It’s a matter of emphasis and import, as demonstrated by this very post. You give yourself away.
Iam is like a child coming up with endless reasons why swimming is impossible. We might all agree about lack of “solid foundation”, but the way we relate to that can be all over the board.
I don’t capitalize dasein because in many important ways human existence is not a proper noun. Instead, it is an ever shifting and evolving point of view regarding [at times] complex relationships embedded in contingency, chance and change.
In particular, narratives that revolve around, “why and how did I come to view myself and the world around me in one way rather than in another?” and “how ought I to live?”
When human value judgments [and behaviors] come into conflict out in the world what is the “structure of existence”? How is that not just a point of view?
There is clearly a definitive structure when I note, “Mary had an abortion and it is illegal.” But what is the structure when someone insist, “Mary’s abortion is illegal because abortion is immoral”. What is the structure of human morality? Regarding the first assertion, it is either true or it is not. Regarding the second, how can it ever be more than a point of view?
Personally, this is what interest me philosophically. I am not concerned with how close or how far Sartre is to Heidegger is to Kierkegaard. I am interested only in how my own understanding of dasein is or is not reflected in actual human social, political and economic interaction.
From Heidegger I took the idea of a subject being “thrown” – purely adventiously sans God – into a world at birth. And, depending on the time and the place of a birth, a baby will be indoctrinated as a child to embrace a particular “I” for many, many years. Some will take this “sense of self” literally to the grave.
What intrigues me then is this: In what way can this existential narrative be tossed aside by the increasingly autonomous dasein and, using the tools of philosophy, a truth emerge that transcends mere points of view? What is true for everyone?
This observation is, in my view, preposterous. Does anon have substantial arguments that are rooted out in the world of actual human interaction or doesn’t he?
I don’t know about substantial, or rooted. I think my argument makes sense based on what you demonstrate during our actual human interactions.
I’m only trying to help. You seem like you’re flailing around in the ocean, always crying about your lack of footing. I’m saying just relax, put your head back, and float. Everybody else is already doing it…
Uh, right.
Clearly. I mean anything that projects out of a kind of nothingness, or lack of solid foundation, can only go anywhere. And the way we relate to it can only do the same.
But how is it, exactly (and I ask this only to get your side of it), that Iam is doing what you’re accusing him of?
I’ve never seen him say anything other than “there’s no objective answer to whether abortion is moral or not”. Have you? Yet this isn’t the Christian fundamentalism forum, last I checked.
And if he were to respond to this, he would of course say what in the world does that mean? I see that as ironic - the refusal to respond differently as different circumstances call for.
People have conflicting values. This isn’t news.
My point in this thread, though, is to try to get to the bottom of it a bit, philosophically speaking. But it’s not happening I think.
Yes, he does seem to use that example a lot. But I think it’s because it is the ultimate example of how ambiguous the kind of questions we deal with are and how lacking in foundation our answers to the questions can be.
And given the kind of drive-by nature of what we do here, the fact that people generally tend to look for something to respond to rather than the insights of others (the insights of others, when they do slip through, are usually an added benefit), it would seem imperative for an individual to repeat themselves in order to hopefully get their point across. I know this seems like a rather bleak and cynical understanding of the people on this board, but it is by no means intended to be. It is merely an sincere interpretation of how people (including me) tend to work. When you’re jamming, if one were to fully focus on what other band members were doing, I would have serious doubts about one’s capacity to fulfill their own role in it. Nor is this phenomenon peculiar to these boards. It’s a little like the dialogue out of Fight Club:
“When you’re dying, people really listen to you instead of… instead of…”
“Instead of waiting for their turn to talk?”
“Yeah.”
Furthermore, we all have our repertoire of riffs which is never an infinite resource. And we are always under a self imposed imperative to create more. We all face that elastic barrier or Lacanian hymen beyond which lies the next level. And the only way I know of to get beyond it is the repetition of repeating ourselves, of throwing ourselves into it with what we know until we somehow get beyond it -only to find ourselves faced with another hymen, another level to get to. And what you’re seeing may be Iam’s process of doing just that.
But these are just speculations. What I do know about Iam is that nothing he has said indicates he is some kind of pro-life fundamentalist. If he were, I doubt he would struggle as he does with the issue. In fact, the impression I get from previous interactions with him is that he is more pro-choice, but still struggles with the uncertainties involved in terminating a life.
That said, I think you are asking a little more of people on here than is actually warranted. We’re all just kind of flying around, giving ourselves to each other in fragments and relying on the other to piece us together. We have no choice given the limited nature of the written and linear language we’re forced to present ourselves in. The only way we can compensate for this limitation is speed, momentum, and diversity. I mean I don’t know how many times I’ve been flying around here and other boards until I’m lost in a kind of speed smear, how often I’ve had to ask myself what I’ve actually said, even when sober, and how many commitments to responding I’ve broken because, before I could get back, I managed to get pulled in another direction. And one can only thank god (whatever it is) for spellcheck. So if Iam doesn’t respond in the way you want, it may be because he has found more efficient ways of getting himself across.
About all we can do is lay it out there, follow what takes, and let go of what doesn’t. It’s a frenzy of intellect and expression. All one can do is follow the flow of the thing.
Good answer. While my objection still stands, I do like the concept of this lowercase dasein.
Spot on.
EDIT: Second thoughts.
True, true. Thanks d63.
That said, I always feel a little awkward and incompetent when Heidiegger comes into the discourse. I’ve read little of his actual text. And for all the interpretive texts I’ve read and heard on him (audiobooks), I have to admit I still don’t get it. The closest I’ve come is his concept of Anguish described by Mary Warnock in Existentialism, the experience and anxiety of having truly tapped into the underlying nothingness of it all. I know what it’s like to not even be sure if you’re walking on solid ground.
But I think this mainly has to do with a lack use for him -certainly not the quality of his thought or importance of his ideas. I mean I read Deleuz and Guattarri, understand little of what they’re saying, yet feel a profound impact due to my ability to steal, for my own uses, and assimilate such concepts as the rhizomatic, re- and de-territorialization, and the nomadic approach to philosophy. And it will be a long time before I consider touching The Escrits; but Lacan’s concept of Jouissance, needs, demands, and desires, and the symbolic order are mine now, I can play with them like a child with a new toy -or a redneck with new gun -however you want to take it. His concept of the psychotic’s relationship to the symbolic order underlies my concept of the psychotic pitfall of the nihilistic perspective. And oh yeah: I have personally decided that the word deconstruction should be changed to d.construction -even though I have never read Derrida. But for some reason, Heidegger just doesn’t seem to take.
And the only excuse I can give for myself is that, one, I consider myself more of a writer who is interested in philosophy among other things, and, two, there is nothing in him I can use. About the only thing I can do as concerns the issue is keep going over him until something takes -maybe. Or to put it in the words of Caveman Lawyer:
[i]Ladies and gentlemen,
I’m a cave man.
Your streetlights scare me…[/i]
That said, I do have some ideas about the relationship of the individual to community. As Carl Rogers points out, we tend to deal with 3 kinds of selves: the real self (self explanatory), the actualized self (that which we idealize), and the social self (that based on what we perceive others to perceive us as). Now 2 of these overlap in that our ideal selves and ourselves as we think others might perceive us would have a strong interaction that would ultimately lead to the construction of our real selves. At the same time, it would seem that the actualized self would seek to assert its own individuality while also seeking a harmonious relationship with the self as perceived by others, the social self. This would naturally create a lot of inner tension that would, in turn, define the real self.
So I would argue that the self is socially dependent to extent that it tends to define itself through the tension between it as an individual and it as a social being. Very much like Horfstader’s strange loop, there is always a give and take between an individual and it’s environment and the individuals (the other its) that occupy it.
d63, to be honest, that kind of analysis of selfhood - how we construct selves, etc. etc. - strikes me as overly complex. It makes it too easy to get caught up in non-issues like the self as some kind of dilemma, a public self versus a private self, and on and on. The problem with this approach I think is that we tend to take descriptive concepts that have limited use, and take them as if they are kind of like real things, even if they are constructs. Then we invent a problem, a narrative, and even a catharsis and resolution - all in relation to this idea of “self”. Or to put it another way, when we fixate on the problem, we reinforce the problem.
But I don’t believe the problems we actually go through, and the way we resolve those problems has anything to do with these theoretical constructions. They are simply problems and resolutions. When we relax and are at ease with the world, these problems temporarily dissipate, along with any kind of “self” at all. Self is just separation - that’s it. Philosophically, we can use logic, sound concepts, etc. to undercut our tendency to fuel a sense of self through misguided concepts, or relationships to concepts. But to do so, it’s necessary to overcome any undue power that these concepts have over us. Concepts shouldn’t control us - we should control concepts.
Heidegger does nothing for me, i.e. I don’t understand him. I tried my hardest (relatively of course 
) to understand where Iam might be coming from when researching to write this OP. I did my best and I admit I was pleased to get some positive feedback. But it turns out I was barking up the wrong tree. Iam’s dasein apparently has little to do with Heidegger’s. I still can’t figure out why he continues to use a word that has no meaning to anyone other than himself. But I’m not him and he’s not me, and perhaps he does it in order to help make that point. But to overemphasize that point, as I think he does - I think that results from mistaken philosophical views.
Pretty response, anon.
Whether it’s right or not I will defer to to a day when I feel rational enough to respond.
But it sounded right.
But that may well be because it sounded pretty.
But it it was a good response regardless.
Anyway: I’m going to go get some more beer and Jager
(then come back
Then I’ll be able to carry out my diabolical plan to take over the world.
Haha, you’re an enjoyable jamming partner, d63. I hate to say it, but it’s now or never. I hardly ever have this kind of time and inclination to sit here and send considered responses into cyberspace. After today it’s back to skimming posts, hoping I grasped the basic point, and madly typing inbetween the inbetweens.
What else is there, brother, fellow traveller, nomad?
hmm, what else. I don’t know, d.
All postmodern-schizo-rhizomatic nomads will meet, at some point or other, with other postmodern-schizo-rhizomatic nomads at some point in the vast rhizomatic network. And at that point, they will have both, tenatively, found their center before they go on and lose it again.
I’m not so sure that ease comes through centering. I’m not a circle, after all!