Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Clear the World Here?

More good stuff at enowning. This time, however, I find myself feeling superior to Heidegger (a useful if limited emotion). Surely we must say more than

the things themselves = the world = the clearing = the open = the here

Surely the relevant required acts of phenomenological description will be different?

Characterizing the here is importantly related to characterizing the world. But they are no one and the same operation.

?
??

???????

2 comments:

enowning said...

Couple points.

Heidegger's works (~100 volumes) include a fair amount of phenomenological description. So the = = = = appears at first glance to be a fairly radical proposal. But it does make a certain amount of sense. Reading Heidegger one gets the sense that he had one brilliant insight, and then elaborated it a million different ways.

The = = = = is Thomas Sheehan's interpretation of Heidegger, which may or may not be correct. And not everyone agrees that he is.

Thomas said...

Sheehan makes a convincing case for da = "the open", as a fact of Heidegger interpretation. Not a phenomenological determination. In such cases, I think Heidegger is trying to make the meanings of individual words do what descriptions (poem-like things) are supposed to do. We must start with an ordinary "here" and an ordinary "opening" and then show "per descriptionem aliquam" (a specific sort of description, as Suarez put it, not a definition) how the here is an opening (of the now?). We must not imagine that there is some "primordial naming power" in the word "Da", which is misunderstood if we happen to something ordinary with it, like translating it into "here" or "there".

Anyway, thanks again for all the work you're doing. I'm also a big fan of the your surveillance of matters Heideggerian on the Net.

All the best.