RE: Blame Bliar

Rene de Bakker wrote:

> >     Dasein, Mitsein are nothing generic, as Anthony claims.
>
> When did I ever say it was something "generic," unless by "generic" you 
> mean
> simply that it is not any entitative group or individual, which would then
> put Heidegger himself in your crosshairs?
>
>
>    Maybe you will check your own posts? I cannot find it, but i'm sure
>    it must be there, and if not downright generic, then generic-related.
>    From the beginning you're interpreting existentials with help of the
>    ontic-ontologic distinction. As soon as you could detect sthing
>    ontical   - Bush, or Lawrence of Arabia - you said: that's ontic, and
>    not ontological.

Well Rene, AREN'T THEY? Doesn't Heidegger himself quite explicitly say that 
mitsein does not mean an entitative "they," as the UN is an entitative 
"they"? Doesn't Heidegger himself say that Dasein's essence is not any 
existent? That's *all* I mean. That is "generic" only in the most empty 
sense - the sense of not-a-specific-entity, which is also true of 
traditional notions of "genus" and "species," which do not signify any 
specific individual. But these come with all kinds of metaphysical baggage 
that doesn't transfer to Heidegger's notion of "ontological," so much so 
that it becomes deceptive to label the latter by the same term, "generic" 
(except, as I said, in the most empty sense).

>   Lately again, when you  -  not i - brought the
>    formal notion of guilt, in order to excuse concrete guilt. But that is
>    not what existentials are good for. That is not what H is doing in BT.

Rene only you could characterize what I did as *excusing* concrete guilt. 
What I argued was that the Heideggerian items that were being used against 
certain entities transcend the blaming AND excusing of any entity. If I were 
trying to *excuse* those entities existentially, I would have argued those 
Heideggerian items actually exonerate their behavior. That is a quite 
different claim.

>    He has quite another goal, when warning that in BT he's not talking of
>    specific (ontic) cases. And that goal, is, as he repeats again and 
> again,
>    provisional.
>
>    You still have to answer the question, how Heidegger is able to say,
>    that the ontically nearest is the ontologically remotest.  Possible
>    application: the lying Blair. ("Saddam is able to hit London in 45
>    minutes, there's no doubt about that"). The ontological is in the 
> ontic,
>    but hidden...otherwise he would indeed explode.

How is what I'm saying in any way opposed to your statement that the 
ontological is in the ontic? As Heidegger says, there is no *difference* 
between these as if they were two distinct entities, but he ADDS that they 
are different. So he said we have a different (ontological difference) 
without a difference (ontic difference). As for his statement that what is 
ontically nearest is the ontologically remotest, I'd have to see the context 
again to make sure, but from what I remember, wasn't he just saying that 
when we are immersed in what is *familiar* (ontically nearest), their 
ontological structure remains hidden?

Anthony Crifasi

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