Re: Heidegger -- distance

From: <GEVANS613@xxxxxxx>
To: <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 12:54 PM
Subject: Heidegger -- distance

[snip]

> Here is Heidegger talking to his assembled students:
>
> To attain anticipatory knowing we must practice such knowing. The
fundamental
> condition for such practice is not a prior familiarity, for example, in
the
> form of philosophical opinions acquired through reading. The fundamental
> condition is readiness to make ourselves free for the essential. Mere
familiarity,
> whether narrow or wide, is capable of nothing by itself. However, that
does not
> mean we can do without familiarity everywhere and completely, especially
> mature and carefully cultivated familiarity.

[snip]

> Jud:
> How on earth is somebody expected to be able to attain anticipatory
knowing
> by practising such knowing? Surely to practice such knowing without first
> knowing such knowing is to accept the knowing of another as one's own
knowing. This
> to me is no more than an exhortation to unthinkingly accept the ideas of
> another?

In the quotation above Heidegger asks his
students to let the phenomena be given to
them (cf. es gibt).

It seems that he believes that the
phenomena are more important than - for
example - what philosophers can teach
them. Familiarity with Kant, Nietzsche,
Husserl etc. is helpfull but not
essential.

This is what Heidegger teaches but does
not practice - as in the case of Gadamer,
where he demands complete familiarity
with his own (Heidegger's) thinking.

It seems as if Heidegger believes that
his philosophy is not just philosophy
but the way to let the phenomena be
given, i.e. the direct access to their
origination (Entstand).
If this is not just seemingly so,
Heidegger tends to be even more God-like
than he reproaches Descartes and Husserl
to be.

> Is Heidegger, by employing this approach, anticipating a
> non-understanding by the other, and even the plain disagreement and
rejection of his/his
> party's ideas?

Heidegger has probably not made it much
easier for his students to understand
his teachings - preaching that real
philosophy is life and not knowing how
to live as one teaches.

> The idea of approaching another way of looking at the world by
> first emptying out or cleansing one's mind of all a priori concepts, is
surely
> foreign to the whole idea of an investigative distancing or philosophical
> enquiry, but is rather like imagining one to be trapped inside the cocoon
of a
> silkworm in order to understand its method of exit, for surely a detached,
exterior
> hermenuetical observation of the phenomena   renders a comprehensive
[rather
> than parochial] view of the claims or proceedings?

Indeed, Heidegger's being in the world
is more or less like being trapped
inside a cocoon. It is perhaps even
"worse". Since there is no being-there
outside the world, there is no exit
but death.

Every "detached" view of the phenomena
is based on a decision to forget being,
i.e. it is based on the - false -
assumption that an experience (Erlebnis)
is governed by laws and therefore can
be repeated.

Henk



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