On Being in Heidegger and Aristotle

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;170129 wrote:

I know that, man. Please don't mistake me for something I'm not. There is and there isn't any mind, Hegel, or hamburgers. I get it. I assure you. All is me. There is no me. There's not even any is. The way that can be told is not the true way, etc. etc. And of course there's also not any "be-ing."
But these sentences are as false as they are true. Words must bridge the gulf, especially in such a disembodied form. Of course you have written some great posts, so you are good at, D.
For real, man. I get it. There is no dismantling. There is no "there is no." Or as No-guy said "Ain't ain't" But surely you'll agree that one talks at times in the usual worldly way. And then one could argue that no one needs to dismantle anything, for there is nothing to be dismantled. But we are getting into territory that sounds mystical and potentially experienced as either absurd or condescending by other humans.
So there is something to be said for a more modest approach, that cannot be mistaken as condescending. After all, how many New Agers etc. are out there using words like "dismantle." And obviously you are not in their camp and neither am I. So that's why I have a certain aversion to any tone that talks at rather than to the other, or seems to. For all you know, I am a computer program, designed by an elf from Mars, and yet you tell me what I need to dismantle. See what I mean? Even if your heart is gold in this matter, your motive could be mistaken for silver or bronze....:flowers:

Reconstructo;

What if being 'mystical' is who you are and 'absurd' and 'condescending' is the 'social pressure' people use to control 'you'? What do you do then? Do you dedicate your life to making all of the 'micro adjustments' needed to make sure you get along with everybody and that people don't misinterpret you or do you stand on your own, in a clearing, and tell the 'world' to piss off?

The former never worked for me. What I need to say gets lost in all of the 'micro adjustments' and subsequently I lose being in touch with who I am, so I choose the latter. I have no control over being mistaken for gold, silver or bronze so I choose to stand in a clearing and let the cards fall where they may. For me anything else would be a coward's life.

Understand me/don't understand me, it doesn't matter; it's not me you're trying to understand. If this is absurd or condescending for you then I suggest you stop trying to manage me and exercise some personal management by not reading anything posted by Dasein.

Dasein (be-ing there)

@Dasein,

Dasein;170157 wrote:

Reconstructo;
The former never worked for me. What I need to say gets lost in all of the 'micro adjustments' and subsequently I lose being in touch with who I am, so I choose the latter. I have no control over being mistaken for gold, silver or bronze so I choose to stand in a clearing and let the cards fall where they may. For me anything else would be a coward's life.

Understand me/don't understand me, it doesn't matter; it's not me you're trying to understand. If this is absurd or condescending for you then I suggest you stop trying to manage me and exercise some personal management by not reading anything posted by Dasein.

Dasein (be-ing there)

I dig it, man. Who wants a cowards life? And yet this is an old old value, the notion of courage. And we both agree on this, even if we have different approaches. I try to see the variety of human perspective as a good thing, as the continuing possibility of mutual enrichment. Forgive me if you found me offensive. Perhaps I was awkwardly expressing my point. It's just that you have sometimes come off as condescending. And this is just a report from another person about that person's perception -- and not at all intended to be the definition of another human being. I view us all, all of us, as infinities. I think we want real community. Why else would we log on? We want to be heard and also to listen. We want to be respected and find those whom we can respect. I have enjoyed your insight on Heidegger and in general. I'm glad to have you on the forum.

You seem to take some offense, and yet surely you see how boldly you have criticized others? Why should you interpret my comments as management rather than honest communication? All I ask for in any dialogue is a little humanness, an openness to the other. In my opinion, all genuine dialogue is a leaning in, a suspension of belief as far as one's own views go and a suspension of disbelief as far as the other is concerned. In moderation of course, or we would all go mad.

:flowers:

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;

1) It is impossible for anybody to be 'condescending' to anybody else. It is possible that I am talking to you as an equal and you consider you to be less than I consider you to be, however, I will continue to tell it straight because I have no control over who you consider yourself to be.

2) It is impossible for anybody to 'offend' anybody else. I can get offended (I haven't), you can get offended, but nobody can offend you.

3) I find that when people take it upon themselves to consider me offensive or condescending it's because they 'looked in the mirror' saw their own 'magnificence', turned around and ran from themselves. This may or may not be true with you, only you know.

We have talked about "offensive' and 'condescending' before, I suggest you stop falling back on 'offensive' or 'condescending' as tools to attempt to get your own way.

In Martin Heidegger's book "What is Called Thinking" he refers to a distinction made by the ancient Greeks regarding thinking. Loosely translated the Greeks determined that 'thinking' was equivalent to "letting something lie there and taking it to heart".

Anything short of "letting something lie there and taking it to heart" is management or manipulation.

Why didn't you address the "What if being 'mystical' is who you are" part of my post? Why did you skip over that part? Is it too far outside of what you think you're capable of? Is it because you want to ignore the implications? Is it absurd?

And since we're being honest with each other I found your "All I ask for" paragraph to be a manipulative attempt that is beneath you.

I am reminded of Winston Churchill's response to a question about why he had a pet pig and not a dog or a cat. Churchill said something along the following. "Dogs are always looking for your approval, cats look down on us, and pigs don't care one way or the other."

Dasein (be-ing there) oink!

@longknowledge,

Man, you are so full of sh*t sometimes.:Glasses: We all are all killers, all saints, all fools, all geniuses. And we carry our little baskets full of metaphors. And yes there is a huge area of our experience that isn't lingual or conceptual, and yet it's difficult to refer to it, for (not so) obvious reasons. I don't mind the word "mystical" personally, but it has a bad smell for certain noses, so I have decided to do without it, for it is only a word. Our language is smoke and mirrors. We are all naked. We are all always dressed. These are all metaphors, metaphors, metaphors. And "metaphor" is a dead metaphor.

My view is that we are all already there, but sometimes forget to notice it. But this is just a sentence, dead letters. I don't mind being called manipulative. Of course I'm manipulative! Life is manipulative! But I measure the decency or indecency of my manipulation as well as I can by the response I get from other humans. And I am fortunate to have great relationships with others. And they've even gotten better since I resolved not to focus on conceptual differences, and remember how alike the human experience is for us all, so I assume, when it comes to sensation and more importantly emotion. A shared love for the shared world, and more importantly the love of one another, which includes a love of the self. I'll make a "mystical" statement that must be understood metaphorically, or it's bad philosophy, in my opinion. The self is the other is the self. But this is an ideal state of mind that we can only touch sometimes. Smile

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;

Like most people you have a very narrow corridor of accessibility. A "friend" can invest a lifetime looking for that narrow passageway only to find that when he gets to the end of the corridor the door is locked with a sign that says "You're not welcome here".

Instead of spending any more time on this I am going back to reading "Being & Time".

I have nothing more to contribute to you.

Dasein (be-ing there)

@Dasein,

Dasein;171320 wrote:

Reconstructo;

Like most people you have a very narrow corridor of accessibility. A "friend" can invest a lifetime looking for that narrow passageway only to find that when he gets to the end of the corridor the door is locked with a sign that says "You're not welcome here".

Instead of spending any more time on this I am going back to reading "Being & Time".

I have nothing more to contribute to you.

Dasein (be-ing there)

Books, books, books, books, books. We all love books. :flowers:

---------- Post added 05-31-2010 at 10:31 PM ----------

Back to the subject though, in case anyone still cares....

I suggest that we can look at two aspects of Being, and reduce them to lowest terms. On the one hand we have discrete conceptual being, and the most general being of all is Being. Being is one of those supreme abstractions that include any logical object. Any name, proper or general, is the name of a being. Justice is a being. Tim's hangnail is a being. Flux is a being. And that's an important one. We can think & talk of continuities, flux, etc., but our thoughts of these continuities are themselves discrete. I've suggested before that true actual infinity is a paradox, a round square. We can't think it. It points either nowhere, to the mystical (Cantor?), or to the non-rational.(Blake. ) The most general being is Being, and Being is just the most indeterminate being we can think of.

The other aspect of Being would be sensation and emotion. In this case, one should cross out the word Being after writing it, to remind oneself that words are only pointers in this case. Of course the shape and color of words is sensation, but their meaning belongs to the above irreducible aspect of experience and not to the other one, i.e. sensation and emotion.

We live the unity of concept and sensation/emotion, with is also the collision of the discrete and the continuous. Pi is a great symbol for this, because pi is an example of us trying to apply our discrete quantified concept to pure continuous spatial intuition.
Our mathematics unsurprising shows clearly the clash of the continuous and the discrete.

Space is continuous. Time is made of concept. Time is digital or quantified. Of course time is experienced as a continuity. But we cannot truly think or speak of this way.

Just my opinions. Thanks

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