Re: Mind & Body, One More Time

Charles, thank you for your response to my very loose posting.

> The existentialist themes run through all of the early Heidegger.
> There
> is no better passage for my gloss than this:  one can and must master
> moods through will and knowledge. I'm not sure what you mean by "ego"
> control, though.  Heidegger's 438-page attack on the concept of "ego"
> goes
> hand in hand with his idea that Dasein can and should become resolute,
>
> acknowledge that it is the source of meaningful possibilities, and
> "seize
> on" possibilities in a way that makes them its own.  Certainly this is
>
> quite different from the later Heidegger, but I think it is better
> than
> quietism and passivism.  I'd like to know why you find problems with
> it.

Sorry for the use of "ego". Sometimes it just seems easier even when it
turns out that I am the only one who knows what I mean. I'm not sure
what I'm fighting for here. I know that Heidegger focuses on Dasein and
Entschlossenheit in SZ, and later felt he had given too much to Dasein
and, hence, the shift to Gelassenheit. I have trouble seeing, even with
the emphasis on Entschlossenheit, that this resolutness means willfully
taking control in the way we have been talking about taking control of
moods. For Dasein to "seize on" possibilities and make them its own is
(in SZ) being authentic. But isn't the resoluteness still a comportment
of openness to the possibilities that present themselves, in contrast to
the willful grasping, shaping, controlling attitude that "resolutely"
(in the wrong context) forces itself upon the world? This is what I
meant, I suppose, by ego-control, because the whole flavor reminds me of
the kinds of approachs in psychology that see building big strong ego's
as the solution to all problems. Seeing the possibilities which are
present, opening to these possibilities, gathering them to one's self in
the clearing takes a certain resolute comportment that seems out of
synch with the idea that we must "master" and "control"...even in SZ. I
wonder if Heidegger did not make his "turn" so much because he changed
his mind and figured out the error of his thinking but, rather, because
he saw that the way he was presenting Entschlossenheit in SZ too easily
led one down the wrong path.

Michael S.



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