enowning
Thursday, August 26, 2010
 
In-der-Blog-sein

Luctor et Emergo intertwines B&T, death, and some cool pics.
Holding to the idea that while Heidegger is looking deeply into the structure of ‘dasein,’ we’ll notice that he’s simultaneously wanting us to observe this through an ‘everyday’ temporality. This ‘everydayness’ plays a part in the ‘inauthentic’ way by which we observe death. This is where we find ‘the they.’ The ‘they’ self is closely attached to the everyday. We’ll see ‘the they’ as people in our day-to-day environment that can obscure our own death from our ‘dasein.’ Basically a kind of public distancing of death from the everyday you. This ‘inauthenticity’ is seen as a pushing away of our own personal death thoughts. ‘One will die at some other time & death is something I don’t talk about much in polite company, therefore it has no bearing on my life. One doesn’t engage morbidity… & so on.’ This inauthenticity of ‘the they’ conceals ‘being-toward-death’ as ‘dasein’s’ ‘ownmost possibility.’
 
Comments:
Interesting images.

While sympathetic to death-awareness, and related themes, I am not convinced we must agree to the Heideggerian presentation of death (Dasein-a- Tod, or however he terms it). There may be a lack of death awareness...yet certainly "gothic" elements (whether via pop, or EA Poe, halloween, horror movies, etc) manifest themselves-- usually in a "kitsch" form--yet a Steven King's tales for instance say something about our sense of death, afterlife, and fear of the possibility of the...supernatural. AS does...EA Poe.

Philosophers often tend to..abstract dying and at least MH addressed the topic yet one notes a slightly catholic aspect in some of Hei.'s death-speak--not so much from the french existentialists--Sartre and Camus, for instance. Death may be absurd for Sartre and Camus, and should be confronted-- yet JPS's views however trite to some intellectuals seem slightly... stoical, nearly. One faces death, and thereby realizes the ...value of an individual life...or something but does not necessarily prostrate oneself before the old rugged cross (did Heidegger? Not sure. Deathbed scenes indicate something about character...as with the dying diseased Hume, telling Boswell a few weeks pre-mort the soul dies with the body).
 
Yeah, Jean-Paul and Albert score points on presentation style, but Martin was there first, unless he stole his attitude towards death from Soren.
 
I'd say that whatever you try to say about Heidegger's deathbed Catholicism (or lack thereof, or whatever it was, or who even cares), you can't argue that his conception of death was at all grounded in any kind of Christian attitude. Unless you want to argue that it's a reaction against the Christian rhetoric about eternal life, in which case you'd have a fun 200-level theology paper on your hands.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home
For when Ereignis is not sufficient.

Appropriation appropriates! Send your appropriations to enowning at gmail.com.

View mobile version