Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 08:47:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Returned mail: Host unknown (Name server: jefferson.village.virgina.edu.: host not found) (fwd)



Kevin said:

 To me, disclosedness is the a priori, 
> ontological familiarity of the world that Dasein possesses and which 
> provides the ground for the possibility of uncovering [entdecken, 
> discovering] entities within-the-world. 

Suppose we are looking at old coins and someone shows us how to see them 
more perspicuously.  We are told, "see, that insignia there?  That was 
only put on a few of these pennies.  Most of them have one like that."  
And we can see that DIFFERENCE now so we can look through the pennies and 
try to DISCOVER ones that have this special insignia.  The training we 
received, would you say, disclosed the world to us ontologically, gave us 
the possibility of the distinctive discovery? 

What is primarily disclosed, 
> then, is Dasein, and what discloses is also Dasein (hence the strength of 
> the quote that Dasein *is* its own disclosedness). 

I'm trying to look at this remark with my example and at the moment I 
want to say that what makes this DIFFERENCE exist is that my 
consciousness illuminates it with my attention, my looking-for and being 
available to notice this DIFFERENCE.  As I rummage through the pennies, 
then, looking for this kind of penny, I AM filled with this particular 
kind of conscious looking-for.


I can make sense of the notion that when I am now aware of this certain 
kind of penny, the coins before me are lit up so that I can see this kind 
of penney.

> As far as I know, Heidegger introduces 
> the term "to disclose" on p.105 of BT. 

Then let me type in what he says on the next page and perhaps some of you 
will discuss it with me.

Heidegger says, p. 106: "That the world does not 'consist' of the 
ready-to-hand shows itself in the fact (among others) that whenever the 
world is lit up in the modes of concern which we have been Interpreting, 
the ready-to-hand becomes deprived of its worldhood so that 
Being-just-present-at-hand comes to the fore."

If the ready-to-hand is the inconspicuous equipment we use without 
noticing then, it is not illuminated by its disclosure.  Agree?  But when 
the world is lit up with disclosure, we suddenly start noticing what is 
there.  So, the next day I am at the store and I reach in my coin purse 
for a few pennies and relate to these pennies as usual just treating them 
as ready-to-hand, when suddenly, I think and wonder if they have this 
insignia which marks them.  I hold them up and glance at them even as the 
clerk watches.  Their 'ready-to-hand' status is deprived of its worldhood 
for the moment.  I don't want to just spend these pennies.  Their 
Being-just-present-at-hand comes to the fore.

Heidegger continues:"If, in our everyday concern with the 'environment', 
it is to be possible for equipment ready-to-hand to be encountered in its 
'Being-in-itself' [in seinen 'An-sich-sein'], then those assignments and 
referential totalities in which our circumspection 'is absorbed' cannot 
become a theme for that circumspection any more than they can for grasping 
things 'thematically' but non-circumspectively."  

So if my coins to be encountered in themselves, that is, for me to notice
them as coins rather than just using them without thinking about them for
my purchasing projects (i.e., my 'assignments and referential totalities
in which my circumpsection is is absorbed), then I lose touch with my 
purchasing projects.  I cannot even grasp what I was doing there at the 
counter implicitly.  I lose touch with my purchasing project.

Are you with me?

Heidegger continues: "If it is to be possible for the ready-to-hand not 
to emerge from its inconspicuousness, the world 'must not announce 
itself.'   And it is in this that the Being-in-itself of entities which 
are ready-to-hand has its phenomenal structure constituted."

Ordinarily when I reach for my coins they are ready-to-hand in their 
inconspicuousness.  If it is to be possible for them to remain 
inconspicuous to me, they must not announce themselves as coins to my 
consciousness.  But when they become Being-in-itself entities that are 
ready-to-hand take on thinghood in my consciousness (their phenomenal 
structure is constituted).


What do you think?

Kevin continues?

> 	Does it follow from all this then that only ontolgoical 
> structures can be disclosed while only entites can be discovered? If so, 
> then Lois's example may be an excellent example of a discovery that seems 
> to bear a very close structural constitution to an act of disclosure. To 
> point to the stars as a 'big dipper' allows us to discover an arrangement 
> which was already there, but which had not been noticed -the orientation 
> of the speaker directs us towards a discovery. 

The problem with the big dipper example, though, is that the big dipper 
is not 'ready-at-hand.'  Is it?  So, things can be lit up without their 
first being ready-at-hand.  So it seems to me.  But, yes, it seems that 
the orientation of the speaker (good way to put it) directs the 
discovery.  The big dipper is disclosed, much as the special coins are 
disclosed, but the big dipper does not go from ready-to-hand status to 
its being-just-present-at-hand.

> 	A final note of the short lived Dreyfus (hate'im er luv'im) 
> dispute. Forget Dreyfus as persona-non-grata for *real* Heideggerians; 
> you should see my shelves stocked full of Quine.

Anyone want to clue me in to what is so distinctive and disliked about 
Dreyfus' interpretation?

..Lois Shawver


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