Subject: Re: the o/o gulf
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 09:01:54 -0800


Anthony wrote:

So the difference between fear and anxiety is precisely that
fear shrinks
back from some entity within-the-world, whereas the
turning-away of falling
is NOT from some entity-within-the-world, but rather from
the very "same
kind of being as the one that shrinks back: IT IS DASEIN
ITSELF." Since
Dasein is not an entity within the world, the turning-away
from itself that
is falling cannot be fear, since fear is only of entities
within-the-world.
That is what he means when he says that fear is anxiety
fallen into the
world - anxiety, like fear, is a turning-away or shrinking
back, but unlike
fear, it is not about an entity in the world at all.


Well, Anthony, I don't know about that. Fear of the unknown,
fear of fear itself, are fears about nothing in particular.
The uncanny [befindlichkeit] is an awareness of the unknown.
I am nor clear either on the idea that

"fear is anxiety fallen into the world"

Dasein falls, night falls, anxiety individualizes,

and the metaphor of  the 'fall' means something else. It is
different from the aversion response of 'turning-away' and
'shrinking back'. Dasein is made ontologically distinct by
sense certainty of the factual and by familiarity with
entities. Dasein is an ontological term used inititally by
Kant for existence, and therefore 'death' has no 'purpose';
however for Heidegger death is both purposive and
fundamental to existence and Dasein. Niala has commented
with eloquence on death and anxiety as relational terms.

"Holding death for true (death is just one's own) shows
another kind of certainty, and is more primordial than any
certaintly which relates to entities encountered
within-the-world, or to formal objects; for it is certain of
Being-in-the-world. As such, holding death for true does not
demand just one definite kind of behaviour in Dasein, but
demands Dasein itself in the full authenticity of its
existence. [BT 309-310]

Remember Dasein is encountered in self, being-in, and world.




>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.

Where EXACTLY are you getting this grammatical distinction
from? Exactly
line please.

>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'

Anthony:
Do you have any idea how utterly absurd it is to
characterize
being-in-the-world as a feeling?


Anthony, feeling is an intermediary of logic and emotion.
For me, being-in-the-world is 'feeling', a state of mind.
Here is what I suppose: All feelings are states of mind, and
thus, according to Heidegger, anxiety is a state of mind,
fear is a mode of state of mind, and thus clearly one
expression of  'being-in-the-world' is to have feeling (a
state of mind). No sympathy or love can exist unless I am a
being in the world. A worldless being cannot have feeling,
nor can a being without a self which cannot feel. Thinking
is feeling. The cognitive and the emotive is rarely pure but
rather is an 'intermediate'.....

What you are asking your audience to now agree to is
'mindless states of mind' or 'no-mind' states; or mindless
miming, mimes, or positively a 'zen-like' no mine (but I
doubt that).

Of course you have not proved that there are no minds, just
made us wonder.

Care, as solicitude is love, but love is said to be an act
rather than a feeling (I wonder?)

Care is 'already-being-in' for Heidegger. Your answer should
have elaborated on where the self is in the phrase
'being-in-the-world.' No self is required to 'feel' as you
know, but Dasein is individualized through anxiety (this is
the difficult point because of the fact that a world cannot
'feel' anxiety, nor can 'being-in' (being at home, residing
alongside, et cetera) as feeling be pure of environment,
world, or self always.

chao

john








You are like a dog with a bone - as soon as
you see some word that has a usual ontic meaning, like
"feeling," you don't
even consider that in an ontological analytic, he just might
be using the
term in a non-ontic sense. You probably interpreted
discourse, call,
conscience, and falling in precisely the same way. YES he
says that we
"feel" uncanny, but look at his EXPLANATION of uncanniness:

"If we interpret Dasein's uncanniness from an
existential-ontological point
of view as a threat which reaches Dasein itself and which
comes from Dasein
itself, we aer not contending that in FACTICAL anxiety too
it has always
been understood in this sense. When Dasein "understands"
uncanniness in the
everyday manner [which is what you are doing, John), it does
so by turning
away from it in falling; in this turning-away, the
not-at-home gets dimmed
down. Yet the everydayness of this feeling shows
phenomenally that anxiety,
as a basic state-of-mind, belongs to Dasein's essential
state of
Being-in-the-world, which, as one that is existential, IS
NEVER
PRESENT-AT-HAND but is itself always in a MODE of factical
Being-there -
that is, IN THE MODE OF A STATE-OF-MIND. That kind of
Being-in-the-world
which is tranquilized and familiar is a MODE OF DASEIN'S
UNCANNINESS, NOT
THE REVERSE. From an existential-ontological point of view,
the not-at-home
must be conceived as the more primordial phenomenon." (SuZ
189)

Just look at what he says here John! The "familiar is a mode
of Dasein's
uncanniness, NOT THE REVERSE"! And yet you keep doing
precisely the reverse,
interpreting uncanniness as a mode of the familiar - as a
feeling! A
state-of-mind is not a feeling! You cannot just robotically
read terms like
feelings, discourse, call, conscience, anxiety,
state-of-mind, care with the
usual everyday meanings in Heidegger's analytic!

>"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),

What the hell is that parenthetical remark supposed to mean
John? The
falling of Dasein is the OPPOSITE of the collapse of
facticity in anxiety!
The falling of Dasein means that Dasein constantly falls
INTO facticity AWAY
FROM its authentic pure potentiality for being. The collapse
refers to the
collapse OF FACTICITY (i.e., the OPPOSITE of falling) and
going BACK to its
authentic pure potentiality for being. Your reading of the
above passage is
completely twisted!

>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).

You must have missed the use of the word just two pages
earlier:

"Here the TOTALITY of involvements of the ready-to-hand and
the
present-at-hand discovered within-the-world is, as such, of
NO consequence;
it COLLAPSES into itself; the world has the character of
COMPLETELY lacking
significance." (SuZ 186)

Sorry John, it's a total collapse of facticity. Face it.

>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'.

"Felt" in the way described above.

>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]

John that is just a blatant misreading on your part! LOOK at
the whole text:

"Even rarer than the existentiell Fact of "real" anxiety are
attempts to
interpret this phenomenon according to the principles of its
existential-ontological constitution and function. The
reasons for this lie
partly in the general neglect of the existential analytic of
dasein, but
more particularly in a failure to recognize the phenomenon
of
state-of-mind." (SuZ 190)

So he is NOT saying that the phenomenon of state of mind has
been neglected
in the existential analytic of Dasein. He says that there
has been a neglect
OF the existential analytic of Dasein, "BUT MORE
PARTICULARLY" in a failure
to recognize the phenomenon of state-of-mind. So the neglect
has been
precisely the lack of performing an existential analytic of
Dasein, MORE
PARTICULARLY a failure to recognize the phenomenon of state
of mind. See the
difference between this and what you said?

>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.

I suppose you will now say that care is a feeling too.

>Rene, you can't insist on this distinction between the
truth
>of rightness
>and the truth of openness while at the same time insisting
>on the ambiguity
>of the o/o distinction. After all, the truth of rightness
is
>factical,
>whereas the truth of openness is ontological. So the very
>distinction you
>are making between these two kinds of truths presupposes
the
>very
>distinction that you are trying to say is ambiguous in the
>first place! So
>if you don't want to spoil your reading of John Foster with
>the "rigidity"
>of the o/o distinction, then you also can't spoil your
>reading of ME with the very same "rigidity" of the
>truth-as-rightness/truth-as-openness distinction.
>
>Anthony Crifasi
>
>Anthony, not necessarily. If you are assuming that
>'rightness' has only a factical component, this might not
>stand in terms of ideation, and in concepts. Mathematics is
>an 'operation' dependent on synthesis, math is a synthetic
>process of ideation; placing concepts in agreement.
>Facticity in formal logic has very little correspondence
>with entities in the world, and with phenomenon.

Oh Geez John, CONCEPTS ARE ESSENTIALLY FACTICAL!!!! You are
missing even the
basics John! Facticities are not just material things!
Heidegger explicitly
places conceptual thought in the mode of presence, which is
COMPLETELY
factical. John, you really need to take Heidegger 101 over
again.

>The
>designation of a quantum is dependent on 'sense certainty'
>and on a relational 'agreement' in an object-subject field.
>
>Truth as H noted has a universal definition and that is
that
>'truth is the revelatory essence of being'; and if we
extend
>the meaning of being to all entities what-so-ever such as
>abstract entities with few or a sole quality, then
>'rightness' is dependent on what is revealed of entities.
Of
>course in symbolic knowledge, essences revealed about
>entities are not exhausted by what is disclosed as
>phenomenon (ie. to human perception). So there is a limit
to
>what is revealed for understanding. This is why existential
>anxiety and its modes of state of mind can be described as
>'fear' and the 'uncanny' et cetera since what these
>'feelings' disclose is something 'indefinite' and
>undetermined, but also what is factical.

On the contrary, FEAR is about something factically
definite, since it is
always about something in the world. Remember, Heidegger
explicitly said
that in the texts I gave you? Anxiety, on the other hand, is
never about
something factical in the world. Remember, Heidegger
explicitly said that in
the texts I gave you?

>As far as the
>positive sciences are concerned, as Wittgenstein claimed,
>'science wants to know nothing about nothing.' Likewise the
>assertion that the 'truth of openess' is 'ontological' is
>distinct from 'truth of rightness' is ontical  is based on
a
>metaphorical analogy between the two claims. This is like
>saying that the ontological is 'descriptive' and the
ontical
>is 'interpretative' only. That is to say that the
>ontological is now reversed in intentionally as that which
>'shows' but cannot be 'intrepreted'. An opening thus if I
am
>correct as you claim is what 'shows' as in 'phenomenon' and
>conversely what is 'right' is descriptive and not subject
to
>intepretation; however as H demonstrates there are
>ontological phenomenon (however primordial) which show and
>are subject to discussion; only the ontical are not
>'interpretative'. A light remains a light until proven
>otherwise, and once it is proven not to be light, it is no
>longer a light, but a source of darkness, for example.
>Ontology refers to 'how one is' but not to 'what one is'
>necessarily.

If by "what one is" you mean a factical essence, then
ontology does not
refer to what one is. If by "what one is" you mean
fundamental existential
structure, then yes ontology refers to what one is. You
can't just leave it
with general terms like "what one is" and expect to make a
coherent
interpretation here John!

>While I can agree that there is a plausible distinction
>between a 'phenomenal ontology' and 'judgements -being
>right, truth claimes in general, validity, inferential
>wisdom), I think that the 'reverse' is more likely to be
>true,
>which is that 'openess' is not 'ontological' but rather
>belongs to those entities which are factical.

Again with the vague terminology John! YES openness
"belongs" to the
factical. YES the ontological "belongs" to the factical. But
SPECIFICALLY,
this means that the ontological is exhibited THROUGH the
factical! They are
not FACTICALLY distinct (i.e., it's not as if the
ontological is some
factical "structure" which is factically "behind" the ontic
world), but they
are still distinct in that the ontological AS ontological is
not per se
factical. Do you see the difference?

>There is a
>'categorical error' made by stipulating that....And that
for
>me is confusing.
>
>The 'open' is a true metaphor for those attributes and
their
>entities which 'show' from time to time, but 'rightness' is
>not a matter of description but entirely 'interpretative'
>(cf. Sextus Empiricus). All propositions are false to some
>degree, and it is not entirely resolved if there is a
>general consensus on the validity of any propositions used
>to 'prove' truth. Truth is an 'axiological' value. The
>metaphor used for describing what
>appears or shows itself (in relation to those modes of
>closeness, etc.), the opening, has no requirement to be
>interpreted. For instance Aristotle relates about the
>perception of a light in the distance, which all agree is a
>fire, but on closer inspection it turns out to be a
>lighthouse (In De Anima - I cannot remember). The opening,
>the light as a fact does not change, but the cause of the
>light, the source of the light does change.
>
>Likewise the ontical is not subject to 'interpretation' it
>simply IS, and the ontological is 'open' for
>'interpretation' 'reflection' and 'analysis'.

John, for Heidegger, the ontic is PRECISELY THE RESULT OF
INTERPRETATION. It
is the result of Dasein's projective understanding upon its
own pure
potentiality for being. You mean interpretation in an ONTIC
sense, like
"interpretating" a factical phenomena.

Anthony Crifasi

>(cf. Paleontology vrs Archeology)
>
>  In ecology
>there are 2 fundamental branches: one is 'interpretative'
>and the other is 'descriptive', or in other words 'applied'
>and 'theoretical'.
>
>Onto-theology is speculative ontology, tends to be
dogmatic,
>but critical ontology is discursive; whereas "Dasein is
>ontically distinctive in that it is ontological" (which
>implies an ambiguous reference to all our discussions
>formerly). [BT 12]
>
>Which means that existenz is enacted discursively, open for
>interpretation and questioning; ontology is a logos, a
>logical discussion about what is primordial using new
>'categories' of the soul, or self, world and
>being-in-the-world. The categories are unique in that they
>are of a spatial and temporal nature (remoteness,
>ready-to-hand, et cetera, factual) and also of a
existential
>nature (remorse, guilt, anxiety, care, joy, etc).


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