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 guess my question would be: do you actually want to discuss this with me? — frank

In my world responding to what you said is discussing it with you.

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.

A one word answer. Doesn't seem like too much to say while on your phone at work. But it does explain why you think it is not likely to be a cosmological claim. I will point out two problems:

First, it fails to distinguish between claims that are or are not metaphorical. Or perhaps you think he held all claims to be metaphorical.

Second, unless all claims are metaphorical and his texts can be cited to support this claim (which is of course metaphorical), what he says about the eternal return does not indicate that he means it to be understood metaphorically.

Third, it closes off an existential interpretation because the claim is metaphorical.

Fourth, what is metaphorical has some meaning. Saying that the truth is metaphorical does not say what it means. Or perhaps you think the truth for Nietzsche is always indeterminate and open to numerous or innumerable meanings.

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.

You first.

I think you'll be very gratified if you look into it. — frank

Thanks for the advice, but I am not looking for suggestions about something I have been doing for many years

I am not going to press you on this. If you do not want to or are not prepared or are not able to answer I will leave it there. But you left a window open to the possibility that when you are not at work typing on your phone you might provide a substantive response.

Perhaps it will address Nietzsche's themes of the relation between knowledge, truth, and life, objective truths,"deadly truths", truth and history, and so on.

But I see now that before I have finished writing this you might have closed the window and plan to keep further comments to yourself.

Digging in to discover Nietzsche's theory of truth was fascinating for me. — frank

What I find disappointing is your unwillingness to discuss what you discovered.

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.

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.

I am deeply suspicious of the practice of appealing to other philosophers we may not understand in order to understand this or that philosopher.

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

I do not think it helpful to look at this in terms of sets and axioms. The question is: what does it mean to be? 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.

What are his ideas about the nature of truth that makes this seem unlikely?

Interesting comparison. For Nietzsche eternity is not an opposing idea. Whether or not the eternal return is cosmology is an open question. A question that keeps returning.

the first appearance of the idea in Nietzsche’s work: — Jamal

The Riddle and the Vision restates the problem using the same imagery of the the spider and the moonlight. In both there is the moment, followed by acceptance.

So here at least it’s a thought experiment to test one’s attitude to life. — Jamal

Describing it as a thought experiment is too detached. It is without the struggle:

Courage also slays dizziness at the abyss; and where do human beings not stand at the abyss? Is seeing itself not – seeing the abyss?

Courage is the best slayer; courage slays even pity. But pity is the deepest abyss, and as deeply as human beings look into life, so deeply too they look into suffering.

We can find attempts to answer the question of the ground of all that is by all the major philosophers. — Joshs

The problem is we cannot find a single agreed upon definition of what metaphysics is.

Value exists because we value things.

For Heidegger, will to power, whether you want to call it a force , value-positing or try at which makes beings possible, is that which persists as presence. — Joshs

Here we confront the problem
I mentioned earlier, as to when Heidegger is representing the thoughts of someone else and when he is misrepresenting or going beyond.

“To modern metaphysics, the Being of beings appears as will.” — Joshs

I assume you are quoting Heidegger. The question is: is this true? Does modern metaphysics even address the Being of beings? What, for example, does Hegel say about will that can be regarded as meaning the Being of beings?

extrapolation from members of a set to an axiom of the set? — ucarr

Beings are not members of a set "Being".

Being is a blood brother to moebius-strip_time-loop? — ucarr

I think it best to try and understand a philosopher on his own terms. See the chapter in in Nietzsche's Zarathustra "The Riddle and the Vision".

I decided to start a new thread.

They are still beings in Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche. — Joshs

[Edit; I misread this as "there are still beings". They are not still beings.]

Will to power is a value-positing being. — Joshs

Will to power is a force. It is not a being that resides in beings.

The Being of the eternal return is ‘in time’ rather than temporal in Heidegger’s sense. — Joshs

Heidegger does not say the Being of the eternal return, he says:

Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return ... means thinking Being as Time.

(20)

Thinking Being as eternal return is not to think the Being of the eternal return.

He says "as time" not in time.

The eternal return is not in time, what is in time is what eternally returns.

Curiously, I'm catching a hint of conflation of a particular being or all beings with Being. — ucarr

To me this sounds like a description of a being, a reflexive being. And, moreover, this particular being is time. — ucarr

The question of Being first proceeds by way of beings - "the Being of beings". But even when the question is guided by a focus on a particular being, there is beneath it the question of what it is to be, what it means to say something is.

thinking Being as Time — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

is not to think of Being as something in time.

Later there is a shift from beings, from what is present to presencing, to Being as the event of coming into and enduring of what comes to presence in time. The will to power and the eternal return are not beings, but that through which and by which what comes to be comes to be.

Ousia does not mean presence, presence does not mean objective representation, and objective presentation does not mean ousia.

And in what way do threats of civil unrest influence the result if not by influencing voters? — Michael

What would Trump say about protest and civil unrest when he is the one who calls for it, as he did with the Capital riot and is now doing with the Manhattan DA investigation? Who is he trying to influence?

Has a scholar who did much to pull apart the veil of Scholastic interpretation of Greek thinkers hidden them behind another? — Paine

Good question. Heidegger combines an insightful and penetrating commentary with a presentation of earlier thinkers that is as much a misrepresentation as it is a re-presentation. Take his claim that Plato and Aristotle conceive Being as ousia (presence).

it worked in the current president’s favor. — NOS4A2

This is the real problem in a nutshell. If making voting more accessible had worked in Trump's favor there would be no objections. This is the same reason why Trump railed against mail-in ballots and wanted to call the results when it looked like he had a better chance of winning.

Election interference is now “preventing or making it harder for people to vote”, according to Michael. — NOS4A2

Not just according to Michael. Preventing or making it harder for people to vote is part of the definition of election interference.

Altering state voting laws in the run-up to an election — NOS4A2

Which changes to voting laws represent election interference? In what way did these changes prevent citizens from voting?

getting social media to censor opponents, — NOS4A2

Specifically, who has done this, by what means, and what is the content of what was censored?

threatening businesses with an army of astroturf protesters — NOS4A2

What evidence do you have of this army of protesters? Who recruited and organized them? How were business targets identified?

This is all just hand waving and gesturing without substantive content.

On whose own admission was there election interference on a mass scale? What did they say? Where can we find transcripts?

It was election interference on a mass scale. — NOS4A2

The accusations continue to appear, but the evidence has not.

Heidegger's influence on progressive theology is strong. Tillich and God as the ground of being is an obvious example.

Hart's "surprise" seems contrived.

He's clearly delusional, but what's depressing is the number of people who get pulled along in the slipstream. — Wayfarer

The desire for a savior is strong. Once found everything is formed and reformed in order to conform to that image. It is fueled by resentment and paranoia that there are powerful forces working against them. Hence the appeal of a strong man who by shear force of will can right the world. Those who do not put him above the law are seen as the enemy harboring sinister intentions. Trump has only to step on stage and play his part.

Aristotle asks about "being qua being", what it means to be, if there is one thing that all things have in common. Some think he found a theological answer in the activity of intellect. Others, however, think he did not find an answer. That his answer is we do not know. That we cannot but begin with what is. The latter is my understanding. The theological answer is given because most are not philosophers. They need answers and one that they cannot understand is better than no answer. And one that has the appearance of intelligibility and is the work of a god is even better.

I think Heidegger was attempting to evoke a sense of wonder that there is anything at all, but it seems like mystification. , but for him Being cannot be thought separate from Time. The question or more precisely the questioning prevails, but it is the questioning that grounds, guides, and moves thinking.

Trump is so scared right now.

We are even told that Trump’s people are planning to “try and film and document it with their own camera crew, they want a shot of him in cuffs and will release the mugshot. They are loving this stuff.

Political theater and financial opportunism are not incompatible with being scared. I am sure he will get some mileage from playing the martyr.

Followed by studious silence.... — Isaac

For good reason, which I don't expect you would understand. But really you should if you would look at what I actually said compared to what you accuse me of. But this is a game you are only too willing to play. Play with yourself I'm done.

thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy, means thinking Being as Time.

Nietzsche thinks that thought ...

Plato and Aristotle also think that thought when they conceive Being as ousia (presence) — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

I think it would be more accurate if he said that this is how he thinks they thought that thought. But I think he would think that I am not thinking historically:

...until philosophy is forced to think historically-in a still more essential and original sense of that word-taking its own most grounding question as its point of departure. (186)

I should ask you the same question about the weather in fabrication land. What evidence do you have of what accuse me of thinking?

Falsification of records seems likely, but as another article in the Times today discusses, there are questions about how they will handle it.

Things are not looking so good for Trump and he looks it.

Does the guiding question not imply a search for the essence of being? — ucarr

No. He says the grounding question:

sustains and directs the guiding question.

The guiding question is about beings, things that are. The grounding question is not about any particular being or all beings, it is about Being, the wonder that there is anything at all. Heidegger's claim is that the grounding question of Being became lost as the focus was narrowed and guided by the question of beings.

The deep state — NOS4A2

How is the weather in conspiracy fantasy land? Do you have your umbrella?

District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for instance, is trying to raise a misdemeanor to a federal crime. — NOS4A2

What do you think this misdemeanor is?

There is a lot of speculation, but the fact of the matter is we do not know what he will be charged with.

But it explains the fanaticism of his opposition quite well. — NOS4A2

Vague but broad accusations accusing the accusers explains nothing, but it does once again demonstrate the fanaticism behind the compulsive need to protect the Orange Messiah.

Can you explain to me why Heidegger viewed Nietzsche as the last metaphysician? — Tom Storm

A short question that requires a long answer. But I will try to keep it short. All quotes are from the text linked to by Paine, "The Eternal Recurrence of the Same". We must begin with what he means by ‘metaphysics’:

... metaphysics is the inquiry and the search that always remains guided by the sole question "What is being?" (189-90)

He calls this the guiding question. In distinction from this is the grounding question:

For that reason we call the question "What is being?" the guiding question, in contrast to the more original question which sustains and directs the guiding question. The more
original question we call the grounding question. (193)

The genuinely grounding question, as the question of the essence of Being, does not unfold in the history of philosophy as such; Nietzsche too persists in the guiding question. (4)

The grounding question remains as foreign to Nietzsche as it does to the history of thought prior to him.(67)

Nietzsche's philosophy is the end of metaphysics, inasmuch as it reverts to the very commencement of Greek thought, taking up such thought in a way that is peculiar to Nietzsche's philosophy alone. In this way Nietzsche's philosophy closes the ring that is formed by the very course of inquiry into being as such and as a whole. (199-200).

The guiding question of metaphysics, “what is being?” has reached its end with Nietzsche. With its completion the grounding question, the question of the essence of Being, can once again be taken up by Heidegger.

If we interrogate being solely with a view to the fact that it is being, interrogate being as being, then with the question as to what being is we are aiming to discover what makes being a being. We are aiming to discover the beingness of being-in Greek, the ousia of on. We are interrogating the Being of beings. (194)

How do you see [this] answering the question about what the future brings and how we are to respond, how we are to distinguish between what is to be accepted and rejected, how we are to act toward the future?