For the rest, modern philosophy has little to say compared to Heidegger. And the medievals and the counterreformation -- well, they of course are concerned with salvation, so their interests are a bit different from those of materialists. I went to Catholic school, so I got a pretty good exposure to Loyola, at least as interpreted by the nuns. I'll take Heidegger any day.
Now, if you don't find Heidegger's thoughts about death useful, that's another matter. But something tells me that nothing I could say would make any difference to you on this or any other point concerning Heidegger. You rely on the usual bad translations and do the Carnap thing of picking out odd-sounding statements and making fun of them without even the slightest effort to understand them. It did not reflect well on Carnap (whom I like) either.
I really take H's the main point about death, to put it in plain English, to be that the fact of our mortality is the central issue in the life of a human being -- not merely something one has to come to terms with and learn to accept,a s it were, philosophically, as the Stoics taught, or as a gateway to heaven or hell, as Christian dogma, but as the fundamental structuring fact about the lives of mortal beings that influences, or ought to influence, everything in our lives. His revulsion against everydayness and losing yourself in business comes from this, as does, I think, his reaction (literally and figuratively) against modernity, which he thinks promotes mere business and forgetfulness of the fact that for each of us our days are numbered. And it is what is behind his idea of truth as Alathea, openness to the world. This is putting it somewhat simplistically. There is actually some point to H's technical vocabulary, which is much better in German, really. All of this becomes keener as you get older. I'm 48, and at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near. If that all strikes you as banal rubbish, read again it when you're older. I didn't like him when I was in college either.
--- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/9/06, andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Then there his H's insistence on the fact of
> mortality
> > as central in understanding human life. This is
> > something that philosophers have paid rather too
> > little attention to; indeed; H gave substantial
> > attention to the questions of the meaning of life
> in a
> > way that philosophers since Plato have dodged.
> >
>
> I am not quite sure if you are joking or not.
> Perhaps you are being
> ironic. Philosophical reflections on death can be
> found in Augustine,
> Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola, if you wish to read honest
> pre-enlightenment
> philosophers. Or you can read the Stoics. Later,
> even Bert Russell has a
> few reflections on death, dying and mortality.
>
> Heidegger's reflections on death are for the most
> part silly or they are
> things that can be said in plain language that he
> dresses up to be "deep" or
> to make a ideological point. Again let us give the
> great Heidegger his own
> words: (Again these are simply at random underlined
> passages in my books.)
>
> "By none of these modes of ending can death be
> suitably characterized as the
> "end" of Daesin. If dying, as Being-at-an-end, were
> understood in the sense
> of an ending of the kind we have discussed, then
> Dasein would thereby be
> treated as something present-at-hand or
> ready-at-hand. In death, Daesin has
> not been fulfilled nor has it simply disappeared; it
> has not become finished
> nor is it wholly at one's disposal as something
> ready-to-hand." Being and
> Time, p.289.
>
> [Note the distinction between Dasein and
> "ready-at-hand" is supposed to be a
> fundamental distinction between human beings and
> inanimate objects and
> plants and animals analogous to the being-for-itself
> (por soi) and
> being-in-itself (en soi) n Sartre. Also H. often
> uses the word fertigwerden
> which is translated as "finishedness" but which is
> simply the everyday
> German for "completion." This explanation of terms
> will not help you to come
> to terms with death.]
>
> "The 'ending' which we have in view when we speak of
> death, does not signify
> Daesin's Being-at-an-end byt a Beind-towards-the-end
> of this entity.' Being
> and Time, p.289.
>
> Or why don't we have Heidegger explain biology for
> us in his very particular
> way:
>
> "When for instance, a fruit is unripe, it 'goes
> toward' its ripeness. In
> this process of ripening, that which the fruit is
> not yet, is by no means
> pieced on as something not yet present-at-hand. The
> fruit brings itself to
> ripeness, and such a bringing of itself is a
> characteristic of its Being as
> a fruit. Nothing imaginable which one might
> contribute to it, would
> eliinate the unripeness of the fruit, if this entity
> did not come to
> ripeness of its own accord. When we speak of the
> "not-yet" of the
> unripeness, we do not have in view something else
> which stands outside, and
> which with utter indifference to the fruit might be
> present at hand in it
> and with it. What we have in view is the fruit
> itself in its specific kind
> of Being. ... The ripening fruit, however, not only
> is not indifferent to
> its unripeness as something other than itself, but
> it is that unripeness as
> it ripens. The 'not-yet- has already been included
> in the very Being of the
> fruit, not as some random characteristic, but as
> something constitutive.
> Correspondingly, as long as any Daesin is, it too is
> already its 'not yet.'"
> B&T, 287-88.
>
> Somehow I don't think that David Attenborough was at
> fault for leaving this
> out of "The Private Life of Plants."
>
> Somebody tell me what this stuff is good for? And
> yes, I think that the
> world would be marginally better if every person who
> has ever read Heidegger
> instead spent their time reading David Attenborough.
> I think the world
> would be better still if every Heideggerian gave up
> Heidegger and decided
> that they actually wanted to engage machinists or
> stone masons (some of the
> smartest people I have ever met) in conversations
> about philosophy, ethics,
> morality and how the world works.
>
> But let us return to Death and mortality.
>
> "We may now summarize our characterization of
> authentic Being-towards-death
> as we have projected it existentially: anticipation
> reveals to Daesin its
> lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to
> face with the possibility
> of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful
> solicitude, but of
> being itself, rather, is an impassioned freedome
> towards death - a freedom
> that has been relaxed from the Illusions of the
> 'they', and which is
> factical, certain of itself, and anxious." B&T p.
> 311.
>
> I don't even wish to make an argument in these
> quotes. One can actually
> make sense of them, first by explaining the larger
> philosophical context,
> and then discarding the philosophical context and
> talking about everyday
> human emotions and fears. But by doing so one will
> be abandoning all that
> is "original" in Heidegger, and you might as well
> have a good conversation
> with your local bartender, who is probably as
> intelligent (if not as
> well-read) in thoughts about life and death as the
> great Heidegger.
>
> Heidegger's larger point, when made clear, is the
> usual existential idea is
> that the emptyness of death incorporated in our
> being because as a result
> the running-ahead ["vorlaufen"] of Daesin. In other
> words we, all of us, are
> pretty sure we are going to die someday because we,
> as human beings, are
> self-conscious and can think of the future. Genius!
> Real genius! But then
> he concludes that somehow Death is always inside
> Daesin. It is within
> Daesin as a constituent part of his being. This is
> why we should focus on
> Death and mortality or in order to fulfill
> ourselves. This is fulfilling
> our proper regard for our Being-toward-death.
>
> Give me Ignatius Loyola or good old fashioned
> Catholicism and hair shirt any
> day.
>
> Jerry Monaco
> > ___________________________________
>
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