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) — David Mo

I'll say it a thousand times: his is in reference to translations (which he says at one point always includes intepretation). Heidegger is talking there about how the Greeks are interpreted in terms of substance ontology -- and that interpretation is false. What does this have to do with Western metaphysics being "wrong"? Notice he doesn't say substance ontology is "wrong," he says that interpreting the Greeks this way (retroactively) is falsifying what they "really" (according to him) believed.

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? — David Mo

What forgery? Regardless, yes he thinks this interpretation of the Greeks is wrong.

Do you have a special problem with the word "wrong"? Otherwise your position seems incomprehensible to me. — David Mo

I do, yes. This whole line of discussion started with what I admitted was a bit of a nit-pick, but I stand by it still. The claim that "all of Western philosophy after the Greeks is wrong" or any such claim like that is just a misunderstanding of Heidegger. If that's not what you're saying, fine. If you're talking about translations and interpretations of the "original" Greek meanings, then yes Heidegger thinks they're just wrong. That's not the same thing.

What does this have to do with Western metaphysics being "wrong"? — Xtrix

Greece after the Presocratics, Rome, the Middle Ages, modernity—has asserted a metaphysics and, therefore, is placed in a specific relationship to what-is as a whole. Metaphysics inquires about the being of beings, but it reduces being to a being; it does not think of being as being. Insofar as being itself is obliterated in it, metaphysics is nihilism. The metaphysics of Plato is no less nihilistic than that of Nietzsche. Consequently, Heidegger tries to demonstrate the nihilism of metaphysics in his account of the history of being, which he considers as the history of being’s oblivion. — W. J. Korab-Karpowicz, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Yet the question [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 or a theme for actual investigation. What these two men [Parmenides and Heraclitus] 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. — Heidegger: B&T, #1

Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task. — Heidegger: B&T, #3

Trivial, blind and perverted is not "wrong"... according you. What means "wrong" to you?

In my opinion you are blind to the true meaning of Heidegger's work. You trivialize and pervert it. But don't worry. I am not saying that you are wrong... according you.

Heidegger could have spared himself, and us, a bit of grief if he addressed one simple question. If there is such a thing as forgetfulness of Being, is there remembrance? If your take on his view of the Greeks is what he did believe of them, he's got them wrong. They, the Greeks, were far more down to earth than he gives them credit for. Their poetry might have been highfalutin, but they were not. I wonder what Aristophanes would make of Heidegger's seriosity? The Greeks were a cosmopolitan/insular people, if that makes sense. Protected from the great powers around them by sea and geography, they were surrounded by cultures in which powerful rulers, or esoteric priests in the case of Judea and Egypt, who used the written word as an instrument of oppression. That is what writing was invented for. And I can't help thinking that is what Heidegger wants us to return it to being. But the fact is, the first appearance of Greek writing (Linear B, Linear A has yet to be decyphered) is several lines of drunken scrawl in a bawdry joke competition. What does forgetfulness of being mean there? But if the man had a shred of kindness in him (and insight!) he would have explained to us that there can be no remembrance. Can we remembrance what we've never known? Why do we grieve at the passing of someone we never really got to know in the first place? Or perhaps thought we were trying to but now know we did not? Can we remembrance the dead? Or is the very effort just more proof of loss? But if we can never really remembrance “Being”, if there is always something loss in all that we are and try to be, what does it really mean to point out our forgetfulness? Especially as a sort of accusation and unfavorable comparison to some lost golden age of remembrances? Don't those who accuse Heidegger of arrogance have a point? But, take it a notch further. Maybe there is a less accusatory tone we could take toward our inability to remembrance Being? If all our lives all we ever did what agree and find ourselves in accord with each other, how would this distinguish our remembrances of ourselves from those of each other? But if we grate a bit at the edges, we must modify our terms. And if received terms is a lesser lexical and perhaps structural body than all the refinements and innovations we grate into each other, then even if the result is the same perennial forgetting we are nonetheless rewarded with a more expansive body of terms and grammatical forms in our efforts to know ourselves and to lie to ourselves about what we think we remembrance of the dead, or of Being. But, nevertheless, since the departed is participant to that growing lexical and syntactic arsenal, even our forgetfulness is a kind remembrance. It's because that remembrance is not and cannot be ours alone that there is virtue in the forgetting. That is, our incapacity for remembrancing Being is our way of needing each other free, and maybe even setting “Being” free, to grate upon the received terms of our minds and so refresh those terms and distinguish us from the tyranny of that receipt. And in that case, Heidegger is indeed wrong. Dead wrong! About us today, and about the Greeks. And about what “Being” is.

Greece after the Presocratics, Rome, the Middle Ages, modernity — W. J. Korab-Karpowicz, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This is excellent.

Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.
— Heidegger: B&T, #3

Trivial, blind and perverted is not "wrong"... according you. What means "wrong" to you?

In my opinion you are blind to the true meaning of Heidegger's work. You trivialize and pervert it. But don't worry. I am not saying that you are wrong... according you. — David Mo

Because "wrong," in this case, is meaningless if you mean in terms of accuracy or correctness. What would be "right"? The Greeks? Well we know that's not the case because, according to Heidegger, although they questioned being they were still very much within the realm of the "metaphysics of presence," which is the basis for the rest of Western philosophy. So if it's not about the questioning of being, it's about the interpretation of being -- so what's the "correct" interpretation? Since Descartes and Kant are "wrong," what's "right"? Heidegger's interpretation? Well, as we've discussed before, Heidegger does not offer an interpretation or definition of being.

So where are we left? Exactly where we were: (1) the questioning of being has become forgotten and concealed, and (2) the interpretation (or "meaning") of being has been taken for granted as something present-at-hand, as a particular kind of being ("substance," mainly). So the question of the meaning of being should be re-awakened and we should begin questioning again, rather than taking it as trivial or "self-evident." That's all. Nothing about "right" or "wrong," no negative assessments of Aristotle or Descartes. Plenty of wrong translations of Greek philosophical words (in Heidegger's view) like "phusis" as nature, "ousia" as substance, and "aletheia" as truth -- but that's all. In relation to the "original" meanings, how they were translated was inaccurate, incorrect -- "wrong."

This is why you won't find "wrong" in Heidegger regarding Western interpretations of being. It's why he explicitly says he does not mean anything negative like that.

I'll call attention yet again to how boring this conversation is. You truly have nothing left to say. But carry on...

Heidegger could have spared himself, and us, a bit of grief if he addressed one simple question. If there is such a thing as forgetfulness of Being, is there remembrance? If your take on his view of the Greeks is what he did believe of them, he's got them wrong. They, the Greeks, were far more down to earth than he gives them credit for. Their poetry might have been highfalutin, but they were not. I wonder what Aristophanes would make of Heidegger's seriosity? — Gary M Washburn

Remembrance of the question of being, yes. That's what he's trying to do: re-awaken that question, the question that's been forgotten.

To say Heidegger isn't "down to Earth" is kind of ridiculous. His entire analysis of the "worldhood of the world" emphasizes average everydayness and "ready-to-hand" activities like hammering and opening doors. As for the Greeks, he has quite a bit to say about their analysis of everyday practical activity, if you're interested in reading him.

Protected from the great powers around them by sea and geography, they were surrounded by cultures in which powerful rulers, or esoteric priests in the case of Judea and Egypt, who used the written word as an instrument of oppression. That is what writing was invented for. — Gary M Washburn

There's a lot of debate about why writing was invented. Many believe it was for accounting, etc., but it's not settled scholarship. To make declarative statements like "That is what writing was invented for" really makes me want to ignore you. No offense, just figured I'd give honest feedback. Let's not pretend to know things we don't know and give lectures on them.

That is, our incapacity for remembrancing Being is our way of needing each other free, and maybe even setting “Being” free, to grate upon the received terms of our minds and so refresh those terms and distinguish us from the tyranny of that receipt. And in that case, Heidegger is indeed wrong. Dead wrong! About us today, and about the Greeks. And about what “Being” is. — Gary M Washburn

You just don't know what you're talking about, I'm afraid. Please provide any textual evidence to back up these bizarre statements, because otherwise I have no idea what you're talking about.

Again, "Remembrance of being" refers to re-awakening the question of the meaning of being. The question has been forgotten -- we are no longer concerned with or it, we take it as self-evident, etc. Heidegger says over and over again that we all walk around with a "pre-ontological understanding of being," so it's not that there is something "out there" that we need to "remember." This is just a complete misreading if that's what jumps to mind. But, honestly, I think you're just uttering nonsense. I'm happy to be proven wrong -- but with sources.

Because "wrong," in this case, is meaningless if you mean in terms of accuracy or correctness. What would be "right"? — Xtrix

According to Heidegger, taking up the line of Parmenides and Heraclitus, which is what he was doing. According to Heidegger. Because the path that begins with Plato and continues with Aristotle, the Latin scholastic, Descartes or Kant was a wrong path. You had to start all over again. He calls this the "second beginning". I insist, start, start again.

...no negative assessments of Aristotle or Descartes — Xtrix

Oh,my God!

This becomes boring because you haven't read Heidegger properly and don't want to read what I write to you. Perhaps if you read some of those secondary readings that you so dislike that your ideas go into "the clearing". I can't do any more.

How can we continue to argue if you say that accusing someone of being blind, of degenerating the sense of philosophy and hiding the real issue are not "negative assessments"? There's no way to argue with that.

I can argue as long as you want, but not in terms you demand. You might as well offer the slave all the work he can manage, so long as he does it under your supervision and conditions. I can justify everything I say, but you don't want to know what I mean, because that would entail admitting ways of discussing the same issues in terms not under your control, or that there are ways of doing fundamental philosophy Heidegger language cannot help you with. In any case, I cannot respect a thinker so attached to sources that nothing original speaks to them at all. That reliance is the, deliberate, suppression of thought, not its promotion encouragement. Have you read Plato's Ion? He claimed to be a genius at Homer, but not Hesiod, and looks ridiculous the trying to justify that claim.

I can argue as long as you want, but not in terms you demand. You might as well offer the slave all the work he can manage, so long as he does it under your supervision and conditions. I can justify everything I say, but you don't want to know what I mean, because that would entail admitting ways of discussing the same issues in terms not under your control, or that there are ways of doing fundamental philosophy Heidegger language cannot help you with. — Gary M Washburn

This thread is about Heidegger. As I said from the very beginning, a pre-requisite should be at least a reading of Being and Time. If you want to give rambling, irrelevant lectures you're free to do so elsewhere. If you want to discuss Heidegger, then do so with sources. To equate this with slavery is embarrassing.

I cannot respect a thinker so attached to sources that nothing original speaks to them at all. — Gary M Washburn

Have you read Plato's Ion? — Gary M Washburn

According to Heidegger, taking up the line of Parmenides and Heraclitus, which is what he was doing. According to Heidegger. Because the path that begins with Plato and continues with Aristotle, the Latin scholastic, Descartes or Kant was a wrong path. — David Mo

Parmenides also interpreted being as presence, as did Heraclitus. This was the inception. They thought and questioned being, but they did so from the perspective of one mode of time: the present. This is not "right" or "wrong."

Now about this point I'm not 100% sure. This is from my reading. But if it's true that Anaximander, Parmenides, and Heraclitus are not within the tradition, that would be very surprising to me. If you can find references to this that I've overlooked, I welcome it. I still doubt very much that you'll find anything about "right" and "wrong," however. Below is a relevant passage about Parmenides:

"Legein itself--or rather noein, that simple awareness of something present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand, which Parmenides had already taken to guide him in his own interpretation of Being--has the Temporal structure of a pure 'making-present' of something. Those entities which show themselves in this and for it, and which are understood as entities in the most authentic sense, thus get interpreted with regard to the Present; that is, they are conceived as presence (ousia)." (Being and Time, p. 48 -- the BOLD is mine)

...no negative assessments of Aristotle or Descartes — Xtrix

How can we continue to argue if you say that accusing someone of being blind, of degenerating the sense of philosophy and hiding the real issue are not "negative assessments"? There's no way to argue with that. — David Mo

I've explained why, many times. I've cited Heidegger saying he "does not mean anything negative" -- many times. I have said before that there is certainly a "wrong" and "right" way to translate words (in terms of accuracy or correctness) -- many times. But you will only find the utmost respect for Aristotle and Descartes from Heidegger. If you want to continue to project your negativity, that's your business.

I do wish I could get the world to take another look at Plato. One of the great virtues of Plato is that he deliberately avoided the reader getting caught up in terms. He explained himself in numerous different ways precisely to avoid cultist fawning. If you can't think for yourself reading philosophy, any philosophy, is not going to make you a thinker. If a poster won't let me distinguish between a cited author, my own original take of the same ideas, and his or her way of understanding anything at all, then there is no discussion. And I suppose that is how all these threads end.

How the hell can we remembrance what we never knew and what is unprecedented in being? Is "Being", before after all, what reason infers from antecedence? What remembrance the unprecedented? Later Heidegger is pandering to his last and final refuge, the ineffable interest of practitioners of Zen. That is, his later terms of "Being" are meant as a "koan". Shock and awe, not understanding.

If you can't think for yourself reading philosophy, any philosophy, is not going to make you a thinker. If a poster won't let me distinguish between a cited author, my own original take of the same ideas, and his or her way of understanding anything at all, then there is no discussion. And I suppose that is how all these threads end. — Gary M Washburn

"My own original take on the same ideas." First you have to know what those ideas are, and you haven't shown the slightest degree of understanding any of it -- and that's the point of this thread: Martin Heidegger. Like most people who want to hear themselves talk, any discussion that requires real work (i.e., having to back up your assertions with textual evidence, and thus the painful task of reading) you eschew. That's fine. Start your own thread and discuss whatever you want. Personally I think your writing is completely confused and nearly incoherent.

Or you can continue playing the victim by complaining about what a misunderstood free-thinking genius you are. Your call.

How the hell can we remembrance what we never knew and what is unprecedented in being? — Gary M Washburn

This is exactly what I mean by incoherent. First, is "remembrance" a typo or used in a special sense? Do you mean "remember"? If so, I've addressed this before. The whole sentence is meaningless. For example, "what is unprecedented in being"? What does that mean? What's unprecedented "in being"? What does "in being" even mean? Are you talking about being in general or about beings (entities)? What exactly in Heidegger are you responding to? Where does he say we need to "remember" being? Etc. etc.

Is "Being", before after all, what reason infers from antecedence? — Gary M Washburn

Are you even capable of formulating a coherent sentence? Or is this incoherence deliberate?

What remembrance the unprecedented? — Gary M Washburn

Literally gibberish.

Later Heidegger is pandering to his last and final refuge, the ineffable interest of practitioners of Zen. That is, his later terms of "Being" are meant as a "koan". Shock and awe, not understanding. — Gary M Washburn

You don't have a clue about what you're talking about, and it's both obvious and embarrassing. If you wish to learn about Heidegger, stop talking and listen -- or ask questions. You're in no position to make assertions of any kind.

But you will only find the utmost respect for Aristotle and Descartes from Heidegger. — Xtrix

I think you're mixing up the moral and epistemic senses of "being wrong". I'm not talking about respect in moral sense. I'm talking about fundamental errors in what ontological truth is. Nor am I talking about particular evaluations but a global consideration of the authors' work. I can have a positive evaluation of the subtleness of Plato's language or Nietzsche's sharpness in criticizing the moral hypocrisy of bourgeois society without accepting Plato's idealism or Nietzsche's will to power. Heidegger respected Aristotle and Kant - I am not so sure about Descartes - but he thought that they were part of a philosophical tradition that perverted the question of Being, which is the mother of all questions. Of course, Parmenides and Heraclitus are an important part of the philosophical tradition, but they were not part of this misleading tradition.

Reason is said to be extension from an antecedent term. If this is incoherent, all of Anglo-American philosophy since Frege is incoherent. Are you unaware of how Heidegger sought refuge in Japanese interest in him after his Nazism became notorious? Here's another incoherent question: Which one of us is us? Which "being" is what "Being" is? The classic view of reason is that it is a reductive progression of judgment between alternatives. The flaw in this is that either/or, as the foundation of reason, is reductive to nothing. There is neither "Being" or "being" at the end of the reduction. Heidegger knew this, even if you don't. His answer was to seek some lost ancient or antecedent completeness that we can somehow revive or reinvigorate to heal the wound of reduction. Which one of us is us? Not either/or, only always neither/nor. And the enigma resolves if we recognize that neither one nor the other of us is what we are is an activity, something we do. It is an act not to be what "being" is. That act has no antecedent. No glorious forgotten origins. It goes on and is never done. It is never done because all efforts to find some concluding term in its original state shifts us to an either/or mode in which one is subordinated to the other. The act of each of us of neither being which one is us is emancipating. The act of deciding who and what "Being" is forgotten or hidden from us it is because we are trying to hold onto it. I, for one, am not allowing the mistakes of past thinkers to hand around my neck like a millstone.

The act of deciding who and what "Being" is forgotten or hidden from us it is because we are trying to hold onto it. — Gary M Washburn

Should read:
The act of deciding who and what "Being" is (somehow forgotten or hidden from us) is because we are trying to hold onto it.[/quote]

but he thought that they were part of a philosophical tradition that perverted the question of Being, which is the mother of all questions. Of course, Parmenides and Heraclitus are an important part of the philosophical tradition, but they were not part of this misleading tradition. — David Mo

This is much better, in my view, than what you've said before. But I wonder why you say "perverted the question" -- I think they've simply overlooked the question. Heidegger says Kant basically took Descartes' position on that question, and Descartes in turn assumed the Scholastic framework. So neither really addressed the question at all. That's not really perverting it, it's not even addressing it. By that point the question had been essentially taken for granted as "self-evident," or "God," or substance, etc. You see what I mean? Again I'm nit-picking, but it's important to careful here.

Here's another incoherent question: Which one of us is us? Which "being" is what "Being" is? — Gary M Washburn

"Being" belongs to any entity whatsoever, including humans. It's the "is-ness" of anything that exists, or that is.

So which one of us is "us" doesn't really make much sense. Every one of us, as individual entities, is just as much a "being" or "exists" as much as that tree or that rock or anything else.

His answer was to seek some lost ancient or antecedent completeness that we can somehow revive or reinvigorate to heal the wound of reduction — Gary M Washburn

OK -- references please. Because I've read a lot of Heidegger for the last year and a half and this looks like complete nonsense to me.

Have you read Heidegger? What have you read? Upon what are you basing your interpretations?

I, for one, am not allowing the mistakes of past thinkers to hand around my neck like a millstone. — Gary M Washburn

Good for you.

This is much better, in my view, than what you've said before. — Xtrix

Strange. It is the same I have repeated again and again.

But I wonder why you say "perverted the question" — Xtrix

The answer is in the very texts by Heidegger and his commentators that I have quoted here.
For example:

"The verb 'verfallen' is one which Heidegger will use many times. Though we shall usually translate it simply as 'fall', it has the connotation of deteriorating, collapsing, or falling down". (John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Being and Time, Oxford, Blackwell, 2001, p. 42, footnote).

"Greek ontology and its history which, in their numerous filiations and distortions, determine the conceptual character of philosophy even today-prove that when Dasein understands either itself or Being in general, it does so in terms of the 'world', and that the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated [ verfallt] to a tradition in which it gets reduced to something self-evident -merely material for reworking". (Heidegger: B&T, p. 22/43)

If you don't like the word "degenerate," you can take "pervert" or " deteriorated". I don't see the difference. Anyway, the word "degenerate" is also used by Heidegger (Ibid, p. 36/61, for ex.). And "peverted" on a B&T quote I placed above.

Why does Heidegger say this? We should ask him. In my opinion, he wasn't clear. But in his words, it seems that substantialism is to blame for this degeneration, perversion, deterioration or fall. Because it turns the mystery of being into an intelligible "thing". And what is understood made it nervous. He was into mystery, poetry, fog and vagueness.

Xtrix,
A year and a half! Wow! I may have written more than you've read. I might not be any more impressed if you said a decade and a half. But, keep reading, and keep a sharp eye on how your reading changes over a lifetime. Then maybe you'll recognize what the real question is.

When I say the thrown ball isn't hidden from you I do wish you'd see the important meaning in the image. You haven't lost the ball, you've joined the game, and you cannot make a property of that participation. You cannot anticipate your part in the play. You have to let it play out freely. People who hog the ball often lose their place on the team. Heidegger strikes me as the kid who doesn't like his role in the game and takes the ball away, expecting to be begged for his return, under his terms. I gave up on Heidegger when the Neitzsche series came out. What a hatchet job! For fifteen years I willfully avoided anything Marty, but was drawn back by the Stambaugh translation, which is much more readable. But then most new titles were just rehashed material his estate put out, presumeably to make a buck, from old class notes. Volume after volume came out all saying the same damn thing no better, or more meaningfully, than the first time. So, no, I am not going to go chapter and verse. What you keep saying is vacuous. I suggest you read Plato's Gorgias. There, Socrates keeps asking Gorgias what is it he does. The answer is always some evasion, as if the question is not understood at all. He offers vapid boast after vapid boast. But in the end even Gogias himself recognizes he has no response. So, if you cannot explain yourself except by reiterating the assertion that is at issue, then let me try.

I think it was in his Parmenides that Heidegger says, quoting Parmenides (if memory serves), "Let it not be said that "Being" isn't!". In his Introduction to Metaphysics he does go on a bit about how impossible to talk about nothing, which makes it problematic to ask "Why is there something rather than nothing?" It seems, "Being" is so 'Beingful' that even nothing is something, and everything that is is so devoid of nothing that what it is does not distinguish from all else that is in its being what "Being" is. But this makes it rather difficult to reason or think at all, if by thinking we mean to distinguish between beings, and between circumstances of being, to make judgments amongst them, and, indeed, about what "Being" is. No, it's not really a ballgame, or play in any sense, the stakes are too high. What is at stake is the articulation of the worth of time. That articulation only comes in sudden bursts of intensity or moment. It always leaves nothing, no term in any language, no issue in any life, unmoved and unaltered. And until this is recognizable in a way no "Being" can remembrance there is no worth in "Being" at all. This, because remembrance and duration is not what worth is. What extends in time, or in logical inference, can only attenuate and ultimately thin that worth out to negligible. This, by the way, is the flaw of science, it is dedicated to that reduction of the moment of worth to negligible. If you wish, I could explain how the invention of calculus does this, or you could read "The Analyst" by George Berkeley. But what then is moment and worth, this momentousness that "Being" hides us from? If we think of time as a continuity of duration, and moment as a break in that continuity, we would suppose moment is a nothingness between, demarking a before and an after, and nothing more. But if that nothing, nothing at all, generates a wholesale transformation of every term and circumstance in both its before and after, then it is literally more encompassing than all the expanse of time as duration and of what "Being" is there. And yet it is neither before nor after the moment of it. It is nothing. And even its unendurable intensity of worth, because there is nothing enduring moment is, is nothing but its being neither its before nor its after. But all reason and thought hovers around this nothing, attenuating its intensity to the negligible, and therefore enduring, term. Science (and Anglo-American philosophy) simply runs with the power this neglect offers it, while Heidegger simply denies that discernment can have any impact upon its "originary" term. Time, and truth, is what changes everything. The moment of that change is nothing. Neither its past nor its future. But it is precisely being neither/nor that it is what worth is. Science and Heidegger may go in opposite directions in this, but neither can suss what nothing is, and how much of worth it is. Throw the ball and you're in the game, hold it and your nothing and nowhere at all.

In the Christian myth, the material world is a corruption of the divine plan, and it is our responsibility to repent of this, to accept guilt for it, acquiesce to the suffering of this "vale of tears, and to seek "grace". Remember, Heidegger started his education in a Catholic seminary school. But he may also have been thinking of Nietzsche's 'decadence'.
Xtrix,
I guess I'm not getting the ball back. I'm not your enemy. I know what it is like to become addicted to Heidegger talk. It was like rehab getting out of it. And I was helped because I was all along pursuing a strain of thought of my own. If the book is getting in the way of thinking for yourself it's time to put the book aside.

A year and a half! Wow! I may have written more than you've read. I might not be any more impressed if you said a decade and a half. But, keep reading, and keep a sharp eye on how your reading changes over a lifetime. Then maybe you'll recognize what the real question is. — Gary M Washburn

I said I've been reading Heidegger (carefully) for a 1 and a half. Philosophy generally has been a lifelong interest on mine. Try reading more carefully.

Heidegger strikes me as the kid who doesn't like his role in the game and takes the ball away, expecting to be begged for his return, under his terms. I gave up on Heidegger when the Neitzsche series came out. What a hatchet job! — Gary M Washburn

Yes, I'm sure you waded through the hundreds of pages of Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche very carefully and that was the deciding factor in avoiding him. A "hatchet job" -- excellent critique.

Stop being a child. If you have anything interesting to say, please say it soon.

So, no, I am not going to go chapter and verse. — Gary M Washburn

In other words, you can't back up anything you say. What a shocker.

I don't believe for one minute that you've read any Heidegger, given the nonsense you've been talking. Secondary interpretations, however -- maybe you've done a little perusing.

So given that this thread is about Heidegger, and that I was clear from the beginning that one should have at least read Being and Time, your incoherent ramblings are welcome elsewhere.

I suggest you read Plato's Gorgias. — Gary M Washburn

I suggest you read Heidegger.

So, if you cannot explain yourself except by reiterating the assertion that is at issue, then let me try. — Gary M Washburn

Explain what? You haven't asked anything -- you've simply made incoherent statements.

What is at stake is the articulation of the worth of time. That articulation only comes in sudden bursts of intensity or moment. It always leaves nothing, no term in any language, no issue in any life, unmoved and unaltered. And until this is recognizable in a way no "Being" can remembrance there is no worth in "Being" at all. — Gary M Washburn

This is complete gibberish. "Articulation of the worth of time"? This is completely meaningless, and not ONCE in Heidegger. The "worth of time" means nothing whatsoever.

Heidegger talks a great deal about time as the horizon of interpreting Being, which I can explain to you if you want to learn about it, since you've not read him: Heidegger's thesis in Being and Time is that from the Greeks onwards, "being" has been interpreted on the basis of one mode of time -- the present. It has been called "ousia" in Aristotle, and has gone through variations since then. "Ousia" Heidegger links to "parousia," which means constant presence. It gets translated as "substance." Being gets objectified in the same way we objectify objects in our environment when things break down -- like a hammer. The hammer becomes an object with properties when we're looking at it scientifically or philosophically, in an abstract or theoretical way, which Heidegger calls "presence-at-hand." This same mode of abstract thinking or "presencing" is the mode we're in when thinking theoretically, which is the state of philosophy and science and has been since the inception of Western philosophy in the Greeks.

So it is on the basis of TIME that Being has been interpreted for 2,500 years. TIME, however, has also been interpreted as a being, as an entity -- as a sequence of "nows," as a kind of number line, as measurable motion -- which itself is a present-at-hand, theoretical kind of "being," and so another object of thought. This is not how Heidegger sees time. This very concept also dates back to Aristotle and his essay on time in the lectures on Physics, and Heidegger goes over this in lectures after B+T, in "Basic Problems of Phenomenology" and others. So rather than confusingly using "time" in discussing where this very concept emerges from (which is the human being), Heidegger uses "temporality" instead. Temporality is one way of interpreting what a human being is -- through its activity.

We are caring, willing, feeling beings -- and are always moving towards ("towards which"), on the way to something, doing things now for something later ("for the sake of which"), etc; striving, future-oriented beings with unconscious goals and plans -- displayed through our actions, habits, skilsl, and "average everyday" activity. (Aristotle in many ways has this "right" and you can see the influence on Heidegger.) Looking at average everyday activity phenomenologically (looking at what's hidden), which is mostly ready-to-hand activity (coping, engaged action), we see that human beings are mostly "care" (Sorge), and that "care" is essentially temporal -- e.g., "anticipating" something involves feeling, desiring, and willing, and where we conceptualize "future." It's not only "thinking time," in the traditional sense of "thought" as logic, rules, and theory.

The common concept of "time" is thus grounded in our being, which is caring: "anticipation" can be thought of as the future, as something not yet happening.

There's much more to say about it, but this is a general outline. All of which can be supported with actual passages from Heidegger, and all of which is far more interesting and clear than your unlettered incoherence.

I guess I'm not getting the ball back. I'm not your enemy. I know what it is like to become addicted to Heidegger talk. It was like rehab getting out of it. And I was helped because I was all along pursuing a strain of thought of my own. If the book is getting in the way of thinking for yourself it's time to put the book aside. — Gary M Washburn

I don't consider you my enemy, nor do I treat Heidegger as ultimate truth. I have, however, made a genuine effort to understand his thinking -- as I have done with Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Chomsky, etc. I started this thread to discuss it with anyone who has done likewise. You have shown you're simply not one of them. I haven't said this very nicely, it's true -- but I'm not always a nice guy. So it bothers you that I say this, but it's still true -- so you instead project onto me that I'm a blind follower of Heidegger, as if in a cult. Makes it very easy to ignore the fact that you don't know the material. Creationists say the same thing to me when talking about evolution -- they make the claim that I've been brainwashed by Darwin. It's predictable and boring.

Either you've read Heidegger or you haven't. It's easy to bullshit in philosophy, but I give no quarter for it here: here, in this thread, you actually have to do some work. David Mo, who I obviously have little agreement with, has at least made the effort to read. You have not. And it shows. Simple as that. Spin it how you will to save face, I don't care.

I refused to read Heidegger for years because of his affiliation with the Nazi Party, but eventually decided to give Sartre enough credit to go ahead and read Being and Time and found that I actually kind of liked it.

I wonder about authenticity, though. I used to be sort of into Jean Baudrillard, but had later decided that there was no such thing as simulated experience. A person who pilots a flight simulation still has the experience of doing just that. Obviously, it differs from piloting an actual airplane, but the simulation of the flight is still an experience in its own right. That might seem somewhat obvious, but I think that it can become pertinent when you consider things like what I can only think to refer to as "fourth generation warfare". A person is capable of waging a war as if it were a simulation because they can establish a certain degree of emotional distance between how it is that they experience their form of combat and what it actually effects. What is the difference between the loss of one, one hundred, and one thousand people when a person can rely upon the cold analysis of engaging in war as if it were a game of computer Chess? I actually think that war has always kind of been waged as such. Men have always moved figures around on maps without any real understanding of what that effects on the ground. The semblance of simulation has always provided people with the requisite delusions to decide upon things like who lives and dies and how.

Conversely, however, authenticity would seem like an antidote to such "bad faith". I can't quite place what it is; there just seems to be something that is somehow aristocratic and Fascist to what he evokes, though. It's as if he thinks that most of the human experience is somehow "inauthentic". It's as if he somehow thinks that someone who purchased an around one-hundred and twenty dollar Fender mandolin isn't an authentic mandolin player because they don't own an old mandolin that they inherited from a wealthy family who had one made from a distinguished luthier. All of the human experience is authentic. A person can act in bad faith, but none of what they experience is any more or less genuine than what anyone else does. I don't think that explicitly states anything to the contrary in Being and Time, but I just kind of got the feeling that there was something all too, how do you say, "Baroque", to what he was implying. That could not really be there, though.

nevermind

Xtrix,

You're right, to Heidegger time is worthless. He is a classic proponent of inhumanism. His idea of “authenticity”: “anticipatory resoluteness”, “Being towards death”, “the unity of the totality of dasein's structural whole”, is entirely a matter of obviating the differing time is through us. We cannot be resolute in that differing because we are not in possession of its completing term. That completing term is not our resolving to be, but the worth our departure from being makes recognizable. When someone dies, we suddenly realize we cannot know our loss. There is no remembrancing it. And there is surely no anticipating even that minimal recognition by others of what worth our being brings to them even as we die. We cannot resolve to possess or even to let be what others become through us. Heidegger's “resoluteness” forecloses upon what others might otherwise become through us upon our departure. His “being towards death” isolates the “resolve” such that only some abstracted “Being” or “Bying” (or some such)—which, by the way, would be instantly recognizable to any Calvinist zealot!—could offer consolation to the human worth foreclosed upon by the structural unity of our “resolve”. That is, as I've been trying to knock some sense into you about all along, there is no structural unity to the momentousness of our participating in the dynamic growth of the terms of articulating what worth time is. Any resolve to be can only eviscerate that worth and deaden that articulation. The act of being is not resolve, but departure, and its completing term is the response, nothing of its own, in recognition of the worth of the departed. In this sense dying is the least aloneness we can ever achieve. But because we cannot prepossess the response, the completing term of our being recognition of the worth of the departed is, we cling to, or “resolve”, always to be. Is being better than nothing? What if there is something rather than nothing only because the only possible terms of articulating what worth time is is that clinging onto being that forecloses upon that worth? If so, reality is an experiment in vacuity meant to supply the setting for a recognition of an otherwise incomprehensible departure. Heidegger's “authenticity” is dedicated to that vacuity and to denying itself that worth.

You're right, not nice at all. But what bugs me is that there is no autonomous thinking applied, let alone any effort to digest what I am saying. It's a crushing bore to constantly have a third party interposed. I can't have it out with Heidegger himself, and I cannot get you to speak for yourself. I am not the one claiming to be the superior interpreter of Heidegger's words. I am trying to explain to you, not what he meant in his own terms, but why he was wrong in any terms. And to get you to speak, and think, in your own terms. It is a very dangerous thing to become a disciple to a dead text. The life of a faithful disciple, upon departure, leaves no residue.

Gurk,

I suggest you go back a bit. Sounds like you've been focusing on his later stuff, “after the Kehre”. But I would stay away from his “Introduction to Metaphysics”, and for goodness sake don't waste time on his “Rector's Address”. Maybe focus instead on his works on Parmenides and Heraclitus.

You might take a look a Herman Hesse's “Glass Bead Game”.

But I wonder why you say "perverted the question"
— Xtrix

The answer is in the very texts by Heidegger and his commentators that I have quoted here.
For example:

"The verb 'verfallen' is one which Heidegger will use many times. Though we shall usually translate it simply as 'fall', it has the connotation of deteriorating, collapsing, or falling down". (John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Being and Time, Oxford, Blackwell, 2001, p. 42, footnote). — David Mo

"Falling" has nothing to do with the question of being. This is out of context.

"Greek ontology and its history which, in their numerous filiations and distortions, determine the conceptual character of philosophy even today-prove that when Dasein understands either itself or Being in general, it does so in terms of the 'world', and that the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated [ verfallt] to a tradition in which it gets reduced to something self-evident -merely material for reworking". (Heidegger: B&T, p. 22/43)

If you don't like the word "degenerate," you can take "pervert" or " deteriorated". I don't see the difference. Anyway, the word "degenerate" is also used by Heidegger (Ibid, p. 36/61, for ex.). And "peverted" on a B&T quote I placed above.

Why does Heidegger say this? We should ask him. In my opinion, he wasn't clear. But in his words, it seems that substantialism is to blame for this degeneration, perversion, deterioration or fall. Because it turns the mystery of being into an intelligible "thing". And what is understood made it nervous. He was into mystery, poetry, fog and vagueness. —

Yes, the question has "deteriorated" and become reduced to something self-evident. "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." (B&T p. 43)

It's worth remembering what we're talking about:

Heidegger respected Aristotle and Kant - I am not so sure about Descartes - but he thought that they were part of a philosophical tradition that perverted the question of Being, which is the mother of all questions. — David Mo

But I wonder why you say "perverted the question" -- I think they've simply overlooked the question. — Xtrix

I stand by that. You'll not find Heidegger saying that these men "perverted" the question of being -- why? Because they never asked it or, better, they overlooked it. Take this example regarding Kant:

"There were two things that stood in his way: in the first place, he altogether neglected the problem of Being; and, in connection with this, he failed to provide an ontology with Dasein as its theme..." (p 45 B&T)

It's hard to pervert the question when it's become so concealed, so taken for granted, that it's no longer even asked.

"Instead of this, Kant took over Descartes' position quite dogmatically, notwithstanding all the essential respects in which he had gone beyond him." (p 45)

The question of the meaning of Being has been neglected and concealed since the inception of Western philosophy, which ended in Aristotle. Even in Aristotle it was becoming concealed and transforming from phusis to idea and ousia. This is the point. We can negatively judge all philosophy afterwards if we choose, but that's our business. No need to project it on to Heidegger -- he doesn't do this. He's simply pointing out that it's happened. He offers no interpretation himself, and if he did he would hardly call it the "correct" interpretation. Rather, he further points out that all interpretations in the Western tradition have inadvertently made their interpretations on the basis of temporality, which is what we are as human beings. Human beings -- our perspectives, values, interpretations, words -- is where all of this philosophizing comes out of. If we are temporal creatures, then it's fairly easy to see, once it's pointed out, that our understanding of what it means to "be" human, and what it means to "be" anything at all, is filtered through our temporal lens. Kant pointed this out in his own way. In the Western world, Heidegger argues, it's been especially from the "present" that Being gets interpreted -- ousia as parousia (constant presence). "Time" itself has been interpreted from temporality (experiential time, lived time) and has thus been likewise concealed in its phenomenological basis. But none of this has anything to do with accusations of perversion, "incorrectness," falsity, etc. It's simply one way that one group of human beings, 2500 years ago, interpreted the world. If in the present day we want to find new directions and new values, we have to shake off this tradition by recognizing this fact and thus opening new horizons for thinking.

We can negatively judge all philosophy afterwards if we choose, but that's our business. No need to project it on to Heidegger -- he doesn't do this. He's simply pointing out that it's happened. — Xtrix

You're dancing on a tightrope.

Your objections to my interpretation of Heidegger (by the way, this is the standard interpretation) are only based on words.
If you want to say that the concealment of the question of Being begins with Plato and Aristotle is not the same that they deteriorate the basic ontological questioning about Being; if you want to say that the failing of providing an ontology for the Dasein is not a fall of the very meaning of Being, you are concealing words with other words. And concealing is the opposite or truth, because unconcealing is aletheia, it is to say truth, in Heidegger's words.

If you want to say that Heidegger's words against metaphysical Western tradition (degenerated, deteriorate, concealing, dogmatic, etc.) are not negative I think we have different dictionaries. And so it is impossible any serious discussion.

Thinking is l'engagement by and for the truth of being. The history of Being is never past but stands ever before us; it sustains and defines every condition et situation humaine. In order to learn how to experience the aforementioned essence of thinking purely, and that means at the same time to carry it through, we must free ourselves from the technical interpretation of thinking. The beginnings of that interpretation reach back to Plato and Aristotle. They take thinking itself to be a techné, a process of deliberation in service to doing and making. — Heidegger: Letter on Humanism.

If getting rid of does not imply a negative evaluation, tell me which dictionary you use.
(And let's piously overlook the "original" statement that according to Plato true thinking is techné.)

If you are accusing me of saying that Heidegger's negative evaluation of Western metaphysics implies that nothing it says has any value, I would ask you to read what I write. That way we will not get into useless discussions because they are repetitive.

i wrote the following thinking this thread was done, so if it seems anachronous now, I'm sorry, but I wrote it out and it still seems cogent to me:

Xtrix,

My instructor was a recognized expert in Heidegger who conducted well attended seminars on him, and Plato, at a major eastern university. When her class tied itself in knots trying to work out what “Being” is she would sometimes forcefully pronounce that '“Being” is better than nothing!' But is it? In fact, she drove herself insane, and ultimately to an early grave, believing that, and reiterating it ever more forcefully. But aren't there times, admittedly rare and very painful times, when nothing is better than something? When “Being” just isn't worth it? If so, it takes courage, honesty, and a great deal of discipline to recognize this. To tell me you cannot see any meaning in my responses is not an argument against me. And it bespeaks an astonishing lack of interest in what you seem to be claiming to be deeply invested in. I understand that you initiated this thread, and expect a certain control over its conduct. But if that expectation extends to dismissing strong counter-views I can only conclude your interest is not as intense as you suppose. Socrates spent his life gainsaying every assertion that he faced. He did so, perhaps, with greater discipline and grace than I am able to bring to these discussions, but he also always conducted himself with a view to bringing his respondent to recognize the worth of not thinking and believing as he had. And never is there any demonstrable evidence he ever intended to supplant the other's view for his own. He had no “teaching”. Sometimes nothing simply is better that “Being”, and as painful as that is to recognize, the changes we undergo facing each other with the truth of this realization transforms all the terms of concourse such that even though we might despair of knowing what we mean, we come to share the terms of recognizing how much more worthy of us that despair is than repeated iterations of the same unbending view. This, by the way, is the subject of Hess's impressive book, and of all the other sources I have cited, which you seem to suppose have no bearing upon the question of the meaning of “Being”. Another resource is a movie called “Cloud Atlas”, in which rebels against oppressive regimes find themselves together over great stretches of time, never really successful in their own time, but ultimately more real and worthwhile together, though never meeting, than any of them is in their own time. Something like this is how recognizing that nothingness is sometimes is better than “Being”, and that our enjoining in recognizing this is much more worthy of us than asserting it can never mean anything, as Heidegger does.

So, if the above is to the point at all, "Being" is and can only be a kind of decadence. And the world is the circumstance and language of that decadence. The quotidian is endemic to "Being". There simply is no enduring what worth is. And so, "Being" always forecloses itself against it.

You're dancing on a tightrope.

Your objections to my interpretation of Heidegger (by the way, this is the standard interpretation) are only based on words. — David Mo

"Standard interpretation" to claim that Heidegger believes all of Western philosophy, excluding the preSocratic Greeks, are "wrong"? What can I say -- if that's true, so much for the "standard interpretation." Kind of a weak appeal to authority.

But yes, I am taking issue with words. I said so from the beginning. They're rather "nit-picky" but relevant nevertheless.

If you want to say that Heidegger's words against metaphysical Western tradition (degenerated, deteriorate, concealing, dogmatic, etc.) are not negative I think we have different dictionaries. And so it is impossible any serious discussion. — David Mo

Not different -- he just never applies it in the way you're saying. As I've gone over with you several times now, there's a distinction to be drawn between translations and the entirety of Western thought. He does not believe the latter is "wrong" -- but rather that an essential thing has been overlooked: that all of our various ways of interpreting being has been on the basis of the present -- and that perhaps it's time to go to the "things themselves" (the cry of phenomenology) by understanding and overthrowing this tradition.

Or maybe Heidegger thinks Plato and Aristotle and Descartes and Kant are all completely "wrong." Have it your way. But there's no evidence of it.

Thinking is l'engagement by and for the truth of being. The history of Being is never past but stands ever before us; it sustains and defines every condition et situation humaine. In order to learn how to experience the aforementioned essence of thinking purely, and that means at the same time to carry it through, we must free ourselves from the technical interpretation of thinking. The beginnings of that interpretation reach back to Plato and Aristotle. They take thinking itself to be a techné, a process of deliberation in service to doing and making. — Heidegger: Letter on Humanism.

Thank you for this. It says it better than I could have. I read it AFTER I wrote what I wrote above.

If getting rid of does not imply a negative evaluation, tell me which dictionary you use. — David Mo

He doesn't say "get rid of," he says we must "free ourselves" from an interpretation of thinking that "has its beginnings" in Plato and Aristotle. Just as we must about time. Just as we must about being. Just as we must about truth. Etc.

What dictionary are you using where this somehow becomes a negative judgment? Un-doing and un-learning what we've learned from a long tradition, in order to open new horizons of thinking, hardly means that what was learned is without merit or greatness. In fact Heidegger praises Kant, Hegel, Aristotle, etc., many many times. Odd for a bunch of wrong-headed people who have mislead us for so long, no?

If you are accusing me of saying that Heidegger's negative evaluation of Western metaphysics implies that nothing it says has any value, I would ask you to read what I write. — David Mo

I don't think you're saying that necessarily...but think about it: if they're all "wrong" in their interpretation of being and beings and of time, then what value do they have?

Doesn't matter though, because he isn't saying that in the first place.

My instructor was a recognized expert in Heidegger who conducted well attended seminars on him, and Plato, at a major eastern university. When her class tied itself in knots trying to work out what “Being” is she would sometimes forcefully pronounce that '“Being” is better than nothing!' But is it? — Gary M Washburn

I don't understand what "better" signifies here, nor what you mean by "being" and "nothing." So there's no way to talk about it. It's clear you're not using any of these terms in reference to Heidegger, since you've made clear you haven't read him and have no interested in doing so. So your own very free-thinking observations and questions look juvenile to me, in that context. It's good to ask those questions regardless, and I wish you well in your pursuit of them.

In fact, she drove herself insane, and ultimately to an early grave, believing that, and reiterating it ever more forcefully. But aren't there times, admittedly rare and very painful times, when nothing is better than something? When “Being” just isn't worth it? If so, it takes courage, honesty, and a great deal of discipline to recognize this. To tell me you cannot see any meaning in my responses is not an argument against me. And it bespeaks an astonishing lack of interest in what you seem to be claiming to be deeply invested in. I understand that you initiated this thread, and expect a certain control over its conduct. But if that expectation extends to dismissing strong counter-views I can only conclude your interest is not as intense as you suppose. — Gary M Washburn

Your writing is incoherent and completely off-topic and, thus, inappropriate. That's what I object to, first and foremost.

Now you seem to be equating "Being" with life, and asking if there aren't some times in life where death is better than life. That's been asked many times by many people, and it's a good question and an important one -- but that's completely irrelevant to this thread. Do you understand?

My interests in Heidegger and the question of being has nothing to do with what you're talking about. You're off in your own world. To flatter yourself by saying you offer "strong counter-views" should be embarrassing. You've not demonstrated the least bit of understanding of Heidegger, the topic of this thread, and have even gone on to say you have no interest in doing so. If you want to share your questions and views on various topics, you're welcome to. Why come here to do so? That's what I'm not seeing and what you're apparently not understanding.

This, by the way, is the subject of Hess's impressive book, and of all the other sources I have cited, which you seem to suppose have no bearing upon the question of the meaning of “Being”. Another resource is a movie called “Cloud Atlas”, in which rebels against oppressive regimes find themselves together over great stretches of time, never really successful in their own time, but ultimately more real and worthwhile together, though never meeting, than any of them is in their own time. Something like this is how recognizing that nothingness is sometimes is better than “Being”, and that our enjoining in recognizing this is much more worthy of us than asserting it can never mean anything, as Heidegger does. — Gary M Washburn

(1) Your use of "Being" is not that of Heidegger's. Heidegger in fact offers no interpretation whatsoever.
(2) Heidegger never, not once, claims that being "never means anything." That's a completely ridiculous statement, given that you've read him at all. But since you haven't, I suppose it's forgivable.
(3) "Being" is not synonymous with "life" or "consciousness," so why keep using it this way?

So, if the above is to the point at all, "Being" is and can only be a kind of decadence. And the world is the circumstance and language of that decadence. The quotidian is endemic to "Being". There simply is no enduring what worth is. And so, "Being" always forecloses itself against it. — Gary M Washburn

Complete gibberish.

"Being-there is being with a determinacy.. As reflected into itself in this it's determinacy, being-there is that which is there, something.. As a being-there and as a something, it is only a form of the something. It is as otherness." This sounds like Heidegger huh? It's Hegel

For Hegel, otherness of something is being-for-another. When non-Ego presents itself, being-for-another becomes the self relation of being-in-itself. Although he wasn't a philanthropist, I feel a spiritual core in Hegels work which seems lacking in Heidegger. Heidegger's world is like a spurious infinity with no mind in control of gears