From the final pages of Heidegger’s “The onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics”

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 11 May 2011 00:17.

The following is my offering - very brief - of Heidegger’s meaning at the very end of the second of the two lectures published under the title Identity and Difference. You may consider it of no consequence, for it has little to do with nationalism. But Heidegger does generally, and this is not as unconnected as it may appear. It is just a small digression from political thinking.

On page 72 of my copy of the Stambaugh translation Heidegger, having remarked upon the openness of god-less thinking to the divine, proceeds:

This remark may throw a little light on the path to which thinking is on its way, that thinking which accomplishes the step back, back out of metaphysics into the active essence of metaphysics, back out of the oblivion of the difference as such into the destiny of the withdrawing concealment of perdurance.

Thinking here does not mean the unending thought process of the intellectual faculty. It is broader than that. Heidegger seems to regard thinking more holistically, as the way the mind in general addresses the reality of the world beyond the human organism. Thus, the “path” or “way” he is talking about here is the procession of the mind from the ordinary conscious state which we all experience in life, and which is characterised by two things. The first is a state of self-segregation from the real, a state of loss or immersion à la Bacon in passing things (feelings, events, objects). The second is a state of “perdurance”, of fracture, of sundering to which we automatically ascribe the word “I”.

This ascription conceals our fractured estate, but in the process of advancement from our ordinary waking consciousness it falls away, and with it the states of fracture and immersion. And then the road is open, perhaps:

No one can know whether and when or where and how this step of thinking will develop into a proper (needed in appropriation) path and way and road-building. Instead, the rule of metaphysics may rather entrench itself, in the shape of modern technology with its developments rushing along boundlessly. Or, everything that results by way of the step back may merely be exploited and absorbed by metaphysics in its own way, as the result of representational thinking.

Thus the step back would itself remain unaccomplished, and the path which it opens and points out would remain untried.

So the step back is a gesture in the direction of a willed alteration of consciousness of a quality very different from that we know when we merely think about metaphysics. If it proceeds to a certain point ... if fracture “withdraws” ... an event of appropriation, a moment of self-possession, will occur, and do so in the nature of an unconcealment. The religionist may assert at this point that being itself, as the ground of identity, is giving or bestowing this wholly familiar and un-new identity ex nihilo. The faithless, however, would assert that the organism is merely functioning normally, and identity or consciousness or Dasein - however you want to angle your way into this - is in its proper relation to being-as-the-product-of-life. Take your pick, according to your constitution.

But now we have erred. For we are “absorbed by metaphysics ... as the result of representational thinking”, and the moment, and the thing itself, is lost. Thought kills.

Such reflections impose themselves easily, but they carry no weight compared with an entirely different difficulty through which the step back must pass.

That difficulty lies in language. Our Western languages are languages of metaphysical thinking, each in its own way. It must remain an open question whether the nature of Western languages is in itself marked with the exclusive brand of metaphysics, and thus marked permanently by onto-theo-logic, or whether these languages offer other possibilities of utterance - and that means at the same time of a telling silence.

Thought is substantially contained and constrained in language, and thinking is really only the functioning of the intellect as it models in the clay of language what exists before it. Language, meanwhile, is constrained creatively by the character and capacities of its founder population and of the people who later speak it. For example, it is quite difficult for Europeans to think of identity and being without seeing the latter as ground for the former. But Heidegger characterises the possibility that such thoughts come with the linguistic cornflakes as “an open question”.

If they do, then the step back is also contained and constrained by language. Nothing pure and absolutely true in itself could be arrived at. Or if it could, it is past the very limit of effectiveness of thinking. What rare utterance can thinking possibly make when it is detached and brought into balance with one or both of the other perceptual mind functions, and the end of the “path” or “way” is reached? Well, revelatory myth perhaps, or symbology. But we are somewhere else now, and of the life that was before, and which will always return, there is “only” the crystalline silence the new utterance fills.

Tags: The Ontology Project

Comments:

Posted by Desmond Jones on Thu, 12 May 2011 08:20 | #

The second is a state of “perdurance”, of fracture, of sundering to which we automatically ascribe the word “I”.

Is this also not the result of representational or analogous thinking?

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 12 May 2011 12:20 | #

Desmond,

Like you, I incline to the psychological in my thinking, and that does give a more practical and immediate point of vantage than Heidegger’s elevated philosophical view, and value imputations which are absent from his thinking (though they are not so absent in Being and Time).

In consequence, I am qualifying “perdurance” with a negative value. What matters to me is not the continuity - not the fact that we continue to ascribe “I” to every moment of our inner life - but the discontinuity which is a permanent flaw in human functioning, and which has, in our times, serious implications for collective survival. But Heidegger, who is concerned throughout this lecture with causa sui, the name of the god of philosophy, only saw a quite neutral and enduring bridging process and a necessary and active component of the dynamics of the “onto-theo-logical constitution”.

So, a few paragraphs before the first one I quoted in the log entry he says:

Because the thinking of metaphysics remains involved in the difference which as such is unthought, metaphysics is both ontology and theology in a unified way, by virtue of the unifying unity of perdurance.

The onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics stems from the prevalence of that difference which keeps Being as the ground, and beings as what is grounded and what gives account, apart from and related to each other; and by this keeping, perdurance is achieved.

And a little later he says:

The insight into the onto-theological constitution of metaphysics shows a possible way to answer the question, “How does the deity enter into philosophy?,” in terms of the essence of metaphysics.

The deity enters into philosophy through the perdurance of which we think at first as the approach to the active nature of the difference between Being and beings. The difference constitutes the ground plan in the structure of the essence of metaphysics. The perdurance results in and gives Being as the generative ground.

So this is a supremely religious statement. He does not say so, but it is but a short step of faith to name perdurance, difference and ground as the Trinity.

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:17 | #

In all this talk about the Continental and esp phenomenological tradition - a tradition which rather spectacularly lends itself to verbal misuse/abuse - how about commenters just taking a moment to list exactly which original works by the authors they are discussing they have actually read?

I gather GW has read Being and Time. Heidegger is notoriously difficult, even for professional philosophers (with many unsurprisingly thinking his thought more mole-hill than mountain). Which interpreters of Heidegger have any of you read? What are the titles of their works? Persons here have the frequent effrontery to throw around Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer (can’t recall Schopenhauer or Bergson or Sartre or Ricoeur, though Lister mentions Merleau-Ponty), as though these thinkers have produced a relatively few, easily digestible works.

Moreover, to speak intelligently of most of these thinkers requires a considerable immersion in the works of all of them. Can one master Heidegger without Husserl, or Husserl without Brentano? Any post-Enlightenment thinker without a deep study first of Kant? Have you really studied Kant? Which works, and which interpreters?

I myself would not feel comfortable “using Heidegger” without a great deal more understanding of the broader history of Western philosophy than, to be honest, I’ve seen exhibited over the years at MR.

But I await to have my suspicions revealed as groundless.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:18 | #

Leon, your demand is quite legitimate in one way and totally off-base in another. Agreed, if one is to cite a litany of philosophers as though speaking for them, one should at least have read what they actually said. However, to imply, as clearly you have, that attempts to ‘“use Heidegger’ without a great deal more understanding of the broader history of Western philosophy than… exhibited over the years at MR” are basically illiterate gibberings of intellectual dilettantes, is to fall victim to a failure embedded in the culture of philosophy itself.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the foremost living phenomenologist is Robert Sokolowski and if I may appeal to his authority here, as you appeal to the authors of antiquity, he starts his introduction to his book “Introduction to Phenomenology” published in 2000 thus:

Introduction

ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF THE BOOK

The project of writing this book began in a conversation I had with Gian-Carlo Rota in the spring of 1996. He was then lecturing as visiting professor of mathematics and philosophy at The Catholic University of America.

Rota had often drawn attention to a difference between mathematicians and philosophers. Mathematicians, he said, tend to absorb the writings of their predecessors directly into their own work. They do not comment on the writings of earlier mathematicians, even if they have been very much influenced by them. They simply make use of the material that they find in the authors they read. When advances are made in mathematics, later thinkers condense the findings and move on. Few mathematicians study works from past centuries; compared with contemporary mathematics, such older writings seem to them almost like the work of children.

In philosophy, by contrast, classical works often become enshrined as objects of exegesis rather than resources to be exploited. Philosophers, Rota observed, tend not to ask, “Where do we go from here?” Instead, they inform us about the doctrines of major thinkers. They are prone to comment on earlier works rather than paraphrase them. Rota acknowledged the value of commentaries but thought that philosophers ought to do more. Besides offering exposition, they should abridge earlier writings and directly address issues, speaking in their own voice and incorporating into their own work what their predecessors have done. They should extract as well as annotate.

It was against this background that Rota said to me, after one of my classes, as we were having coffee in the cafeteria of the university’s Columbus School of Law, “You should write an introduction to phenomenology. Just write it. Don’t say what Husserl or Heidegger thought, just tell people what phenomenology is. No fancy title, call it an introduction to phenomenology.

This struck me as very good advice…

Although there are references to philosophers scattered throughout his book, Sokolowski rarely, if ever, resorts to arcane argot such as Husserl’s “Fundierung” preferring, instead, plain English words like “founding” and “founded” with appropriate context to refine meaning.

This sort of “populist” approach to philosophy is, of course, a grave insult to those who have poured over the texts of the ages and we should expect them to respond with commensurate scorn. Meanwhile, there is work to be done…