In that paragraph Heidegger doesn't use the verb "destroy" but noun "Destruktion". Stambaugh translates this correctly "destructuring". Somewhere else Heidegger uses the verb "abbauen" which means dismantling (a construction) and which Derrida later for his own purposes translated as "deconstructing".

The passage continues like this. Bold added. (unfortunately I can't copy and paste from the PDF file that contains the Stambaugh translation) :

"In thus demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological concepts by an investigation in which their 'birth certificate' is displayed, we have nothing to do with a vicious relativizing of ontological standpoints. But this destruction is just as far from having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. We must, on the contrary, stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits; these in turn are given factically in the way the question is for­mulated at the time, and in the way the possible field for investigation is thus bounded off. On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself towards the past; its criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology, whether it is headed towards doxography, towards intellectual history, or towards a history of problems. But to bury the past in nullity [Nichtigkeit) is not the purpose of this destruction ; its aim is positive; its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect."

In Being and Time H. is only vaguely referring to the task of the historical destruction of metaphysics. It would have been carried out in later volumes which were never written. It is no use to try to analyse that paragraph because it only consists of general remarks.

Here is the whole plan for the (series of) book(s):

"Part One : The interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality, and the
explication of time as the transcendental horizon for the question of
Being.

Part Two : Basic features of a phenomenological destruction of the
history of ontology, with the problematic of Temporality as our clue.

Part One has three divisions:

1. the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein
2. Dasein and temporality
3· time and Being

Part Two likewise has three divisions :

1. Kant's doctrine of schematism and time, as a preliminary stage in a problematic of Temporality
2. the ontological foundation of Descartes' 'cogito sum' , and how the medieval ontology has been taken over into the problematic of the 'res cogitans'
3· Aristotle's essay on time, as providing a way of discriminating the phenomenal basis and the limits of ancient ontology." p. 39-40


Being and Time consists of Part One divisions 1. and 2. Note the expression "a phenomenological destruction of the history of ontology."

:up:

Xtrix,

The point is that time, and reason, is something personal. That is, the dynamic character of thoughtful discourse is the central issue, even of reality itself. The infinitesimal is the pivot around which everything real orbits. But it is itself not part of the mechanism. The least term of time is all the differing it is. Worth is moment, duration is the dilution and ultimate elimination of worth. If duration is being, time is the stranger to it. And the articulation of its worth is the stranger we come to know each other to be to it. Do you wonder why Plato replaces Socrates with the Stranger?

Sartre was a flawed man, and thinker, in many ways, but he was honest and consistent, he just couldn't get past the aloneness the spacial framework of the Post-Enlightenment era. "Under the gaze" was as close as he could ever get to love. By the way, he was, surprisingly, personally affable and deferential, the diametric opposite of Heidegger. And, yes, this does matter.

Let us pass to a specific context. We can analyze this text of Heidegger and you would have the opportunity to explain that Heidegger doesn't say that Western metaphysics is wrong ant that we shouldn't "destroy" it to regain the true way of Being. — David Mo

Notice he doesn't once say that Western metaphysics is "wrong." The question has been forgotten and concealed, and the "orignary" way the early Greeks thought about it has indeed been deformed and misinterpreted, etc. If we want to say that therefore Aristotle, Descartes, Suarez, Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and even Heidegger's mentor Husserl are all "wrong," then we can -- but as I said from the very beginning, that's pretty misleading and, as you've now shown, not in Heidegger.

I have no way of knowing exactly what you're responding to here.

More interesting lines of discussion (both ignored by you) that bears repeating:

Exactly. Philosophers of the last 2,500 are right within the scope of "presencing."
— Xtrix
I don't know what scope that is. What do you mean by "presence"?
— David Mo

That's a great question. There's plenty to talk about there. He has a lot to say in Being and Time about the "present-at-hand" relations to things in the world. This is the "mode" in which he believes nearly all philosophy has dwelled -- by seeing things as present before us, as substances or objects. This is the connection to the "time" part of the title -- that Being gets "interpreted" from the perspective of time. (Namely, the present.) — Xtrix

Being isn't a being, and it isn't in some mysterious "realm." It's any being whatsoever. It's the "is-ness" of any thing.
— Xtrix
You yourself are saying that the term being applies to all things. Therefore it is universal and we cannot find a "scope" that is restrictive.
— David Mo

Substance. Or God. Or nature. All interpretations of Being, and all restrictive in their interpretations.

Being itself isn't restricted to any class of entities.

Heidegger has an entire chapter on this, titled "The Restriction of Being." He goes through four of them: being and becoming, being and seeming, being and thinking, being and the ought. This is how being has been historically interpreted and "set apart" from something else. Being "and not", etc. — Xtrix

Are we supposed to take this as an exhaustive account? Reminds me of Permenides. In ninety pages Parmenides tries to answer a simple proposal by Socrates, which he defeats with one word. I do hope you see the similarities, and pertinence.

Notice he doesn't once say that Western metaphysics is "wrong. — Xtrix

Of course, he uses a dozen words that mean the same as "wrong".

In that paragraph Heidegger doesn't use the verb "destroy" but noun "Destruktion". Stambaugh translates this correctly "destructuring". — waarala

I don't know why you say this translation is "correct". From what I've read it's pretty controversial. Not to mention the fact that in the index of Stambaugh’s translation you can see that he keeps the term "destruction". Anyway…

Indeed, Heidegger says that one should not destroy everything in the previous metaphysics. There are partial successes in it. But the error that metaphysics makes is in the key (this is the term that Heidegger uses) of the comprehension of Being. And Being is what is in the base of all the philosophical, political, scientific, technological and poetic thought that is worth for Heidegger. Throughout this section Heidegger comments some cases (Kant, Descartes) of this error and qualifies them very hard. Besides he extends them to all Western philosophical tradition. Some examples from Being and Time:

When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial 'sources' from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn.
(…)

The destruction of the history of ontology is essentially bound up with the way the question of Being is formulated, and it is possible only within such a formulation.

(…)

Here Kant shrinks back, as it were, in the face of something which must be brought to light as a theme and a principle if the expression "Being" is to have any demonstrable meaning.

(…)



In taking over Descartes' ontological position Kant made an essential omission : he failed to provide an ontology of Dasein. This omission was a decisive one in the Spririt [im Sinne] of Descartes' ownmost Tendencies.

(…)

The seemingly new beginning which Descartes proposed for philosophizing has revealed
itself as the implantatiop of a baleful prejudice…

(…)

But with this 'discovery' nothing is achieved philosophically as long as it remains obscure to what a profound extent the medieval ontology has influenced the way in which posterity has determined or failed to determine the ontological character of the res cogitans.

Etc., etc.

This means that you can translate the term Destruktion as you like. What you cannot hide is the harshness of Heidegger's condemnation of the seminal error of Western philosophical tradition: the "concealment" of Being. This condemnation is the one that implies a second beginning of philosophy that recovers the initial impulse, although unfinished, of the pre-Socratics. It seems to you little destruction?

elicits the trouble in understanding him/referenced passages because — Kevin

The phrase you quote does not cause any confusion. It simply points out that there is a philosophical tradition which describes the specificity of the human being in Heidegger-like terms. They all raise the universal issue of freedom.

What happens is that Heidegger is too busy defending his particular etymologies to realize that behind other linguistic forms there is hidden the same content, the same problem and even the same solutions. He seems to believe that by using the terms in a different way than he does the same thing is no longer designated. Because Sartre uses the term essence he does not fall into the Platonic tradition. He uses it just in an anti-platonic sense. As I showed, Heidegger also uses the same term "existence" for similar purposes. Neither is Heidegger too original in spite of his taste for creating neologisms.

You can praise yourself, but I don't think what you say is very "interesting" because it doesn't go to the heart of the matter.

The mistake that Heidegger blames on the metaphysical tradition is to err on the key question: Being. That's why he says it has to be "destroyed". Please read my previous comments.

According to Heidegger, God, substance or nature are not understood without a previous theory of Being. Western metaphysics was perverted because it hid Being under Substantialism.
On the other hand, the law of gravity can be understood without the general theory of relativity. Therefore, Newton could not degrade, nor err, nor hide a superior reality, as Thomas Aquinas or Descartes did. He worked correctly in the field of objects within his grasp. No one is going to destroy Newtonian physics. Scholasticism, on the other hand, must be destroyed as a system.

:up:

I view his neologisms as his attempt to speak about something "so far as we can speak of it at all" in an effort to have his "form in congruence with its content," to "let what shows itself show itself as it shows itself from itself." This seems to me to be the phenomenological feature and a reflection of what he means by "fundamental ontology."

Does Da-sein refer to the same thing as subjectivity or subjective experience? Sure.

However, if it's a common word in German, that receives a peculiar sense with the hyphenation, and he's using it both to refer to everyday existence but speaking from and to a philosophical voice, my understanding has been that he wishes the word to carry with it all of these senses not in a deliberate act to confuse or seem profound where he is not, but because what he is getting at, or think he's getting at, loses something (conceals) once it gets settled/'congealed' into this or that concept/objective presence. Perhaps also to take up N's suggestion of experimentation for a "philosophy of the future."

The neologisms might also "perform" the modes of being of the coming-to-be of beings as objective presence - without themselves quite 'congealing' into ready-made concepts. I don't have the text in front of me but the sections on conspicuousness and obstinacy - that give rise to something as objective presence seem to me here applicable to the neologisms themselves - whether he intends this or not, I do not know - but it actually strikes me as fitting.

The endless hyphenation in translation at least I always took to reflect an emphasis on the unity of the terms despite a certain necessity for division "so far as a can speak of it at all."

The neologisms also resist pre-conceived notions as ready-made concepts from others or the temptation to think they are the same or the exact same as what we find in similar thinkers.

In these ways, I would say H stikes me as simple at times, deceptively simple at others.

To be sure, reading the English hyphenations in BT in some sections gets beyond overboard, but then Heidegger himself in the cited video earlier recounts his attitude changed such that as his thought developed he left that behind.

He also agreed with critics and those that have an interest in his work that his effort is simple - or rather simple to begin but hard to maintain/carry out.

I see this as also why he blends the poetic with the philosophical in other writings - to resist the concealing in the elucidation insofar as every elucidation is also a concealing, and to maintain, as tim wood mentioned earlier in this thread, a kind of being "on the way."

The neologisms might also "perform" the modes of being of the coming-to-be of beings as objective presence - without themselves quite 'congealing' into ready-made concepts. — Kevin

That's fine with me. Neologisms can awaken stale concepts when they are sufficiently provocative.

But as long as they are clarifying. That is, as long as they are accompanied by sufficient explanation. This is not what Heidegger does. Heidegger launches neologisms that are confusing metaphors and leaves them on the table so that you and I can understand what we want. At the same time, this lack of definition serves Heidegger to say that you and I have not understood the real crux of the matter. And he still doesn't explain the real crux of the matter.

I have nothing against art, quite the contrary. I often go to museums, exhibitions and cinemas. I read a lot of literature and go to the theater from time to time. I like all this if it's good. I believe that good art fulfills that function of waking up the sleeping soul. It helps me, at least. But I don't think art has anything to do with truth. I mean, I don't think there's an aesthetic criterion of what's true or false. That's the function of science and - in a sense - of philosophy. To mix the two things, is to provoke the ceremony of confusion. Which is what Heidegger did from the first book he wrote to the last.

I find it difficult to explain why so many people find this game stimulating. Well, I think it has to do with post-modern gobbledygook, which has revitalized Heidegger lately. A sign of our time.

About this last one.

[The descriptions of common life] are the most vigorous and suggestive part of Being and Time and in them lies, very probably, the reason for the extensive and profound influence achieved in this work. Heidegger traces here, with the resources of phenomenology, a series of interesting pictures of the inner life, of the conception of the world in which the process of the disintegration of the bourgeois intellectuality of the years of the postwar period is reflected. These pictures are undoubtedly suggestive, because they are - on a descriptive level - authentic and faithful images.

Georg Lukács: El asalto a la razón, Madrid 1976; p. 406.

Curious this semi-praise. It should be taken into account.

Xtrix,

[The point is that time, and reason, is something personal. That is, the dynamic character of thoughtful discourse is the central issue, even of reality itself. The infinitesimal is the pivot around which everything real orbits. But it is itself not part of the mechanism. The least term of time is all the differing it is. Worth is moment, duration is the dilution and ultimate elimination of worth. If duration is being, time is the stranger to it. And the articulation of its worth is the stranger we come to know each other to be to it. Do you wonder why Plato replaces Socrates with the Stranger?

Sartre was a flawed man, and thinker, in many ways, but he was honest and consistent, he just couldn't get past the aloneness the spacial framework of the Post-Enlightenment era. "Under the gaze" was as close as he could ever get to love. By the way, he was, surprisingly, personally affable and deferential, the diametric opposite of Heidegger. And, yes, this does matter.]

I thought I had posted this yesterday. Overnight I received a notice that you replied..., to what post I do not know, unless it was the one comparing Parmenides to Heidegger. By the way, the word Socrates uses to defeat Parmenides, and Heidegger, is participation. Of course, academically trained sources portray this participation as of the sort of a cog in a machine, or recruit in a body of action thought or style of living. This, because they are readers rather than listeners.

The written word was invented to dehumanize rental accounts, and to conclude obligation in systems of exchange. Later, sovereigns wrote in stone to deny appeal, but did not expect reverence or devotion, merely obeisance. The Bible was written by a group of expatriate Hebrew scribes who, displaced from their positions in the only city in the region fit for such such professionals prospering, created a mythic resource with which to bring to the region, from which they had fled, to use as a means of domination, since they had no military skills. From then on the written word became a fetish for privileged interpreters to browbeat less literate or illiterate supplicants for their wisdom.

I can appreciate how Heidegger's terms can cloud one's capacity for discussion. For anyone seriously studying him I highly recommend an extended sabbatical from him, until one can think in one's own terms. He should be credited with demanding we reexamine fundamentals, but his performance just doesn't measure up to the hype. Being is a verb used to require calculative accounts dehumanized or divested of Socratic participation. As such it “abstracts” from “beings” a persistence in a timeless dimension of..., what? Analysts obviate the issue by reducing being to a cypher, and drop it out of their symbolic representations entirely. Heidegger is forced to be ever more expansive in the calculus of its dimensionality, until we find ourselves in a dimension where navigation is entirely ungrounded in any flesh-and-blood discourse.

Reason requires conviction in the constancy of its terms. But it is utterly absurd to suppose that conviction is the engine of language. It is simply impossible that there can ever be any term in any language that conveys a simulaneity of thought among us. That requires us to chase down all the variances and urge justification for them. The result is intended to be a reduction of differences in the apprehension of terms to the least possible variant. But the real result is to eliminate all conventionally shared terms of any simulaneity of perception between us. We are separate minds and reasoners, and this is inviolate, however zealously we convince ourselves of universals. But the result, also, is a dynamism to all terms. That is, the least term in the intended reduction of variations in our perception is the complete revaluation of all terms, unlimited by any dimension of meaning at all. Heidegger wants being to be a dimension, of which he is the prime navigator. The moment of the differing in which we are more participant to the evolution of the meaning of terms than we are in the conviction of their constancy. That participation conveys more of who we are and of the quality of our reasoning than the conviction of the constancy terms can prevent us from knowing. That conviction is isolating. That participation is nothing of aloneness. We are as fully of it as it discerns us as inviolately autonomous reasoners. But if reasoning requires the conviction we are each alone and yet wins its terms only in a participatory drama in which we are discerned each other nothing alone in it, conviction is always hidden us from each other, and from our terms, and discourse ultimately eludes all dimensions of aloneness, even as it discerns us in ways conviction never could. Nothing is hidden. We hide from each other and then find each other trying not to. Nothing “withdraws” or comes out from “concealment”. That is the view of the isolation conviction is. Truth is not a strip-tease.

You can praise yourself, but I don't think what you say is very "interesting" because it doesn't go to the heart of the matter.

The mistake that Heidegger blames on the metaphysical tradition is to err on the key question: Being. That's why he says it has to be "destroyed". Please read my previous comments. — David Mo

I have, and even if I were to agree with you that Heidegger is being negatively judgmental in some way in his analysis, it's hardly the "heart of the matter." In fact it has no real effect on his thesis. If he were as critical of Western metaphysics as Schopenhauer was of Hegel, it wouldn't prove anything. It's simply the only point left you feel competent enough to take a stand on, while ignoring the much more relevant issues -- namely, that it is from the standpoint of time (the present) that Being is interpreted from the beginning of philosophy to today. Whether this is "wrong" or "covered over" or "forgotten" really makes no difference. The question is: is this thesis accurate? Is it supported by historical and textual evidence?

Take it from the man himself (at 6:32):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcm05b8m6tQ&t=527s

"Firstly I have to correct the question with regard to the way in which you talked about the 'downfall of Being'. For that is not meant in a negative manner. I do not speak about a 'downfall' of Being, but rather about the fate of Being insofar as it hides itself more and more in comparison to the Openness of Being with the Greeks." -- Heidegger

This is what I've been saying all along. The rest is your interpretation, and you're welcome to it. But it's so far from the main issues raised in Being & Time and the Introduction to Metaphysics, that to carry on about it already proves me point.

According to Heidegger, God, substance or nature are not understood without a previous theory of Being. Western metaphysics was perverted because it hid Being under Substantialism.
On the other hand, the law of gravity can be understood without the general theory of relativity. Therefore, Newton could not degrade, nor err, nor hide a superior reality, as Thomas Aquinas or Descartes did. He worked correctly in the field of objects within his grasp. No one is going to destroy Newtonian physics. Scholasticism, on the other hand, must be destroyed as a system. — David Mo

Your reading of "destroyed" isn't accurate. I think someone on here already pointed that out to you.

Also, "theory of Being" should be "interpretation of Being" in the above context. To talk about this interpretation not being understood without a "previous" interpretation (or theory) is nonsensical. The interpretation of Being as "substance," or ousia, is not "hiding" Being, it's interpreting Being -- on the background of the present moment (parousia) -- time -- which is indeed hidden as the horizon (or perspective) upon which Being is interpreted (in this case as "constantly present," later translated as "substance").

Not to be rude or egotistical or anything like that, but you don't understand Heidegger as well as I do. Your ego isn't letting you see that, which is why you persist with irrelevancies at this point. This isn't a flaw in intelligence -- it's simply that I've dedicated more time in reading him. I can very easily admit that you probably understand many philosophers better than I do, and if I were interested I would want to learn about them collaboratively rather than defend some position on limited information. But that's me. You started with a real effort and some interesting questions, but now I'm afraid I'm rather bored with going in circles and repeating things I've already written.

Sorry, but I really don't see the relevance of this. I have no idea what you're responding to.

The interpretation of Being as "substance," or ousia, is not "hiding" Being, — Xtrix

This is rigorously disproved by the quotes I have placed above. Your interpretation of Heidegger seems a little "autistic", if I may say so. I mean, you don't listen to the words of Heidegger himself.

Not to be rude or egotistical or anything like that, but you don't understand Heidegger as well as I do. — Xtrix

That's funny.

As I said, I could not find the response of which I was notified.

There is no mystical "hidden". But we do hide from ourselves, and with good reason. Any claim of understanding Heidegger should be suspect. But our convictions, and their terms, undergo changes through the very effort we undertake to conserve them. We need others to help us see this, but they are too entailed in their own. What we hide from ourselves is how much we need each other free. Only needing each other free are we able to be foil to each other's convictions, and so by hiding that need from ourselves our convictions alter through discourse and yet enable the conceit of conserving them. But nothing is hidden from us in any mystical sense. It's psychological, if anything, not metaphysical or ontological, nothing really mysterious. The generation and growth of language is that drama. We don't want to see it, not because it's like making sausages (or laws!), but because being too aware of our participation in the growth of language undermines the facile use of it. We become the strangers to ourselves that is too 'proximally' who we really are.

The interpretation of Being as "substance," or ousia, is not "hiding" Being,
— Xtrix

This is rigorously disproved by the quotes I have placed above. Your interpretation of Heidegger seems a little "autistic", if I may say so. I mean, you don't listen to the words of Heidegger himself. — David Mo

Your way of phrasing things is misleading.

Read the whole paragraph:

Also, "theory of Being" should be "interpretation of Being" in the above context. To talk about this interpretation not being understood without a "previous" interpretation (or theory) is nonsensical. The interpretation of Being as "substance," or ousia, is not "hiding" Being, it's interpreting Being -- on the background of the present moment (parousia) -- time -- which is indeed hidden as the horizon (or perspective) upon which Being is interpreted (in this case as "constantly present," later translated as "substance").

Emphasis mine. It's the question of the meaning of Being that's been hidden and forgotten. The interpretation that's taken for granted, ousia (substance), isn't itself "hidden" -- it is THE interpretation of the West, with different variations over 2500 years.

Not to be rude or egotistical or anything like that, but you don't understand Heidegger as well as I do.
— Xtrix

That's funny. — David Mo

Ok!

There is no mystical "hidden". But we do hide from ourselves, and with good reason. Any claim of understanding Heidegger should be suspect. — Gary M Washburn

True, which is why I give plenty of textual evidence. This is what the thread is about. If I'm mistaken, I'm not seeing it. Maybe it's just me being daft, I don't know. I'm sure I'm not 100% on everything, but in understanding the general thesis I feel I have a pretty decent understanding, after a year of study.

It's the question of the meaning of Being that's been hidden and forgotten. The interpretation that's taken for granted, ousia (substance), isn't itself "hidden" — Xtrix

I don't understand anything. The text above is by Heidegger? If so, it's misquoted. Quotes and reference are missing.

I don't understand either who talks about "the interpretation of ousia as substance is hidden". Is the interpretation hidden? That doesn't make much sense. Can you explain it better?

I think this whole mess you're making is because you didn't understand my opening remark. I can explain it better, if you like.

According to Heidegger, God, substance or nature are not understood without a previous theory of Being. — David Mo

What I was trying to explain is that Newton's theory is still valid in the terms that the theory is limited. That is, it is valid for concepts defined in the terms of Newtonian physics. Absolute space -independent of time and perspective- perfectly works in phenomenal objects. In this sense, it is still applied with constant success.

You pretended that it was the same case with the theories that are limited to talk about God, substance or other partial aspects of metaphysics, which according to you are valid "interpretations" of Being or partial aspects of it. I explained that for Heidegger this was not true. Theories about God, for example, are not different or partially valid interpretations, but wrong approaches without a correct comprehension of Being. Heidegger says textually that only a previous understanding of Being can lead to understanding of the sacred. Therefore, everything that is said about God outside a Heideggerian phenomenological perspective is invalid (inapplicable, if you want to say so).

Of course, this is not compatible with your theory that all interpretation is valid. Heidegger never said such a thing. Here the key of this mistake:

The usual thoughtlessness translates ousia as "substance" and thereby misses its sense entirely (ItM: 46/64)

Greek philosophy is then interpreted retroactively—that is, falsified from the bottom up—on the basis of the dominant concept of substance (ItM: 148/207)

"Misses its sense entirely"; “Falsified from the bottom up”. Is it not clear for you? What context can change the meaning of phrases expressed so strongly?

It's the question of the meaning of Being that's been hidden and forgotten. The interpretation that's taken for granted, ousia (substance), isn't itself "hidden"
— Xtrix

I don't understand anything. The text above is by Heidegger? If so, it's misquoted. Quotes and reference are missing. — David Mo

No, I was just quoting my entire paragraph. It's not Heidegger, it's me. Hence why no references.

I don't understand either who talks about "the interpretation of ousia as substance is hidden". Is the interpretation hidden? That doesn't make much sense. Can you explain it better? — David Mo

You're the one that was making that claim, not me -- remember? Look:

The interpretation of Being as "substance," or ousia, is not "hiding" Being,
— Xtrix

This is rigorously disproved by the quotes I have placed above. — David Mo

Now you're agreeing that it doesn't make much sense?

I think a lot of this could be avoided if you just quoted (or perhaps read) more fairly. The context matters.

I think this whole mess you're making is because you didn't understand my opening remark. I can explain it better, if you like. — David Mo

That very well could be, and I welcome you to.

According to Heidegger, God, substance or nature are not understood without a previous theory of Being.
— David Mo

What I was trying to explain is that Newton's theory is still valid in the terms that the theory is limited. That is, it is valid for concepts defined in the terms of Newtonian physics. Absolute space -independent of time and perspective- perfectly works in phenomenal objects. In this sense, it is still applied with constant success.

You pretended that it was the same case with the theories that are limited to talk about God, substance or other partial aspects of metaphysics, which according to you are valid "interpretations" of Being or partial aspects of it. I explained that for Heidegger this was not true. Theories about God, for example, are not different or partially valid interpretations, but wrong approaches without a correct comprehension of Being. Heidegger says textually that only a previous understanding of Being can lead to understanding of the sacred. Therefore, everything that is said about God outside a Heideggerian phenomenological perspective is invalid (inapplicable, if you want to say so). — David Mo

The analogy to Newton and Einstein was to demonstrate only that because A becomes the dominant theory does not always necessitate that B is "wrong." This is true for theories in science as it is for interpretations generally. Sometimes theories and interpretations certainly are simply wrong. But it's not always the case.

I brought that up in the context of your claiming that Heidegger is making some kind of negative judgment, which I don't see supported and in fact have quoted him directly saying he does NOT mean it this way. This was the only point, and a fairly trivial one.

There are many interpretations of being. Heidegger is not interested in proclaiming them "wrong" or "right." All he does is point out the interesting historical fact that there has been this series of interpretations, which are variations of the Greek interpretation of being as ousia, and that the "question of the meaning of being" has been forgotten and hidden, covered over as a question. He believes this question should be re-awakened.

That's all.

Of course, this is not compatible with your theory that all interpretation is valid. Heidegger never said such a thing. — David Mo

I never claimed that "all interpretation is valid." Not once. Nor has Heidegger.

The usual thoughtlessness translates ousia as "substance" and thereby misses its sense entirely (ItM: 46/64)

Greek philosophy is then interpreted retroactively—that is, falsified from the bottom up—on the basis of the dominant concept of substance (ItM: 148/207)
"Misses its sense entirely"; “Falsified from the bottom up”. Is it not clear for you? What context can change the meaning of phrases expressed so strongly? — David Mo

Here again, as I've said before, Heidegger is talking about translations. When talking about translations, of course he believes that many are simply inaccurate. This is a matter of scholarship.

You claimed, however, that Heidegger thought that Western philosophy (including the Greeks) was wrong. Those are two very different things. Here's what you have said:

He considered that Western philosophy had overlooked, deformed, degenerated, etc. this question since the time of the Greeks. — David Mo

Heidegger repeatedly accuses Western philosophy with negative concepts that imply falsity in many ways, — David Mo

According to Heidegger, Western metaphysics perverted the correct questioning of the Greeks. Therefore, the Greeks were right and western metaphysics was wrong. So much so that philosophy needs to start again, which does not happen until Heidegger arrives. Of course. — David Mo

Here is what Heidegger says:

"Firstly I have to correct the question with regard to the way in which you talked about the 'downfall of Being'. For that is not meant in a negative manner. I do not speak about a 'downfall' of Being, but rather about the fate of Being insofar as it hides itself more and more in comparison to the Openness of Being with the Greeks." — Xtrix

The question of being has been forgotten. The early Greeks (including Plato and Aristotle) still asked that question. It is not a negative judgment on Western metaphysics that it's become concealed.

So your above quotations are accurate, but they only mean that the original sense (or meaning) of various Greek words have been misinterpreted over the years.

Here again, as I've said before, Heidegger is talking about translations. When talking about translations, of course he believes that many are simply inaccurate. This is a matter of scholarship.

You claimed, however, that Heidegger thought that Western philosophy (including the Greeks) was wrong. — Xtrix

Sorry but you don't understand Heidegger. The meaning of words in Greek philosophy is not an academic issue for him. Inaccurate translations are a reflection of inaccurate metaphysics: the concealment of Being. To reveal means truth in Heidegger, concealment is wrong. He expresses this error in many different words that I have included here in previous comments.
You have avoid the fragment that I put in my previous comment, according to which the metaphysical Western tradition "falsified from the bottom up—on the basis of the dominant concept of substance".
I insist: How do you can dissimulate the absolutely obvious expression "falsified from the bottom up"?


I never said that this concealment includes the Greeks. It would be opposite to all my previous comments. I have mentioned several times the "first origin" of the question of Being that Heidegger places in Heraclitus, Parmenides and Anaximander.

The meaning of words in Greek philosophy is not an academic issue for him. Inaccurate translations are a reflection of inaccurate metaphysics: the concealment of Being. To reveal means truth in Heidegger, concealment is wrong. — David Mo

No. He never once says anything about "inaccurate metaphysics" or that concealment is "wrong." That's your projection, and it's not in Heidegger. Not once.

The question of the meaning of being has been concealed and forgotten. That doesn't make Descartes, Kant, or Hegel "wrong." This is a childish way of looking at things. But go on arguing it if you must.

How do you can dissimulate the absolutely obvious expression "falsified from the bottom up"? — David Mo

Referring to translations of the Greeks. He's claiming their original way of seeing the world -- as phusis -- gets mistranslated and thus the original meaning gets falsified. So what?

Page 2 of Being and Time:

"Yet the question [of the meaning of being] we are touching upon is not just any question. It is one which provided a stimulus for the researches of Plato and Aristotle, only to subside from then on as a theme for actual investigation. What these two men achieved was to persist through many alterations and 'retouchings' down to the 'logic' of Hegel. And what they wrested with the utmost intellectual effort from the phenomena, fragmentary and incipient though it was, has long since become trivialized."

Also page 2:

"...a dogma has been developed which not only declares the question about the meaning of Being to be superfluous, but sanctions its complete neglect."

"In this way, that which the ancient philosophers found continually disturbing as something obscure and hidden has taken on a clarity and self-evidence such that if anyone continues to ask about it he is charged with an error of method."

Does any of this sound like "all philosophers and metaphysics since the Greeks are wrong"? If so, you're wrong. Heidegger is uninterested in making claims about the truth or falsity of metaphysics since the Greeks. There have been many interpretations of Being, but today it's trivialized, concealed, and unquestioned. It's time to re-awaken that questioning, and in so doing perhaps find new interpretations.

If Heidegger ever once stated that Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Hegel, etc., were all "wrong," he'd be an absolute joke figure. Which is apparently what you would like to turn him into. But you'll not find it in the texts.

No. He never once says anything about "inaccurate metaphysics" or that concealment is "wrong." — Xtrix

"Greek philosophy is then interpreted retroactively—that is, falsified from the bottom up—on the basis of the dominant concept of substance" (ItM: 148/207)

Referring to translations of the Greeks. He's claiming their original way of seeing the world -- as phusis -- gets mistranslated and thus the original meaning gets falsified. So what? — Xtrix

.

So what? You mean Heidegger didn't think the forgery was wrong?

Does any of this sound like "all philosophers and metaphysics since the Greeks are wrong"? If so, you're wrong. Heidegger is uninterested in making claims about the truth or falsity of metaphysics since the Greeks. — Xtrix

And this?:

When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial 'sources' from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn.(BT: 22/43)

Being-true as Being-uncovering* , is a way of Being for Dasein. What makes this very uncovering possible must necessarily be called 'true' in a still more primordial sense. (BT: 220/263)

This is starting to get a little crazy.
Do you have a special problem with the word "wrong"? Otherwise your position seems incomprehensible to me.