enowning
Friday, December 09, 2011
 
Martin Jay on interrupting the Fahrt of experience.
The role of Ereignis (normally translated as “event,” but closer to “appropriation” in Heidegger’s usage, and sometimes translated by the neologism “en-owning”) gained in importance in his later work, but even in his earlier work Heidegger had imbued it with the passive implication of experience, the waiting expectantly for something to happen rather than deliberately making it happen. As he put it in his later essay “On the Way to Language,”
To undergo an experience with something, be it a thing, a person, or a god, means that this something befalls us, strikes us, comes over us, overwhelms us, and transforms us. When we talk of “undergoing” an experience we mean specifically that the experience is not of our making. To undergo here means that we endure it, suffer it, receive it as it strikes us, and submit to it.
Heidegger also contrasted Ereignisse with experiences of objects that are set apart from a subject, the subject–object dualism he was so much at pains to overcome:
Experience doesn’t pass before me as thing that I set there as an object; rather I myself appropriate it (er-eignes es) to me, and it properly happens or “properizes” (es er-eignet) according to its essence.
An Ereignis might well be a threatening one – expressing the link in German between Erfahrung and Gefahr (danger) – as in the case of modern technology, but it also might be an opportunity for the revelation of a deeper truth. The belonging that is suggested by the eigen in Ereignis (thus the plausibility of the neologism “en-owning”) is not that of an object by a subject, but rather of Dasein by Sein. Because it is not the same as a natural process (Vorgang), an Ereignis can take the form of a radical rupture in the course of things, a sudden appearance of Being in the midst of quotidian existence.

Thus, the journey of experience – the Fahrt in Erfahrung – does not lead back to the point of departure, even at a higher level, as in the case of Hegelian dialectics, but is rather an interruption in the narrative flow.

Pp. 97-8
 
Comments:
"... an interruption in the narrative flow."

Isn't that what Heraclitus suggested with his river we cannot step into twice?
 
Except we want to interrupt Dasein's narrative flow, not Heraclitus's river. Into the river, the same I cannot step twice, then.
 
Hegelian dialectic...does progress via contradiction (or...at least moves forward via oppositions)--including the river of History.

Dasein on the other hand is not the same as a natural process (ergo, the somewhat platonic dualism still inherent in Heid.'s ontology IMHO). Hegel's the authentic Heraclitean
 
"Dasein on the other hand is not the same as a natural process (ergo, the somewhat platonic dualism still inherent in Heid.'s ontology IMHO)."

So Dasein is transcendent? Dasein can't be studied by a scientist, since it is not the same as nature. And so Dasein is just an idea, like all the other non-natural existing ideas that can be thought?
 
"""Because it is not the same as a natural process (Vorgang), an Ereignis can take the form of a radical rupture in the course of things, a sudden appearance of Being in the midst of quotidian existence."""

I parse that as ..dualist (as is the early Heid. distinction of ontological/ontic). Not cartesian exactly but...vaguely Augustinian (or some might say neo-platonic)

Hegel waffles as well but ...essentially a monist (ie, dialectical monism)
 
In the afternoon mail, I received my copy of the Freid-Polt translation of Introduction to Metaphysics. I have not looked at that for 35 years in the old translation. So I just had to take a look at MH's commentary on the verse from Antigone. It is extensive, so I truly only skimmed it.

Seems to me he is making a case there for the assertion that Sophocles can be understood as declaring that beyng and thinking are the "same." That permits MH to assert that language is the house of beyng. The relationships he develops between Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Sophocles that he then uses to distinguish Plato from Aristotle and the ancient Greeks from moderns are a tour de force. (I have also ordered a copy of Polt's commentaries on IM—a collection as I recall of such that his book pulls together.) So it is jam-packed.

The strongest impression left from my quick skim, however, is the insight the lectures offer for human being. We are "the uncanniest of the uncanny," which MH interprets as one who does violence to what is already violent. Yes, that can be creative. The only thing that the uncanny shatters itself on is death. So the overwhelming has the last laugh, even as we attempt to overwhelm the overwhelming.

I barely understood a word of the lectures the first time I read them. I can follow the arguments more closely now (hurrah for 35 years later). My gratitude for preserving the Sophocles is accompanied by awe. My determination to stick with MH, even in my ignorance, encourages me. The strife of Heraclitus' polemos is now everywhere we look. As a dualism (Stambaugh, too, concedes the duality) it is not a metaphysical dualism. And even as finite (Stambaugh's The Finitude of Being) it may be "well-rounded" in Parmenides' sense but still "It moves," to quote another old heretic. Hence we have a destiny to fulfill.

(PS. J I share your hope that analytic and continental styles can find common ground.)
 
"...we want to interrupt Dasein's narrative flow...."

I understand Stambaugh's account of MH's Time-Space as interruption. Not Aristotle's series of nows. But that flash of lightning or wink or instant of the clearing that is not a flow but an awakening. In religion we call it revelation. Not as a once and for all nor as routine, yet as both unique and ordinary.
 
The post on the 6th said of the uncanny: "eruption of this latent uncanniness refers us to the radical finitude of existence that is covered over in our preoccupation with practical affairs". So the uncanny is a warning that the flow will be interrupted some day.

In ItM, that's neatly tied to some fragments from Parmenides, but I don't remember how that develops now.

ItM was the first text of MH's that I enjoyed. I'd struggled with and set B&T aside, and decided to give ItM a try on a vacation. With the discussion of the uses to "being" and its etymology, I felt that here was a discussion of ontology I could follow and use to start to orient myself in MH's other texts.
 
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