enowning
Saturday, January 22, 2011
 
Sensing a disturbance in the sciences.
It remains the case, then, that the sciences are not in a position at any time to represent themselves to themselves, to set them selves before themselves, by means of their theory and through the modes of procedure belonging to theory.

If it is entirely denied to science scientifically to arrive at its own essence, then the sciences are utterly incapable of gaining access to that which is not to be gotten around holding sway in their essence.

Here something disturbing manifests itself. That which in the sciences is not at any time to be gotten around—nature, man, history, language—is, as that which is not to be gotten around [Unumgängliche], intractable and inaccessible [unzugänglich] for the sciences and through the sciences.*

* Unumgängliche and unzugänglich are built on the stem of the verb gehen (to go). In this passage Heidegger uses several forms of gehen itself: eingehen (to arrive at), zugehen (to gain access to), gehen (to move), übergehen (to pass over). And subsequently das Ubergangene, translated with “that which is passed over,” will also be used. In most cases it has been impossible to translate these words so as to show the close connection existing among them. Hence this passage carries in the German a force arising out of repetition, which the translation cannot reproduce. And it evinces, in that repetition, the interrelated unitariness of that about which Heidegger is speaking.

P. 178
 
Comments:
"the sciences are not in a position at any time to represent themselves to themselves"

That is what I understand to be science's claim to superiority: incapable of being solipsistic. But MH stamps it with deficiencies.

So then is the "poetic" that van Leeuwen (upthread) celebrates to be understood as a refined solipsism?
 
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