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Christian Romero-Perry
Fledgling
7 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1368 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 04 2012 : 05:32:24 AM
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That's what I take it to be, Christian: time—the time-space (10), our being-here, history, that great big historically extended here and now within which things show up—the event of unconcealment, truth. As Heidegger puts it in Being and Time:quote:
...Da-sein is the being of this "between." [According to the usual picture,] there are beings between which this between as such "is." The between is already understood [on this view] as the result of the convenientia [the Latin word means: coming together. –TKT] ] of two objectively present things. But this kind of approach always already splits the phenomenon [the phenomenon of the between –TKT] beforehand, and there is no prospect of ever again putting it back together from the fragments. Not only do we lack the "cement," even the "schema" [the allusion here is to Kant] according to which this joining together is to be accomplished has been split apart, or never as yet unveiled. What is...decisive is to avoid splitting the phenomenon beforehand, that is, to secure its positive phenomenal content. The fact that extensive and complicated preparations are necessary for this only shows that something...self-evident in the traditional treatment of the "problem of knowledge" was...distorted in many ways to the point of becoming invisible.
The being which is essentially constituted by being-in-the-world [i.e., the being Heidegger calls "being-here": Dasein. –TKT] is itself always its "there" [i.e., its "Da"—its "here," as I would translate this. –TKT]....
When we talk in a...figurative way about the lumen naturale in human being [the Latin is a medieval expression now usually associated with Descartes: the natural light. –TKT], we mean nothing other than the...structure of this being, the fact that it is in the mode of being its there. To say that it is "illuminated" means that it is cleared in itself as being-in-the-world, not by another being, but in such a way that it is itself the clearing. Only for a being thus existentially [constituted] do objectively present things become accessible in the light or concealed in darkness. By its very nature, Da-sein brings its there along with it. If it lacks its there, it is not only [in fact] not of this nature, but not at all a being. Da-sein [i.e., being-here—the being that is its here. –TKT] is its disclosure. (Being and Time, Joan Stambaugh, tr. [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996] 124-125, H. 132-133. All material in square brackets mine. And bear in mind that wherever Stambaugh has the word "there" in here translation, it's a translation of the word "Da," which I always prefer to translate as "here" in this context. –TKT)
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Christian Romero-Perry
Fledgling
7 Posts |
Posted - Apr 05 2012 : 1:27:25 PM
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This is very interesting, and at the same time very complex. I think I understand what this means but maybe I need some further clarification.
You had brought up the idea that the between is just like time-space and our being-here, but I stumbled when you mentioned history. Now maybe I'm having trouble with this simply because, as Heidegger puts it, I might have "approached it from the point of view of our everyday or scientific way of thinking and read it in that frame of mind" which might be what is puzzling me. Maybe it's because my concept of history is determined by my everyday or scientific way of interpreting that concept (where history has specific events and times in comparison to the whole of history), but let me try to put the between into the perspective that started shaping my interpretation of the concept once I read the term "history": Does this mean that the between itself is just one event, one stretch of an event? What I mean by "stretch of an event" is that it doesn't necessarily change; it is just the exposure to the event where we are capable of experiencing gainstands.
If this between is just one stretch, then is it even safe to call it time? If so, then this concept of time is different from our everyday or scientific concept of time or our everyday or scientific way of thinking about time, right? We wouldn't necessarily have to distinguish different instances of that event, it would just be one stretch of event?
[Very lightly edited to enhance readability -TT] |
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Amanda Marston
Moderator
12 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1368 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1368 Posts |
Posted - Apr 06 2012 : 09:15:58 AM
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Here's another thought that might be worth exploring. What Heidegger calls "the between" ("das Zwischen" in German) might, from another linguistic perspective, be fruitfully thought of as the interval.
First, this might capture at least part of what I suspect you may have in mind, Christian, in thinking that we ought, perhaps, to be thinking of the between as what you've called the "stretch of an event." I think that there can be no doubt that Heidegger thinks of the between as an event in some sense of the term. The phrase Heidegger uses at the end of the discussion in Subsection h of Section 7 that you highlighted, Amanda—the one that characterizes experience as "an intrinsically circular happening"—certainly suggests that we can see the between as an event, and it's an event that's most definitely capable of stretching from a beginning to an end in just the way that Heidegger thinks a history such as the history of the thing question, itself stretches from a beginning to an end. Recall this from the very early pages of The Question Concerning the Thing: "...history is actually a happening. We question historically if we ask what is still happening even if it seems to be over and done with. We ask what is still happening and whether we are still really equal to this happening so that it can now unfold itself for the first time" (23).
Second, the word "interval" applies as readily to a stretch of space as it does to a stretch or span (or "space") of time. Indeed, it originated as a word having to do with a certain space, namely the space "between the ramparts" in a walled-in city or castle—which makes it very similar to the sort of space we have in mind when we speak of a clearing in the forest—except, of course, for the fact that we don't think of clearings as being walled in by anything except the surrounding dark forest. Still....
And third, the theory of betweenness Sean makes reference to in some of his journal entries applies very nicely and very precisely to the spatial or temporal points contained within any given closed interval including closed intervals along spatial and temporal lines. |
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Amanda Marston
Moderator
12 Posts |
Posted - Apr 06 2012 : 11:33:47 AM
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| I just read Sean's journal entries and your comments, Tom, and I find this an extremely agreeable idea. I do agree with you that it may be many connections because we are constantly working in that "between," especially when relating to the "self and world." It seems that the connections do tend to be "twos" because they are often the relationship between the self and something, but I view each connection to each thing within the world specifically as being a separate connection. |
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Christian Romero-Perry
Fledgling
7 Posts |
Posted - Apr 10 2012 : 4:44:56 PM
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I also read Sean's journal entries; they were very helpful. I did read over the entries you recommended, Tom, but I also skipped ahead to another entry where he talks about the principle of sufficient reason as well as the I-principle. He goes on to talk about the open region as being "me" or "mine," and this makes sense with the entries in this thread as well as his own journal entries. I find it interesting to suggest a change in attributing "me or mine" to the open region. I want to tie this back to what you had mentioned earlier, Tom, about how history connects to the between as a happening. This really helped me understand this from the point of view of a very different approach, and I like it.
That being said, what if for the open region instead of assigning subjective connotations to the experience of an open region (me, mine), we think of the open region as "ours," and not "mine"? I know I brought this up at the end of the last class but maybe we can expand on it here a bit more. There is also a journal entry I posted on the distinctions we were making between the two conceptions of "being here" for those of you who would like to refresh your memory.
[Very lightly edited to enhance readability -TT] |
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The Between
