Re: will to will

----- Original Message -----
From: "Henk van Tuijl" <hvtuijl@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 5:41 AM
Subject: Re: will to will


> From: "michaelP" <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 1:50 PM
> Subject: Re: will to will
>
>
> > on 10/4/04 12:03 pm, Malcolm Riddoch at m.riddoch@xxxxxxxxxx wrote
> speaking
> > of Anthony's so-called confusion and contradiction:
> >
> > > I'm guessing it has something to do with your Catholic belief in a
> god
> > > which you have to somehow reconcile with secular facticity and
> > > Heidegger's ontology.
> >
> > Malcom, I do not think it has anything to do with Anthony's religiosity
> and
> > its relation to secualrism: I find myself in much the same (though
> hardly
> > identical) zone as Anthony on this business of the nature of the
> ontological
> > thinking and its relation to human action etc, and I am not the least
> > religious and find no tension with the secular.
>
> Perhaps Malcolm's point is that Being is not a positive noumenon.
>
> > The tensions involved in
> > thinking-being are far more complex, subtle and difficult than any
> > assumption that once one is over (the thinking bit) the other will be
> > properly informed as to action and the simple exercise of will and
> > de-cision. Thinking-being has no end and it's always already begun
> (although
> > this arche is concealed by the passing-on; it's still on its way.
>
> As long as it exists Dasein will have knowledge of Being. This knowledge
> is ontological or a priori, not unlike (or completely like) time.
> Ontological knowledge has no use independent of factic life experience -
> one of the reasons why Heidegger asks for the meaning of Being, not its
> use. Positive noumena do have a meaning, and one may ask oneself what the
> meaning of an illusion like Being (independent of beings) is - although
> the question itself is absolutely useless.
>
> The knowing of Being is nothing exalted, holy or whatever. Divine
> knowledge (intellectus divinus) is ontic knowledge and nothing else. It
> is not that God doesn't need ontology - ontology is the opposite of
> divinity. Divinity repels ontology.
>
> In this sense we have to admit that Jud is more at home with the divine
> than most  Heideggerians. So does receptive phenomenology - as opposed to
> fundamental ontology.
>
> > Heidegger provides an opening: why does no-one take this entrancing
> exit?
>
> An opening to what?
>
> Henk

What about onto-theology? Being is equivalent with God, however not in the
traditional western sense as ultimately real being, rather as that which
'presists' and 'subsists' in the _cogititonis_ thinking. Heidegger has it
that besides persistance and subsistance, there is a _fundamentum_
underlying all thought. The noumenon is what is 'in itself' thus 'self
reflection', or self knowing, has some direct knowledge about some noumena
in thinking Being. Being for Heidegger is the 'light' or 'nearness' which
shows up things as they are. He mentions that appearances are not true
phenomena, but semblances, keeping with the tradition. In thinking Being we
are presented with what is shown as intelligible, thus God is - while not
understandable - nevertheless is intelligible, can be thought as the most
perfect idea, just as Being is thought. Of course there is no positive
phenomena associated with what is shewn as light, but it is the light of
intelligence. Only the light brings things to nearness. To be able to
communicate various truths [essences revealed] suggests that the noumenon
regarding say God or Being is real, but not necessarily ideal. Ideas express
really only relations between phenomena; ideas are relations [implications]
regarding what is most near, but not nearness. One exception may be real as
to ideas: "the most perfect idea" which can be thought is the idea of the
whole, which cannot present itself adequate via phenomena, or what some on
this list call the ontic [real experiences, sensory information, objected
things].. Language and expressive gestures, et cetera, are not the light of
Being but they indicate something about Being in that communication
indicates a 'formal' relation extant in how things present.

Thinking as a whole which is ontological therefore is not  referential to
the minutae of each individual thought, rather it is thinking as a 'whole'
about a single time of being-in-the-world. [being meaning 'in its' time' of
showing]. Being makes possible each shewing forth of beings. But Being is
not being. Being is the is the intelligence which makes possible the showing
of beings, hence the 'nearness' of thinking, feeling. Thus thinking which is
ontological is non-'theoretical' nor 'practical' since these later thoughts
are finite determinations about the relations [or ideas which we have about
the particular phenomena]. I would argue that ontological thinking is
obliterated the moment that the cogito dissolves all reality into
'unrelated' distinctions. Thus ontic thinking is about what is practical and
theoretical [has only extrinsic value], much like modern technology which is
said by Heidegger to 'render beings manifest', as 'instrumental' without
consideration of their 'intrinsicality' which means that they are closed off
as to their reality. The real is what is instrinsic to beings, and cannot be
taken up by any other like beings. Suffice it to say that the real is always
mediated by a degree of remoteness. For instance to take a trivial example,
rocks. That which we perceive as rocks is about as close as we can get to
knowning what is expressed by the term noumena, at least from a material,
scientific means. Rocks have a certain look, and they have a certain
composition which does not vary, unlike organisms. Rocks are essentially
unchanging because their time is of geological time, meaning they were
perhaps made over billions of years ago. In fact all the gold in the
universe was made during the Big Bang [this theory is not part of the rocks
noumena, but rather of reason for being-there, or the dasein of their
existence. Theories about rocks are part of their ontic logos, but the
existence and our knowledge of rocks as real is a component of their
noumena, that which they are 'in-themselves'.

At a human level noumena [versus the phenomenon] our reality is 'in-itself'
what is actually our universal potential: a being with language _zoon logon
echon_, the animal which reasons and talks. This cannot be stripped away
from being human. Hiedegger even says that humans are the only animals with
speech and but not the only with reason. Animals can make inferences, thus
they are therefore capable of 'conceptual' thinking in a different way than
humans [Sextus Empiricus]. Humans can reason about things which animals as a
whole cannot [this is not entirely proved though], and can construct
scenarios.

However language is almost utterly incapable of expressing what  Being 'is'
even though humans can have _cogitations_ which persist and subsist as a
whole. Whereas in animals concepts are more likely to be 'act-concepts', in
humans we can engage in more: acts can be made separate from concepts
implying that humans have a different sense of destiny and history than do
animals, they can conjecture, speculate about the past and about the future;
as well humans, at the individual level, have illusions which are separate
from the phenomena: secondary illusions.

The important point which Heidegger has brought up is expressed in his
general introduction to what Being is, but not in what Being is at the
ontological level for the individual, or my self. He writes that some
thinking obliterates Being, not because it is thinking which is
'pre-ontological', by making real what is not real, primarily, rather,
incomplete ideas regarding relations. Being is for me the 'nearness' which
makes possible the apprehension of beings, but not the comprehension of
beings.

How am I related to the whole of Being? Well rather I am admitting of light,
apprehensions, of that which brings near from afar, the 'before beyond
function' of Being. It is this 'unitive intuition' subsisting and persisting
in thought which makes it likely the only real idea is of the whole, the
most perfect idea. I think Heraclitus expressed this similarly regarding the
transcendental unity of all things: "No amount of mind is without matter,
and no amount of matter is without the [slightest] amount of mind."

Thus to Anthony's assertions of 'distinctions' I can only say that even
without most of these 'ideal' distinctions, some of us are not persuaded.
For nothing is left to distinquish which would make the 'nearness' and
'light' of Being possile.

ag-nostic & intuitus intima et unitiva to you all

john
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