Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 12:29:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time


On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Mike Staples wrote:

> henry sholar wrote:
> 
> > Reading the sentence in context helps.  We are refering here to the
> > following
> > which is located on page 175 in the Macquarrie transl of B&T:
> >
> > "Factically, Dasein can, should, and must,
> > through knowledge and will, become master
> > of its moods; in certain possible ways of existing,
> > this may signify a priority of volition and cognition."
> >
> > (next sentence:  "Only we must not be misled by this
> > into denying that ontologically mood is a primordial
> > kind of Being for Dasein, in which Dasein is disclosed
> > to itself *prior to* all cognition and volition, and
> > *beyond* their range of disclosure.")
> 
> Michael Staples replied:
> 
> I read this passage too, but still found it difficult to make sense of
> the "mastering moods" statement.
> 
> > "Mastering" moods may be an unfortunate
> > choice of translated words --or it may not.
> 
> Sure confused the heck out of me.
> 
> > In this discussion, which i think has nothing to do (yet)
> > with psychological therapy,
> 
> That's what I was looking for, henry!
> 
> > At the level of psychology, for one to not be "master"
> > of their moods, would make them unaware of their
> > thrownness, unaware of being-in-the-world as a whole,
> > unaware of encountering "something."
> 
> That is pretty interesting, and pretty confusing. Seems to me this is
> one of those times you need to figure out what a specific sentence means
> by "placing" it properly into Heidegger's work as a whole. It's another
> one of those "It's the only way things hang together" issue, mirroring
> our interpretation-all-the-way-down dialogue. I feel much better now, my
> Universe has been restored to order.
> 

And I would like to re-inject some more disorder, if at all possible. When
we put together the "hanging together" element, following Heidegger, there
are two may possibilities: one is positive and holistic, the other is
critical. The former suggests that it "works out" in the bigger picture,
the latter suggests that assumptions, if wrong, present problems for the
whole. I'm not at all interested in a "left/right" bifurcation or
establishment of "camps" here. But very generally speaking, I would have
to say that your approach here, resting on considerable faith in
Heidegger, is potentially problematic and may very well issue from a
lostness, not in the "They", but in the "Him". The Him being, of course,
Heidegger. Being in the They and in the Him are both *positive
possibilities for Dasein*: As either simply accepting norms of behavior or
as *discipleship*. There are limits to these, which, for example, Nietsche
indicated (only by not following him can one hope to, in a way, follow
him). The critique of Heidegger's blindness concerniong, early enthusiasm
for, and later relative silence concerning National Socialism and the
furher (sp?) system, totalitarianism, etc. should give one pause. By
setting forth a sense of freedom from the "They" without any notion of
freedom from the "Him", Heidegger prefigures an *endless discipleship*
that, in the end, so to speaks, appears to take the form of explorations
of the questionn of Being which are to be ceaselessly reintegrated into
*Heidegger's* holism, rendering silent the "other side of things", the
critical questions of assumptions which could concievably lead one into
truly alternative holisms. One such *alternative*, which is not simply one
among many, is the notion of a sense "The Him" as a certain parallel
aspect of Dasein, since one must, after all, break free of "The Him" in
order simply to even give *serious and sustained* thought to this *very
possible category*. 

TMB



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