I think it's spectacularly silly to study or treat being as if it is a thing, and so am silly in doing so. — Ciceronianus

:wink: Yes, I've been sucked in to this thread against my better judgement. If one of Heidegger's interpreters came out in agreement with the view you express here, there might be grounds for agreement. But it remains very unclear just what is being asserted about being.

his focus seem to me to be more narrow than the traditional figures. — Manuel

...you say that as if it were a bad thing. Being clear about something small is an improvement on being obtuse about something grand.

Not bad at all, more narrow, no implication on quality.

Being is a manifestation of pure energy degraded, manifestation itself is being in the form of matter.

Heidegger analyzes being as Dasein; "being there" or "there being", which he understands to be the primordial nature of human being.

He also was the first to show that the being of things in the world as sheer opaque presence is not prior to their being as transparently ready to hand for us.

I quite agree. I think it's spectacularly silly to study or treat being as if it is a thing, and so am silly in doing so. — Ciceronianus

I agree, but this is not an apt criticism of Heidegger, as he does not treat being as a thing.

What?

The pretence is that somehow being - treated apparently as a thing - is structured by time.

Explain that.

If one of Heidegger's interpreters came out in agreement with the view you express here, there might be grounds for agreement. But it remains very unclear just what is being asserted about being. — Banno

I've been told more than once by those who've been initiated into the mysteries of Heidegger that it's incumbent on me to learn what he's saying (what the words he uses really mean), and that I shouldn't expect clarity from him, clarity being a kind of childish concern to begin with. When I was less kind then I am now, I used to reply I knew he was capable of clarity since he was perfectly clear in his praise of Der Fuhrer. But now I refrain from calling him a loathsome Nazi toady.

↪Janus
What?

The pretence is that somehow being - treated apparently as a thing - is structured by time.

Explain that. — Banno

That seems unfair, since I've answered very, very many questions concerning these folk, from you and from others. — Banno

The point is that at soon as the questions become critical of the ideas in question (criticisms which may or may not be apt), then the recourse is to "read the bloody text".

Heidegger does not treat being as a thing; but there is no point trying to explain that to someone who has not read his work.

His work may not be to your taste; it may have nothing for you, you wouldn't know until you made a real effort to read and understand it. It is not sound judgement to conclude from your superficial understanding of it which is due to your apparently total lack of interest in it, that that it contains no insight for others. Where you may merely lack interest, others :wink: make a weird fetish out of detesting Heidegger.

So if you are unwilling to drive forward with the conversation, just stop posting.

Here's the state of play: second-order logic gives us a neat analysis of existence. If there is more to being than is encapsulated in this analysis - and doubtless there is - and if it is found in Heidegger, then tell us what it is.

At the least, give us a reason to think it worth our time to read the bloody text.

It is hard to divorce the fact that the man was a dreadful human being from his philosophy. He must have had some redeeming features, since he apparently appealed to Arendt. Perhaps she had dreadful taste in bed partners.

Heidegger does not treat being as a thing; but there is no point trying to explain that to someone who has not read his work. — Janus

But that is what is done in the OP:

The "is" in this sentence is apparently referring to being, but being is presupposed with when using the "is." So it's almost like asking "What is 'is-ness'?" — Xtrix

...so at the least you might critique the OP for misrepresenting Heidegger.

Try adding something to the conversation.

Heidegger's analysis is phenomenological. If I recall you have little respect for phenomenology in general, so it probably wouldn't be to your taste. But critiquing phenomenological works in terms of first order logic is beside the point, totally misses it.

...so at the least you might critique the OP for misrepresenting Heidegger. — Banno

What makes you think @Xtrix has misrepresented Heidegger?

I've been told more than once by those who've been initiated into the mysteries of Heidegger that it's incumbent on me to learn what he's saying (what the words he uses really mean), and that I shouldn't expect clarity from him, clarity being a kind of childish concern to begin with. When I was less kind then I am now, I used to reply I knew he was capable of clarity since he was perfectly clear in his praise of Der Fuhrer. But now I refrain from calling him a loathsome Nazi toady. — Ciceronianus

:smirk: :up:

Why would you give the "thumbs-up" to the voice of ignorance?

It would seem that being is nothing at all, except as the one for whom it is a concern says it is. For me, beings are whatever I encounter: no encounter, no being. — tim wood

That's interesting, because it represents the above view rather well -- that of "presence." That which is present before you, as an "encountering." Everything else is absent -- a kind of "nothing."

Being seems very similar to no-thing indeed. Because it isn't a "thing" at all.

"What is the Being of beings?" And I suspect the answer to that is analagous to questions as to truth. — tim wood

Exactly. So if we go back to the Greeks, where being of beings is phusis and truth is aletheia, but have similar meanings: disclosure, openness, emergence. This loops back to what you mentioned about the concern of the questioner -- that's exactly right. If we are this "openness" -- if we are world-disclosers, so to speak, then we "are" truth in the same way as we "are" beings.

When we're concerned about this question, we're in a specific mode of being --- a theoretical, abstract mode. But we walk around with a pre-theoretical understanding of being all the time. Our existence doesn't stop when we stop thinking, any more than life stops when we're sleeping or our breathing stops when we're not paying noticing it.

What is Being?
Nothing but an empty name. — 180 Proof

A "vapor," as Nietzsche says. Indeed. But as Heidegger argues, and I agree with, is that this is currently the case and often argued because the question of being has been completely forgotten. What was so fascinating to the Greeks has become taken as self-evident, trivial, empty, or meaningless.

To say it's an empty name ignores, however, that we're all walking around with an understanding of it, even if pre-theoretical and pre-linguistic. Much the same way as to say that "human being" is an empty name, or "culture" is an empty name; perhaps, but that doesn't negate our (largely unconscious) views about ourselves, our place in the world, and the social and physical environment that has shaped our beliefs, values, and behavior.

(Look at how "being" is used in any language-game.) — 180 Proof

From your linked response a while back:

However, if this read of him uncharitably misses the mark, why didn't he just come right out and say, paraphrasing Laozi's nameless dao and Buddha's anatta-anicca, or Schopenhauer's noumenon (à la natura naturans), that "the meaning of Being" is ... Bergson's la durée? Why the (crypto-augustinian re: "time") mystery-mongerer's career? — 180 Proof

My response is worth looking over again -- I stand by that. But to add something I didn't before: Heidegger isn't offering another interpretation of being. The talk about time, in my view, is his Kantian moment minus the subject/object distinction. Aletheia, "truth," is our being, which is temporal. We cannot help interpret being in terms of time -- and for the Greeks it was interpreted as presence, ousia.

I'm happy to get into it more, but if you're convinced that it's all nonsense and Heidegger is basically a charlatan, no hard feelings -- I don't fault anyone for that view.

Asking "what is being?" is asking "How do we use the word 'being'?" — Banno

It's not simply a matter of words or definitions, though. It's undoubtedly the case that being, like other things, can be (and has been) interpreted and defined in many ways. A linguistic analysis of the word itself is interesting, but doesn't get us too far. The perspective for this analysis has plenty of assumptions and a long history behind it as well, which is itself grounded in a very definite interpretation of being -- specifically, in this case, the being of words and grammar.

Here are two puzzles, from Frege and Russell, that must be explained if one is to treating "exists" as a property. — Banno

But recall that being isn't a property, really. This is only an analogy, but consider a chair. The chair has properties, but we don't say one of those properties of the chair is light. Yet without the light, we'd see no chair.

1. What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that exists? The difference between a red apple and a green apple, or a sweet apple and a sour apple, is pretty clear. But explaining clearly what is added to an apple by existing...?

2. It's not difficult to understand an apple that is not sweet, or an apple that is not red - but an apple that does not exist? What is it? — Banno

(1) An apple is a being, yes? As I said above, being is not some property that's added or subtracted.
(2) An apple that does not exist is not a being at all.

This goes for the sentence at the beginning of the puzzlement expressed in the OP: "There is something" has no straightforward translation in logic. — Banno

What we call "logic" has quite a history as well, which we can get into if you'd like, but analyzing being in terms of the kind of logic I assume you're talking about is a dead end.

But "what is being?" is best answered with "Yes, being is what is". An alternative and even more informative response would be "Being is, and nothing happens." That is to say that being refers to the static state at a moment in time, and nothing to the continuous flow and transformation that being undergoes from one moment to the next. — unenlightened

This reminds me of something similar to Plato's forms, in a sense: the unchanging prototype. The constant and permanent as opposed to all becoming and impermanence/change, yes?

Yeah, best we agree to disagree on the philosophical significance of M.H.

:up:

Well, maybe I'm just as ignorant as Ciceronianus. – Das Man sneezes– "Gelassenheit!" :mask:

Heidegger does not treat being as a thing; but there is no point trying to explain that to someone who has not read his work.
— Janus

But that is what is done in the OP:
The "is" in this sentence is apparently referring to being, but being is presupposed with when using the "is." So it's almost like asking "What is 'is-ness'?"
— Xtrix
...so at the least you might critique the OP for misrepresenting Heidegger. — Banno

To give Xtrix the benefit of the doubt, I think he is alluding to the fact that Heidegger begins Being and Time by asking the question ‘What is Is-ness’?
His answer is that terms like ‘Is’ , Being’ and existence don’t point originarily to such notions as presence, identity, inherence and thingness , but show these concepts to be derivative of a more fundamental structure of becoming.

Being’ and existence don’t point originarily to such notions as presence, identity, inherence and thingness , but show these concepts to be derivative of a more fundamental structure of becoming. — Joshs

That's what Hegel said.

That's what Hegel said. — frank

Heidegger writes a lot about Hegel , indicating his debt to him.

:up:

But critiquing phenomenological works in terms of first order logic is beside the point, totally misses it. — Janus

Hmmm. Indeed. Logic doesn't seem to go with phenomenology of your sort.

He must have had some redeeming features, since he apparently appealed to Arendt. P — Banno

And Adorno, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty, Tillich, Gadamer, Rorty, Wittgenstein, Jonas, Ortega Y Gassett, Barth and Levinas , to name a few.

His answer is that terms like ‘Is’ , Being’ and existence don’t point originarily to such notions as presence, identity, inherence and thingness , but show these concepts to be derivative of a more fundamental structure of becoming. — Joshs

If he is saying that such terms do not point at all, that pointing is not something one does with such terms, then we have agreement. One can point to an apple, but not to the being of an apple.

"...a more fundamental structure of becoming"? That relation to time still needs explaining.

Hmmm. Indeed. Logic doesn't seem to go with phenomenology of your sort. — Banno

Haven’t you thought about the origins of logic? Wouldnt a primordial theory of Being have to begin with the conditions of possibility for logic rather than simply presuppose it as a starting point?

They all slept with him?

They all slept with him? — Banno

Only figuratively, afaik

Haven’t you thought about the origins of logic? — Joshs

Of course.

Wouldnt a primordial theory of Being have to begin with the conditions of possibility for logic rather than simply presuppose it? — Joshs

What? Wouldn't such an theory have to presuppose a logic, a grammar in which it might be set out?

Well, maybe I'm just as ignorant as Ciceronianus. – Das Man sneezes– "Gelassenheit!" :mask: — 180 Proof

I would never say you are an ignorant man; that's kinda cute, though!

(Look at how "being" is used in any language-game.) — 180 Proof

Phenomenology? Maybe it just doesn't do it for you. Have you looked at Braver's account of the commonalities between the early Heidegger and the late Wittgenstein?

What? Wouldn't such an explanation have to presuppose a logic, a grammar in which it might be set out? — Banno

Yes, it's a profound (or trivial) truth that a language is needed. The question is, what kind of language?