Crucial Conversations 1

From Whooshup.org

Frank: Heh Howard.

Howard: Hi.

Howard: What did you think of the latest Heidegger class?

Frank: Thought it was the most difficult. Do not think I am clear on constancy.

Frank: I can't help but to see the relations to Kierkegaard in Division 2.

Howard: Yes. It is rather obvious. Have you read Dreyfus' commentary, Being-in-the-world? In it, Dreyfus pretty strongly criticizes Heidegger on Div II.

Frank: He is criticizing in podcast. Is it in the same vein?

Howard: well, tell me what you interpret as criticism that you hear. It is not just that Heidegger was mixed up, or said things he should have caught... it is more of a to-the-jugular attack.

Frank: That Heidegger is not clear and sometimes seems confused. That the order in which he places the topics is wrong. That he does not develop them.

Howard: I will try to explain the counter Dreyfus makes in the Appendix of his commentary.

Howard: He says that Heidegger cannot claim at the same time that dasein's essential nature is coping with the background, while also claiming that dasein's natural tendency to cover up leads to falling - which is in essence the same as regular coping, that is, he points to an inconsistency having to do with covering up dasein's "fallen" nature, which he connects to Kierkegaard's sinfulness (of course not sin in ordinary way).

George (enters): Hello everybody.

Frank: Hello.

Howard: Hi George.

Frank: Is falling used in two different senses? One which means absorbed coping and the other which is covering up. If this is the case it is confusing. If not, it is also confusing.

Howard: Dreyfus implies that Heidegger took over the notion of falling from Kierkegaard, who criticized the common opinion of the press - idle talk, discourse, etc. comes from that notion.

Frank: In Division one, wasn't falling absorbed coping? throwness, falling, projection?

Howard: Yes - but in Div II it is inauthentic reaction to nullity.

Frank: Right. So its meaning seems to change. Why did Heidegger use same term?

Howard: George, we are off on tangent about Heidegger and Kierkegaard. In general we have talked a lot about why the two seem so connected to Dreyfus. Any ideas? All lines point back to him, and its not clear to me why

George: Not really, the only links I can see come from Dreyfus's remarks about world change and always having an Isaac.

Frank: The notion of calling is so close to Kierkegaard. The big difference is that Heidegger accounts for world collapse.

Howard: But that world collapse actually replaces the knight of faith idea.

George: Later Heidegger would seem to have generalised Kierkegaard's ideas.

Howard: Yes, but always in a secular (or pagan) context.

Frank: Yes, Anticipatory Resolution replaces Knight of Faith. Secularization I guess.

Howard: So, I think Dreyfus's central point of departures has to do with the success - or not - of Heidegger's secularization of Kierkegaard. Which is why the "dual nullity" is so important. Null of your thrownness, and null of your death.

George: Kierkegaard may have been pointing conceptually in a secular direction with his idea that god is the fact that all things are possible, even though his vocabulary is christian.

Howard: The christian lexicon handles the two nullities - Heidegger cannot. Interestingly - ALL seem to agree that this is a culturally isolated issue (buddhists need not worry).

George: Nullity is the absence of all possibilities I think.

Frank: How does Chrisitanity handle nullity of throwness?

Howard: We were created - creatures of god.

Frank: So nothing is unsettled, all is grounded.

Howard: Exactly - except our choice. That is unsettling enough according to Kierkegaard.

Frank: We are called. We accept or reject. Does it choose us and then we either acccept or reject. Or do we choose it through mediation? Too many ideas there, need to break it down.

Howard: Kierkegaard after all has three spheres, and the top one has two possible modes. Apparently we can progress through all of them.

George: It seems to me that we can't assume an identity prior to the calling, which constitutes an identity.

Howard: As I understand it, we skip mediation if we "leap" to religious sphere?

Frank: I think we have to be in universal and feel its pull. There would be no trial if we skipped mediation. In Heidegger it seems as if we are drawn to a calling. Do you think that in Kierkegaard we are also drawn to an unconditional commitment?

Howard: Certainly, unless we remain in lower immediacy, or cannot progress past the ethical or esthetic.

Frank: So our choice in both cases is really limited. Either accept or reject.

Howard: OK, here's what I think is the punchline - I think DH would give us both options. Kierkegaard leads to the augenblick and world-discloser, while Heidegger leads to the Greek phronemos/cultural maestro.

George: There is also the mode of acceptance. We can accept in focusing on the meaning (resignation) or accept in combining meaning and singular being.

Howard: I think that's a good view of the difference between faith and resignation

George: Kierkegaard seems to allow us to become an individual in an instant where Dreyfus allows a continual process of individuation (world-disclosing).

Howard: I think he would say it could be instant or it could be long-term.

George: World disclosing is continuous. Even without world collpapse we must be vigilant and persistant to maintain our current world.

Frank: But Dreyfus allows for world collapse. Does that not give the opportunity to be a world discloser?

Howard: I see more and more that Dreyfus wants some synthesis of Kierkegaard and Heidegger He does not think Heidegger removes the need for some kind of Kierkegaard-like redemption (for want of a better word). George, how is world disclosing separate from world collapse?

Frank: Calling in the last lecture, as I said, sure sounded like Kierkegaard. But less precise, fuzzier if you will.

George: I think that resoluteness lets us see the ungroundedness of everything and so our maintaining of the current world is a persistance on the basis of this ungroundedness and so is still a disclosing. That's why Heidegger uses discloing and not creating.

Howard: But that sounds like the everyday kind of disclosing dasein does naturally. World disclosing seems to have a special meaning - that is connected to the nullity of death.

George: Do you mean dislosing things by treating them as ready to hand, by using them transparently?

Frank: I think Heidegger takes resolution to just be about the particular practices within a culture. It calls those into question for the good of the culture. But Anticipatory Resolution (which is related to death) calls the whole culture into question.

George: The nullity of death is the ungroundedness I think.

Howard: both nullities lead to ungroundedness - and i am still unclear which is tied to which kind of resoluteness.

Frank: Doesn't that give us the impassioned freedom to break from the "they" and be world disclosers?

Howard: Oh and there is a third nullity that has to do with the pointlessness of falling... OK, Frank - that's what we started talking about. Does that "impassioned-ness" come naturally from Heidegger, or do we need Kierkegaard to really get it?

Howard: The passion comes from the faith step - not from any resoluteness...

Frank: Right. It is not clear to me how Heidegger has us get it. Why not "everything is permitted"?

Howard: Like Nietzsche.

Frank: Right. Except maybe we must take a stand on our being. It must be through that route I think.

Howard: Well, on this whole area, reading the Dreyfus Appendix in Being-In-the-World (from 1991) really clarified it for me. He ended with a discussion of two possible roles - the same ones in his paper that is part of the course handouts - "Is There a Better Source of Intelligibility than Everyday Practices?"

George: Is the phronimos passionate? It must be so, as he has followed an attraction long enough to become the master of his practice.

Frank: And what he does is for the good of the practice and the culture. So it matters.

Howard: Phronimos equals practical wisdom - but how passionate is pragmatism?

George: I think what clarified things the most for me was the preface to the Carol White book. If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. The phronimos has persisted in following his folly (that is, ungrounded practice). That seems to be a passionate commitment.

Frank: Howard, to go back a little. Do you think (or does Dreyfus think) Heidegger is trying to secularize something that cannot be secularized?

Howard: Yes. And, my hunch is that Dreyfus does not naturally agree with that stance - it has been philosophically forced on him.

George: So Kierkegaard trumps Heidegger?

Howard: So to speak. Of course we all eventually agree with the line of development of our own thoughts. In other words, Dreyfus would like to be in a secular stance, but somehow finds it cannot be held without drifting into nihilism - the leveling we see in our world.

Frank: I kind of found that our ability to be resolute (commit) yet flexible (anticipatory) seems to water down the commitment. We seem to have one foot in and one foot out. That's why passion and commitment are so important, and Heidegger's stance of resolute expectancy (unto death) does not quite cut it.

George: I want to say that there is a tension between Kierkegaard's vocabulary which is christian and his concepts which are already secular. Heidegger reveals and develops the secular tendency and so can allow solutions that Kierkegaard could not yet think of, e.g. a new Isaac is possible for Heidegger.

Howard: Remember - Kant's philosophy was deemed christian too, yet nobody really thinks of that now. Kierkegaard reacted against Kant, and against the Lutheran church in Denmark - he attacked it viciously.

Frank: No passion in Kant's categorical imperative, or sermons that Kierkegaard heard.

Howard: George - I think - seems to see Heidegger's secularizing of Kierkegaard as a good thing - is that right?

George: Yes totally. I am for the more pluralist thinking of Heidegger as it seems closer to the phenomena of real life.

Howard: Yes, I agree that Heidegger gets the phenomenology right. But we are left with the passion problem.

George: I think there is passion in Heidegger.

Howard: Resolute passion?

Frank: This is where I had the problem. How do we get constancy? Anticipatory is not strong enough (or does not seem so). Where is the passion and commitment that will hold us together and stretch us through time?

George: You must be senitive to the nullity and still maintain your world, that is, resoluteness and passion. Anticipatory resoluteness is even more passionate perhaps as you must go explicitly against the One. But even living the "same" world out of a sense of groundlessness being authentic is already a passionate commitment. Passion is not the same as affect.

Frank: But the question I am having trouble with is this. I can see where Kierkegaard gives us constancy. But in Heidegger it is much less clear. Why do I need to be unified and constant even if I go against the One? Couldn't I be constantly changing, as Nietzsche would seem to have it?

George: Nietzshe does not have us constantly changing. He says we must "will something and will it for a long time."

Frank: But also to eventually leave it behind. To constantly shed skins, I think.

Howard: I will type a direct quote from Dreyfus, Appendix of Being-in-the-world, 1991: "Rather than living in the absurd like Kierkegaard's knight of faith, accepting the risk of grief and thereby making higher immediacy possible, authentic dasein, by soberly facing the impossibility of having any possibilities of its own, is insured against absolute commitments and their concommitant risk of grief." I think the word "absurd" is very important - Dreyfus recognizes how absurd all this faith and commitment and passion is!

Frank: Howard, have you ever communicated to Dreyfus these doubts you have about Heidegger secularizing Kierkegaard. Are those doubts found in the appendix as well?

Howard: Absolutely - I asked him if his "trajectory" had changed since he wrote the Appendix. He answered very generally - but did not deny it. Like I said - I think he can see the entire sweep of modern philosophy, and he is stuck on Kierkegaard for some bizarre reason - and that reson is that only Kierkegaard gets around nihilism. Everybody else just gives us reasons to grin and bear nihilism. Everything modern seems to lead to nihilism - the entire enlightenment project, and secular existentialism as well. Enter Dostoevsky into the Dreyfus picture... more christian existentialism!

Frank: Which means there needs to be some sort of transcendent source. Without that, it seems to lead down only one road.

Howard: On the other hand, we get a healthy dose of paganism in his Phil 6 "Form gods to God and back to gods" lecture series!! And, paganism is where both Heidegger and Camus seem to end up.

Frank: And Melville.

Howard: So, christian or pagan - we need divinities to get us out of here...

Darrel: They make better defining commitments.

George: Yes the saving power. But Heidegger's divinities are explicitly immanent and secular, whereas Kierkegaard's god is a halfway concept between oldstyle transcendent and new immanent.

Howard: OK, maybe it's time to break? Anybody want to start a new line?

Frank: Darrel, which one of those Kierkegaard paper topics jumped out at you?

Darrel: I am trying to remeber what I wrote! I remeber I went back and read that passage and was musing on something. I will have to look it up!

Frank: Inclination of heart means that it must be mediated and therefore cannot be a mere inclination of the heart. I guess. Doesn't Pascal say something like "the heart has reasons that the reason does not know"?