We figure out how well we understand philosophers in the first place by discussing them. — green flag

Sure, but discussing a philosopher and bringing in other philosophers is not the same.

You seem to suggest that philosophy not be done -- or only done elsewhere in order to be shown off as a completed product here. — green flag

That may be how it seems to you, but it is quite far from what I am saying. We never have "perfect clarity". If we think we do that is a good sign that we don't.

Comparisons can be interesting and informative, but a poor understanding of one philosopher is not improved by comparison with a poor understanding of another. But much depends on what one wants to do. If one wants to discuss ideas, it may not matter whether this is or is not what a particular philosopher means.

As you stress, Heidegger adds the radically subjective moment, which is a bit tricky to connect with the rest (which is not to say impossible.) Anyway, what do you think about Hegel influencing Heidegger ? And what do you make of the significance of death in Heidegger ? — green flag

Heidegger is definitely a post-Hegelian philosopher. He basically agrees with Husserl that Hegel represents constructive metaphysics in a bad sense. He doesn't ignore Hegel though. On the contrary, he highly respect him (Being and Time's final chapters treat Hegel). Hegel was the apex of the traditional metaphysics. Somewhere Heidegger remarks that for Hegel everything becomes ontology, referring here to Hegel's absolute or objective idealism.

I read the chapters on death in BT as metaphors. Death means ultimate nothingness or the end of the being-in the-world. On the other hand, the theme of death could be Heidegger's semi-materialistic credo. He frequently uses the term "finiteness" (Endlichkeit) to designate the basic character of human metaphysics (for Hegel, on the other hand, the infinity was an important notion).

Thank you for the clarification. I still think you ought to just come out with concrete objections. Respectfully, it's hard to see how you are not just hinting at your own superior wisdom. As I see it, if you know better than me on this or that topic, make a case. I am willing to be corrected.

I just want to point out that you are criticizing my theory that theory is directed toward greater and greater coherence in terms of its supposed incoherence. You also invoke strong thinkers with which my own theory 'ought' to cohere. (I'd define a strong thinker in terms of that norm, or as one whose work deserves being woven into the story the storyteller tells about itself.) — green flag

This is the familiar anti-pomo argument. As Derrida put it “Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly?”

The answer is that points of view can cohere more or less closely relative to local, contingent normative contexts, but these contexts themselves are always changing, and with them the criteria of coherence , truth, etc. One cannot appeal, as dialectics does, to a criterion of coherence that transcends and grounds all contingent historical contexts.

Thank you!

Also, @Joshs, you might like this.

Here's a very Heideggerian moment in Hegel's famous preface, which I postulate was influential.

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not.

Analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, did in fact consist in nothing else than doing away with its character of familiarity. To break up an idea into its ultimate elements means returning upon its moments, which at least do not have the form of the given idea when found, but are the immediate property of the self. Doubtless this analysis only arrives at thoughts which are themselves familiar elements, fixed inert determinations.

These 'inert determinations' are what I'd call inherited sediment. They are decisions made in the past which can only be questioned once a certain kind of deconstructive digging recovers them for awareness. What we took for necessary is revealed to be contingent, so that we are freer than before.

I think you are misunderstanding me ? I love Derrida.

One cannot appeal, as dialectics does, to a criterion of coherence that transcends and grounds all contingent historical contexts. — Joshs

OK. Here is where maybe we clash. Your quote above seems to speak about something fundamental, towards something which 'transcends and grounds' everything else. You say that one cannot, I mean, hinting at some eternal-dominating structure. In my view, philosophy can't help doing something like this. There 'must' be some limiting of play, some center. The game is often enough seeing just how little we need in that center. What's the minimum we can get away with ? But if we claim to destroy the center or the universal vantage point (or whatever plays the Role), then we've sacrificed exactly the leverage that such a claim needs in order to be taken seriously.

I'm not antipomo, but I do think that pomo sometimes crosses a line into self-cancellation , without always noticing this crossing.

There 'must' be some limiting of play, some center. The game is often enough seeing just how little we need in that center. What's the minimum we can get away with ? But if we claim to destroy the center or the universal vantage point (or whatever plays the Role), then we've sacrificed exactly the leverage that such a claim needs in order to be taken seriously. — green flag

Yes indeed. That is the tricky part. So if we make time and becoming the irreducible ‘center’ and ground, how do we do it in a way that doesn’t end up allowing static universals to slip back in? I think we have to make sure that our structure of becoming is truly self-reflexive. If Hegelian dialectics attempts to undergird the becoming of history via a schematics which organizes evolution but doesnt itself change its nature over the course of historical becoming, then it doesn’t seem to be truly self-reflexive.
If instead we focus of the structure of becoming that is common to each moment of time, the way that the present anticipates beyond itself while retaining the just past moment, and how via this synthetic structure , we constitute a world of objects and people, we have a phenomenological method which never has to stray from this thick ‘here and now’ in order to talk about historical becoming.

I have been saying the same thing for years. I have said so on this forum long before you became a member three days ago. It is a general comment about how to read texts. It is not about you. There is not one correct or "superior" way to read a text or texts. As I said, much depends on what we want to do.

No doubt reading Heidegger opened the door to reading Aristotle in a way that had been occluded by Scholasticism. Reading Heidegger to get at Plato, however, is not as helpful. But in order to see that we must read Plato. Plato's concerns do not align with Heidegger's.

We can gain perspective, when possible, for example, when reading Aristotle's discussion of previous philosophers, if we know what they said apart from what Aristotle says.

As previously commented, it is difficult to determine when Heidegger is explicating Nietzsche and when he is making use of him for his own purposes.

There is, however, value in reading philosophy as a dialectic between philosophers.

On the other hand, there is a practice that is all too common even within academia, of relying on the opinions of someone else instead of a careful and detailed reading of an author. Misrepresentations and misunderstanding have been perpetuated from generation to generation in this way.

I think we have to make sure that our structure of becoming is truly self-reflexive. — Joshs

I agree, but why ? What drives us this way ? Is it connected to the causi sui project ? the "thus-I-willed-it" project ? the nobody's fool project ? the history-as-a-nightmare-from-which-I'm-trying-to-awake project ?

I've also been reading Bourdieu's Distinction lately, which is basically about taste and hierarchy. Bourdieu discusses the distance that the bourgeoisie can take from a world, made possible by their position in the (material) economy, which thereby becomes spectacle. The lower class person can't afford the requisite aesthetic training, which is something like a sublimated form of Veblen's conspicuous consumption. Anyway, I was immediately interested in Bourdieu's own position in this hierarchy as a sociologist looking down and enjoying (and presenting for my enjoyment) this spectacle of the bourgeoisie looking down and enjoying the world as a spectacle.

But is wealth necessary for this wicked enjoyment ? What if a human being stops trying to survive at all costs ? Or more mildly lives with just one foot in the grave ? What if a heretic abandons wife and child and lives the woods to contemplate the world as spectacle ? What do we make of the early martyrs ? Do you know that speech in Braveheart where the soldiers are encouraged to fight and not face regret on their deathbed for the missed opportunity for a genuine appropriation of their time ? If one questions to the very end, it's not clear that longevity even ought to be the goal. 'He who seeks to keep his life shall lose it.' How does Heidegger's interest in death connect to all of this ? I'm also interested in a Hamlet/Socrates connection. Why do we fear death? "Since no man knows aught of all he leaves behind, what is it to leave betimes?" Does the kindly schoolmaster have an answer that isn't just what one says in 'the impostume of peace' ? When philosophy questions the rationality or legitimacy of the fear of death, it becomes an undecidable poison/cure. 'Take up your cross hemlock and walk with me."

I agree that it's important to go to the original texts. The main thing I'd add to what you've written is that philosophy is (it seems to me) most essentially about the matter itself (reality) and only indirectly about the various approaches to that matter. Since (human) reality is historical, this indirectness or mediation is necessary, but maybe it's fitting to remember the reason for all the talk about talk about talk.

How can "beings" as signifier have meaning if it doesn't signify common attributes of things, thereby gathering these things together into a set? — ucarr

Being is not an common attribute of things that are. It is tautological to say that what all things that are have in common is that they are. — Fooloso4

Although a tautology does not advance the narrative of discovery, that doesn't mean it's false.

To say, “all things that are have in common that they are” is an analytically true statement. As yet, I’m not aware of why it’s not also an existentially true statement.

I make this trivial argument because it leads into a more serious examination:

I do not think it helpful to look at this in terms of sets and axioms. — Fooloso4

Proceeding from the premise that anything – beings included – can be a member of a set, the claim that

Beings are not members of a set "Being". — Fooloso4

motivates me to investigate the volume of its truth content. Speaking in generality, I think a sound observation can be made to the effect of saying, “All sets exemplify beings being members of a set, including even the empty set.”

The upshot of the above claim is that being is an insuperable medium, even with regard to nothingness.

From here I’m contemplating advancing to the claim, “There is not nothing because there cannot be nothing.”*

*Language, as demonstrated above by the infinitive “to be,” doesn’t allow me to articulate authentic nothingness.

What does it mean to say that something exists ? that something is ?

Proceeding from the premise that anything – beings included – can be a member of a set — ucarr

The point is that this is not what Heidegger is investigating.

I read the chapters on death in BT as metaphors. Death means ultimate nothingness or the end of the being-in the-world. — waarala

It's blurry, but I read him to mean especially our own experience as mortals of the looming possibility of this nothingness. Each of us has our own death out there somewhere waiting for us. The point seems to be that this individualizes us in a way that nothing else can match. I imagine a man climbing a mountain alone, with death as some transfiguration and yet annihilation at the peak. A soldier before the battle, hoping he'll be brave enough, also comes to mind, along with Julien Sorel hoping to keep his cool as he walks to the guillotine.

What does it mean to say that something exists ? that something is ? — green flag

Firstly, it entails the existential fact of my existence and, moreover, it entails my acknowledgement of my own existence.

Existence of things is an essential and abiding issue for the self.

I think in making our examination of Nietzsche and Heidegger, we are investigating, along with other things, whether or not being is an insuperable medium.

Firstly, it entails the existential fact of my existence and, moreover, it entails my acknowledgement of my own existence. — ucarr

True. But what I was getting at (and it's not so easy) is what is meant by saying that something is ?

I mean what is that person trying to say ?

Proceeding from the premise that anything – beings included – can be a member of a set — ucarr

The point is that this is not what Heidegger is investigating. — Fooloso4

Okay. That's an appropriate restriction for me to obey.

Being is not an common attribute of things that are. It is tautological to say that what all things that are have in common is that they are. — Fooloso4

When you make claims, as above, are you not straying from what Heidegger is investigating?

If not, then I think you need to explain why the use of set theory is not an appropriate tool of interpretation for endeavoring to understand Heidegger. I further think that such an explanation should expose how, more generally, set theory is not applicable to terms such as being-in-general.

When you make claims, as above, are you not straying from what Heidegger is investigating? — ucarr

I don't think so. You introduced attributes, I don't think they have a place.

If not, then I think you need to explain why the use of set theory is not an appropriate tool of interpretation for endeavoring to understand Heidegger. — ucarr

I already did.

what I was getting at (and it's not so easy) is what is meant by saying that something is ?

I mean what is that person trying to say ? — green flag

Ah! I now understand you better.

At the risk of being tiresome, I feel like I want to repeat the statement you quoted. I say this because my approach to elucidating what is meant by saying something is necessarily entails a sentient self detecting another existence via the complex inter-weave of the object-subject duality.

As we all know, the object-subject duality deserves its own encyclopedia for expression of a narrative resembling an exhaustive examination.

Getting back to Heidegger, I think the object-subject entanglement is the motivator for his being-in-the world with other beings ready-to-hand theme. From this center we get his proto-existentialist theme: authenticity and his extensions-of-human technology theme.

Being as insuperable medium with resultant entanglement of individualized beings is a good pivot into investigation of general being-ness.

I think we have to make sure that our structure of becoming is truly self-reflexive.
— Joshs

I agree, but why ? What drives us this way ? Is it connected to the causi sui project ? the "thus-I-willed-it" project ? the nobody's fool project ? the history-as-a-nightmare-from-which-I'm-trying-to-awake project ? — green flag

What drives us this way. As opposed to being driven any other way. An arbitrary foundation. The preferring of one drive, desire , willed outcome over all the alternatives. I am nobody’s fool because I have chose truth over falsity, the good over the bad, the visible over the invisible, the dialectical unity that overcomes lack and negation.

The idea that we are driven in just ‘this way’ by the needs of a proper metaphysical grounding results from interpreting self-reflexivity as subjective idealism , the endless returning to itself of an arbitrary meaning, an arbitrary qualitative content (the good, the true, the self-identical, the unified) . What I had in mind was the self-reflexivity of becoming as difference rather than identity. What returns to itself is always an utterly new and different meaning. There is nothing evolutionary or cumulative in this self-reflexive unfolding, no aim or goal. The self is remade in every repetition.

You introduced attributes, I don't think they have a place. — Fooloso4

If Sein und Zeit is an investigation of being and if

at·trib·ute
noun | ˈatrəˌbyo͞ot |
1 a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something: flexibility and mobility are the key attributes of our army.

is a definition pertinent to Heidegger's objective, then I need help understanding how attributes gathering members into a super-ordinating set is irrelevant to investigation of being or, for that matter, to any other generalizable attribute.

If not, then I think you need to explain why the use of set theory is not an appropriate tool of interpretation for endeavoring to understand Heidegger. — ucarr

I already did. — Fooloso4

I understand you're making a distinction between identity and equivalence, and that you think Heidegger concerned with the latter.

By applying the concept of set to Dasein, I conclude from Sein und Zeit that being is an insuperable medium.

I do not think it helpful to look at this in terms of sets and axioms. — Fooloso4

This is a claim. Where's your supporting argument? I think you need to cite quotations from Heidegger that invalidate the method that lead to my conclusion or, in lieu of quotations, your own inferences drawn from Heidegger that effect the invalidation.

An arbitrary foundation. — Joshs

For better or worse, I take Darwinian evolution seriously. I don't see us as blank slates. For me there's an animal foundation. A person might suggest that the fear of death is an evolved piece of irrationality, but there's also an advantage to be had in conquest, which 'justifies' (game theoretically? economically?) a complementary death-risking aggression that might make 'genuine' philosophy possible in the first place. I'm casting genuineness in terms of questioning tribal norms here. The personal courage which helps the tribe when the monsters come has a secondary effect of generating internal monsters.

The big picture is that I embrace something akin perhaps to 'will to power', with God or the gods as an image of what we'd like to be. In Hobbes, kings cannot stop conquering, even when sated, because their satiety must be made secure. The will wills itself, more power and freedom, but for what ? An indestructible orgy of narcissism ? A flight from looming merely animal senescence and death symbolized by shit ? Personally I think Becker is basically right. Culture or spirit is an 'immortal' flame that leaps from melting candle to melting candle. To put it playfully, it's a (necessary) group delusion that we don't shit ourselves and die. 'Truths are lies without which we can't make it.' (Taken without irony, it becomes self-cancelling ?) On the other hand, I maintain that the self is not the body, though it depends on it. It's a differentiated piece of the tribal software, a snowflake experimental version, a candidate update.

I need help understanding how attributes gathering members into a super-ordinating set is irrelevant to investigation of being or, for that matter, to any other generalizable attribute. — ucarr

What are the attributes of everything that is that they have in common?

I am nobody’s fool because I have chose ... [the] dialectical unity that overcomes lack and negation. — Joshs

But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself....

'Tarrying with the negative' is a necessary 'detour' to an impossible positive ?

'existence is not a predicate' — green flag

'existence is not a predicate' = '"is existing" is not a predicate'?

What are the attributes of everything that is that they have in common? — Fooloso4

Everything that is possesses the common attribute of being-ness.

To deny that being-ness populates a set is, in my opinion, to deny a promising attack on the knarly issue of Origin Boundary Ontology. Maybe, somehow, the insuperability of being-ness-the-set gets us out of the infinite-regress puzzle. To elaborate a bit, this problem involves the perplexity of quantum leaping from the analytical to the axiomatic.

It's been argued that existence is not a predicate. I'm not so sure what to make of the meaning of being myself (or of the meaning of meaning.) I think Heidegger found a strange question. That philosophy is fundamental ontology is maybe even tautological, and perhaps it's a good thing that this tautology throws us into the hermeneutic circle. Anyway, he knew that it would sound like nonsense or confusion to many other philosophers. For me, Heidegger has been more valuable for his analysis of human existence (his early stuff, starting well before B&T, as explored in Van Buren, for instance.) The fundamental concept, in my view, is historicity. We are (language is, being is) 'historical' in a certain way.

Consider a beautiful paragraph on 41 of the MR translation which ends:

Dasein has grown up into a traditional way of interpreting itself...by this understanding the possibilities of its being are regulated. Its own past -- and this always means the past of its 'generation' -- is not something that follows along after Dasein, but something which already goes ahead of it.

The past goes ahead of us, constricting our interpretation, mostly without us realizing it. This is why Heidegger has to go back to previous ontological decisions that have calcified into 'common sense' that we mostly cannot question, because we mostly do not see the water we swim in.

existence is not a predicate — green flag

Since the above clause has "existence" functioning as a noun, the meaning conveyed is true but trivial.

If we say, "I am existing." is a false statement per the true nature of existence, then we're facing the need to work out the meaning of existence outside of subject-predicate grammar. Even so, saying, "I am existing." can scarcely be denied by anyone, including Heidegger.

Do Heidegger's neo-logismic contortions -- such as this one -- really connect to statements understood to be logical?

In order not to repeat myself over and over, I will say it one more time and move on. Being or "beingess" is not an attribute of what is. Something must be in order to have attributes.

Do Heidegger's neo-logismic contortions -- such as this one -- really connect to statements understood to be logical? — ucarr

Heidegger is one of those valuable philosophers who destabilize our complacent sense that we know what we are talking about when we babble on about being and logic and truth quasimechanically. The point is a rethinking of what we take for granted. It therefore makes sense that Heidegger is offensive, just as a psychoanalytic theory is offensive. Offensiveness proves nothing in itself of course. As I see it, people would like to dismiss Heidegger, but some of them can't stop licking the cold sore*. I couldn't. And I finally got 'it' well enough to be glad I didn't flee the cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, maybe Emerson or someone I haven't heard of it just as good. (Emerson is truly great. )

*Turns out that what I had in mind is a "mouth ulcer."