Subject: Re: the o/o gulf (1)
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 08:26:08 -0800




>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.

Why sticking to rightness? I'm not gonna spoil my reading of
John Foster
with this sort of rigidity. Sometimes he writes blatantly
false statements
like: "Heidegger is above all a ski-teacher". Haha, you want
to dispute that?

You share the old metaphysical fear to be wrong. It is in
all of us,
incorporated. Like the Widerwille against time, it cannot be
overcome.
(ueberwunden) But when that is seen, it can be twisted
(verwunden)

rene


Hey You! Please if you are going to quote me, then quote
accurately. When did I ever say that H was a ski instructor?
What sort of passim did I deliver which was false? He did
teach Hannah Arendt to ski...just kidding.

Anyway, my assessment is that H has suggested that anxiety
ramifies inidividual existence (Dasein). He refers to
'anxiety [as] fear' and anxiety is at one time 'a state of
mind' as well later as 'a mode of state of mind'. I also
believe that there are 'grammatically ambiguous wordings' in
his BT text (see footnote 1, page 187).

There is a grammatical distinction between anxiety and being
anxious:

"That about which anxiety is anxious reveals itself as that
in the face of which it is anxious - namely,
Being-in-the-world." [BT 188] Anxiety is not here a
'feeling' but a primordial condition of being, whereas being
anxious is a feeling, a physiological one.

Then in the next paragraph we are told that anxiety is
'disclosive' and that "a state of mind makes manifest how
one is. In anxiety one feels 'uncanny' <Befindlichkeit>."
Being-in-the-world therefore is a feeling too, it is a
feeling of 'being at home'

"Uncanniness also means 'not-being-at-home'" [BT 188]

"Being-in was defined as 'residing alongside...',
'Being-familiar with..." which concretely is brought to view
'through everyday publicness of the 'they', which
tranquillized self-assurance...."

and

"On the other hand, as Dasein falls (but not collapses -
falling is not a collapse but a 'lowering' emphatically and
in a relational sense), anxiety brings it back from its
absorption in the 'world'. Everyday familiarity collapses
(this is the only useage of the word collapse I have found).
Dasein has been individualized, but individualized as
Being-in-the-world. Being-in enters into the *existential
'mode'* of the 'not-at-home'. Nothing else is meant by our
talk about 'uncanniness'". [BT 189]

Here the ontical term 'familiarity' is used as a descriptive
term meaning 'at-home' and the ontological meaning of
anxiety, the 'uncanny' is interpretive regarding the
individualized Dasein being felt as the 'uncanny' due to a
'collapse of familiarity'.

An important distinction is discussed later on page 190

"...under the ascendancy of falling and publicness, 'real'
anxiety is rare. (I agree totally with this- no one would
attend a hockey game if this was not true)....Only because
Dasein is anxious in the very depths of its Being, does it
become possible for anxiety to be elicited physiologically."

H sayes that the 'phenomenon' of anxiety has been 'partly'
neglected generally in 'the existential analytic of Dasein'
as a result of a failure to 'recognize the phenomenon of
state of mind'" [BT 190]

The footnote here refers to the history of 'timoris' (fear)
and other states of mind as described analytically by
Augustine to Kierkegaard (otherwise Christian
'states-of-mind').

At any rate H regards anxiety as a 'phenomenon' in the
widest sense imaginable, that is, in any case, anxiety  in a
'primordial sense', a 'basic state of mind' for anxiety
individualizes, gives birth (all at once) to the self,
world, and Being-in.

The primordial nature of human existence is 'already
Being-in' <mitgesetzt>, which is essentially care.

john foster







-----------------------------------
drs. Rene de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering
tel. 020-5252368


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