Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality
And, if this be the case, then everything — everything that encompasses the body, everything that encompasses the mind, and everything the encompasses the world around it/“I”, can only be entirely explained when we have an understanding – ontological? teleological? – of existence itself.
This thread however takes that gap for granted. Just as it makes the presumption that we all have some measure of free-will to actually opt for particular points of view.
Dasein then revolves around “I” in our day to day interactions and the extent to which what we believe to be true about them is able to be demonstrated as in fact true. Call it true objectively. Call it true universally. Call it true empirically. Call it true phenomenologically. Call it true historically, anthropologically, ethnically, culturally, sociologically, politically, economically, psychologically.
It is either a thing or a relationship in sync with what science calls the “laws of nature” out in the either/or world able or not able to be verified or falsified by way of the “scientific method”.
Of course science is considerably less concerned with “I” in the is/ought world. With human behaviors said to be virtuous or moral. Here instead any number of philosophers down through the ages have grappled with what in the discipline is called “ethics”.
And that’s the part I zoom in on in regard to my own understanding of dasein in this thread. That’s the part where I focus the beam at the existential juncture of identity, value judgments and political power.
Out in any particular world, in any particular context, understood from any particular point of view. And here I speculate not so much on what philosophers can tell us, but on what [perhaps] they cannot.
But it is only when we take these “intellectual contraptions” down off the scholastic scaffolding and situate the words out in a particular context, out a particular world, can the human condition be explored more substantively.
Or, rather, so it seems to me.