[lbo-talk] Grappling with Heidegger

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Sat Jun 10 18:05:59 PDT 2006


On 6/10/06, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hmmm. Interesting Jerry. Your use of the term
> "non-experiential" here reminds me of my own
> ruminations of the place of the "unconscious" in
> phenomenology -- phenomenology has problems dealing
> with it, for the obvious reason that it isn't an
> object of experience.

Thanks Chris,

I really would appreciate it if you continued to think about these issues and communicated with me about them, on or off list......

I use the term "non-experiential" in this case to mean the "non-experiential biological" and the "non-experiential mental" so as not to confuse those terms with the Freudian theoretical terms of "preconscious" and "unconscious." In other words the "non-experiential" biological would be a broader term which would include how we usually don't experience processes such as circulation of blood, the construction of our vision, and the process of proprioception. Unless of course we are bleeding, have specialized eyesight problems, or suddenly loose control of our limbs.

I notice above that I said something that was a bit too much criticism and not enough critique: Quote: "Both science and art are needed to correct these delusions but phenomenology is an abstraction of the process that leads us to such delusions." This can be reframed as a a positive for phenomenology. The fact that phenomenology may be able to actually present to us the experiential level of the making of certain illusions/delusions is what I find well done in Merleau-Ponty for instance.


> I think just on the
> spur of the moment that a strict Heideggerian analysis
> of the "non-experiential" would fold it into the
> concept of the Nothing.

I think that you are correct here. But it is this very fact that disturbs me. It is like the way that Sartre, taking from both Hegel and Heidegger makes the "for-itself" a No-thing in all ways. It preserves the freedom of the will but it also creates a literal hole that becomes an escape hatch for criticism. (I think this is the way that Ted is using the concept of "self-determination." It is a hole that can disappear or negate any theory or what he is calling "determination." A misused of the term in my opinion.) Heidegger uses the notion in a different way than Sartre but with Heidegger I think it can be both displacement and escape hatch. (I would have to explain the "displacement" part.)

Jerry

(It's interesting that Heidegger
> never mentioned Freud to my knowledge -- maybe he
> thought he was just a sex-obsessed nut, but I think
> there's a bigger reason; note also Sartre's dismissal
> of the idea of the subconscious.) I think just on the
> spur of the moment that a strict Heideggerian analysis
> of the "non-experiential" would fold it into the
> concept of the Nothing. It molds lived experience,
> while being unable to be thematized by it (that's
> really what the Nothing and Being are, when you come
> right down to it -- the borders of experience that
> cannot be themselves thematically encountered as a
> something but nevertheless control the content and
> form of experience). More on this tomorrow, I have to
> ruminate on it and it's 3 am here -- I have to be at
> the office at 10 tomorrow!
>
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