Subject: RE: Being and Time-section one
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 20:54:16 +0100


> modern
> materialists identified Being with matter, so that the ultimate ground of
> any existent must be material principles; idealists identified Being with
> some kind of consciousness. These are examples of some ways throughout
> western history in which Being has been conflated with some particular
> being.

At the end of part one of _Being and Time_, Heidegger proves that the
ontological mode of truth is subsistence. Truth is thus subsistent, a
subst-ance thus (which does not come from the false fried "substitute"). So,
truth, the most abstract of all abstractions, for it judges them all
according to their own merit (we say, of course, "This is true, that is
false."). So, if truth is a substance, then the to be is the principle (of
being) substance, for it confers its manifestations the quality of being
endowed with an enduring purpose, in the sense that one of the purposes of
existing is the existence itself. The to be is the existence, it is the
principle of all existences. Of course, due to forgetting of principialness
(i.e. what is that a principle), Heidegger tried to avoid such tired words
(which were to some extent recovered only by his disciple, Gadamer, as the
translators of the second edition of _Truth and Method_ testify in their
preface).

To the accuse of Heidegger being an irrationalist, I have to say he
investigated the ground of groundability, the ratio of rationalism, the
truthing of the truths. He employed the age old method of rationality, i.e.
the syllogistics. If his conclusions unmask the shallow terrain of
old-style, conservative and traditionalist rationalism, then we can only
aspire towards a new rationalism, one that knows its limitations, yet
preserving what was worth in the old one. The alternative, sad but true, is
postmodernism and postmodern politics, and even more sadly, this is now
being done.

Gigantomachia peri tes ousias!
 
Tudor Georgescu
 
http://intellect-club.nl.eu.org 
 
Fax +1-775-245-5922






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