Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 16:29:06 -0600
Subject: Re:  o/o


>   My "Heidegger" folder is stuffed full of the o/o threads. 
>
>One more, Jason, and thank you too.
>
>Heidegger: What is metaphysics?
>http://www.msu.org/e&r/content_e&r/texts/heidegger/heidegger_wm2.html
>
>As surely as we can never comprehend absolutely the ensemble of beings in
>themselves we certainly do find ourselves stationed in the midst of beings
>that are revealed somehow as a whole. In the end an essential distinction
>prevails between comprehending the ensemble of beings in themselves and
>finding oneself in the midst of beings as a whole. The former is impossible
>in principle. The latter happens all the time in our existence. It does
>seem as though we cling to this or that particular being, precisely in our
>everyday preoccupations, as though we were completely abandoned to this or
>that region of beings. No matter how fragmented our everyday existence may
>appear to be, however, it always deals with beings in a unity of the
>whole, if only in a shadowy way. Even and precisely then when we are not
>actually busy with things or ourselves this as a whole overcomes us  for
>example in genuine boredom. Boredom is still distant when it is only this
>book or that play, that business or this idleness, that drags on. It
>irrupts when one is bored. [es ist einem langweilig] Profound boredom,
>drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling
>fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable
>indifference. This boredom reveals beings as a whole.
>      Another possibility of such revelation is concealed in our joy in the
>present existence  and not simply in the person  of a human      being
>whom we love. Such being attuned, in which we are one way or another and
>which determines us through and through, lets us           find ourselves
>among beings as a whole. The founding mode of attunement [die
>Befindlichkeit der Stimmung] not only reveals beings           as a whole
>in various ways, but this revealing  far from being merely incidental  is
>also the basic occurrence of our Da-sein.
>
>
>
>
>This is more than interesting: I just flipped
>open Botho Strauss, "Beginnlosigkeit" (An-archy),
>
>(There is much philosophy in this author.
>And science: the steady-state theory,
>a world without a beginning)
>
>The ontological is not a thing, no-thing.
>'Something' in German is 'Etwas'
>Strauss coins the word: Abwas, no-thing,
>Ab-wesen, ab-sence. Abthing
>
>p. 57, my rendering:
>
>"The Abwas is a thing of absence and seemingly
>a thing of remembrance. Still its activity is that of a
>the hole of a funnel: it effaces, it abstracts remembrance.
>An abthing posesses thousand suckers, is one
>worldabsucking plasmodium.
>
>When the abthing effaces every thing: when for instance
>a missing person fills out your whole being-there, more
>than his presence ever could do.
>

Rene,

Such a moment seems to indicate that thinking Befindlichkeit in the 
midst of beings as whole is
equally impossible.  The attempt to think an absence as "more than 
his presence could
ever do" is just the sort of impossibility that philosophy thrives 
on.  Of course, the moment
itself happens all the time, but the attempt to think it, especially 
as a thing of rememberence, isolates
one "inside" Dasein such that all one can do to assuage the pain of 
the "missing"  is to "fill out"
no-thing by looking to be at home everywhere at once," i.e. at home 
in the midst of beings as a whole.

regards,

Allen
-- 
  Allen Scult					Dept. of Philosophy
HOMEPAGE: " Heidegger on Rhetoric and Hermeneutics":	Drake University
http://www.multimedia2.drake.edu/s/scult/scult.html	Des Moines, Iowa 50311
PHONE: 515 271 2869
FAX: 515 271 3826


     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---