Date: Fri Jul 21 09:05:43 1995
Subject: Divisions of Heidegger


Here are some problems I have with Heidegger: His 
depiction of authentic/inauthentic is based on this 
conception that people are running around the world 
"chattering", fallen, and so forth. Then, only through 
some one specific movement, authentic resoluteness and 
being toward death, are they able to attain to 
(attested) authenticity. But what if what preceded was 
not in fact "chatter", mere "idle chatter"? What if 
there already was some such movement from inauthentic 
to authentic. 
 
This division is much like the senses of 
"prephilosophical" and especially "prereflective" 
operating in Husserl. It's like he's saying, "Ok, here 
how it is: you're not reflective (repeat after me...): 
Ok, now do this reduction. Ok, now you're reflection. 
All that other stuff? Not reflection. A nice novel 
maybe, but not real 'reflection'".
 
Again, ditto Heidegger. He comes in: "this is idle 
chatter, that is all!" But what if it isn't? Now, of 
course, he doesn't come in at all and specically say 
this to anyone (he doesn't say anything specific!) But 
the general sense is there. Like the situation of the 
self in the workshop, there is a powerful and very 
veiled (because so present) gesture of "casting" or 
"setting the scene" which starts things off. This seems 
an imposition. Again, the setting is: "the person is 
fallen" (but is he or she?), "one for the most part is 
'lost in the they'" (but is one?), "unless such 
conditions are met, this or that is 'idle chatter'" 
(but is it?). In that initial gesture, some very 
important phenomena are supressed, it seems to me. 
Phenomena like Literature, for example. And that is 
surely not the only example.
 
I really dislike this aspect of Heidegger, yet of 
course there is so much good in his thinking as well, 
of course.
 
This seems to be a terrible ruse that parallels logics 
of conversion which I find particularly detestable: one 
encounters, for sheer example, something like a "cult": 
you come in, you are "taken as": wandering, lost, etc. 
"Here's how it is: you are wandering, this is 'where 
you are' (your 'there', n'est pas?), here's what you 
think, etc." You are given the "authentic" 
understanding. Perhaps some test, a rite, ritual, or a 
passage of time and immersion. All previous 
understanding was "nothing". This is, incidentally, 
very much like the way my friend talks of Landmark 
Education, the current manifestation of what was called 
Erhard Seminar Training (EST) at one time. I can say 
anything, but unless I've been through the training, 
nothing I say counts as a real "commitment", etc.
 
In this respect, the divisions of Being and Time, seem 
really quite mistaken. I like the play: "divisions" of 
Being and Time. I refer to the style of the "treatise", 
the structuration of "divisions" as such, as this plays 
both in the chapter formats of the book and in the 
divisions between authentic and inauthentic.
 
Any thoughts?

---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.

Tom Blancato
tblancato-AT-envirolink.org
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)




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