Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 16:01:19 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: re:  mood as color


On Thu, 2 Jul 1998, henry sholar wrote:


> perhaps! but as you also are thinking about, the issue is
> stickier.  trying to "isolate" mood from understanding or
> any other existentiales is already a present-at-hand approach
> nez-pah?  

No way. *Focusing on* is not the same os really isolating and cutting off.
One can dwell on this or that without it being an isolating thing, let
alone taking something as p-a-h. 


> one of the things i find troubling about your
> scenerios--be it toothpaste tubes or violence-- is that there is
> a very unclear attempt to convey what "mood" is in these 
> events.  as if toothpaste tubes (or toilet seats) trigger moods...
> this isn't spelled out in SuZ (is it?).  i think you leap a little
> in painting these scenerios.  i am still at  a less conclusive stage
> about the relationship between ontological moodedness
>  and feeling blue about the toothpastetube.
> 

They aren't definitive scenarios at all, just little examples. IN one
mood, I go in the bathroom and think: gee what's on tv tonight? as my eyes
fixate in the tv guide and I am in that funny "purusal" mood that so many
of us get while taking as shit. In another mood, I focus on the fact that
the seat is dirt and I remember how depressed the person whose toilet it
is is. In another mood, I am in a condition of extreme violence and can't
move my bowels, and the bathroom shows up as part of the condition of that
violence: I should be able to take a shit, but I can't even do that, this
(whatever it would be) is just too violent. In another mood, I *notice*
some cologne: I never use it, but I'm going out on a date and suddenly I
think, what the heck, might be cool to smell good...I'd never have noticed
that in the "purusal" mood or in the "subject to violence" mood. What this
means for the discussion here or more broadly I am not even attemping to
say. These are all various threads of this or that that simply help to
beef up our picture of moods. This is not at all taking them as
present-at-hand, but it is a *focusing*. Just as Heidegger focuses on this
or that, by turns.

> 
> 
> 
> >2. If moods already fully and completley disclose being in the world as
> >such, why does Heidegger paint the picture of a fleeing Dasein, either
> >sated or lost in elation, lost in bad moods, or so lost in the world of
> >its concerns that it *forgets* that it *has moods all the time*? I find
> >his language a bit vague here. But clearly, he wouldn't *bother* working
> >through this stuff, in its ontological-existential significance, if
> >Dasein, simply by being mooded, was freely awakend to its existence, and
> >did not, rather, in some way tend to lose its existential understanding. 
> 
> well, i don't think dasein'forgets' but rather it flees from the disclosure
> of its own being and falls in with the "Anyone." (das Man)

Well, it's just not that simple at all. Dasin also flees into a mood of
elation, for example, or even: into literally going to sleep, etc. 

> 
> the disclosure of its own 'nothingness' which is being-towards-death
> is heavy duty (evidently joy also provides that disclosure).  
> 

Ok, here, while I don't want to come out as "anti-death" (whatever that
would mean) and nor am I attempting to "flee death", we need to realize
that thatis not the only thing that Dasein flees. There is more than
*being towards death*. I think there is also being towards life, towards
*natality* (our capacity to initiate, our responsibilities to do so,
etc.) Heidegger focuses on Death too much and in a *certain way*. I think
death should be thought and experienced differently.


> I am not sure... can you find this forgetfulness in the text?  he goes with
> the forgetfulness in big ways later, but i'm not sure its in B&T.

Well here we go. I can try. I would rather not. I mean: just look at it:
fleeing/forgetfullness. I mean, if you flee enough that can lead to a
forgetting. It seems, generally speaking. that Heidegger is indeed saying
that Dasein has fled so much that it forgets the truth of Being, but that
truth is so primordial a truth that even the most forgetful Dasein is, in
fact, still fully in the truth of Being, whether awakend to this or not.

> 
> 
> >
> >3. Again, moods are more like inescapable colors. I don't see why you
> >can't grant some recognition of how moods "color" things and some everyday
> >language for this, how things are "colored" by moods, and how the vast
> >poetic register relating *color* to mood can be accessed to help explain
> >how moods *are*, but, not in order to "psychologize" (which I'm not
> >doing). In any event, moods are not the totality of being in the world,
> >but *one existentiale*, co-primordial with other existentiales (like
> >understanding, projection, etc.) My point about color is for no other
> >reason than to illustrate the definite limitations of how far we can take
> >"mood" as such, not to pschologize it.  It is a *metaphor*, but a pretty
> >tricky one. But in any event, again, moods remain co-primordial phenomena
> >along with others things, no? 
> >
> 
> 
> yep, its tough to try to isolate dasein's befindlichkeit.  

You're on guard against this "isolation" thing, but I'm not isolating,
just focusing. It is possible to do that. 

> 
> i can't actually follow your use of color outside of psychologizing.
> as a metaphor [in B&T] color just doesn't cover mood when mood is
> the thrownness of dasein.

It is not *psychologizing*. Why do you say it is? And a deep inquiry into
mood, via metaphors of color, or *other metaphors and figures*, will only
add to our capacity to grasp more meaninfully the sense of thrownness (and
I always want to ad "grownness" here because it rhymes....:) ) as this is
developed. Indeed, it may even affect how "the analytic" proceeds. That is
part of what I am suggesting. For example: thrown...or grown? The tonality
around and in which Heidegger speaks of moods much to ensconced in terms
like "throwing", "escape", "bringing face to face", etc. These are ok, but
the are in fact truncated out of the range of experience, and lead, in
tur, to a *particular* tonality of "existentialism". It is not the only
such possible tonality, any more than jazz is the only musical
possibility.

> 
> there have been essays written about heidegger and the blues, jazz.
> you are probably on to something.  i just don't see it.

Maybe my recent exmaples on "color" help simply to show up how it is ok to
talk about "color" in relation to mood, withough either psychologizing or
reducing it to kind of visual metaphor or losing equiprimordiality with
many other phenomana (disclosedness, understanding, circumspection,
projection, temporality), etc. It is very important to understand here
what is entailed when we say "equiprimordial". While I am at pains to
differ from Heidegger on some very serious leves and in some ways
fundamentally, at the same time, these aspects of his thinking are
extremely good and exemplary. 

Regards,

TMB



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