I figured that for readability I ought break all these posts up thematically. I started out raising the issue of neoPlatonism and discussing Heidegger and Plato's Cave. Then I brought up the problem of desconstruction and reading Plato. I want to now spiral back to the dialog regarding the Cave and ask about Being. What do we mean by Being in Heidegger?
One should note that Heidegger's thesis was "Categories and Doctrine of Meaning in Duns Scotus." Further a crucial early text for Heidegger was Brentano's On Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. So one can probably guess, given Scotus' univocality of Being and then Aristotle's multiple senses that Being would be complex for Heidegger.
While I think the sense of Being subtly evolves as Heidegger's thought evolves, I think that in the Heidegger of Being and Time through at least On the Essence of Truth Being is roughly beings-as-such-in-the-totality. That is what William Richardson calls beings in the ensemble. But it is the totality in the sense of an emerg-ing into presence. I do the goofy Heidegger-speak of breaking up a word so as to emphasize the verbal or process sense of emerging. It is not beings in totality as presence but being in totality coming into presence. Perhaps the other way to put that is as presencing. At this stage of Heidegger's thought though I believe that this is conceived of far more passively than in the thought often characterized as following his Turn. (Roughly the period of Introduction to Metaphysics onward.)
In the later Heidegger things get a tad more complex but I'll avoid that complexity for now. Further I must urge that no one paragraph discussion of Being can possibly be accurate. As much as will be concealed as unconcealed. And we will lose our way somewhat into errancy. But it will do for now given the finite space I have to write of this.
Allow me momentarily a digression to perhaps illuminate elements of the above. First what does Heidegger consider by beings in their totality? I'd suggest that we can understand this by considering that it is Being that allows us to see beings as the kind of beings they are. That is it makes beings intelligible to us. I can see a horse as a horse because Being illuminates the horse letting me see it as a horse. Put simply Being is what allows being to be meaningful.
I'd suggest that perhaps a useful, if not completely accurate, way of thinking Being as beings in totality to consider it as what, in the final outcome, the community of people would understand of beings. That would include not just our feeling of beings as we encounter them, but the discourses about these beings, the relationships the beings enter into and so forth. It would be beings as intelligible in their fulness.
Included in this in both beings as unconcealed and beings as concealed. So, for example, as I concentrate on writing this post I notice the screen of my computer and the feel of the keys as I type. But I don't notice the fan blowing hot air into the room nor the wall behind the computer and many other things. They have withdrawn from me. Thus beings in this totality of intelligibility includes both concealing and unconcealing. My experience of a kiss when it was my first kiss is dramatically different from kissing my wife now as much as because what was concealed as anything else. Thus Being inherently includes concealment for Heidegger.
Allow me here to interject one of the other figures I said I'd discuss in the context of neoPlatonism. Peirce. Peirce's notion of truth is remarkably similar to what I outline above. For Peirce truth is what the ideal community of inquirers would agree upon "in the long run." Now I've written on this before. However this sense of truth is primarily in terms of assertions. It is truth as a kind of correspondence, but the correspondence is not fundamental. Neither is the truth for Peirce. There is also the transcendental truth.
Among the senses in which transcendental truth was spoken of was that in which it was said that all science has for its object the investigation of truth, that is to say, of the real characters of things. It was, in other senses, regarded as a subject of metaphysics exclusively. It is sometimes defined so as to be indistinguishable from reality, or real existence. Another common definition is that truth is the conformity, or conformability, of things to reason. Another definition is that truth is the conformity of things to their essential principles. (CP 5.570)
That is truth is the truth not of propositions but of things. In this Peirce and Heidegger agree. We can talk of propositional truth (as even Heidegger does) but it is parasitic on this deeper sense of truth. Thus even in Peirce I think one might say that it is the sum totality of experiences of beings that is the truth. Which is, in an other sense Being. The propositional truth is representational and truth, as philosophers typically discuss it, is purely a matter of representations. But representations are themselves parasitic on their object of truth. The following discussion by Peirce of Truth, Being and Aristotle is, I think, perhaps helpful for illuminating Being in Heidegger by putting Heidegger into a dialog with Peirce.
A sign is connected with the "Truth," i.e. the entire Universe of being, or as some say, the Absolute, in three distinct ways. In the first place, a sign is not a real thing. It is of such a nature as to exist in replicas. Look down at a printed page, and ever the you see is the same word, ever e the same letter. A real thing does not so exist in replica. The being of a sign is merely being represented. Now really being and being represented are very different. Giving to the word sign the full scope that reasonably belongs to it for logical purposes, a whole book is a sign: and a translation of it is a replica of the same sign. A whole literature is a sign. The sentence "Roxana was a queen of Alexander" is a sign of Roxana and of Alexander, and thouhg there is a grammatical emphasis on the former, logically the name "Alexander" is as much a subject as is the name "Roxana"; and the real persons Roxana and Alexander are real objects of the sign. Every sign that is sufficiently complete refers to sundry real objects. All these objects, even if we are talking of Hamlet's madness, are parts of one and the same Universe of Being, the "Truth." But so far as the "Truth" is merely the object of a sign, it is merely the Aristotlelian Matter of it that is so. In addition however to denoting objects, ever sign sufficiently complete signifies characters, or qualities. We have a direct knowledge of real objects in every experiential reaction, whether of Perception or of Exertion (the one theoretical, the other practical). These are directly hic et nunc. But we extend the category, and speak of numberless real objects with which we are not in direct reaction. We have also direct knowledge of qualities in feeling, peripheral and visceral. But we extend this category to numberless characters of which we have no immediate consciousness. All these characters are elements of the "Truth." Every sign signifies the "Truth." But it is only the Aristotelian Form of the universe that it signifies. [ . . . ] The purpose of every sign is to express "fact," and by being joined with other signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such (at least, we may use this language) would be the very Universe. Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection or entelechy, which he never succeeds in making clear. We may adopt the word to mean the very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and so identical, - in such identity as a sign may have, - with the very matter denoted united with the very form signified by it. The entelechy of the Universe of being, then, the Universe qua fact, will be that Universe in its aspect as a sign, the "Truth" of being. The "Truth," the fact that is not abstracted but complete, is the ultimate interpretant of every sign.
Now to me that passage is an amazing illumination of what Heidegger is after. However it seems to also be what Heidegger and Derrida deny. What is at issue? First note that the Truth here is Truth of beings. Exactly as in Heidegger. Second note that this encompasses our feelings of the beings. Beings as they unconceal themselves to us. What we must keep in mind, however, is that for Peirce a sign manifests beings by producing an other sign. Indeed it was this that Derrida latched onto in his critique of Husselr in On Grammatology.
So what is this ideal interpretant if semiosis never ends? It is here that I think that the issue of the infinite and finite, or the issue of time enters into our discussion. It is this point that I think is so crucial for our eventual return to the issue of Being in Plato.
BTW - sorry for the Peirce quote being without a lot of breaks. Peirce switches between very short paragraphs to paragraphs whose length might well have been suggested by Ayn Rand. The paragraph also presupposes some familiarity with Peirce's notion of signs. This collection of quotes on Peirce's notion of sign will be helpful. Elements of this will become quite important in our discussion of Platonic realism, Being, and particularly neoPlatonism.
The basic idea is that something (the object) causes in someone (or something) an effect. The effect is the interpretant - the word Peirce uses regularly in the above. This interpretant is typically an other sign, although there is simultaneously also a direct impact on the person and also a feel to the experience. The idea is that beings in totality create a set of experiences in people that then generate further experiences onward until we eventually have a totality of experience. We thus move from Truth as the universe creating effects in all humans to a set of effects which is the universe as intelligible. That is the universe as understood.
This leads to Peirce's famous (or perhaps infamous) claim that truth is that which is never in conflict with experience. This has odd implications since it means that even fictional entities have some Being. This is controversial, especially given the Russell-Frege tradition. However William Richardson, discussion Heidegger's On the Essence of Truth notes a similar position in Heidegger. (Although I can't for the life of me find the quote right now)
I'm excited to see what you have to say in the next post. I've read each one of these new ones a couple times each to make sure I'm following. BTW, I think it's cool that you're willing to give the continental stuff a fair shake. Modern phil. at BYU was the only class I just loved. I didn't skip class and I always sat on the front row. It ended with Heidegger and I naively walked into a book store about a year later and decided I needed "see what came next" and got into Derrida. I naively got online a year or so after than that and started trying to talk about it on this IRC phil room. Man, I got attacked, I was really surprised at how many people thought it was like a *big deal*, in a bad way, if someone liked Derrida. The thing for me is that reading phil really has rarely had much to do with my actual beliefs about life or the world. While I'm an atheist, I can't think of anything in my philosophy reading that has shaped that worldview. I really don't care if Derrida or any of the others were right or wrong, I just like the effect of being shocked by looking at something in such a radically different way than I'd never have thought of myself in a million years. Also, I admit I am more inclined to be interested if it's hard. Derrida, he's a tough nut to crack. While I still haven't decided yet on the value of his contribution (since I don't quite get all of it yet) I have to say, over the years (in my very passive interest) it has become more and more apparent that most of the criticisms I've read about him, the "throw him out the window" criticisms just aren't very good.
I think I tend to agree with Jim Faulconer. Derrida is most valuable in helping you see things in Heidegger. I'm not at all convinced he's that original in a sense, but he is very original at pushing ideas that were always there. If that makes sense.
The reason people are typically made at Derrida is because of the misuse of him by literary types - especially in the 80's. People in English departments and the soft sciences simply don't typically have the philosophical background to be able to understand what he's saying or arguing. Having said that though I think the notion of a deconstructive reading is amazingly useful. But I think in practical terms it's basically best seen as a careful and technical close reading that focuses not on what was said, but the aims or Question the text addresses. In other words you think through the questions the author is raising for yourself.
But that's far less mysterious and exciting than I think what a lot of people attempt to do. Which is typically merely ape Derrida's style (poorly) and throw words around without meaning much by them.
I think your "In other words you think through the questions the author is raising for yourself" idea is especially helpful. We've all been in a conversation where someone pulls some analogy to make their point and countered by taking their analogy and changing it around in order to build on their point and make it better. "No, no, if life is like being lost at sea, the oars don't represent..."
btw, i hope your wife doesn't read this blog. i got in trouble a couple months ago for making a similar observation as you did in I think it was your second post.
LOL. She doesn't, but what I said was something we joke about so there's nothing too terribly surprising in it. She sometimes jokes that the computer is my "mistress." She'd prefer me cuddling on the couch with her watching TV whereas I get bored pretty quickly. Unfortunately she's very pregnant so getting out is harder. Hopefully one day I can get a portable computer so we can do both together - she watch TV and I read blogs and papers - all on the couch.
A couple of clarifications to the above, since over at Before the Law made a few comments on the above post.
One must keep in mind that even in the earlier Heidgger of Being and Time one must be careful to keep in mind that Being is not a being (entity). "Being and its structure transcend every being and every possible existent determination of a being. Being is the transcends pure and simple. The transcendence of the being of Dasein is a distinctive one since in it lies the possibility and necessity of the most radical individuation. Every disclosure of being as the transcendens is transcendental knowledge. Phenomenological truth (disclosedness of being) is veritas transcendentalis." (BT 38)
Put simply we must not treat this as a being.
The second question is whether Being for Heidegger and Being for Peirce are the same. I think there are differences and I'll be touching upon this through the coming days. I'd say though that the question of Being as Truth is a significant one in Heidegger. The error in both thinking through Heidegger and Peirce is to assume that this is pure presence. It is not. But in Heidegger truth is unconcealment. But that means that there is simultaneously concealment. But this is true with Peirce as well.
The problem with Peirce is the same problem of finitude that one finds in Heidegger. The "in the long run" that allows one to talk of Truth is an endlessly deferred Truth. A Truth never made present. A Truth never obtained. Yet simultaneously as Peirce says, every sign signifies this endlessly deffered.
In connection with semiotics, the arena of Peirce (and perhaps Derrida), this quote seems relevant.
To the extent that man is drawing that way, he points towards what withdraws. As he is pointing that way, man is the pointer . . . His essential nature lies in being such a pointer. Something which in itself, by its essential nature, is pointing, we call a sign (Zeichen). As he draws towards what withdraws, man is a sign. But since this sign points towards what draws away, it points, not so much at what draws away as into the withdrawal. The sign stays without interpretation. (What is Thinking,6 as quoted in Sikka, Forms of Transcendence, 80)
Yes one can of course point out that sign here isn't the general sense that Peirce is speaking of. One can turn to section 18 of Being and Time for a discussion of Heidegger's sense of signs. "Signs are not things which stand in an indicating relationship to an other thing but are useful things which explicitly bring a totality of useful things to circumspection so that the worldly character of what is at hand makes itself known at that time." (BT, 80) "Signs are something ontically at hand which as this definite useful thing functions at the same time as something which indicates the ontological structure of handiness, referential totality, and worldliness." (BT, 83)
Now these are controversial and not well agreed upon pages of BT. However I think they are saying much the same thing. Discussions of Truth and Reality (and Logos) in Heidegger are quite relevant here, I think. But I'll save those for now.
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