loyalty and love

been years, i subscribed to the newspaper "faith" and in particular the section philosophy and religion. i kept my faith thanks to the newspaper, even though i lost my credit in this society.

so i turn back to myself and wonder how it happens that i am less loyal than i should be. wether that is so irrelevant, it's more the feeling - or is it to know for sure in my conscience - that i have of myself as a good catholic?

that newspaper provokes to reflexion anyway. well take the word loyalty. of course it is true that the word faith itself symbolizes not much given the fact that the word faith is almost always associated with "until death" and "forever".

so faith by itself seems to be insufficient and meaningless. it is only that it gets its meaning after a long period of time. loyalty has yet to be proven and therefore it has no identity as such and therefore may have no name (cv)

furthermore, the word is always used in combination with "sincerity" and " to swear". faith is not credible if one not swears and the epithet is certainly not a true ornans and denigrates the ordinary or common allegiance to something sneaky.

as a pronoun, a pronoun, a word that stands for something, not least because this word has a solemnity, a prominent word. also the word has something of the almost inaccessible, it is almost impossible.

as a noun, not a word with a name (famous) but certainly a word that can exist independently on its own say. fidelity as marriage, a true alliance of the marriage. so-called marriages on the contrary .. etc.

anecdotal one could philosophy about the gender of the words, because faith can be male or female, "echt" is male and marriage is neuter. it could be related to houwendatlijck? (lick or lijck = dance alternatively: beat that corps ;)-

remarkable is the implicit question of doubt using the word wedding. after all, who can this cruel task to bring a good end? it is something which has not yet been proven and what still needs to be.

it has no right to exist in the present. without perseverance, faith has no meaning. the society seeks to benefit by declaring faith to real marriage ("echt"). by this alone the marriage is penalized. an extra burden as it were.

faith is therefore most probably only virtual, not least because it is sanctioned by church and state. it causes unnecessary continuous human suffering because the target hardly can be achieved here on earth.

remember: he who marries does well, but he who does not marry does better! and don’t blame in god's name no allegiance to a dog. it's bad enough that the word is used by pigs, who think they are human.

the forecastle

i just want to dwell on the word solemn. it may be the least surprising that this word cees verhoeven counts it as one of his beloved words. he tastes in this word a little too much of a good: a solemn and stately, and thus the word would have something typically nineteenth-century student-irony.

the components fore-deck and stately form a pleonasm (not a neoplasm), which solemnly accompanied by serious matters such as social and religious events e.g. installing an office, a royal celebration, a birth, a communion party, a wedding, a priest ordained and at last but not least, a funeral or a burial, and especially not to mention the related assumption, which is almost self-evident duty to look up devoutly.

solemnly implies that one is obligated to something almost an complot. it also implies a moral responsibility to respect the moral obligation. the behavior shown more or less official ceremony also named in the format required to be cast, based on the morals or mores. remarkable that the expression "i will teach you morals" has an pejorative undertone. i recall an old dutch word almost gone "plechtelijk" or in solemn manner.

it has something to do with stately, a formality or pontificallity, where a ceremony is common practice. it is stately in full regalia and with a serious face (in the fold) as it relates. a carried banner, a carried heir, a carried bier and in full ceremonial clothing. evidence of formal ratification of the higher hand, the state, while a discrimination is induced in the same time. after all, if the common people would walking in ceremony, there is no distinction anymore, which is worn.

surprising is that the writer not only speaks about the deck as a duty, but also the deck that noble portion of the front part of a vessel, which one can stand solemnly as a figurehead to look forward to the wide oceans. the forward deck or braid-work (= πλεκειν braids) is then best associated with the rig of the vessel. of course it could also be associated with common scum, but that's us. and this should be made a clean sweep.

locking the old year

closing the old year is something solemn, a ceremony where we first standstill by the events and achievements of the year, so it can ripe and age and finally locked. the past, we suffered, is gone forever and it seems almost indecent to look back on it. then there exists ceremonies, which are looking forward to the new year with ritual incantations such as good intentions, implying that the old year ended in the right way and with legal right.

of course it is also true that in the old year there has been much suffering and in the past year in particular, because this is the year, that needs to be locked, but one must not forget that positive images from negatives ones has been made. the latter should then be extracted and sublimated in the spells of the new year. hence the word "solemn" as a figurehead that stands majestically in front on the foredeck of the ship, that navigates new worlds and watery tears will the ship sail.

anti-philosophy

the nonsense of the question of the meaning of life.

it is possible that i am a simple mind, a peasant like a 'bauer' in german language. 'bauen' in german language also means constructive building. i am aware for longer time now that almost all philosophers are using such difficult words and language. this is particular true for heidegger.

i searched on the internet and i categorized everything, what is published until now about heidegger. the opinions of the other philosophers about heidegger are split. his 'tractata' are almost obscure for normal people and surely not a treat. because of that it is almost impossible that heidegger tells the truth about being. i call this logic by using common sense.

was it not heidegger, who called 'being' the most obscure word in ontic and ontology and that he for once would illuminate the darkness for ever (enlightment?). but by the use of his special words he created an uneasy language, uncomprehensible for normal persons, except for his adepts?

probably it is because of the nonsense he wrote about the meaning of being. philosophers use - as i call this - special words (neologisms) a 'language', a kind of code that starts with ontic, ontology, metaphysics, epistemology and ends by the so-called logic with the logic consequence a kind of 'wortsalat' (this for the unsane among us).

a painful remark is the following statement: assume that heidegger indeed is so intelligent and that he can be only understood by so-called other intelligent people, what is the gain for us common people? what is the meaning of that? ah, you want a formule: suppose that heidegger's intelligence occurs in 1:100.000 and that there are about 1.000.000.000 (1 miljard) intelligent people with a more than an average iq, than he would write for 10.000 special odd people in a world consisting of a population of 6.650.370.000 (6.7 miljard) humans.

by the way, why should heidegger succeed to solve the problem of the meaning of being, knowing that all previous (greek) and later philosophers failed to do so? and because i am a simple mind is my assumption the following: how more complicated the argumentation is, how further away from the truth, even so when 'true' truth doesn't exist. divida et impera by the game of words and special language.

in my opinion is a genuine philosopher great, who can explain us in simple words what the point is. for example my deceased friend cees verhoeven, who was capable to analyse and explain trivial things in a way that even a child could follow his reasoning.

it is only possible to understand the meaning of being from my-being in the world. when i am not there, there is even nothing, even not if there is something of nothing. ergo being is only of interest as long as i live. of cause it is possible to be of interest even when i am not there in place or time like after my death, but this is practical limited by the period that they live.

i am implicit myself in my world, but not only for myself. in this way i am explicit. this applies to my family, friends, and social contacts in my world. they all contribute to my self-perception and self-esteem. of course this vision is an egocentric one, but on the other hand is it difficult to experience my world from a vision of 'their' world, even when they have the same premisses.

this means that we are woven in a kind of social network, that is a part of my being in this world. in this social network we have our priorities and it is clear that direct environment like family has the highest priority followed by friends, social contacts and the rest of the outer-world, who is also mine. culture (but not cultivation) plays an important role because culture approaches the 'being' from inside spontaneously.

notwithstanding it is possible that i can make myself and others happy by sharing small gifts. i do not want to talk about ethics. ipso facto the meaning of my life is determinated by my being-in-the world and in addition by my social contacts in my world. the meaning of being, my being, is determinated by the time that i live. what more sense can there be than the meaning of my temporarily life on earth? not everybody is a 'mother-teresa'!

work on the meaning of your own life and don't let it depend on others, those charlatans, who call themselves philosophers and who tells you how the meaning of your being has to look like. they are too insane for normal words!

ps: even the antique greek philosophers were supported by the rich man, who doubted their existence from boredom. the subsidy, we think to acquire by reading philosophers, shall be payed by the esteem, that we think to gain.

heidegger

his view inverts the traditional priority of theory over practice. for him the theoretical view is artificial and comes from just looking at something without any involvement, such an experience is 'levelled off'. for heidegger this attitude is given the moniker, "present-at-hand" and it is parasitic upon our more fundamental mode of interaction, called "ready-to-hand". parasitic in the sense that in our history we must first have an attitude or mood toward the world before we can adopt a scientific or neutral attitude toward it. such a re-evaluation of science allows him to say, for example, that the friend caught sight of across the road is in fact closer than the street upon which one walks, that the voice on a phone is closer than the handpiece, that the glasses pushed back on your head, can be, when not found, considered as remote and far away.

two of his most basic neologisms, present-at-hand and ready-to-hand, are used to describe various attitudes toward to things in the world. for heidegger, such "attitudes" are prior to, i.e. more basic than, the various sciences of the individual items in the world. science itself is an attitude, one that attempts a kind neutral investigation. other related terms are also explained below. however, heidegger's overall analysis is quite involved, taking in a lot of the history of philosophy. see being and time for a description of his overall project, and to give some context to these technical terms.[1][2]

ready-to-hand (german: zuhanden, readiness-to-hand, handiness: zuhandenheit)

however, in almost all cases we are involved in the world in a much more ordinary, and more involved, way. we are usually doing things with a view to achieving something. take for example, a hammer: it is ready-to-hand; we use it without theorizing. in fact, if we were to look at it as present-at-hand, we might easily make a mistake. only when it breaks or something goes wrong might we see the hammer as present-at-hand, just lying there. even then however, it may be not fully present-to-hand, as it is now showing itself as something to be repaired or disposed, and therefore a part of the totality of our involvements.

importantly, the present-at-hand only emerges from the prior attitude in which we care about what is going on and we see the hammer in a context or world of equipment that is handy or remote, and that is there "in order to" do something. in this sense the ready-to-hand is primordial compared to that of the present-at-hand. the term primordial here does not imply some-thing primitive, but rather refers to heidegger's idea that being can only be understood through what is everyday and "close" to us. our everyday understanding of the world is necessarily essentially a part of any kind of scientific or theoretical studies of entities - the present-at-hand - might be. only by studying our "average-everyday" understanding of the world, as it is expressed in the totality of our relationships to the ready-to-hand entities of the world, can we lay appropriate bases for specific scientific investigations into specific entities within the world.

for heidegger in being and time this illustrates, in a very practical way, the way the present-at-hand, as a present in a "now" or a present eternally (as, for example, a scientific law or a platonic form), has come to dominate intellectual thought, especially since the enlightenment. to understand the question of being one must be careful not to fall into this levelling off, or forgetfulness of being, that has come to assail western thought since socrates, see the metaphysics of presence.

present-at-hand (german: vorhanden, presence-at-hand: vorhandenheit)

with the present-at-hand one has an attitude, in contrast to ready-to-hand, like that of a scientist or theorist, of merely looking at or observing something. in seeing an entity as present-at-hand, the beholder is concerned only with the bare facts of a thing or a concept, as they are present and in order to theorize about it. this way of seeing is disinterested in the concern it may hold for dasein, its history or usefulness. this attitude is often described as existing in neutral space without any particular mood or subjectivity. however, for heidegger, it is not completely disinterested or neutral. it has a mood, and is part of the metaphysics of presence that tends to level all things down, the destruktion (see above) of which heidegger sets out to accomplish.

presence-at-hand

is not the way things in the world are usually encountered, and it is only revealed as a deficient or secondary mode, eg, when a hammer breaks it loses its usefulness and appears as merely there, present-at-hand. when a thing is revealed as present-at-hand, it stands apart from any useful set of equipment but soon loses this mode of being present-to-hand and becomes something, for example, that must be repaired or replaced.

the worldliness of the world

in chapter 3 we saw that heidegger criticizes the idea of a self-contained subject directed toward an isolable object and proposes to redescribe intentionality as the ontic transcendence of a socially defined "subject" relating to a holistically defined "object," all on the background of a more originary transcendence.

then in chapter 4 we followed heidegger's attempt to do justice to the insights of the epistemo-logical tradition while avoiding its distortions by giving a detailed description of various modes of ontic transcendence from pure coping, to the thematically conscious practical subject, to the thematizing theoretical knower.

we saw how heidegger uses against traditional epistemology with its subject/object relation the ontological observation that our transparent ev­eryday way of coping with the available can be carried on inde­pendently of the emergence of a thematically conscious subject with mental content, which must then be related to an object. with all this in mind we can finally turn to heidegger's main concern in chapter iii--originary transcendence or the worldliness of the world. in describing the phenomenon of world heidegger seeks to get behind the kind of intentionality of subjects directed towards objects discussed and distorted by the tradition, and even behind the more basic intentionality of everyday coping, to the context or background, on the basis of which every kind of directedness takes place. against traditional ontology, heidegger will seek to show that all three ways of being we have considered--availableness, unavailableness, and currentness--presuppose the phenomenon of world (with its way of being, worldliness), which cannot be made intelligible in terms of any of these three. the description of the -88-

'seeing without observing' §16: 'the worldly character of the surrounding world making itself known in innerworldy beings' [72-76]

usually, in circumspect absorption, dasein is thematically unaware of the very thing he is using and its worldly quality remains quite hidden. however, there are certain modes of taking care that uncover it:

1. when equipment is missing it is not 'at hand' at all. what is at hand is then shown in a certain kind of mere objective presence: it 'obtrudes'. we stand, helpless before our task, and discover 'the being-just-present-at-hand-and-no-more of something ready-to-hand'.
2. things may get in the way and thereby exhibit 'obstinacy'. such unhandy things disturb us and make evident the objective presence of something that must be taken care of before anything else.

3 modes of concern reveal the objective presence of things through heedful circumspection, without recourse to the 'deficient' mode of only knowing. through

1. conspicuousness,

2. obtrusiveness,

3. obstinacy

we 'see' the world without merely 'observing' it. in each case 'the character of objective presence making itself known is still bound to the handiness of useful things'.

the structure of being of handy things has been shown to be determined by references (§15). references themselves are not seen but they become explicit when disrupted in one of the ways described above. then 'the context of the work, the whole 'workshop'' is uncovered 'as a totality that has continually been seen beforehand in our circumspection. but with this totality world makes itself known.'

the 'being-in-itself' of useful things is comprehensible only on the basis of the phenomenon of world. if things are divorced from their referential context then they can be only observed (as merely present-at-hand) and the 'in-itself' loses its ontological content. a thing only exhibits its being-in-itself when it is absorbed within its referential context which, in turn, must remain undisclosed and nonthematic for circumspection. it is precisely when the world does not make itself known, when the ready-to-hand 'holds itself in', that an innerworldly being exhibits its 'being-in-itself'.

so: 'being-in-the-world signifies the unthematic, circumspect absorption in the references constitu-tive for the handiness of the totality

heidegger's world view is unfamiliar and difficult to understand. it is, in truth, profoundly different to the prevailing western view of what constitutes 'the world'. this digression is an informal, simplistic addition to my brief commentary on §15-16. but before worldliness is laid bare, a few thoughts about some of the key terms in heidegger's esoteric vocabulary...

circumspection

looking at this website and finding your way around it is not a theoretical exercise. certainly its content is largely theoretical, but actually reading it and jumping from page to page is a practical activity about which you hardly think at all. this unthinking way of doing things is the way we all relate to the world most of the time. unthinking, but with an end in sight. this is heidegger's 'heedful circumspection'.

handiness

in §15 heidegger spells out what 'handiness' means. useful things are always interconnected by innumerable 'references', and this whole complex web is necessarily known in advance of any single item in it. indeed, an object can only show up because it makes sense within this larger whole.

so, consider the computer on which you are viewing these words. as you read them you implicitly recognise (though almost certainly fail to think about) the following:

1. the 'equipmental totality' into which the computer fits - the screen, the power source, the keys beneath your fingertips, and so on.

2. the 'work' - that is the reason you're using the computer: presumably in this case to find out what i think 'being and time' is all about and so understand this puzzling book a bit better... or, if you're familiar with the text, to pass judgement on my efforts to understand it.

3. 'nature' - the source of the materials from which your computer's components have been fashioned.

4. the 'public world' - in this case the world of the web, a hugely collaborative, public construct made possible only by the numerous people who create and sustain it.

5. the 'surrounding world of nature' - not a very obvious reference in the case of a computer perhaps, but heidegger's sketchy mention of 'clock equipment' certainly applies in some fashion.

these five headings (which are by no means of equal importance in heidegger's analysis) gather together the myriad 'references' that make any piece of equipment usable. this is the way things are 'in themselves', heidegger maintains. first and foremost things are 'ready-to-hand' or, in other words, useful and used.

at first sight this description of the way things fit together seems unexceptional but it is the claim that practical engagement with useful things is more fundamental than any detached observation of the world that is so startling. it really does turn things on their head.

merely looking

heidegger does not deny that detached observation of worldly objects is possible. how could he? but he will not grant this objective view the privileged status that it is popularly accorded. if, in a moment of curiosity, you consider the way your computer actually works heidegger says that you are dealing with it in a 'deficient' way. you are merely looking at it rather than using it and have, in effect, removed it from the world.

looking or using: which comes first?

so we can look at things or use them. there are two contadictory accounts of this fact:

1. using things as equipment is possible because we first observe them disinterestedly as objects and then add our meanings and intentions

2. observing things as mere objects is possible only because we first use them (and that without consciously doing so).

the first option would be the popular choice but it is the second that is heidegger's. he maintains that a detached, objective view of the world is not fundamental and is, in fact, made possible only on the basis of everyday, background, practical coping. in turn both ways for objects to be (used or observed) is dependent on a third way of being, namely 'existing', which is the way of being for people. the world, for heidegger, is not a repository of objects, amongst which humans are to be counted. rather, a correct understanding of the world must accommodate the way things actually are and, as part of this, it must incorporate the distinctively human way to be from the outset.

disruption

so things are truly themselves when they fail to show up. you are understanding your computer best when you view this or any other file and fail to notice the machine at all (which happens most of the time). but doesn't that render an analysis of the content of heidegger's world impossible? either you observe things objectively and fail to see them as they truly are or you use them as they are 'in themselves' but then they are, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

fortunately there are circumstances when the world, in heidegger's sense, becomes visible. when equipment is unusable, missing or in the way - and its use thereby disrupted - things and their reference relations are shown forth in the midst of our heedful circumspection. so if you were to grow frustrated by the incorrectly displayed sign at the beginning of §15 of this site and try to put it right by refreshing the page you would 'see' the presence of an item in the world (the sign) without merely looking at it. and as you saw it just 'lying there' not doing what it should, its links with its whole context would become apparent and the reference structure of the world would come into view. (i might have made this point more forcibly by having my website deliver some horribly destructive virus to your machine. then you would experience a disruption that you simply could not overlook and the objective-presence-in-the-midst-of-handiness that shows forth the world would be all too obvious. but i don't know how to do that, and you wouldn't thank me if i did.)

heidegger is here hinting towards the supposed 'theoretical' posture of traditional ontology: being a part of the world in the way he has portrayed, how can we know about it? such a practical familiarity with things at hand, for heidegger, is not a situation from which to flee theoretically as the platonic tradition does (to gain an imagined perspective of critical distance, an 'ideal' to posit as prior to the 'real'); it is not a limitation, but is rather an advantage: possibilities are open to da-sein as being-in-the-world that simply are not for the 'subjective self' or 'spirit' of the traditional view. being and time , dreyfus notes, " is supposed to make manifest what we are already familiar with [...] and in so doing to modify our understanding of ourselves and so transform our very way of being" (dreyfus, 8).

human beings implicitly understand the totality of worldliness in our effectual relations with it, in heidegger's view, and yet, when "the constitutive reference of the in-order-to to a what-for [the referential process of average understanding] has been disturbed" (bt, 70), the possibility of encountering an isolated thing "in a 'new' way, as something objectively present" (bt, 330) becomes plausible. this is an interesting and somewhat perplexing theoretical move on heidegger's part, for, at least traditionally, 'objectively present' things in isolation combine to form the aggregate whole of the world. heidegger's metonymic interpretation, on the other hand (placing the totality of at-handedness in prior relation to objective presence), operates as a reversal, a retrieve to reconfigure the fallacious assumptions of the historical development of ontology. "to expose what is merely [plainly, clearly] objectively present, cognition must first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of" (67). and this penetration becomes possible when the routine functioning of useful things is disturbed:

the modes of conspicuousness [an 'unhandy' thing, eg. when a hammer breaks], obtrusiveness [not 'at hand' at all, eg. when the hammer is lost], and obstinacy [when something is in the way, 'at hand' yet not needed] have the function of bringing to the fore the character of objective presence in what is at hand. what is at hand is not thereby observed and stared at simply as something objectively present. the character of objective presence making itself known is still bound to the handiness of useful things. [...] in its conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy, what is at hand loses its character of handiness in a certain sense. but this handiness is itself understood, although not thematically, in associating with what is at hand. it does not just disappear, but bids farewell, so to speak, in the conspicu-ousness of what is unusable. handiness shows itself once more again, and precisely in doing so the worldly character of what is at hand shows itself, too (bt 69).

heidegger, here concerned with the ontological possibilities that become manifest in the fleeting perspectival transformation from handiness to objective presence (emergent from such a three-fold rather, it is paradoxically a positive or pro-jective interpretive activity in which thinking ( theoria ) is doing-in-the-word ( praxis ). it is [...] praxis that always already destroys the reified determinations (the re-presentations) inscribed in the subject by metaphysics (and its linguistic, cultural, and political elaborations) and simultaneously discloses the understanding's radical and multisituated temporality (spanos 107)

heidegger employs the hammer in his formulation of da-sein as being-in-the-world (as always intimately engaged in a practical affiliation with things at hand -- a posture to which theore-tical circumspection invariably returns), as exemplary of the interpretive fore-structure of practicality. prying apart the traditional (platonic) idealized abstraction of theory with his own theoretical "destructuring" (bt 20), heidegger's thinking is a doing. the matter is of methodological concern -- heidegger does not claim that practical circumspection is superior to the theoretical, but only that the philosophical tradition has covered up its inception and progress as always engaged in the practical. hammering is a striking example of this simple recasting of the tradition's history: as an initially atheoretical engagement in activity, the act of hammering can certainly be theorized, but -- lest one strike one's thumb -- it is probably better off approached, and left, as praxis. originally a chaos of ideas. the ideas that were consistent with one another remained, the greater number perished--and are perishing (wp 508, 276). inconsistent and variously enacted, there is hammering in the texts of twilight of the idols and being and time. without a hammerer, a subjective substratum theoretically affixed to the act, much noise is made. "it is usually assumed that the hammer with which nietzsche philosophized was a sledge hammer" (112), speculates kaufmann: nietzsche forcefully sounds out traditional ideals in his emphatic revaluation. aptly complimenting his task of destructuring, heidegger proposes the hammer as a salient example of what is at-hand: heidegger pries and wrenches with historic distinctions in his postural revolution. in the very elocutionary construction, the written enactment , of their thinking, both nietzsche and potential disruptive breakdown of everyday worldliness), does not seek to posit the two postures of awareness in a hypothetical hierarchy.

'theoretical' understanding, which apprehends the objective presence of things, is no more than ontically secondary to the (apparently) more 'practical' understanding already implicated in being-in-the-world. the two postures are in fact not essentially different; each reverting to the other, they are themselves mutually interdependent. as franco volpi notes in "dasein as praxis ," "heidegger becomes convinced that theoria is only one of the different possibilities and modalities of the uncovering attitude of poieses or that of praxis by means of which too man is related to being and apprehends it" (volpi 40). emergent from the " disruption of reference " (bt 70) between entities in the totality of worldliness (when a hammer breaks, is lost, or is in the way), it is when the referential structure of the interconnected relevance of entities to each other and their environs is interrupted, that possibilities for da-sein to alter its comportment towards being arise -- anywhere from the practically theoretical to the theoretically practical (to conflate traditional distinctions). [3]

'practical' behaviour is not 'atheoretical' in the sense of a lack of seeing, and the difference between it and theoretical behaviour lies not only in the fact that on the one hand we observe and on the other we act , and that action must apply theoretical cognition if it is not to remain blind. rather, observation is a kind of taking care just as primordially as action has its own kind of seeing. (bt 65)

theory and praxis do not stand in binary opposition in heidegger's analysis of being (and time). they are not two categorically distinct ways of "circumspection" (bt 328), of "just-looking-around" (bt 327), of being-in-the-world. the thoughts of a carpenter, engaged in the practice of building, are certainly geared to praxis, just as the tools of an academic are employed in the labour of theory; and yet, as circumspection, both "move in the relevant relations of the context of useful things at hand" (bt, 328). both are postural, practical possibilities of da-sein's being-in-the-world -- "just as praxis has its own specific sight ('theory'), theoretical investigation is not without its own praxis" (327-328). by never positing a 'self,' "a 'theoretical subject,' and then [complementing] it 'on the practical side' with an additional 'ethic'" (bt, 291), the mistaken path of traditional epistemology in heidegger's view; but by starting out instead with the analysis of being-in-the-world (that i have cursorily sketched), heidegger is able to do away with the theory/praxis dualism which has perpetuated many of the tradition's (pseudo) 'philosophical problems.' thinking, philosophy, in heidegger's destructuring formulation, to the extent that it is an authentic comportment of da-sein, is praxis. thrown into the world as we are, always projectively interpreting and articulating our (pre-) understanding, da-sein is at once a doing being, practically engaged in-the-world, no matter what it is presently occupied with. heidegger's "destruction is not, therefore, a nihilistic activity of thought," writes spanos adeptly in heidegger and criticism: heidegger emphasize hearing -- sounding and attunement respectively -- over the traditional philosophic accentuation of the sensory primacy of sight. this move epitomizes their divergent endeavours to re-tune thought with chaos, hammer with hammering, theory with praxis. both demand to be heard -- hammered in.

notes

1. both nietzsche and heidegger expound upon the designation 'chaos' in great detail, and there is not here room for an in-depth explication of the term. for present purposes, it will suffice to refer 'chaos' to nietzsche's conception of heraclitean 'world-play,' to "the fluid and unbounded power of life" (granier, 198). chaos, writes heidegger, "means 'the gaping'; it points to the direction of a measureless, supportless, and groundless yawning open, [...] chaos means not only what is unordered but also entanglement in confusion, the jumble of something in shambles. [...] chaos also always means some kind of 'motion'" ( nietzsche : vol. 3 , 77). chaos here is a non-abstracted experience with the world as a never static flux of 'becoming.'

2. significantly, nietzsche is here making use of conventional metaphorical constructs of the indo-european language tradition -- now architectural (spacial) metaphors -- to such an extreme that they become refreshingly innovative. as alan schrift notes, "this reiteration of metaphor emerges [...] as a concrete illustration of the praxis of nietzschean transvaluation: within his strategic rehabilitation of the tradition's metaphors, the values implicit in these traditional metaphors are revalued" (93). form and content fuse in nietzsche's style so effectively that it appears his aphorisms, often allegorical, are literally penned with a hammer.

3. further due to such breakdowns, the "fore-structure" (bt, 143) of interpretation can reflexively apprehend the "as-structure" (bt 329) of beings in the world: here, the possibility arises for the hammer to be revealed as the hammer itself, without reference to the totality of the "work-world" (bt 323). there is not here room for further explication of this possibility of da-sein's relational being-in-the-world. how heidegger employs the exemplary hammer in his discussion of the 'as-structure' -- "the existential- hermeneutical 'as' in distinction from the apophantical 'as' of the statement" (bt 148) -- is a topic for another inquiry.

leucippus

leucippus and the existence (of the atom corpuscules):

being/existence has always bin the greatest mystery for any philosopher whatsoever. it is maybe understanding the being is far to complicated for simple minds as humans. my suggestion is to apply, what leucippus learned us in the past: being or existence is nothing more than build up in levels by small undivisible particles. these particles are interacting and grouped in layers (2n² for electrons). atoms become molecules and are layered in rasters to build up a material.

together they form only a thiny small part of the total being like sensations and feelings, observations modified by the activity and interpretation of our brain and mind: the interactions between levels of conciousness or awareness preparing for certain actions and interactions, mostly intentionally for goalseeking purposes, mostly because some actions and interactions are not always understood (totally).

in addition to that communication is not one of the best qualities of opinionated human beings. communication is also build up in several layers as the digital level (the data like the spoken and written word) and the analogue level (the accompanied behaviour, like look, gaze, posture and gestures). the digital and analogue level maybe concordant or discordant. a confusion of tongues almost a veritable tower of babel.

this process i like to rename as: gaining beingness without borders by following the formule of 2n². it is like universe expanding in time without space limits. by reaching a higher level, the possibilities are exponential multiplied and so maybe it: it is impossible to understand what being really is. you may compare it with the nuclear fusion in an atombom. when it implodes nothing is there anymore and that's exactly the ultimate being.

timeless

life before death is so contemporary, even when you start with the big bang and not with the big bang of your parents to create you. and even when the universe is almost endless in time - a conception that is human made - still there remains the question what was before the big bang or even after the universe ends in a black hole.

the latter uses also the time-scale, because we are humans. and because we don't know the answer we created a god or a holyness in our mind, to cope with the fact that we might be wrong. this is the most original and fundamental defense-mechanism. i am a sober person and will call it ostrich policy. but maybe i am also a owl or a goose, so one can say i am almost a holy blessed trinity.

hole in my space

now we have to stand still by the word place and space. an object is a space occupying entity, defined by fysical parameters as length width height area volume and weight and other characteristics as from appearance material temperature radiation velocity motion gravidity and attraction. also other parameters as chemical and biological ones.

also there can be a non-physical object such as a object in mind with or without a relation to a real object in the outside world, occupying only place and space in my mind if there is any to occupy at all. maybe there is no place needed but only an imaginary one, like for the object itself as i explained beneath in object_ively (analogon).

slowly it becomes clear that an object needs place in space to locate itself for an observer, a real place or maybe a less rational place such as only in mind or even an irrational place such as a not yet persisting parallel world in outer-space except for fantasy. that object itself maybe of material or immaterial concept, depending the purpose it serves.

bit by bit we came to a concept of a certain interdependent system, where there is an obvious connection between subject and object, attraction and attention, interpretation and working up, action and reaction, physical qualities and properties, time and dimension, cohesion and repulsion, velocity and acceleration and place in space.

the parallel world is an interesting concept and maybe it will become reality in near future by particle-accellerators or transformator-beamers or passing through wormholes. in fantasy it is possible by now and who knows in near future also. be faithful and let your thoughts beams into universe as morse-signs for strange alien worlds.

we made a premisse that subjects are living objects and that life is needed for exploration of new worlds. a death object suggests that it can not have the processes of a living subject. keep in mind that in ancient beliefs all objects have a soul or at least are attributed to them and that objects and subjects have their place in nature and universe.

in conclusion one may say that we all subjects and objects are interconnected in a strange world of ideas we create ourselfs for keeping selfsysteem up. this world may have all gradations from irreal to real, depending on the origin of the incentive, the creator of the idea and the goal aimed at. ask me, yes i believe in a warm hole in my space ;)

objectively said

as mentioned earlier by greek philosophists, we can’t trust our observations. looking for the truth, we have to analyse the input in our brains by an object. first thing to do is to define an object: a "thing" with certain characteristics, existing in reality or in our mind, that interacts with an observer with capacities of analysing formats.

for example when we look at an object, it has a certain relation in space and time. i walk around that object – a time consuming business – the relations to the surroundings will change and it seems that the object is in an other place, while being on the same place, it hasn't moved at all. thus the same object can interact with my observations in different ways.

i can gaze at the object in the mean time not seeing it, because my mind is not touched by the object itself at that very moment. there must be an attraction going out from the object itself, that captures my mind, so i can see it. it calls for attention. this is a necessory condition for observation and interaction between the object and the subject.

even, if i am elswhere and not seeing that certain object, i can imagine in my mind, that it is there. and of course it is there in my mind and it can even takes realistic forms, depending on the strenght and the polarity or attractiveness of my imaginationary force. let us look what for possibilities there are for this simple thought.

if this object is really there and in my mind, we call that observation. or is it only in my mind meaning existing in my mind and existing in reality but in an other place and time. we call that rememberance. or the object is not existing at all elsewhere. we call that fantasy. in all the forementioned possibilities the position of the observer must be a central one.

but what if you look at this phenomenon as a indirect observer? you can see the subject in relation to the object only if both are there and you can see both. but you can’t see what that subject is thinking and analysing about that object. you can only note certain interactions, wich on their turn may be delusional. strange isn't it?

what can we learn? reality doesn't exist for real, it is always only partial and sometimes delusional, because what we call reality serves a certain goal to fulfill. the same happens with truth. the truth doenn't exist, because there is only truth in certain objectives. reality and truth are abstractions and as such they exist only partional.

it is time any way

the time term in philosophy

as being humans we found out and use the word or term “time” as a conditional one, because we have need for scaling time in connection with our thoughts and feelings, emotions and intentions, our basic human elements of a short life-time (at least we think we have or is it at last?).

also we experience time as a “non-constant factor” by adding associative thinking and emotions to it. let me explain: some things or situations, especially the more unwanted ones, seems to last longer than the beloved ones in the same timespan. standstill-time and loosing time are the extremes.

this seems unlogical and depends on the point of view, from wich you departs. also you have to take in mind, that the definition of time is made by humans and therefore defined in a defective human way that may not suffice in “other“ situations such as contemplative or philosophical ones.

in an analytical way of thinking time can have more meanings such as total being - no time needed as being is always there -, or subsequential being – being in change-format for wich time might needed or not (definition depended) -, or being is certain time-formats as time is not independant from distance and space.

therefore we have to define and refine definition of time first. this is extremely difficult because time is or a dependent factor (of distance, space and a dimensional one) or time does not exist in an existential way and being is always there or not. that is the question. you could say that concious being is always there and non-conscious being also (in the same time and place).

it does’nt matter of the being is of “parallel or serial” quality, parallel in the same time or space, serial in consequential time or space, simply said the being there is independant of them. an other way of expression is to say that being per sé is continuously - changing or not is not a condition for being (in other words life or death) -.

for human beings this way of thinking is difficult to accept and therefore they use belief and hope as (e)scape-goating, not excepting the non-sense or the meaninglessness of the being here or the existence. it is not sufficient for them solely to be without goal. but the existence needs no aim, it is simply there. so enjoy being there.