Dasein/dasein

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iambiguous
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
The “person” example works in the same way, as does any response you could give, any simple ascription of a “whatness” onto your being. This is why Descartes misses Dasein when he thinks himself as “a thinking substance”. Dasein’s being is not answerable to a whatness, to an essence, that precedes it, but, rather, its essence lies in its existence, through which it makes various choices about what its whatness is and will be, not by contemplating, but by realizing them through living: “The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself.” (Heidegger, 2008, p.33) In other words, Dasein chooses what it will be, and this is its essence. Or, more accurately, it is its possibilities, which open it up onto the future, and its activity of choosing, and doing, one or the other as ways of being.
The part where Heidegger is construed to be an existentialist while Descartes is construed to be anything but. It's not what you are but always the potential to become something other than what others might perceive you to be. The possibilities that one can choose if one did not "believe that all material bodies, including the human body, are machines that operate by mechanical principles". Especially when this machine is also a "devout Christian".

Similar to Sartre's "existence precedes essence". And for some his "Hell is other people". Why? Because they do attempt to objectify you. To turn you into a "whatness". Not only that, but turning themselves into a "whatness" as well. Whatness, in the is/ought world, I call the moral cand political objectivists.
“The essence of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibited in this entity are not ‘properties’ present-at-hand of some entity which ‘looks’ so and so and is itself present-at-hand; they are in each case possible ways for it to be, and no more than that” Heidegger

Thus, its being is always an issue for it, because it is always confronted with the question “what shall I be today, tomorrow, next year?”
Over and again: that's the basic existential scaffolding that we all carry around with us day in and day out. We all ask ourselves that. The Nazis asked themselves that back when Heidegger was around, as did the Jews. In other words, like this is some extraordinary insight!

Though I suppose for those who predicated everything that they thought, felt, said and did on one or another God or one or another political ideology or one or another "school of philosophy", it might actually be.

But for me it couldn't possibly be more obvious: here I am, what shall I do next?

Instead, the far more interesting question revolves around those situations in which you choose to say or do something and someone else objects to it. That's the part where my own dasein comes into play. Sure, you can go through your day and choose to do any number of things that have absolutely no impact on anyone other than yourself. But when it does impact others enough to piss them off then you're confronted with conflicting assessments of the "right thing to do". What of philosophy and ethics and political science then?
Furthermore, its being is always an issue for it in the survival-instinct “don’t launch me into the sun!” kind of way as well, because it is also confronted with the question “Will I be tomorrow, next year, etc?”
Yeah, but how many of us are confronted with literal life and death situations from day to day? Now, in Ukraine it's a whole other story. Or if you're riding the subway in Brooklyn.

The closest many of us have come to this is in regard to the covid pandemic. According to the worldometer site, 1,013,044 Americans have died from it. And over 6,000,000 around the globe. Life and death down to the bone.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Wed Apr 13, 2022 6:53 pm What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
The “person” example works in the same way, as does any response you could give, any simple ascription of a “whatness” onto your being. This is why Descartes misses Dasein when he thinks himself as “a thinking substance”. Dasein’s being is not answerable to a whatness, to an essence, that precedes it, but, rather, its essence lies in its existence, through which it makes various choices about what its whatness is and will be, not by contemplating, but by realizing them through living: “The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself.” (Heidegger, 2008, p.33) In other words, Dasein chooses what it will be, and this is its essence. Or, more accurately, it is its possibilities, which open it up onto the future, and its activity of choosing, and doing, one or the other as ways of being.
The part where Heidegger is construed to be an existentialist while Descartes is construed to be anything but. It's not what you are but always the potential to become something other than what others might perceive you to be. The possibilities that one can choose if one did not "believe that all material bodies, including the human body, are machines that operate by mechanical principles". Especially when this machine is also a "devout Christian".

Similar to Sartre's "existence precedes essence". And for some his "Hell is other people". Why? Because they do attempt to objectify you. To turn you into a "whatness". Not only that, but turning themselves into a "whatness" as well. Whatness, in the is/ought world, I call the moral cand political objectivists.
“The essence of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibited in this entity are not ‘properties’ present-at-hand of some entity which ‘looks’ so and so and is itself present-at-hand; they are in each case possible ways for it to be, and no more than that” Heidegger

Thus, its being is always an issue for it, because it is always confronted with the question “what shall I be today, tomorrow, next year?”
Over and again: that's the basic existential scaffolding that we all carry around with us day in and day out. We all ask ourselves that. The Nazis asked themselves that back when Heidegger was around, as did the Jews. In other words, like this is some extraordinary insight!

Though I suppose for those who predicated everything that they thought, felt, said and did on one or another God or one or another political ideology or one or another "school of philosophy", it might actually be.

But for me it couldn't possibly be more obvious: here I am, what shall I do next?

Instead, the far more interesting question revolves around those situations in which you choose to say or do something and someone else objects to it. That's the part where my own dasein comes into play. Sure, you can go through your day and choose to do any number of things that have absolutely no impact on anyone other than yourself. But when it does impact others enough to piss them off then you're confronted with conflicting assessments of the "right thing to do". What of philosophy and ethics and political science then?
Furthermore, its being is always an issue for it in the survival-instinct “don’t launch me into the sun!” kind of way as well, because it is also confronted with the question “Will I be tomorrow, next year, etc?”
Yeah, but how many of us are confronted with literal life and death situations from day to day? Now, in Ukraine it's a whole other story. Or if you're riding the subway in Brooklyn.

The closest many of us have come to this is in regard to the covid pandemic. According to the worldometer site, 1,013,044 Americans have died from it. And over 6,000,000 around the globe. Life and death down to the bone.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
You should add in the thousands of people who kill themselves because their lives have no meaning or purpose. A Dasein that endures includes duty to oneself and others to accept the inevitable; that without exception we make our own meanings, purposes. People in the midst of a battle usually have a clear purpose, to stay alive and save the lives of their relations and friends so existential angst is not much of a problem when simple reactions to danger are the order of the day. Dasein and the psychology of Dasein are benign; every proper psychotherapist believes in Dasein.

Sartre engaged with Dasein and freedom to choose by joining the French Resistance during the war, and that was dangerous. Duty to oneself means not doing the easiest action but doing the action chosen for one's own reasons and purposes. At this point it's awfully hard not to slide into Free Will belief. Dasein and the actions thereof, however, is not 'Free' in the sense of personal origination but is free in the sense of avoiding the pitfall of inauthenticity.
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iambiguous
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
Finally, its being is an issue for it precisely because it can think “what is Being?” and be troubled by such a question. This is a capability of Dasein, along with buying cabbage, calculating Pi, and saying “It’s raining cats and dogs out there”. Neither houses nor lumps of granite can boast that their being is an issue for them in any of these three ways.
Again, this is supposed to be, what, some great insight that philosophers in the past missed? No, what troubles most of us about the question is this: that while we think that our own "being" in regard to conflicting value judgments has come up with the optimal answer, damned if lots and lots of others don't insist that, on the contrary, it's their "being's" answer. Some even insisting as well that this is the case because their God sent them a Scripture in order to prove it.

Or, if No God, a manifesto?

And, for sure, "neither houses nor lumps of granite" have one of those.
1.2 Mineness

The second feature that inheres immediately to Dasein is that its being is always and in every case “mine”. This has two senses. Firstly, carrying on from its being being an issue for it, its being is an issue for only it. The question of “what shall I be next year” is my, and only my, issue, and I will only work it out through my own existing onto next year.
This, from my frame of mind, is precisely the sort of thing a philosopher might "think up" in the intellectual clouds. Yeah, sure, the narcissist and the egotist might make it "me, myself and I" all the way down. But unless he or she is a survivalist or the only human being around, its "being" is not only going to be derived from others, it will have consequences for others.

Then the parts that revolve around dasein. His or her indoctrination as a child. His or her existential scaffolding into adulthood involving sets of circumstances only understood or controlled up to a point. All of the variables in their lives that can come at them...factors coagulating into experiences that become nothing less than the embodiment of contingency, chance and change.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 4:13 pm What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
Finally, its being is an issue for it precisely because it can think “what is Being?” and be troubled by such a question. This is a capability of Dasein, along with buying cabbage, calculating Pi, and saying “It’s raining cats and dogs out there”. Neither houses nor lumps of granite can boast that their being is an issue for them in any of these three ways.
Again, this is supposed to be, what, some great insight that philosophers in the past missed? No, what troubles most of us about the question is this: that while we think that our own "being" in regard to conflicting value judgments has come up with the optimal answer, damned if lots and lots of others don't insist that, on the contrary, it's their "being's" answer. Some even insisting as well that this is the case because their God sent them a Scripture in order to prove it.

Or, if No God, a manifesto?

And, for sure, "neither houses nor lumps of granite" have one of those.
1.2 Mineness

The second feature that inheres immediately to Dasein is that its being is always and in every case “mine”. This has two senses. Firstly, carrying on from its being being an issue for it, its being is an issue for only it. The question of “what shall I be next year” is my, and only my, issue, and I will only work it out through my own existing onto next year.
This, from my frame of mind, is precisely the sort of thing a philosopher might "think up" in the intellectual clouds. Yeah, sure, the narcissist and the egotist might make it "me, myself and I" all the way down. But unless he or she is a survivalist or the only human being around, its "being" is not only going to be derived from others, it will have consequences for others.

Then the parts that revolve around dasein. His or her indoctrination as a child. His or her existential scaffolding into adulthood involving sets of circumstances only understood or controlled up to a point. All of the variables in their lives that can come at them...factors coagulating into experiences that become nothing less than the embodiment of contingency, chance and change.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Okay to all that. Not only does Dasein learn from others, and can feel duties and responsibilities to others but also Dasein never ceases to learn until Dasein finally morphs into a mass of etre-en-soi. Daseins comparatively are slower or faster at learning, but no Dasein is an essential self. Daseins are like how Wittgenstein envisaged the meaning of a word i.e. a woven cordage of filaments of which no defining strand endures throughout the length.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
Because I’m always working out my whatness through the business of existing, of doing and choosing and speaking and thinking and interpreting and making, and this issue always comes back to me, regardless of whether I let the world or others reveal certain facts to me, there is a sense that I am accountable all the way down.
Which of course "in reality" is ridiculous. Are you accountable for being born? Are accountable for being brainwashed as a child? Are you accountable for all of the many, many, many people and experiences and events that can come at you from all directions as an adult. In fact, the more you think it through the closer you come to accepting just how much of your life is either beyond fully comprehending or fully controlling. It's amazing that we understand ourselves as much as we do.

The business of existing, bursting at the seams with contingency and exigency...both amidst the vicissitudes of the ordinary and the extraordinary...is for the human species far, far, far more problematic than for all other creatures. Animals that by and large are driven almost entirely by instinct, libido and deep-seated drives.
This is where Heidegger introduces the normative category of “Authenticity”. Dasein is always its choices and possibilities, but doesn’t often realize this. Often it just carries out actions because “that’s what one does”, thus disavowing its responsibility in its choosing to choose a course of action. This is Dasein in an inauthentic mode. However, inauthentic Dasein is not for that reason lacking in any of the being that Dasein is. The difference is one of comportment towards oneself and one’s being. Accordingly, we will not spend time exploring this distinction in this analysis of basic features.
This is philosophical jargon for...for what exactly?

"Normative category"?

"Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible." wiki

Come on, if Heidegger was truly interested in integrating Dasein into the is/ought world, he would have spent considerably more time in Being and Time exploring authentic/inauthentic behavior given his very own moral and political prejudices.

The irony of course being that many today insist that any number of Germans back then lived "inauthentic" lives because they allowed those like Hitler to turn them into full-blown Nazis. They lived out the normative parameters of others rather than their own. They allowed their subjectivity to be owned and operated by the state. Any number of whom became full-blown fascist thugs.

After all, what is the "Final Solution" but how far the fulminating fanatic objectivist minds can go?

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 3:37 pm What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
Because I’m always working out my whatness through the business of existing, of doing and choosing and speaking and thinking and interpreting and making, and this issue always comes back to me, regardless of whether I let the world or others reveal certain facts to me, there is a sense that I am accountable all the way down.
Which of course "in reality" is ridiculous. Are you accountable for being born? Are accountable for being brainwashed as a child? Are you accountable for all of the many, many, many people and experiences and events that can come at you from all directions as an adult. In fact, the more you think it through the closer you come to accepting just how much of your life is either beyond fully comprehending or fully controlling. It's amazing that we understand ourselves as much as we do.

The business of existing, bursting at the seams with contingency and exigency...both amidst the vicissitudes of the ordinary and the extraordinary...is for the human species far, far, far more problematic than for all other creatures. Animals that by and large are driven almost entirely by instinct, libido and deep-seated drives.
This is where Heidegger introduces the normative category of “Authenticity”. Dasein is always its choices and possibilities, but doesn’t often realize this. Often it just carries out actions because “that’s what one does”, thus disavowing its responsibility in its choosing to choose a course of action. This is Dasein in an inauthentic mode. However, inauthentic Dasein is not for that reason lacking in any of the being that Dasein is. The difference is one of comportment towards oneself and one’s being. Accordingly, we will not spend time exploring this distinction in this analysis of basic features.
This is philosophical jargon for...for what exactly?

"Normative category"?

"Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible." wiki

Come on, if Heidegger was truly interested in integrating Dasein into the is/ought world, he would have spent considerably more time in Being and Time exploring authentic/inauthentic behavior given his very own moral and political prejudices.

The irony of course being that many today insist that any number of Germans back then lived "inauthentic" lives because they allowed those like Hitler to turn them into full-blown Nazis. They lived out the normative parameters of others rather than their own. They allowed their subjectivity to be owned and operated by the state. Any number of whom became full-blown fascist thugs.

After all, what is the "Final Solution" but how far the fulminating fanatic objectivist minds can go?

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
I don't know what Heidegger said about Dasein's ability or inability in the context of strong determinism. I believe in strong determinism. Freedom then is taking the huge risk of shouldering responsibility for own moral decisions and judgements that's to say (in polite language)trying to rise above Dasein .Not the effect but the intention is where the freedom is.
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iambiguous
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

Identity and Postmodernism
From UKEssays
The stability or otherwise of identity has become a major battleground for sociological theorists in recent times. The infamous ‘postmodern’ turn has rendered identity a deeply problematic phenomenon. In this paper I will investigate the claim that identities are unstable sites of contestation.
Phenomenon: "a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question".

Again, back to the obvious:

What in particular is being observed? Who is observing it? What do they think they are observing" What can it finally be determined [and then demonstrated] to in fact be?

How is a human identity any different?

Well, for one thing, our identity is not a thing being observed. It's not a tree or a cinder block or a tube of toothpaste. It is a complex amalgamation of objective facts and relationships. Of ever evolving changes. Of purely speculative assumptions rooted in behaviors chosen based on yet more assumptions about right and wrong, good and bad.

All the postmodernists have done is to turn the focus in more on the language that we use to describe it. The phenomenal relationship between words and worlds. The extent to which we can substantiate our words about any particular identity by showing how they are entirely in sync with the world around us.

Vladimir Putin for example. He's been in the news [and in the minds] of many of late. What can we pin down objectively about his identity?
I will do this by examining the dissolution of identity within postmodern theory before examining both the negative and more importantly, the positive consequences of this. This will enable a deeper understanding of precisely what is meant by this fluid notion of identity, and where possible criticisms and inconsistencies can be located within this theory.
Okay, imagine you existed a century ago. Before the advent of "postmodern theories". What about you then would have been subject to "dissolution" had they been around? What about you now can in fact be "dissoluted" by the postmodernists? How exactly would we -- philosophers -- go about pinning that down?

The question isn't the "fluidity" of human identity. That's just commonsense. How someone who is now 60 was when she was 10 or 20 or 30 will reveal any number of changes. Some glaring, others less so. Biological changes, demographic changes, facts regarding any number of aspects that constitute "I". Changes almost none will question or refute.

And hardly just "theoretical".

And changes that some see as negative, others might see as positive. Again, we will need to know what those changes are given the particular life that one lives.

But what if the changes revolve instead around value judgments. You change your mind about abortion or homosexuality or consuming animal flesh or the proper role of government. Here "I", now that you are 60, might be nothing at all like "I" when you were 20. How would this be assessed objectively?

And what does that have to do with the arguments made by postmodernists?

Or the arguments made by me?

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 3:37 pm What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly
Because I’m always working out my whatness through the business of existing, of doing and choosing and speaking and thinking and interpreting and making, and this issue always comes back to me, regardless of whether I let the world or others reveal certain facts to me, there is a sense that I am accountable all the way down.
Which of course "in reality" is ridiculous. Are you accountable for being born? Are accountable for being brainwashed as a child? Are you accountable for all of the many, many, many people and experiences and events that can come at you from all directions as an adult. In fact, the more you think it through the closer you come to accepting just how much of your life is either beyond fully comprehending or fully controlling. It's amazing that we understand ourselves as much as we do.

The business of existing, bursting at the seams with contingency and exigency...both amidst the vicissitudes of the ordinary and the extraordinary...is for the human species far, far, far more problematic than for all other creatures. Animals that by and large are driven almost entirely by instinct, libido and deep-seated drives.
This is where Heidegger introduces the normative category of “Authenticity”. Dasein is always its choices and possibilities, but doesn’t often realize this. Often it just carries out actions because “that’s what one does”, thus disavowing its responsibility in its choosing to choose a course of action. This is Dasein in an inauthentic mode. However, inauthentic Dasein is not for that reason lacking in any of the being that Dasein is. The difference is one of comportment towards oneself and one’s being. Accordingly, we will not spend time exploring this distinction in this analysis of basic features.
This is philosophical jargon for...for what exactly?

"Normative category"?

"Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible." wiki

Come on, if Heidegger was truly interested in integrating Dasein into the is/ought world, he would have spent considerably more time in Being and Time exploring authentic/inauthentic behavior given his very own moral and political prejudices.

The irony of course being that many today insist that any number of Germans back then lived "inauthentic" lives because they allowed those like Hitler to turn them into full-blown Nazis. They lived out the normative parameters of others rather than their own. They allowed their subjectivity to be owned and operated by the state. Any number of whom became full-blown fascist thugs.

After all, what is the "Final Solution" but how far the fulminating fanatic objectivist minds can go?

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Personal identity is accustomed behaviours and appearances reified for purposes of social control, and prediction. When some existentialist makes a great lunge at freedom she is defying accustomed behaviours and appearances.

Normative parameters affect all but the most defiant of mortals. It would be a naive existentialist who didn't know she was taking a risk when she became eccentric. Authenticity is not an easy option including when you are aware you should be authentic.

I don't claim to know what Heidegger wrote about the is/ought world however I believe I can be eclectic to suit my own quest. Is there any reason I ought not to conflate ideas from Sartre with ideas from Heidegger?
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

Identity and Postmodernism
From UKEssays
The debate over the stability of identity is one that is inseparably linked to postmodernism. This diverse group of theories centre around, in Lyotard’s famous phrase, ‘incredulity toward meta-narratives.’ Postmodernists maintain that the project of modernity has failed, and that no single source or body of knowledge can legitimise itself as a universal measure of value or identity.
Two points:

1] Like all the rest of us, postmodernists are creating their own narratives as a result of the life that they live out in a particular world understood in a particular way. Some of it can be demonstrated to in fact be true and some of it is only what they think is true...their own personal opinions. Others may see the same situation differently. You go back and forth trying to pin it down, but it never really is.

2] human reality is such that, if you are able to convince yourself that your own narrative does in fact reflect something in the vicinity of a "metaphysical" truth, then from your frame of mind it is. And, far more important still, you will behave as though it is true objectively. And it is through the behaviors that you choose that consequences occur. For both yourself and for others. Thus if stability is important to you in regard to your identity there are any number of "isms" out there from which to choose. And certainly not just mine.

Postmodernism no longer allows us to theorise society into homogenous identities which can then be totalised in a grand-theory or meta-narrative. This is also the case when it comes to the identification of the self. Rather than the self maintaining a stable core of identity, from a postmodern perspective identity is fluid and is dependent upon where the self is historically and culturally situated.
Let's just say that I understand this better than you you. If in fact that's true. But in fact I am no more able to demonstrate that it is than you are that it's not. But then I understand this better than you do too.
As Luntley (1985) notes, this conception of the self threatens the very possibility of self-identity:

The loss of self-identity is threatened because if we situated the self in real historical circumstances, we would situate it in things that are contingent and constantly changing. Therefore, the self would also be constantly changing. It would be in flux and would have no continuing identity.
And all I ask of others is that they at least make an attempt to demonstrate that this is not at all the case for them. Instead, their own particular moral and political and spiritual foundations really are a reflection of the One True Path to, among other things, enlightenment.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by phyllo »

Postmodernism no longer allows us to theorise society into homogenous identities which can then be totalised in a grand-theory or meta-narrative. This is also the case when it comes to the identification of the self. Rather than the self maintaining a stable core of identity, from a postmodern perspective identity is fluid and is dependent upon where the self is historically and culturally situated.
As Luntley (1985) notes, this conception of the self threatens the very possibility of self-identity:

The loss of self-identity is threatened because if we situated the self in real historical circumstances, we would situate it in things that are contingent and constantly changing. Therefore, the self would also be constantly changing. It would be in flux and would have no continuing identity.
Wow.

Discovering something that Buddhism has been saying for 2500 years.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Iwannaplato »

phyllo wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 7:19 pm
Postmodernism no longer allows us to theorise society into homogenous identities which can then be totalised in a grand-theory or meta-narrative. This is also the case when it comes to the identification of the self. Rather than the self maintaining a stable core of identity, from a postmodern perspective identity is fluid and is dependent upon where the self is historically and culturally situated.
As Luntley (1985) notes, this conception of the self threatens the very possibility of self-identity:

The loss of self-identity is threatened because if we situated the self in real historical circumstances, we would situate it in things that are contingent and constantly changing. Therefore, the self would also be constantly changing. It would be in flux and would have no continuing identity.
Wow.

Discovering something that Buddhism has been saying for 2500 years.
And that was far away for a long time, but we have the presocratics like Heraclitus, so no excuses....
Everything flows and nothing stays.
Everything flows and nothing abides.
Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
Everything flows; nothing remains.
All is flux, nothing is stationary.
All is flux, nothing stays still.
All flows, nothing stays.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by phyllo »

True

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” - Heraclitus
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Iwannaplato »

phyllo wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 11:50 am True

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” - Heraclitus
And if this is true, there's no reason to fear death, at least as some future event or future cessation perhaps, because it won't be you who dies. And you'll be ceasing for the rest of the day today. A quite similar fellow or gal will be going to work in your stead tomorrow.

I'm really quite angry at the older me who started this post, since I'm not sure how to finish, but I feel this hallucinated loyalty to him.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

Identity and Postmodernism
From UKEssays
Once the very identity of the self comes under threat, then so does the possibility of any coherency in social theorising. A postmodern society is one in which the identities of the social actors are undergoing constant transformation.
And how can it be otherwise since identity itself is thought to be rooted out in particular worlds understood in different ways by individuals who live in this world experiencing truly diverse sets of personal circumstances. What seems coherent to some seems utterly foolish and irrational to others. And constant transformation because our interactions are submersed in the relentless reality of contingency, chance and change. Even here however some experience this far more than others. Then there are those global episodes that can impact millions like the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Identity then becomes open to contestation as there is no longer any ultimate referent (truth, science, God etc.) to provide universal legitimation.
That "transcending font" which most call God. And not only on this side of the grave but, of far greater importance, on the other side. After all, what is the 70 to 80 odd years we live from birth to death on Earth compared to all of eternity. On Judgement Day "legitimation" determines whether we go up or down. Paradise or damnation.
In Lyotard’s terms, the impossibility of a grand or meta-narrative leads to the social being constructed of small narratives, none of which are necessarily more valid than another.
Small narratives ever and always derived from individuals living their lives out in particular worlds understood in particular ways historically and culturally and experientially. And while each "ism" insists that their own "meta-narrative" must prevail, they refuse to acknowledge the possibility that their own One True Path -- one among hundreds and hundreds of others, both God and No God -- might not actually be the "ism".

Why?

Well, back to the OP here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

Back to the "psychology of objectivism". Back to my own speculation that for the objectivists among us [and they know who they are] it's not what they believe but that what they believe is the font they embed I in in order to sustain their own "comfort and consolation" all the way to the grave.

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
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iambiguous
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

phyllo wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 11:50 am True

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” - Heraclitus
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 7:42 pmAnd if this is true, there's no reason to fear death, at least as some future event or future cessation perhaps, because it won't be you who dies. And you'll be ceasing for the rest of the day today. A quite similar fellow or gal will be going to work in your stead tomorrow.
How I wish that I could figure out a way to think like this!!!

Back in the day when I was a devout Christian, a big part of me didn't fear death either. Yes, I knew it would be me that died, but the next stop was immortality and salvation. True, I had absolutely no idea what the hell that entailed for my "soul", but, I figured, anything beats oblivion.

Now, Godless and unable to think myself into believing in an alternative spiritual path like Buddhism, I still fear death. Why?

Because all of the people and things that make my life truly enjoyable and fulfilling "here and now" will be snuffed out forevermore!!!.

Nope, I'm still convinced the only thing that would tip the balance and make me not fear death is when my life itself becomes such that there is considerably more pain and suffering in it than all the good stuff.

Check this out: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=195614
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