Further clarifications with regards to Daesin

Postscript 2:
Understanding Daesin through Greek philosophy

In Blackwell Companions to Philosophy: A Companion to Heidegger: “Dasein: Thomas Sheehan”

This end see how we can understand Heidegger’s Daesin from Greek philosophers. I begin with Aristotle. Aristotle’s Ousiology is the study of the realness of whatever-is-real; the is-ness of whatever is, the being of whatever has being [BCPACH, Sheehan, pp. 194]. For Aristotle, anything that is real, if it is [emphasis added] and is something i.e. if it exists, has a form or essence. A being anything that “is-in-a-form” or “has-existence-with-essence.” Ousia (or being) is what makes something real. Ousia or being means existing in a form. Form is its ideal way of being or how it is supposed to be. There are two very subtle differences here that are crucial for Heidegger.

(1) athleo – “to contend” for a prize
(2) askeo “to continuously” work it out or work towards it (goal)

In Aristotle’s Ousia or Ousiology, the ‘human’ being who is not perfect teleion but imperfect a-teles is always working continuously towards his goal or his ideal form. He is in kinesis or continual movement towards perfection. Only God is perfect teleion or energeia in his finished form. ‘Human’ beings however, are always imperfect and always striving to becoming one’s form i.e. always in kinesis and can never reach stasis – a fully achieved self (like God).

Aristotle also considers God to be the higher ground and human ousia to be the ground or lower form of ousia. Aristotle thus explains ousia (being) and its to on – whatever is by a highest form of pure subsistent existing being (ipsum esse per se subsistens) like Aquinas in explaining the being ens by ens supremum. This is for Heidegger insufficient for it does not give an explanation to being itself.

For Aristotle, ‘being’ is to on (the real and realness of the real independent from the subject). Aristotle’s analysis is object focused. Heidegger’s object of interest is however the to par on or the to athles i.e. the meaningful and his formal focus is the meaningfulness of the meaningful i.e. the correlation between objects and their intentional constitution. The source of meaning for Heidegger is to be found in a lived context. When Heidegger refers to ‘being’ then, he does not refer to being as the Aristotelian being to on, but being (as phenomenologically reduced) to atheles.

(A) Comparing Aristotle and Heidegger:
Aristotle: ‘Being’ = being ‘to on’ – the real object out there
Heidegger: ‘Being’ = what is meaningfully present to paron within a human context.

(B) Heidegger
Anwesen (Being-as-prescence) – does not refer to a thing’s spatio temporal prescence ‘out there’ (Aristotelian). But a Heideggerian intepretation would be: (1) meaningful prescence in correlation with (2) the understanding of that meaning.

When Heidegger talks about ‘nearness’ it is not in terms of spatio temporal nearness but more about the significance. Hence if something is near to us, it means it is or can be present within our concerns.

Heidegger’s being is thus, being-as-meaning (Anwesen) and his task is to know what is the meaningfulness of this meaningful i.e. its nature. The focus is not the meaningful things but their meaningfulness (Anwesen of the Anwesendes). What is the meaningfulness of the meaningful?
For Heidegger, (1) because there is meaningfulness “a priori” (2) that is why there can be meaningfulness (3) that is why we can seek for a source cause or explanation of it – i.e. world analysis. That things are meaningful is hence always presumed in the background. The focus is on how and where things get their meaning, meaningfulness of and by itself (alethia in itself parousia in itself, das Sein selbst).

(A) Structure of meaningfulness

1) The World
a. World is a “place wherein” (das Worin) that focuses on humans beings live out their purposes and interests and “relations whereby” things within that realm get their meaning.
i. Is the total context – total range of human possibilities in terms of which anything within this context can have significance.
ii. Is thus, world=what-constitutes-meaning (to aletheuein)
iii. World=totality of all relational contexts
iv. World wherein (Das Worin) – i.e. the world as a place of our concerns. We live our lives for the sake of our purposes and own survival of being (Spinozistic line). The ultimate goal for the sake of which we live, the ultimate end is thus ourselves in the world.
v. World whereby (Das Woraufhin) – is thus i.e. things found in the world for us. We use them for our survival. Because of this, things in the world get their meaning (from us).
vi. Conclusion: World is the place wherein we are directed to our final goal and the set of relations that directs tools to tasks for the sake of that same final goal.

2) Distinction within meaningfulness
a. Meaningful thing: object – das Seiende
b. Meaning – Seiendheit
i. Meanings are constituted

3) World is being “das Sein” is a meaning-constitutive structure.
a. Das Sein World (Static intransitive): place of meaning
b. Das Sein World (Dynamic transitive): placing of things in meaning, the enworldling and contextualizing of them within a set of possibilities.
Being as (Static intransitive): indicates prescence of the being.
Being as (Dynamic transitive): indicates presenting of things by the being, the act of allowing them to be present.

These distinctions offered by Sheehan was a great help in understanding what Heidegger meant by “the open that opens things up (das da, das Offene).” Das da taken static-intransitively is the world simply writ large and “opened out” like an open field (die Gegend) – the world as an open field where everything is possible and all forms of meaningfulness occur. The second reading dynamically and transitively means the world (the open) that opens things up [emphasis added for an active doing act] for possible use and appropriation. “being open” indicates imperfection – the haven’t achieved telos (en-tel-echeia) – Aristotelian link see above. Hence, the world for Heidegger as a meaning-giving world is always open and never “closed” synonymous to human beings being always finite and incomplete and is always constituted in this world towards his own prescribed ends.

World Structure Analysis

1) The very process of making-sense is thus never complete i.e. it is always a partially synthesizing and never completely synthesizable task of the being. 2) Because, the world is “always open” and “always opening” and never complete. 2) is because 3) it is an arena of difference and tension, of in-between-ness and mediation. The world remember is an open meaning giving world. The world is the medium id quo of intelligibility or meaning relations. Meaningfulness requires mediation, connective relations and the world is that i.e. the medium that mediates (read dynamically) tools and tasks; subjects and predicates together i.e. it is where meaning and sense occurs.

2) The world is ordered to the final cause of human fulfillment but as Aristotle has laid it out, human beings are imperfect and the meaningfulness for human beings thus can never be in perfect unity with itself. It can never be complete. It is like an always ongoing race for humans. As such, the open world as a medium is always drawn out (Austrag), there is always a tension (polemos) between togetherness and apartness, unity and separation, synthesis and difference. The world is a “setting apart” Aus-einandersetzung, Gegen-setzung) that holds separated elements into a tentative unity of sense. The world is never complete and sense making is never complete either

3) The world is the free that frees things; the power that empowers them. Static-intransitively, ‘free’ means an open empty space and power is a reserve of untapped energy. Dynamic-Transitively, the “free” frees things within the world and power empowers their significance. The world remember, is the realm of relations between tools and their possible utility. Thus, the world as “free” (dynamic) or “freeing” must be understood as a sort of “liberating” i.e. world as liberating these tools from their just-thereness. It reveals their aptitude (Bewandtnis) for fulfilling this or that purpose. The world is not “the good” (Plato) but “the empowering” (Heidegger)

4) The world is the opening that clarifies things; the unfolding that lets them appear. Lichtung read static-intransitively is a window that lets light in. But dynamic-transitively, it is the opening that brings clarity to things in the room by letting light shine on them and show them as this or that.

The world is aletheia – unfolding of the world itself but dynamic-transitively it can be seen as unfolding of things (to aletheuein) by bringing them into meaning.

The world is phyesin or physis – arising or self emergence but dynamic-transitively, it is the birthing that brings things forth into the open, where they can appear as this or that.

(B) Source of meaningfulness

i.e. the arche of all forms of aletheia, the aitia of any mode of parousia, the Wesen of das Sein selbst – i.e. the thing in itself (?) What is the meaning-of-being and or the source of the world?

1) Movement as Being opened up and Coming into one’s own
a. Perfection
i. Not the Aristotelian top down kinesis or the attainment of the state of perfection telos i.e. having lack no part of what belongs to it by its essence. (en-tel-echeia being-wholly fulfilled) or (en-erg-eia being-a-finished-work). For Aristotle, the perfect is a finished work and hence at a rest point but the imperfect (human, beings) is always striving to fufill its essence. It participates in the goal to entirely posess it. But in participating or participation, it (means also) it never entirely possesses it. Participation without full possession occurs all the time. Human beings are deficient, a-teles, always still coming into its own. Movement is thus the state of becoming; becoming is the transition into being; becoming for? The sake of being. Hence there is a split-world. Either one is already itself i.e. telic, wholly present or erotic whereby the telos is still drawing the entity for self fufillment or for the good of its own being.

Heidegger’s Daesin as self-moving entity: Ontological condition of the Daesin: Circularity:

ii. The argument seems to be something like this: Human beings are imperfect. So his goal oriented process (his telos) is never complete. Yet it always wants to be fulfilled, to be his own to move to perfection. Man’s very being insofar as it is imperfect, so it always seek self fufillment. If so, His own telos is a mover for it actively moves and draws him towards his own desired fufillment. Daesin is hence self-moved. It’s motivation as its own mover is itself to fill its relative-absence from perfection and its erotic presence to perfection. From this, we can also conclude that the Daesin’s relative-absence is the source of (or for) its presence.

Sheehan thus concludes also that the Daesin’s ontological perfection and completeness is to be imperfect and incomplete, with no prospect of achieving an ideal perfection in the future. It is always frozen in its movedness [of] becoming… itself or fulfilled-self. It can never transcend itself into an ideal God-like state but it can be said to always be transcending itself. It has no further goal but itself. Ontologically, the Daesin is hence going no where. It is already where it is supposed to be i.e. as a finite incomplete being, its essence is always in a perpetual state of coming into its own. The Daesin’s perfection is thus, to be in imperfection or is imperfection.

In terms of knowing: For Aristotle, knowing is a matter of being one with the known (the prefect most knowledgeable, intelligible and meaningful). But human beings are imperfect and can never transcend its own mortal finitude to “meet God.” Thus, for the human being, the knower, knowing, the drive to know or to make sense of all things is one’s degree of presence to the relatively absent goal i.e. the degree that the relatively absent goal is present as [and and] desired. The Daesin is thus again moved by its own desire to make sense of things. How the Daesin comes to know? The Daesin cannot be in immediate relation to God (as explained above). So, it cannot know directly. It can only know, indirectly or mediately by boding what is knowable to itself through a matrix of mediating relationships in the world. They know and find meaning only to the degree they are discovered along with and within the world i.e. by bonding themselves to these mediating relationships in the world. Hence, Daesin makes sense of itself and of others by the way of the world [pp. 205].

Daesin’s circularity based on my above rigorous reconstruction of Sheehan’s arguments (and Heidegger)’s is then truly “the theory of prescence in the ontology of absence.” Its imperfect being engenders a dynamic transitive realm of meditative world relations. This can perhaps be crucial in explaining why there is always conflicting and newly emerging meanings of the world (note to self: this seems to be an even more fruitful and useful explanation then the Kantian teleological argument). Through trying to make sense of itself, to attempt with perpetually guaranteed failure, Daesin is always forced to come into its own and to connect itself with the open world of meditative relations to understand itself and hence, the “world” as we perceive it to be in its multi-coloured strands can be seen as Daesin’s efforts… The human that intends itself (through an inner core imperfection…and hence self-moving desire rooted in Aristotelian “essence”), engenders the world. This is why Sheehan writes that the Daesin Human Being is ontologically bivalent.

(a) it is a lack insofar as it is imperfect. This lack is also a longing, a desire and a belonging even if it is the case that there is no where and nothing to belong to, and no something else to long for and that the human being is always off-center, eccentric, a protention that is going nowhere.

(b) But insofar as it is perfect, Daesin also has presence, although a radically finite presence. The Daesin thus is not a unity but parts outside of parts (I take this for now to be just that it is because Daesin is just a being in relation to the manifold possible meditative relations open up to it by the world). The Daesin is not self coincident (I take this to be self-coincident with the “outside world”) but distended (stretched from inside literally but more holistically, I understand this to be self motivating source from “inside” propelling it). It is also not a pure mind (I take this to be not God for now) but a self-concerned body. Daesin is a self-concerned, distended, self-aware body that ultimately intends itself that always experience a tension of difference (?) and synthesis (It always seeks synthesis from the world-tools given to it.)

The Daesin is (a) opened up into openness (by its own desires) and (b) thereby comes into its own perfect-imperfection and (c) appears as the self-intending distended tension – that is, the world.
This constitutes the Ereignis – the unique ontological movement of the Daesin

(a) as drawn out and opened up by its imperfection, Daesin opens up the mediating realm that frees things from unintelligibility, the clearing that clarifies them, the unifying-of-difference that draws them into tentative aggregates of sense.
(b) This drawn out and opened up by its own imperfection, its always-having-come-into-its-own.
(c) Having always already come into its perfect imperfection, Daesin does not only appear as topos eidon – the place where meaning appears (In Aristotle: soul as the place of forms. De Anima, “thinking faculty thinks the forms in images. Soul is in a way all the things that exist […] objects of thought are in the forms that are perceived… [DA pp. 210]) BUT the eidos eidon (Aristotle: form of forms i.e. the intellect) the very appearing of appearance, the wellspring of meaning, the aitia (cause of) , arche (source of) and logos (reason for) the wonder of all wonders: that there is appearance at all, meaningfulness at all, “being” at all. Daesin is not only the source where meaning appears. Daesin = form of forms. Daesin is the very meaningfulness and appearance.

[…]

It does not matter whether one is (being is) “being thrown open” (Geworfensein) or “being drawn out into its own” (Ereignetsein). It is both.

Our motivation is ourselves. Sheehan describes this as “[because] we are in utter poverty…]. In fact, we cannot say we do it, but it is done unto us (there exist this naturally occurring desire-force at work) (This is what Foucault is against! A self motivating force? Source is found in some mystic human desire (back to Aristotle) That we do not know? It is in Kant’s eyes blasphemy. Looks like we have a split between the mystic [Nietzsche, Schopenahuer, Heidegger] vs the rationalist analytic trend)i.e. that we are moved by our perfect imperfection in such a way that world occurs. World occurs as an after-effect product of our self-striving. “This happens without being fully ourselves (we don’t act as full agencies – that we always assume we are and which always buttresses our source of action as “full agencies” with a stable substratum…) but rather because we have to become ourselves. We are pulled by our own self absence. (I think this is what Kant will call the faith of or in reason).

Thus, we are the opened up opening of meaning, the empowered empowering of sense, Always approaching but never arriving. We are as Stephen Daedalus puts it – “almosting it” we are always in Heraclitus’s word agchibasie – getting near without ever arriving. And the outcome is, meaningfulness.” [pp 207]

i.e. How does Daesin give meaning to the world? Heidegger answers: from itself. Why is there tentative aggregates of sense? Heidegger answers: because sense-making is a never ending process that all beings make. Hence we have many doxas or epistemes (science is just the one of them). Heidegger is as opposed to Kant then who says that knowledge is the transcendental categories + empirical data (from out there).

In Blackwell Companions to Philosophy: A Companion to Heidegger: “Carol J. White: Heidegger and the Greeks”

Carole White seems to suggest also that Heidegger is trying to put forth the notion of a primal world out there in which human’s activity “connects” with the world that gives it its tools or the multiplicity of mediating relations “to be connected to.” Which is why “[the world or even art] is a revealing of being in human activity…” [pp. 122].

Early Greeks

“what-is” must be seen as a whole. Greek work “on” is ambiguous. “on” is both participle and noun. It does 2 things simultaneously. 1) it refers to being as to be something which is and 2) it names something which is-? (concealed). Hence, ‘to be’ and ‘what-is’ is concealed. The riddle of being is kept.
Being is always thought about the being of what-is which “unconcealed itself” to them.
(1) Thales
“It’s all water” “It’s the opposites at war” the what is (it) is never distinguished from the water or the war. But thales is the first thinker to answer the question of being by reference to a being “to be…” water.

(2) Anaximander

“what is” is ordered by necessity to something or the whole.

“to chreon” = “necessity”

“Things come into and pass out of existence according to necessity…” “for they pay one another recompense and penalty for their injustice.”
- “They” Heidegger takes for multiplicity of what is or “ta onta”
- What Anaximander did was 1) He named the being of what-is which “ta onta” they have. 2) He sees the being of “ta onta” as placed in “to chreon” or necessity which is taken as that which unifies or makes a whole of everything. 3) Anaximander’s “to chreon” is thus, a gathering of the multiplicity “ta onta.” A gathering which both “lights” and “shelters” what-is making it what it is.
- Later, Heidegger says that “ta onta” for Anaximander always encompass what is past, what is to come, what is present at some here and now. It is connected with both ways of presencing of what is here and what is not.
- “to chreon” is for Heidegger, connected with “he cheir.” This refers to a) the hand (physical hand) b) chrao – to get involved with something; to reach one’s hand to something; to place in someone’s hands (I take as the act of you putting it, you active as active agent, making something happen); let something belong to someone (Yet you let it belongs to someone: more passive).
- Heidegger thus takes “to chreon” and translates it to Brauch usage or custom and its verb Brauchen in his Heideggerian sense – A) to need, B) to employ, C) to engage.
o “to chreon” or Brauch thus captures the notion of A) a necessity that arises out of practical involvement and the demands of everyday activity. We need to do X we Need to employ it in our daily lives we Need to engage with X. [from subject point of view]
o B) But that that things solicit us, engage us, in this involvement (necessity from 2 point of views). [From object point of view]
- Hence the “world” is a context of involvement which is “to chreon” necessary in order for things to be. World here is a necessity that arises out of human being’s practical involvement and everyday activity but at the same time, the world engages us in this involvement.
-“Brauchen” in its root meaning is – A) to enjoy, B) to be pleased with something, and 3) have it in use – to let it be involved in one’s being at home in the world. [from subject point of view and object point of view]
- “chyre” in its root meaning for Heidegger thus indicates
1) Turning something to use by handling it i.e. when we handle something, we turn that something (object) into use.
2) A turning to the thing hand in hand according to its way of being (according to its already-there-ness way of being).
3) Thus, we (human beings) by handling things, let its way of being become manifest. (what this essentially means is also that meanings of the world are not created by humans. There is some sort of inherence in the world but humans in engaging with the world makes manifest this world. This bolded sentence has serious implications for human agency. In a stronger sense, we can say that there is no Kantian Genius who creates the world gives the world teleological order but only that there already is an infinite number of there-ness to be unveiled through man’s handling) I think my intepretation is right in that “Tending grapes or grain, using leather for shoes or bronze for shields, involves letting these things be what they are…”

My intepretation: A necessity (to chreon) undergirds the finitude of things passing in and out of existence. This must be left ambiguously understood as making a whole of everything from which everything is contained in. The ta onta (they; beings) is by necessity to chreon, engaged and connected in the world-context. The world engages it and the human being acts in it by necessity (link to Aristotle’s imperfect self hence self moving desire…).

Heidegger’s Greeks

Equate “what is” with a) what we are “at home with” in our everyday dealings (I take this to be all the tools etc) and b) what-is-present. Thus Greeks use the term “ta pareonta” for “what-is.”
- Prefix “par” shares meaning with German proposition “bei” indicating “at” or “near” “during” “while” “At home of” = French chez.
- “pareonta” hence indicates something like the unconcealment of our familiar territory or “neighbourhood.”
- Being of “what-is” is thus always associated with our everyday familiar territory (tools, crops, trees, furnishings earth)… they are inseperable.

Early Greeks Heidegger think place great importance in cultural ordering as condition for things to come forth and show themselves as what they are.

(B) Heraclitus

- Concept of logos – has a force of necessity which maintains the order of what-is.
o Logos thus lays out the world as the context of significance in which things are worked out and dealt with.
o Logos lets what is manifest itself as what it is.
o Logos reveals that “all is one” or “hen panta”
o For Heraclitus, there is not just ta onta (the multiplicity of what is) but in a stronger sense a unity and woneness to what-is.
o The what-is (to on) is for Heraclitus a totality.
o Heraclitus for Heidegger is the first to make a claim about the relationship between being and what-is (to on). Logos shows Heraclitus that what-is (to on) has some common bond. Hence Heidegger says “the hen panta lets lie together before us in one presence, things which are usually separated from and opposed to one another, such as day and night, winter and summer, peace and war, waking and sleeping…” (GA 7: 213/Heidegger 1975: 71).
o Logos is thus for Heidegger, the “essence of unification which assembles everything in the totality of simple presenting” (GA 7: 220/Heidegger 1975)
o Logos should not be seen just as “prior to all profound metaphysical intepretations.” It contains things. So things (to on/what-is) may exhibit different unity based on how humans “handle it” and so, no formula to describe their common unity as property can be adequate. That we can discursively abstractly think of them, is just one other mode of thinking of these permutations in the “container.” That we can think of them as ideas (plato) is also in a more basic cruder way of putting it, man’s way of presenting the simple presentings the great and vast assembly of things in the world.
o Logos lets everything be gathered into a unified totality.

Thus, 1) “hen panta” (all is one) is simply 2) in Heideggerian terms, “the being of what-is (to on).” The being of what-is is thus, 3) unity of all that is and all there is – Logos. Necessarily. But this all or hen is only present with or in the being for only the being present of the being allows things to be present and show themselves for what they are.

Thus, when Heidegger says “phusis” is both the activity what lets what is manifest manifest itself and that which is manifest. As the activity of manifesting, it does not reveal itself, it lets itself hide. But phusis is nature, it is the being of what-is, it is hidden.