Subject: Re: the o/o gulf
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 20:04:07 +0000


Rene where exactly is this quote:

> >>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,
>
>Well, what he says is that we always again 'degrade' our own way of
>being in terms of behavior or objectifiable states, which in everyday life
>is not good, nor bad, but inevitable.

I want to see the context of the quote you cite above.

>Like you did automatically
>when you heard the word: feeling.

I never said that feelings are good or bad! I simply said that they are 
FACTICAL, unless the term is used in some ontological sense in the same way 
that he uses discourse, call, conscience, and falling in ontological senses 
and clearly distinguishes these from their usual factical senses. What I am 
objecting to is not feelings per se (as if I were saying that feelings 
themselves are "bad"), but rather the conflation of our constitutive 
ontological structures with feelings and other such facticities. To 
distinguish these is not the same as to say that the ontic is "bad" or "not 
worthy of" the ontological or any such thing!

>But what you so threw aside, *might*
>contain sthing essential to anxiousness as mood: that it is felt.

Look, do you or do you not grant that according to what Heidegger says at 
least 7 or 8 times, anxiety CANNOT be about any factical entity in the world 
(since it is about Dasein)? That is what I am objecting to, because John is 
reducing anxiety to worry about the collapse of some ontic facticity, such 
as a mother's child or the ecosystem.

>So what you did, when you wanted the ontological, was introducing
>everydayness into thinking: moods in terms of controllable states.
>That too is inevitable, so denying only makes it worse. Not being
>against that (see below), that's the trick. Then it is no longer
>inevitable.
>
> >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.
>
>I can only speak for myself.

But your whole argument about the ambiguity of the o/o distinction was 
initially directed at one of my replies to John Foster about his specific 
examples of anxiety and other such ontological terms. And what he means is 
obviously an ontic conflation of even a PRELIMINARY o/o distinction.

> >> >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.
>
>In BT yes, apart from passages, that are also open for a 'reading
>against the grain'. (Oudemans) But no as to GA29/30, where, while
>reaching for deeper forms of Langeweile, he explicitly chooses
>an alternative way, while pointing the risk of an ontological approach,
>because forcing the phenomenon into an aprioristic understanding.
>(the ontological as 'condition' of the ontic)
>The surprise is that when the everyday phenomena (e.g.: A book
>is boring ; Being bored waiting for a train) is NOT ontologically
>clarified ('dissolved'), but instead its holding back is focused,
>that then also the way everydayness hides, becomes more 'clear'.

That is not at all different from what he says in section 16 SuZ, when he 
describes how when some equipment becomes unusable, our everyday absorption 
is interrupted in its tracks, and the "towards-which" of the unusable 
equipment is explicitly seen. Thus the world shows itself in this 
phenomenon. But what John is doing is EQUATING the world with a factical 
phenomenon, not DISCLOSING the world through such phenomenon. He is, for 
example, equating anxiety with worry about some ontic facticity, like the 
ecosystem.

>As to Angst, it is the remotest from deadly fear. It is something not
>noticed. "Ah, it was nothing". Such is the 'being' of (the) nothing:
>it is as if it is nothing.
>
>Then, there would not be possible a *direct* discovering of the nothing,
>by ontologically purifying Angst, but only an indirect approachment:
>focusing on the normality of everydayness that always is immediately
>restored, and the fundamental mood suppressed, in the nether regions,
>where it belongs. Now one can ask: what is happening here? What is
>happening in the dark nether regions of Dasein? Not by throwing onto-
>logical light into it, tearing the mushroom out of the ground.
>But by NOT being AGAINST the inevitable covering of everydayness.

That is fine, but it is still the inevitable COVERING of everydayness (i.e., 
the very turning-away of falling per se) which is the positive 
existentiell-ontical phenomenon here that discloses the "nether regions" of 
Dasein. In other words, it is not what we fall INTO (a feeling, a thing, 
etc.) that discloses Dasein; rather, Dasein is disclosed in the very 
turning-away of falling itself.

>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.
>
>As to BT you're right. But being right is not much. Truth, according to
>Heidegger,
>is not, in the end, rightness (rectitudo), it is openness.

Well of course, but if we follow John's route, we will continually conflate 
the truth of openness (being-in-the-world as such) with the truth of 
rightness (some being within the world), precisely because he is conflating 
the ontological with ontic beings.

>And, also
>according to
>him, all comes down to finding a relation to it. But then come the
>weisenheimers
>and are going to be right about openness....
>
> >>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
>
>And earth. What is that? And nature? They belong to world too.
>In the "The origin of the work of art" things -paintings, temples-
>appear that can hardly be called ontic. On the contrary, it is the
>*thing* that collects earth and sky, gods and starvelings.
>Here the od has become meaningless,

To say that the ontological structures of ontic phenomena are disclosed 
through ontic phenomena is not to say that the ontological structures are 
"really distinct" from ontic phenomena, as one ontic phenomenon can be 
"really distinct" from another ontic phenomenon. Do you think that's what 
I'm saying?

>and the way a thing is
>in the Geviert, something else, than partaking in Being.
>That's the way we're going from BT via GA 29/30 to the
>Contributions. At least, I.
>
>  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
> >possibilities are still the possibilities only for things 
>present-at-hand,
>
>No, Anthony. This makes no sense. Kant does not state conditions of
>possibility for things-at-hand, even not for things as 'present' things.
>That is Heidegger, Heidegger says that all metaphysics represents the
>present-at-hand. But Kant asks how subjective conditions can have
>objective validity, working towards a 'subjectivity', that he also does not
>name as such, but calls, according to tradition, Verstand, Vernunft etc.

Yes but it is still a distinction of presence, even if he is not talking 
about an existing soul-subject or mind-subject. For Kant, we are NOT 
being-in-the-world from the start as we are for Heidegger in the prior mode 
of readiness, because for Kant, the phenomena are NOT the things in 
themselves, and for Kant, there is NO other meaning of real entities within 
the world except for things in themselves. For Heidegger, on the other hand, 
entities can also mean equipment, which we are alongside from the very 
start. So for Heidegger, there is no separation between the phenomena and 
entities as there is for Kant, precisely because Heidegger proposes a prior 
mode (readiness) in which we are ALREADY alongside entities as equipment. 
Kant does not have that.

Anthony Crifasi

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