller, told me that one day he had introduced himself to Heidegger on the train from Karlsruhe to Freiburg as Heidegger was returning from a meeting of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Hoping to have an interesting conversation about literature and the stage, Müller tried to draw Heidegger's attention to his own activities in Freiburg, but failed. (Müller did not know that Heidegger was not interested in theater at all.) Rather, Heidegger inquired whether Müller was occasionally involved with television. He explained his question by saying that as far as television (this questionable modern equipment) was concerned, he was actually interested only in television broadcasts of soccer games, especially cup games. While especially praising the English soccer players, he expressed great admiration for Franz Beckenbauer and enthusiastically described Beckenbauer's style, stressing how much he was fascinated by the player's tactics and way of handling the ball. He then tried to show the astonished Müller the subtleties of such a style of play, saying how he also admired Beckenbauer's skill in evading collisions with his opponents. This finally led Heidegger to speak of the "invincibility" of this "brilliant" soccer player.
This went on all the way to Freiburg, where Müller and Heidegger both got off the train. The man from the theater had never imagined that he would carry on such a conversation with the philosopher--and it was to be his only conversation with him.
Heidegger’s philosophical development is replete with unanticipated turns that only prove the precariousness of the task of fundamental ontology. Within the architectonic of Being and Time, the fundamental horizon of metaphysics brings the understanding of being to the determination of the self-transparence of the subject as an ‘autonomous, completely self-transparent subjectivity’ or ‘to the rationality of a sovereign subject’. In contrast, the so-called philosophical ‘turn’ questions the direction to which the task of fundamental ontology is leading, that is, complete self-understanding of being. The horizon of intelligibility of subjectivity is something that the later Heidegger would refuse the analytic of being to fall back on. The radical shift in his later ontological project must be understood in the light of the fundamental limitation of being itself to bring the task of fundamental ontology to a decisive conclusion. This is the forgetfulness of being that metaphysics has ironically achieved within the horizon of intelligibility.
I still possess a small photo that Heidegger sent me at Christmas in 1952: "The photo shows a place northwest of the castle where I used to hand around a lot as a boy." Was this the improvised soccer field of the Messkirch youth, where little Martin used to play left wing? Even later, he never denied this role of his in sports, although it was generally known that he was a good skier and swimmer. I was thus somewhat surprised when one day in the early sixties, he asked me whether anyone where I lived in Freiburg has a television set and, if so, whether he could be accepted as a member of the audience to watch a big soccer game. No less surprised, my landlord accepted him gladly. When Heidegger arrived on the appointed afternoon, he freely and easily joined the small family circle, which was versed in soccer. When I offered him a cup of tea, he looked at me slyly, smiled, and said, "Okay, Petzet, now go upstairs to your apartment and work--you know nothing about soccer!" With that, he turned to watch the game between Barcelona and Brussels. Later I heard that at one point he was "playing along" with the teams with his left foot so vigorously that the rest of his tea spilled on his knee. Similar occasions brought him more often to Schwarzwaldstrasse [Petzet's domicile].
Record Outlet, a small music store in Thousand Oaks, carries used vinyl records as well as CDs. Store owner K.C. Staples said business has been as good as ever.
"Vinyl sales have never really slowed down," he said. "CD sales have slumped, but I'm seeing more junior high through high school young adults buying more records."
Staples said the online music culture has failed to harm vinyl sales, part because digital music files, in his opinion, have inferior sound quality compared with records. There also is a nostalgic fascination with the format.
"I think a lot of people like owning, in a way, a piece of history," Staples said.
To all those naysayers out there — lovers of the digital, the downloaded and the iPod — take note: Vinyl lives.
That's "vinyl" as in records, those large, grooved discs you place on a turntable and play with a needle.
As the muchkins have to explain when their friends ask what's on all those shelves in the music room and garage.
Records are a social, as well a financial, investment.
Day says he tries to keep prices low so customers can experience the thrill of discovering or rediscovering music.
But if they are too low, he could get cleaned out by dealers who sell on eBay. Although eBay has created a virtual community of record collectors, Day says he can't imagine a time when record stores no longer exist.
"It's part of the experience of learning about music," he says. "There's a social aspect to it."
Both Galileo and his opponents saw the same "fact." But they interpreted the same fact differently and made the same happening visible to themselves in different ways. Indeed, what appeared for them as the essential fact and truth was something different. Both thought something along with the same appearance but they thought something different, not only about the single case, but fundamentally, regarding the essence of a body and the nature of its motion. What Galileo thought in advance about motion was the determination that the motion of every body is uniform and rectilinear, when every obstacle is excluded, but that it also changes uniformly when an equal force affects it. In his Discorsi, which appeared in 1638, Galileo said: "I think of a body thrown on a horizontal plane and every obstacle excluded. This result in what has been given a detailed account in another place, that the motion of the body over this plane would be uniform and perpetual if this place were extended infinitely."
In this proposition, which may be considered the antecedent of the First Law of Newton, what we have been looking for is clearly expressed. Galileo says: "I think in my mind of something movable that is entirely left to itself." This "to think in the mind" (Sich-im-Geiste-denken) is that giving-oneself-a-cognition (Sich-selbst-eine-Kenntnis geben) about a determination of things. It is a procedure of going ahead in advance, which Plato once characterized regarding maqhsiV in the following way: "bringing up and taking up--above and beyond the other--taking the knowledge itself from out of himself." (Meno 85d)
There is a prior grasping together in this mente concipere of what should be uniformly determinative of each body as such, i.e., for being bodily. All bodies are alike. No motion is special. Every place is like every other, each moment like any other. Every force becomes determinable only by the change of motion which it causes--this change in motion being understood as a change of place. All determinations of bodies have one basic blueprint (Grundriss), according to which the natural process is nothing but the space-time determination of the motion of points of mass. This fundamental design of nature at the same time circumscribes its realm as everywhere uniform.
Beings, human and non-human, are formed by transcendence, as, in our play, a beer-can becomes a football, trees become goal-posts, and we become footballers. We take pleasure in the game, but not only that: "in all pleasure--and not just in pleasure--, in every mood there lies a sort of play".