Subject: Re: the o/o gulf
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 16:36:40 +0000


Rene de Bakker wrote:

> >>Don't you feel anxiety as a result. A state of mind is a
> >>mood, and Heidegger writes this elsewhere.
> >
> >John look at your very words - "Don't you FEEL anxiety..." That is 
>blatantly
> >ontic and factical, John! (Rene, do you see this?)
>
>Yeh, Rene here. Feeling blatantly ontic and factical.
>If not: how could Being ever be questionable?
>You appear to be being-in-Being, and not in-the-world
>
>Heidegger, What is metaphysics?, 'Elaboration of the question':
>
>"Befindlichkeit of mood .... is the fundamental happening of our
>Da-sein.
>What we so call 'feelings', is neither a fleeting companying-appearance
>of our discursive and voluntative behavior, nor a mere causing drive
>to such, nor a mere occurrent state, to which we come to terms
>one way or the other."

Then Heidegger in THAT text is using "feelings" in an ontological sense, 
just as he uses anxiety, discourse, conscience, and falling in ontological 
senses too and explicitly distinguishes these from their usual factical 
meanings. But John is using anxiety in a blatantly factical way, because he 
gives specific facticities about which his anxiety is anxious (a mother's 
anxiety over her child, an ecologist's anxiety about the ecosystem). That is 
just blatantly factical, which Heidegger explicitly says anxiety 
(ontological sense) is not about.

> >Heidegger explicitly says
> >that anxiety is not about any definite factical entity at all. You are
> >talking about factical ontic anxiety, not ontological anxiety! And you 
>are
> >basing your whole anti-war worldview on this twisted interpretation!
>
>Anxiety does not have a definite object, is not a specific mood in the 
>ontical
>sense. You see I don't deny o/o distinction. But this is only a very
>preliminary
>and negative upshot.

But it is still necessary in order to point the way. If the o/o distinction 
is muddled from the start the way John is doing, then the way gets cut off 
from the start. What John is doing is conflating even the initial 
distinction between Being and beings.

>Even a bit annoying in its repetition......
>In BT Heidegger writes that in anxiety world itself or: being-in-the-world
>itself, is disclosed.

But "world itself" here is not any factical world Rene. Ontologically, 
"world itself" means world AS SUCH, or the very POSSIBILITY of the factical 
world in the first place, which is Dasein's authentic potentiality for 
being. That is how Dasein is disclosed in anxiety, because all involvement 
with factical beings drops away, eliminating any possible mis-interpretation 
of Dasein in terms of beings. So Dasein is forced to "face" its own factical 
nothingness - THAT is what Dasein is anxious about (i.e., about its 
no-thing-ness, its indefiniteness, etc.).

>Now to your accusation that I would have connections to the
>Enlightenment network. Kant, the mother of Enlightenment, forbids 
>theoretical
>knowledge of the world, because, unlike the table in front of  me, 'world'
>cannot
>be representated, posed in front of me, vor-gestellt. It is not a possible
>object
>of theoretical (empirical) knowledge, although it remains to be a 
>Gegenstand
>for the Vernunft, like God and soul. We need the idea, says Kant. Right, 
>what
>is a table without a world?

Yes but even for Kant, it is still the IDEA which is needed, albeit in an a 
priori sense. For Heidegger, the "world" which makes it possible for the 
table to be a table has nothing to do with an IDEA, a priori or not. 
Equipmentality, for Heidegger, does not involve ideas, even in the Kantian 
sense. I realize that for Kant, an a priori "idea" is not a subjective 
"thing" in a subjective "mind" or anything like that, but his a priori 
possibiltiies are still the possibilities only for things present-at-hand, 
which for Kant underlies any further "use" they may have. For Heidegger, on 
the other hand, the possibility for beings as equipment is PRIOR to the 
possibility for beings as present-at-hand. So Kant is still essentially 
interpreting Being as beings, because for Kant, the encounter with beings as 
PRESENT THINGS is still primary. This misinterpretation continues all the 
way to Husserl. But I agree that Kant is a step closer to Heidegger, because 
for him, empirical "beings" are not the same as the transcendental idea of 
Being, which is their possibility.

Anthony Crifasi

>(Nietzsche: and what a world without a God?)
>Kant here SAVES (unknowingly) ontological difference, that is: metaphysics.
>The not-knowing is nothing negative: it is a hard and time-demanding nut,
>for which
>most teeth are not fit.  All metaphysics is taking care of ontological
>difference, it
>cannot do else, because it is the ground wherein the metaphysical tree is
>rooted.
>That's easily said, copied, but where is the place, from where such a thing
>is said?
>There are words of Heidegger for that too - the unthought - but again 
>......

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