Date:          Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:42:11 EST
Subject:       re:  mood as color 


TMB:  
Mood as "color", in quotation marks, is good enough for the point I was
making, I think. I was not falling into concreteness. Moods aren't
*really* colors, though it would of course be very naive to think there is
no relation between innumerable metaphorical, poetic, artistic, cinematic
expressions and devices, and certainly figures of speech, etc.  and moods
or states of mind. 

Henry:  
it would be naive to think that there were no relation
between moods and being-in-the-world as a whole.  Yes!

TMB:
I simply meant that a mood is not exactly a
*situation*, and to take it as such is really to misunderstand both
Heidegger and the phenomenon of moods in this regard. I suggested,
however, that states of mind *can* become *situations in themselves*
precisely when they are somehow out of control, problematic, etc. Now,
this may be wrong. 

henry:  
and i believe it is wrong because my understanding of the text
(SuZ) and of Befindlichkeit, and --by way of Befindlichkeit-- moods,
is, in heidegger's SuZ as it hangs-together, is that mood is the primary
disclosure of Being-in-the- world.  So that "state-of-mind" and "mood" 
need to be understood ontologically not psycho-logically.

TMB:
This is different from the mood becoming a situation
through the misunderstanding of mood; i.e., moods becoming a situation as
such simply because we are equating it with situation, not because it has
*become a situation* in the rarer sense of a kind of distension or
distortion of Dasein. This would be, instead, a distortion on the order of
ontological misunderstanding: mood is mistakenly taken to be a situation. 
I must reaffirm that mood is more like the "color" of any given situation
and should not be overextended to be identical to a situation itself. I
may be wrong, but would you please consider not attributing difficulty of
understanding between us to my being deliberately obscure?

Henry:

You are affirming a mood-ness outside my understanding of SuZ;
outside my understanding of heidegger, for that matter...

thanks,
henry



     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---