Subject: Re: the o/o gulf
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 12:20:46 -0800


Anthony wrote:
For example, he interpreted mitsein has more of an affinity
with a UN
consensus than US unilateral action (hoping to give some
kind of ontological
justification for the anti-war side), when Heidegger
explicitly says that
mitsein already underlies ALL our attitudes and "opinions"
towards others,
not just the UN attitude or opinion. BOTH are ways of
being-in-the-world.
Similarly, he is now trying to interpret Heidegger's anxiety
as having to do
with the collapse of a specific ontic entity - the ecosystem
(hoping to give
some kind of ontological justification for Deep Ecology),
when Heidegger
explicitly says that anxiety is about the collapse of all
involvement
SIMPLY.

Anthony, you seem to have taken a 'mystical' approach to
this subject. Mitsein means 'being-with' and the connotative
meaning is 'being-along-side  another'. The word United as
in United Nations means 'being-alongside-in-the-world' under
a Charter. In that Charter are statements which member
nations have agreed to such as

'no nation shall attack another nation'

The US chose to abandon the United Nations, act
unilaterally, and attack a sovereign nation which has not
attacked it.

The US has mixed, or impure motives, for attacking Iraq. One
motive is to change regime, another is to remove weapons of
mass destruction, and another is to liberate Iraqi citizens,
and so on. There is no clear objective for this refusal to
work within the United Nations Security Council. The US is
acting in a 'one-sided' and unilateral nature in dealing
with political and humanitarian situation. It is in fact in
violation of the Geneva Conventions (another example of
'mitsein').





John then replied that the o/o distinction is merely
"interpretative" and
that in concrete, there is no such distinction, and you then
SUPPORTED this
by saying that the o/o distinction is ambiguous, referring
to the texts we
have been talking about. So you are attacking the o/o
distinction from the
same side that John Foster is - the Enlightenment side,
which mistook beings
for Being.

Anthony, there is no mistaking here for Being. I don't know
how you can bring in Being. Neither of us have talked about
Being. We were talking about Being (the undefinable) in our
discussion of the first pages of Being and Time. We have not
stated anything positive about Being, except that it cannot
be defined.




Heidegger, on the other hand, "attacks" the o/o distinction
only
AFTER making it in the first place and using it to point the
way.


Anthony, how does Heidegger attack this intellectual
distinction?



Again Anthony wrote:

The way
you are attacking the o/o distinction would not even allow
it to point the
way in the first place, because from the start we would be
misinterpreting
the UN for mistein, misinterpreting anxiety over the
collapse of the
ecosystem (or anything ontic) for anxiety over the collapse
of all
involvement as such.

What about you anxiety over the failure of the Security
Council to reach consensus? This anxiety has lead your US
Republican Party wage a saturation bombing campaign on 4
million innocent lives.

Don't you feel anxiety as a result. A state of mind is a
mood, and Heidegger writes this elsewhere.

chao

john




You can't defend such misinterpretations by appealing
to the ultimate result (the collapse of the o/o distinction)
because the
correct interpretation of the o/o distinction is precisely
what points the
way to the ultimate result.

>First: the above is a remark to the following capitalized
sentence of 1929:
>
>"Unveiledness of Being enables manifestness of beings.
(More clearly
>(I can't help it): Enthuelltheit des Seins ermoeglicht erst
Offenbarkeit
>von Seiendem.)
>This unveiledness as truth over Being (Wahrheit ueber das
Sein) is called:
>*ontological truth*."
>
>The remark begins: Ambiguous! Ontological truth .......
etc.
>
>The remark thinks ontological truth from something new:
Beying.
>Only here has become clear that fundamental ontology is as
>ambiguous - there is the word again, and it is Heidegger's
>confirmation - as (its) ontological truth.

Yes but not ambiguous in the way YOU have been arguing. You
are arguing an
ambiguity similar to the ambiguity between Being and beings
in Enlightenment
philosophy, as is John Foster. You have to crawl before you
can walk.

>From Beying, ontological,
>that is now: METAPHYSICAL truth, because truth of beingNESS
>(entitas) according to CATEGORIES, is seen (not criticized)
as
>ONE particular truth of Beying. Beying being that which can
never
>be seen by metaphysical representation.
>
>So, what he retrospectively sees, is that he used a
fundamental
>*metaphysical* distinction, in order to overcome
metaphysics!
>But there is no other way, to get behind it.

Yes, THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. So you can't cut off that "way"
from the start
by defending the interpretation of mitsein as UN (united
nations) friendly,
or anxiety as about the collapse of an ecosystem, or such
things. That is
not getting behind it, becasue it is not even getting
started in the first
place! If someone mistakes beings for Being, you can't
defend this by
appealing to the ultimate dissolution of the o/o
distinction, because that
would be to defend the Enlightenment in the name of Being!

Anthony Crifasi

>I pause here, because if you don't act hermeneutically now
and
>get stuck in an anti-desert, further discussion makes no
sense,
>esp. because positions (Beying) are at stake, for which
we're still
>much too green. It took Heidegger many years to break
through
>subjective (in the widest sense) casting, transcendence,
Dasein
>as the ontological clearmaker of the ontical.
>
>rene
>
>
>Focus: Being is hidden. It resists ontological
understanding.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-----------------------------------
>drs. Rene de Bakker
>Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
>Afdeling Catalogisering
>tel. 020-5252368
>
>
>      --- from list
heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


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