Paging , he knows a lot about Heidegger.

I certainly don't think Heidegger would agree at all with this interpretation. For him cognition is a secondary mode of being, parasitic upon dasein's seamless being-in-the-world. So subject and object are not phenomenologically or ontologically basic to the zuhanden mode, they are analytically generated formal derivations, and you seem to be wanting to retroject them back into the pre-analytical context out of which they were created. Certainly they might be said to be implicit in the zuhanden; a fact which seems self-evident in virtue of their subsequent explicitation.

Heidegger actually wanted to overcome the subject/object distinction in order to return thought to a mode more able to interpret being-in-the-world, to actually, as he saw it, begin to think for the first time (well, for thr the first time since the Presocratics, anyway). So what you are proposing seems to be moving in precisely the opposite direction to Heidegger's trajectory.

Yes, I had a sense that I was moving against Heidegger, but that's almost to be expected. He was a Nazi. Where did he go wrong? I'm not fishing after his intentions so much as redeploying some fascinating concepts/'noticings.' I've seen him largely through the lens of Rorty, so far, and read a few secondary courses: Steiner, Caputo, Versenyi, Greene. I did just buy a copy of Being and Time, since I've decided to endure the writing style for the sake of the concepts of equipment and world-disclosing. I also think thrownness and ownmost death are right on.

I'm trying to reduce the present-to-hand to the ready-to-hand. I think life is about getting back into smooth operation, disappearing joyfully into the finite projects life is made of, perhaps for-the-sake-of an endless self-enlargement and pursuit of greater authenticity. The possible futility of the subject-object epistemological games can be read as the "becoming unready" of paradigm. The subject is disclosed by interruption of smooth functioning on the one hand and deployed in the smooth functioning of more abstract equipment. Inquiry strives to make the un-ready-to-hand ready-to-hand again. Something like that...

Yes, I had a sense that I was moving against Heidegger, but that's almost to be expected. He was a Nazi. Where did he go wrong?

heh, well...

So we try to restore smooth operation, via assimilation or abandonment of the broken tool. My hunch is that homeostasis rules.......I think life is about getting back into smooth operation...perhaps for-the-sake-of an endless self-enlargement and pursuit of greater authenticity.....

;)

I'm not sure how you're going to reduce the present-at-hand to the ready-to-hand because we just seem to operate in the world with both modes - as intellectually detached from our projects in the world as Daseins, and fundamentally absorbed within our projects. They're both needed.

The being of something also always belongs to beings. Being doesn't just float around abstractly. Beings under a "realist" interpretation also do exist Dasein-independently, but I guess that can be argued in favor an anti-realist interpretation of Being and Time which I'm sympathetic to.

I think Levinas basically attempts to switch over Being & beings into Existence and Existents, and show that the latter is completely dependent on Existence. He just doesn't tie it to a Dasein in-which discloses being.

I'm trying to reduce the present-to-hand to the ready-to-hand. — Hoo

The fact that Heidegger was, for at least a brief moment, a Nazi, cannot be relevant to the philosophy of Being and Time, as I see it. Whether it is relevant to his later philosophy is arguable; and I don't want to opine on that because I am relatively well read only in his earlier philosophy, which was well established before Nazism arose.

I'm trying to reduce the present-to-hand to the ready-to-hand. I think life is about getting back into smooth operation, disappearing joyfully into the finite projects life is made of, perhaps for-the-sake-of an endless self-enlargement and pursuit of greater authenticity. — Hoo

It seems more like you're trying to reduce the ready-to-hand to the present-at-hand, to be honest. :P

Seriously, though; I think this is the tension in relation to Heidegger, or at least in relation to the way he is generally interpreted as a philosopher of finitude. The modern presumption is that we are finite beings, and it it is probably correct to interpret Heidegger as sharing this critical presumption. But even Hegel (I think mistakenly) is interpreted this way by thinkers of Marxist and postmodernist orientation. So, to say that we should focus on "finite projects" betrays the presupposition that we are finite beings and that our projects are finite; and that really is merely a prejudice that grows out of the rising predominance of empiricism, as I see it.

This presupposition comes straight from the modern materialistic scientistic paradigm that we all inhabit more or less as fishes-in-water, and it forgets the fact that the greatest philosophies-as-transformation used precisely the opposite kinds of concepts to any presumptions of finitude to achieve their transformative power. Without the infinite the possibility of radical transformation shrinks to a dimensionless point.

The fact that Heidegger was, for at least a brief moment, a Nazi, cannot be relevant to the philosophy of Being and Time, as I see it.

I love Heidegger, don't get me wrong, but Division II has all the seeds, especially in this climactic paragraph: "Resoluteness implies handing oneself down by anticipation to the "there" of the moment of vision; and this handing down we call "fate".This is also the ground for destiny, by which we understand Dasein's historizing in Being-with Others. In repetition, fateful destiny can be dis-closed explicitly as bound up with the heritage which has come down to us."

The fact that Heidegger was, for at least a brief moment, a Nazi, cannot be relevant to the philosophy of Being and Time, as I see it. — John

I don't mean to be dramatic about it, but we're talking about the same guy. I get the "prophet" vibe from Heidegger. "Only a God can save us." I'll gladly take from him what I can use. But what was his myth of himself? Was the modern world all f*cked up in his view? Did he have the diagnosis if not the cure? I can only follow Rorty so far, too, since there's still politics at the center. Thinkers propose themselves as leaders of humanity as a whole rather than as tool-makers for a certain kind of sufficiently similar individual. It's a bringing of stone tablets down from the mountain. I'd be surprised if Heidegger wasn't wired this way from the beginning, considering his theological roots. (I've been wired away from duty and politics almost from the beginning, so philosophy was a flaming sword against being swallowed by guilty solidarity.)

It seems more like you're trying to reduce the ready-to-hand to the present-at-hand, to be honest. :P — John

Maybe I'm trying to show the instability of this distinction. We makes things present-to-hand in order to fix them and finally to lose ourselves in "the seriousness of a child at play," or "maturity" for Nietzsche. "Evil is burned up when we cease to behold it." (Blake)

This presupposition comes straight from the modern materialistic scientistic paradigm that we all inhabit more or less as fishes-in-water, and it forgets the fact that the greatest philosophies-as-transformation used precisely the opposite kinds of concepts to any presumptions of finitude to achieve their transformative power. Without the infinite the possibility of radical transformation shrinks to a dimensionless point. — John

IMV, Radical transformation in inspired as a reaction to the un-readiness-to-hand of the concept system at the highest level. Science wins its prestige technologically, I think. It moves around the obvious objects, gives us painkillers and root-canals and cell phones. As I see it, we are forced to integrate this fairly-won prestige in a greater whole. I'm willing to render unto Newton what is Newton's and find the rest in concept and feeling as concept and feeling. There's infinity enough for me here anyway, though I don't pretend to offer a general solution. I feel more or less wised-up, but for me this involves the abandonment of responsibility for humanity at large as well as the notion that there is one right way to be wised-up.

I view that as a leftover of the stories of transcendent myth. Under those traditions, and the ones Heidegger longs for, human projects are understood to be finite all the way down. Nothing we ever do is good enough because it ends. For us to paint or move within infinite realm is considered impossible. Anything we do is just fishes pointlessly swimming in the water. We need to be transformed from anything we ever are or else amount to nothing. To be ourselves is to be separated from anything that matters, from any significance etched into the timelessness of logic. The delusion of nihilism, a characteristic of most human traditions and philosophises, which have no come to terms with the infinite expressed the world, particularly our own death.

We dance amongst the infinite every moment of our lives (and of our death). Within each moment, we mean something timeless, thinking, moving, feeling (or not) in ways which cannot be touched by anything to come or anything of the past. Every second we are present in way that does not depend on other logics or any finite part of ourselves. We are something, not a body or a mind, nor an atom or cell, but a presence all on its own-- Being in the world.

In this context, the infinite of possibility is incoherent. It is impossible for there to be anything other than Being in the world. To say that radical transformation shrinks to a dimensionless point is entirely true: there is no transformation. There can never be. Being in the world will never be given-up, no matter how much we pretend God, tradition or technology lets us transcend it. We are always etching into the infinite no matter how much desire to be meaningless wretches who are given Being from the outside.

Heidegger and the Modernist are cut from the same cloth. They both seek the tradition which brings utopia, which fills our absence of Being with a perfect Being which is never ours. A world in which meaning is entirely a question of the finite (e.g. practicing a tradition of transformation, living forever, having no problems, etc.,etc.) rather than of the infinite (our Being).

I get the "prophet" vibe from Heidegger. "Only a God can save us." — Hoo

Yes, but this comes from his later philosophy, not from Being and Time. In any case, looking at today's fashionably oppressive and repressive scientism, maybe its true that only a God can save us. But you have to careful how you interpret what that could mean, and steer clear of fundamentalism, for sure.

Maybe I'm trying to show the instability of this distinction. We makes things present-to-hand in order to fix them and finally to lose ourselves in "the seriousness of a child at play," or "maturity" for Nietzsche. "Evil is burned up when we cease to behold it." (Blake) — Hoo

Blake, in his radical Christianity, referred, as Heidegger seems in a very different way to allude to with his notion that only a God can save us from the potential darkness of the dominance of the 'present-at-hand' and "technology", to "dark Satanic mills". The modern tendency is often to 'cherrypick' from some of the more religiously motivated authors and ignore the very spiritual context and commitments out of which their works evolve. Here is presented the spiritual context of Blake's "dark Satanic mills":


And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

The full passage from which you have (not accurately) taken the words of Blake is:

Error is created. Truth is eternal. Error, or Creation, will be Burned up, & then, & not till Then, Truth or Eternity will appear. It is Burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it. I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance & not Action; it is as the dirt upon my feet, No part of Me. "What," it will be Question'd, "When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?" O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, `Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.' I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative eye any more than I would Question a window concerning a Sight. I look thro' it & not with it.

In context it gives a very different impression from what it does as you have presented it, inaccurately and in isolation. The modern tendency is to reduce and flatten everything; probably because this allows us to feel less insecure in the face of ineluctable mystery.

Well, hell. I'd never deny cherry-picking. That's how personalities are constructed, in my view. Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. I take "creative misreading" and the absolute rejection of authority for granted. So I don't quote Blake or anyone as an authority. But I really do despise flatness and scientism. Still, I can't take politics or world-saving seriously. I vote, but really the world is much bigger than me. Intellectuals tend to want to take responsibility for the world, to implicity present themselves as leaders to a better future. I don't condemn this, but I see it from the outside. I sometimes miss the experience of mystery. I had intense experiences of wonder at the thereness of the world as a child and young adult. I'm a godless man, and don't mind describing atheism as a sort of "faith." I experience the world as an amoral machine or frame in which human beings interact according to various clashing concepts and myths. I really believe that religion (or "religions" other than mind) get the job done for others, maybe just as well or even better. But my "religion" works for me, so the inquiry is mostly playful or mostly a matter of figuring out how to write the "poetry" of this idiosyncratic "religion" that confesses its idiosyncrasy.

I find iconoclasm in Blake. The human imagination is the forge of the gods. Hence it is the "true" god. But it only exists (for me and the Blake below) in living, breathing human beings. The infinite is revealed to the senses and emotions, in the face of one's lover, for instance. This reappears in Feuerbach --and Stirner who dedicated his book to his "sweetheart."

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer’d: ‘I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover’d the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, and remain confirm’d, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote.
Then I asked: ‘Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?’
He replied: ‘All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.’
Then Ezekiel said: ‘The philosophy of the East taught the first principles of human perception. Some nations held one principle for the origin, and some another: we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests and Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours and to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius.
...
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
...
Some will say: ‘Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer: ‘God only Acts and Is, in existing beings or Men.’
...
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the Only Wise. This they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning.
Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho’ it is only the Contents or Index of already publish’d books.
A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceiv’d himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg: he shows the folly of churches, and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious, and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.
Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods.
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro’ his conceited notions.
...
One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression.
...
— Blake

I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.

Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more.
What is the Divine Spirit? is the Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain? What is
the Harvest of the Gospel & its Labours? What is that Talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the Treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves, are they any other than Mental Studies & Performances? What are all the Gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all Mental Gifts?
Is [not] God a Spirit who must be worshipped in Spirit & in Truth and are not the Gifts
of the Spirit Every-thing to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art & Science! I call upon you in the Name of Jesus! What is the Life of Man but Art & Science? What is Mortality but the things relating to the Body, which Dies? What is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which Lives Eternally! What is the Joy of Hea- -ven but Improvement in the things of the Spirit? What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness & devastation of the things of the Spirit?
Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders.

And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. But that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man is not so in the sight of our kind God. — Blake

I don't have much time Hoo, but I'll just say that I don't think cherry-picking is necessary, and certainly is not sufficient, for creative misreading. I think the latter consists in fruitfully misunderstanding the whole context (or at least the most substantial part of it) of a thinker's work. I think any misunderstanding that comes from taking isolated parts out of context would be highly unlikely to end up being creative or fruitful.

And, I don't know about personalities, but I don't believe philosophies are created by "driving over the bones of the dead". I rather think they are created by taking the living works of the departed into our own consciousnesses, and seeing the living truth of commonality there. For me it has nothing to do with heroism, but rather a combination of the cold fact of intellectual duty with the warm fact of spiritual passion, and compassion.

I agree with you that the notion of authority is not apt; in fact I think it is utterly useless. Our duty is not to any authority but instead to the genuine promptings of our own (better) instincts, imaginations, intuitions and intellects. I think there is nothing heroic or extraordinary about it; it is very ordinary, in fact very humdrum and everyday.

I cannot make any sense at all of the notion of a "godless man", I'm afraid.

I don't have much time Hoo, but I'll just say that I don't think cherry-picking is necessary, and certainly is not sufficient, for creative misreading. I think the latter consists in fruitfully misunderstanding the whole context (or at least the most substantial part of it) of a thinker's work. I think any misunderstanding that comes from taking isolated parts out of context would be highly unlikely to end up being creative or fruitful. — John

Truly, I've put some real time in with Blake, though it's been awhile. It's hard to parse "misunderstanding" away from assumption that a "real" meaning is accessible. Was Blake himself any more consistent than

And, I don't know about personalities, but I don't believe philosophies are created by "driving over the bones of the dead". I rather think they are created by taking the living works of the departed into our own consciousnesses, and seeing the living truth of commonality there. For me it has nothing to do with heroism, but rather a combination of the cold fact of intellectual duty with the warm fact of spiritual passion, and compassion. — John

But how else are philosophies created? There are original poetic leaps. They are passed down. Others are influenced, yes, but they criticize and add to what preceded them. I love Hegel, because I think he gets the violence in progress right.

You mention the "cold fact" of "intellectual duty" in the same sentence that dismisses "heroism," but this duty is exactly what I'm getting at when I mention heroism. As I see it, you associate heroism with something childish. But I'm thinking more generally in terms of personified virtue. "A grown man is beyond such grandiosity or narcissism. A grown man gives a damn about the world beyond his personal life, about politics, about science. Selfish children, on the other hand, care only about themselves and their stupid petty reflections." I'm not saying this is your view. It's just an example of the sort of frame I'm talking about. What happens as we become conscious of them? We may reaffirm them, by becoming conscious of them opens them for editing. But they are fascinating objects of study, at least to me. This is how I understand Hegel, or at least Kojeve, on the master/slave issue. We seek recognition along the lines of our own frame. Unless our frame prohibits or excludes it, we project this frame as a universal law. Such frames are largely invisible, as they can be threatened by self-consciousness. This is probably why the will to truth is questioned at the beginning of a book entitled "Beyond Good and Evil." I think Stirner was tuned in to the same issue. He just called the archetype of the hero the "sacred."

I agree with you that the notion of authority is not apt; in fact I think it is utterly useless. Our duty is not to any authority but instead to the genuine promptings of our own (better) instincts, imaginations, intuitions and intellects. I think there is nothing heroic or extraordinary about it; it is very ordinary, in fact very humdrum and everyday. — John

But would you go so far to say that you look around and see the average person as your intellectual equal? I'm sure we both strive to be kind and open-minded as much as possible. But do we not quietly prefer some minds to others? Do we not seek out the extraordinary?

I'm very much with you on the "genuine promptings." If I dwell on narcissism, it's in the pursuit of authenticity, self-honesty, self-knowledge. What are my real motives ? Who do I want to be? Where did I get this who I wanted to be? This "who" has changed drastically since adolescence, for all of us, I'd expect. How is this process modeled? I think pragmatism (inspired by Hegel) is on the right track. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is, try something new. Dream a new dream of virtue. Or, more likely, find on one the shelves. Try the spirits, whether they be good or evil --work in the context of one's flesh-and-blood life.

I cannot make any sense at all of the notion of a "godless man", I'm afraid. — John

In a generalized sense of the word, I doubt anyone is godless. But I know that there are strains of egoism that work pretty well as generalized religions. There's the notion that every man is his own priest and his own king. He owns himself. He holds nothing sacred but his own mind. This is monstrous is "sacred" isn't understood in terms of spiritual authority. It feels bad to be petty and cruel. We truly want community, love, mutual recognition. It's just that I envision the mutual recognition of liberated and potently self-possessed "kings."

Truly, I've put some real time in with Blake, though it's been awhile. It's hard to parse "misunderstanding" away from assumption that a "real" meaning is accessible. Was Blake himself any more consistent than — Hoo

I think there's some text got lost here. :) Yes, the notion of misunderstanding or misreading, whether creative or otherwise, does seem to presuppose that a "real" meaning is 'in' the text somehow (what, embedded?). Does it necessarily presuppose that meaning to be accessible, though?

If the meaning is not accessible, would it follow that all understandings be misunderstandings, and all readings misreadings? I think this is related to the idea of truth being independent of us; and some (pragmatists, most notably) simply won't have that.

I finished that line with "we the living" and thought about throwing in an Ayn Rand joke.

Does it necessarily presuppose that meaning to be accessible, though? — John

If the meaning is not accessible, would it follow that all understandings be misunderstandings, and all readings misreadings? I think this is related to the idea of truth being independent of us; and some (pragmatists, most notably) simply won't have that. — John

The question in both cases (to me) is what to do in the absence of accessibility? Facts about the physical world can plausibly be said to picture some kind of non-linguistic reality, the furniture, the moon, the esophagus, that we can check. But what of "the real is rational and the rational is real"? Or "God is love"? Or "the medium is the message"? Or "the unexamined life is not worth living"? Or "yes, we have free will." But what do these things mean exactly? It's not exhaustive, but we can look at how they do or might change our behavior:

The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? – fated or free? – material or spiritual? – here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. — James

So pragmatism can sound irresponsible, but there's a "worldly" urge at the heart of it to get something done.

If the meaning of empirical propositions lies in,or depends on, knowing what would make them true or false; then perhaps the truth or falsity of non-empirical propositions such as the ones you mentioned lies in, or depends on, knowing what would make them meaningful.

That's where Kojeve and pragmatism start to blend. The "wise man" is satisfied. He scans the completed circle of his concept system and finds no gaps, no holes. His life doesn't contradict his theory (the real is rational is real). For pragmatism, inquiry ceases when the machine starts up again. The system of non-empirical propositions is ultimately justified by "irrational" pleasure or satisfaction or flow.

Yes, but isn't death the (elephant's arse)hole in the room of the concept system? ( Phew!!! talk about mixed metaphors!!!)

I confess I heartily dislike pragmatism. The pragmatist dissolves the very coherent and useful distinction between truth and belief, conflates the two. Even Peirce's less subjectivist model reduces truth to what the community of enquirers comes to believe when they have finally, at the end of their inquiry, eliminated all sensible doubts. For me that is a truly chilling vision.

I think at the heart of pragmatism is an hubristic unwillingness to admit that we cannot know the truth (in the discursive sense at least). "No truck with mystery" they seem to be crying. I see pragmatism, in this sense, as just another great leveller, no less than scientism, and in fact very much akin to it in spirit.

Yes, but isn't death the (elephant's arse)hole in the room of the concept system? ( Phew!!! talk about mixed metaphors!!!) — John

I really don't think so. Death is huge, of course. But don't we reason with ourselves about it? I've got this candle/flame analogy. We're melting candles, but the flame is passed on. I think the highest and best in us is universal. Others will replace me. The high thoughts and feelings that light my life will light theirs. Why do I love life? I love a woman. I love philosophy. I love math. These loves will just wear a different face. Don't get me wrong. I'll take another thousand years. But there is something beautiful in laying down 'soldier' and picking up a new one. I mentioned that shrooms experience. Intense death terror, steered via Christian myth as myth into a river of love running through my chest. That was a peak experience, but this is roughly how I deal. And there's also a sense of having completed the primary mission. It may not compute for others, but I feel like I'm at the end of certain journey of once-alienated self-consciousness.

I confess I heartily dislike pragmatism. The pragmatist dissolves the very coherent and useful distinction between truth and belief, conflates the two. — John

I get that. It's very much "earth and fire." But what if one can't really make sense of correspondence at high levels of abstraction? What else is there but coherence? I think I can embrace pragmatism because I'm getting the real juice elsewhere.

I'm sustained by a sort of poetic, ironic "mysticism." It's like a negative theology. It's maybe even a heretical Christianity.

The essential feeling in all art is religious, and art is a form of religion without dogma. The feeling in art is religious, always. Whenever the soul is moved to a a certain fullness of experience, that is religion. Every sincere and genuine feeling is a religious feeling. And the point of every work of art is that it achieves a state of feeling which becomes true experience, and so is religious. Everything that puts us into connection, into vivid touch, is religious. — D H Lawrence

I think at the heart of pragmatism is an hubristic unwillingness to admit that we cannot know the truth (in the discursive sense at least). "No truck with mystery" they seem to be crying. I see pragmatism, in this sense, as just another great leveller, no less than scientism, and in fact very much akin to it in spirit. — John

Well, yeah, that's part of it. James is a complicated case. But it is arguably just a twist on positivism, utilitarianism, empiricism in the light of Hegel and Darwin.
Maybe I'm not a good pragmatist in that sense, because I argue that the world is necessarily mysterious, that an explanation of the totality isn't coherent. I squeeze a negative theology out of Job.

I really don't think so. Death is huge, of course. But don't we reason with ourselves about it? I've got this candle/flame analogy. We're melting candles, but the flame is passed on. — Hoo

I like what you wrote below this, but I just want to comment on these lines. We do reason about death, but we have no determinate concepts about it, just whatever we can imagine or intuit. It thus forms a gaping hole in our concept systems, along with origin, (which in a sense is the same question) for that matter.

The candle/flame analogy is also used by Buddhists to help aspirants get a sense of the Buddhist notion of reincarnation, but I think their take is quite different from yours. The idea there is that when I die, the flame (which represents the attachments (klesas if I remember rightly), and not a substantive soul or anything like that) is reincarnated as a different individuality. Thus there is a karmic link specifically between the new life and my life; it is not the same person being reincarnated but a kind of individual karmic stream.

But what if one can't really make sense of correspondence at high levels of abstraction? What else is there but coherence? — Hoo

That's an interesting question; I have pondered that a fair bit myself.

I think that when it comes to understanding the empirical notion of truth as the correspondence of statements with actuality, correspondence is quite simply ineliminable, but it is also not analyzable as truth and meaning themselves are not.

When it comes to the truth of scientific theories the isomorphic nature of any purported correspondence cannot be easily, or even at all, intuited. Also, if history is a guide, no scientific theory is likely to be true in the sense of final or definitive. We can easily imagine propositions like "i did not go for a walk today' being true in a final and definitive sense, because it seems that once the day is passed the fact that I did not go for a walk during it is immutably fixed, and we cannot even begin to imagine what it could mean for it not to be so.

When it comes to the 'truth' of scientific theories, though, it still seems that coherence will not do. And I think this is still so even when it comes to poetic truths like "God is love" and "love is the only law". The thing with this last class of truths is that when we have a rich or deep understanding (in the poetic, not any discursive sense) of their meanings we seem to just know they are true, or perhaps it is more that we know that they ought to be true.

We do reason about death, but we have no determinate concepts about it, just whatever we can imagine or intuit. It thus forms a gaping hole in our concept systems, along with origin, (which in a sense is the same question) for that matter. — John

Good points. For context, I feared hellfire as a child/teen. Mom was religious. The old man was profane and obscene. Death as nothingness was liberating. And that's my sincere expectation or my faith. Eternal sleep. So it plugs into my concept system that way.
Origin, however, is more mysterious, but I can't even imagine an explanation that could dominate this mystery. "[It] is."

When it comes to the truth of scientific theories the isomorphic nature of any purported correspondence cannot be easily, or even at all, intuited. Also, if history is a guide, no scientific theory is likely to be true in the sense of final or definitive. We can easily imagine propositions like "i did not go for a walk today' being true in a final and definitive sense, because it seems that once the day is passed the fact that I did not go for a walk during it is immutably fixed, and we cannot even begin to imagine what it could mean for it not to be so. — John

Yes, I agree. Truth-as-correspondence in the physical part of "manifest image" is almost unshakable. At higher levels of science, it's already breaking down. We can be said to be relating measurements to to-be-expected measurements, with metaphors like "the point mass is a little stone" to aid us. (In the same way, mathematicians can retreat to formalism as a metaphysics, but it's hard to find formal proofs without an intuition of what's going on.)

Looking at higher science and metaphysics, it's easy to see why pragmatists (and others) would look for an alternative to correspondence.

I view that as a leftover of the stories of transcendent myth. Under those traditions, and the ones Heidegger longs for, human projects are understood to be finite all the way down. Nothing we ever do is good enough because it ends. For us to paint or move within infinite realm is considered impossible. Anything we do is just fishes pointlessly swimming in the water. We need to be transformed from anything we ever are or else amount to nothing. To be ourselves is to be separated from anything that matters, from any significance etched into the timelessness of logic. The delusion of nihilism, a characteristic of most human traditions and philosophises, which have no come to terms with the infinite expressed the world, particularly our own death.

We dance amongst the infinite every moment of our lives (and of our death). Within each moment, we mean something timeless, thinking, moving, feeling (or not) in ways which cannot be touched by anything to come or anything of the past. Every second we are present in way that does not depend on other logics or any finite part of ourselves. We are something, not a body or a mind, nor an atom or cell, but a presence all on its own-- Being in the world.

In this context, the infinite of possibility is incoherent. It is impossible for there to be anything other than Being in the world.To say that radical transformation shrinks to a dimensionless point is entirely true: there is no transformation. There can never be. Being in the world will never be given-up, no matter how much we pretend God, tradition or technology lets us transcend it. We are always etching into the infinite no matter how much desire to be meaningless wretches who are given Being from the outside.

Heidegger and the Modernist are cut from the same cloth.They both seek the tradition which brings utopia, which fills our absence of Being with a perfect Being which is never ours. A world in which meaning is entirely a question of the finite (e.g. practicing a tradition of transformation, living forever, having no problems, etc.,etc.) rather than of the infinite (our Being). — TheWillowOfDarkness

There are some interesting takes here Willow, due, I would say, to some creative misreading.

I have underlined the bits that I feel like addressing. I agree with you that, for Heidegger, human life is "finite all the way down". As I read him, transcendence for Heidegger consists in the kind of creative engagement with the particularities of existence that he refers to as 'authenticity'. It is precisely a matter of not adhering to generalities and universals that is the existential point.So, transcendence for Heidegger is nothing to do with what he dismissively refers to as the "onto-theological".

Life is a process of constant transformation; we are always changing, but we are also always what we are. So, for Heidegger, as for Kierkegaard, transformation does not come form clinging to idea of heaven, or utopia, or eternal peace, but in living your anxiety, which comes precisely from feeling the possibility of your own nothingness; of the nothingness of your own knowledge, what Heidegger calls "being towards death". Death in this context does not refer to the death of the body, but to the continual death of what you are in what you become. To resist this transformation dying is to remain fossilized with abstract generalities and universal principles; to constantly have you eye, that is, on the "other world" instead of engaging with this one.

Kierkegaard's leap of faith, which Heidegger reworks as authenticity, is a leap away from the oppressively uncreative normativity of 'they think' into the living, feeling creativity of 'I think".

In the second part I underlined where you talk about "dancing amongst the infinite" are you referring to an actual experience or is that just a characterization of how you think, in abstracta, about our metaphysical relation to the world. If it is the latter do you see the importance of that vision to be of an inspiring nature to get us to feel our lives that way, or is it something else?

I think I already addressed the third and fourth underlined parts with the rest, so I''l leave it there.

Yet Heidegger still resists. He's not content to be anxious or present without anxiety over the changes in the world. Authenticity is amounts to getting away from this anxiety through a transcendent means-- a superiority over the world and death. The authority and worship of Fascism which allows life to extend beyond itself. To live in peace with anxiety or lack it entirely, to need no transformation, is untenable to Heidegger. He resists the transformation of death with all his might. Deep down, he considers we must be "transformed" from the transformation of death. Clinging to a vision of eternal superiority, he ignores the world in front of him. He pines for lost tradition where humanity wasn't just a user possessing and being possessed by technology, where they were superior to the rest of the world.

Death in this context does not refer to the death of the body, but to the continual death of what you are in what you become. To resist this transformation dying is to remain fossilized with abstract generalities and universal principles; to constantly have you eye, that is, on the "other world" instead of engaging with this one. — John

Here Heidegger doesn't make an important distinction between the finite and the infinite. The death what you are is of the body. From one moment to the next, it's my "body" which changes; I become a different state to what I was prior. It's my body which continually dies. Only in an infinite (Being) do I remain fossilised, unchanged for the entirety of my life.

Heidegger is, of course, talking about the logical expression of the ever changing body. He draws attention to the ever changing body not to point out any specific changes, but to draw attention to our different logical identity in every moment. Death is not just a matter of losing an object we loved, but of becoming something logically different, such that some meaning is forever lost. Resisting death is not merely futile just because we cannot avoid the final ravage of illness, injury or time. It's impossible because in existing entails the death of a meaning from one moment to the next, even when something continues or similar meaning occurs. We cannot escape death even in the infinite expression of the finite-- no ideology or tradition will give has the necessity we (sometimes) desire. We are forever doomed to be a "nothing(Being)" constantly undergoing change.

In the end this is what Heidegger cannot accept. He looks upon our death and flees back to the embrace of infinite rescue. Rather than reveal in our nothingness and accept our death (in finite terms: focusing on and loving our changes), Heidegger returns to a myth of transformation, where we can access something other than our own death if we think (or rather pretend) hard enough, through a universal principle.

In the second part I underlined where you talk about "dancing amongst the infinite" are you referring to an actual experience or is that just a characterization of how you think, in abstracta, about our metaphysical relation to the world. If it is the latter do you see the importance of that vision to be of an inspiring nature to get us to feel our lives that way, or is it something else? — John

Both. Any experience we have is dancing amongst the infinite. In that moment, we mean something regardless of time. Nothing of the past or future can take it away. Not even the death which constitutes the existential condition-- no matter what we were or become, it will not later what we are in a moment.

Critically, there is no distinction between thinking in abstracta and actual experience. Thoughts about metaphysical relations are one type of actual experience. Looking at a computer screen is another. And so.

They all dance amongst the infinite whether we realise it or not. Even the Nihilist, who denies meaning, is caught asserting the meaning of nihilism and themselves. They are person thinking, feeling and talking. Someone who finds satisfaction or success in revealing to us their nihilistic wisdom.

Still, despite referring to all sorts of experience,"dancing amongst the infinite" is a point of abstracta. I'm picking out a feature of any experience. As such it's only relevant to people who labouring under the metaphysical notion that our experiences have nothing to do with the infinite. It's for philosophers who relate to meaning by whether or not it's true our experiences are about something more than the finite. For those outside this philosophical context or those who relate to meaning by denying this truth (i.e. holding we only mean through transcendental rescue), it's not relevant to feeling their life is meaningful.

I still think you're grossly misrepresenting Heidegger, but right now I don't have either the time or energy to argue with you about it any further.

We can easily imagine propositions like "i did not go for a walk today' being true in a final and definitive sense, because it seems that once the day is passed the fact that I did not go for a walk during it is immutably fixed, and we cannot even begin to imagine what it could mean for it not to be so. — John

This is a bit away from Heidegger, but I just wanted to comment. 'I did not go for a walk today' is one of those self-certainties, I'm not clear any theory of truth relates to such declarations in the first person. 'My wife didn't go for a walk today' might relate to one, though for myself I think that once a supposed (non-)event in time has passed we can never be sure; if we could, then it wouldn't be so hard to reconstruct the simplest of events through evidence.

I'm trying to reduce the present-to-hand to the ready-to-hand — Hoo

I do heartily agree with John and Marty that you're misunderstanding the Heidegger enterprise here, and in danger of turning the Dasein set of notions into their opposite. The ready and the present are vitally separate concepts in understanding ourselves and how we understand what's around us. It's the very part of the whole shebang that draws me to it, for it speaks to my everyday experience and makes the non-phenomenological or analytic approach feel inside out.

Perhaps, perhaps. Really I just loved those passages I quoted and whipped up a thesis to have an excuse for conversation around them. I'm no "Heidegger" expert. I can hardly enjoy reading the guy. And yet I think he has some profound ideas, having looked into a few secondary sources.

I know that my pencil becomes transparent when I'm doing math, and I think certain philosophical frameworks become transparent when we are working within them. Of course there's always something transparent and something visible. Maybe I expressed myself badly as if I didn't see this. But I think the "visible" can be frame (maybe) as unreadiness to hand. It's visible because it's being worked on or fixed. But the tools we are using to fix it are invisible. So we lose ourselves in fixing the unready. We become the unready. But the ready-to-hand or the framework we are assuming is itself invisible. Even if this is not sufficiently Heideggarian, perhaps you can relate.