[lit-ideas] scathology
- From: palma <palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:26:34 +0200
On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 12:24 PM, dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Actually, the nothing does not JUST noth. The nothing noths itself.
>
> Or, to echo Heidegger, "Das Nichts selbst nichtet".
>
> A little context.
>
> Heidegger writes:
>
> "The turning away, however, is as such an expelling of be-ing as a whole
> that lets it slip out of one's grasp. The whole rejecting expulsion of
> be-ing as a whole that is slipping away, which is the way dread closes in
> on
> existence, is the essence of no-thing: nihilation [die Nichtung]. Neither
> is
> it an annihilation of being nor does it come from negation. Nor can
> nihilation be accounted for by annihilation or negation."
>
> It is then that Heidegger concludes, metaphysically:
>
> "No-thing nihilates of its own."
>
> In the vernacular that irritated Carnap:
>
> "Das Nichts selbst nichtet."
>
> The questions raised by McEvoy are super-important. What kind of statements
> are metaphysical statements? (The elucidation of this belongs to
> 'philosophical eschatology').
>
> If you defend a dogma (of the analytic-synthetic distinction) there are at
> least a few variants to McEvoy's alternatives below. Yes, they can be
> analytic and a priori, but they can also be synthetic a priori. (Grice's
> favourite example: "Nothing can be green and red [not read] all over.").
> We know
> Sir Freddie, who quotes Heidegger's "Nothing" claims denied the
> possibility
> of this type of statement. Later on, philosophers like Donnellan (who
> wrote
> his Cornell PhD dissertation under Max Black on the foundations of
> necessary truths in the work of C. I. Lewis) and Kripke will add further
> subcategories: necessary a posteriori, for example, or a statement of
> identity that
> is merely contingent, and so on.
>
> Grice also mentions that the keywords in philosophical eschatology are
> METAPHOR and ANALOGY. So perhaps Heidegger was speaking either
> metaphorically,
> or engaging in an analogical sort of reasoning, which would rely on a
> 'proportion' of metaphysical concepts. Finally, Grice would say that, as in
> topology, often in metaphysics, being 'interesting' may pay better than
> being
> boringly true.
>
> (I'm sure Heideggerian get a lot of excitement out of Heidegger's
> metaphysical claims that cannot just be encapsulated in 'having grasped a
> truth':
> it seems to be more like an illumination of some special sort). And yes,
> 'observation' may play a minimal role here, unless we involve intuition.
> After
> all, there is phenomenological background to Heidegger's thought, and his
> intuitions or introspections about 'Nothing' may STILL count as
> 'observational' (in the 'sense' of, say, Russell's acquaintance with his
> own sense
> data).
>
> In any case, I'm fascinated that Heidegger, from the passages where "Das
> Nichts selbst nichtet" occurs, was SO into 'science': he just thought that
> Science ignored nothing, which coming from a religious thinker as he was
> may
> implicate he could have studied the problem in the history not just of
> philosophy but of science. In one of my posts on this thread, I notice
> that the
> vacuum, and how nature abhors it, may be a scientific counterpart of
> Heidegger's 'question'.
>
> What I'm also fascinated with, as J. L. Scherb is, is how Carnap preferred
> to see Heidegger's question (and statement) as a pseudo-statement,
> violating the grammar of German. I suppose Carnap was being jocular in
> that
> Heidegger is not committing a _solecism_, so there must be something more
> to
> Carnap's view. McEvoy is of the idea that Carnap's views on language and
> the
> language of science were pretty narrow; but he made an influential point,
> and
> years, nay decades, later, D. P. Henry and J. L. Scherb were still taking
> Carnap's 'linguistic' approach seriously, as perhaps Heidegger himself
> should.
>
> In a message dated 2/24/2015 10:55:59 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> "Popper [...] claim[s] [that metaphysical statements are unfalsifiable].
> It is part of his 'demarcation criterion' between science and metaphysics:
> it amounts to saying that metaphysical statements are distinct from
> empirical/scientific statements and that the difference lies in whether
> they are
> falsifiable by 'observation'. This claim leaves open that metaphysical
> statements may be 'falsifiable' in some other sense. To take [one]
> examples: "Das
> Nichts nichtet", if interpreted to mean "Das Nichts immer nichtet", would
> be falsified by a "Nichts" that failed to "nichtet". ... But we have to
> ask
> whether [this] counterexample[... is] 'observable' in a scientific sense:
> it seems highly unlikely: neither the "Nichts" nor its "nichet" is
> observable in scientific terms. ... If Heidegger defends his "Nichtet"
> thesis by
> way of analytic or definitional argument that renders the claim
> tautological,
> ... it is irrefutable; but as a tautology [like "All tables are tables"] it
> is without substantive interest - including metaphysical interest. If
> defended as a substantive claim, it may be falsifiable in some sense [as
> indicated above] but still metaphysical because not falsifiable by
> observation.
> That it is unfalsifiable by observation is a logical weakness. ... "Das
> Nichts nichtet" [may be] taken to mean "There exists a "Nichts" that on at
> least one occasion "nichtet"", ... a positive existential statement. ...
> It is
> doubtful H intended his "Nichts" thesis to amount merely to a positive
> existential statement of this sort. [H's example] show[s] the usefulness
> of
> Popper's demarcation criterion rather than offering anything significant
> that
> undermines its usefulness as a logical tool."
>
> Well, Popper (like Carnap) would have read Heidegger in German, and so
> they would know what Heidegger was _meaning_.
>
> On the other hand, Sir Freddie Ayer (who hated "The Nothing noths") relied
> on a, I grant, bad English translation ("The Nought noughts" sounds
> better).
>
> What is also perhaps unfalsifiable is Grice's remark, slightly out of the
> blue, that either for this or for that, Heidegger was (at the time of
> Grice's lecturing), "the greatest living philosopher".
>
> --- SOME CONTEXT FOR HEIDEGGER'S CLAIM, "Das Nichts selbst nichtet".
>
> Heidegger writes in "What is metaphysics", section II: "Nothing":
>
> "How do things stand with this no-thing [Nichts]?"
>
> "Is it an accident that we speak quite automatically in this way?"
>
> "Is it then only a manner of speaking—and nothing more?"
>
> "But why do we trouble ourselves about this no-thing?"
>
> "In fact, no-thing is indeed turned away by science and given up [on] as
> the null and void [das Nichtige]."
>
> "But if we give up no-thing in such a way, do we not indeed accept it?"
>
> "But can we talk about an acceptance if we accept nothing [nichts]?"
>
> "Yet maybe all this back and forth has already turned into empty verbal
> wrangling."
>
> "Science must then renew its seriousness and assert its soberness in
> opposition to this, so that it has only to do with being."
>
> "No-thing—what can it be for science except a horror and a phantasm?
>
> If science is right, then one thing is for certain: science wants to know
> nothing of no-thing."
>
> "In the end, this is the scientifically strict comprehension of no-thing."
>
> "We know it in wanting to know nothing about the nothing."
>
> "Science wants to know nothing of no-thing."
>
> "But even so it is nonetheless certain that, when it attempts to talk
> about its own essence it calls on no-thing for help."
>
> "It claims for its own what it has rejected."
>
> "What sort of conflicted essence unveils itself here?"
>
> "Reflection on our present life as one determined by science finds us in
> the midst of a conflict."
>
> "In the dispute a question has already presented itself."
>
> "The question merely needs to be articulated."
>
> "How do things stand with no-thing?"
>
> "The development of the question about no-thing must put us in the
> position to be clear about whether it is
> possible or impossible to answer this question."
>
> "No-thing has been admitted."
>
> "With overweening indifference toward it, science commends it as what "is
> not a given."
>
> "All the same, we will try to speak about no-thing."
>
> "What is no-thing?"
>
> "Our first approach to this question already shows us something unusual
> about it."
>
> "From the outset in asking this question we posit no-thing as something
> that "is" such and such, as being."
>
> "But plainly it has in fact been distinguished from just that."
>
> "The question about no-thing—what and how it, no-thing, is—turns what is
> being questioned into its opposite."
>
> "The question robs itself of its own object."
>
> "Accordingly, every answer to this question is impossible from the
> outset."
>
> "For it necessarily starts out in the form: no-thing "is" this or that."
>
> "Question and answer alike are themselves just as nonsensical with respect
> to no-thing."
>
> "But such a dismissal doesn't have to come from science."
>
> "The commonly referred to ground rule of all thinking (the principle of
> avoiding contradiction), everyday "logic" puts down this question."
>
> "For thinking, which in essence is always thinking about something, would
> be working against its own nature in thinking about no-thing."
>
> "Because we keep on failing to make no-thing as such into an object, we
> have already come to the end of our question about no-thing, on the
> assumption that "logic" is the highest authority on this question, that the
> intellect is the means and thinking the way to grasp no-thing in an
> original way
> and to decide about its disclosure."
>
> "But can the rule of "logic" be challenged?"
>
> "Isn't the intellect really lord and master in this question about
> no-thing?"
>
> "After all, only with its help can we determine no-thing at all and
> formulate it as a problem, even if only as one that eliminates itself."
>
> "For no-thing is the negation of the generality of being, simply not
> being.
>
> "Yet with that we subsume no-thing under the higher determination of the
> not-like and therewith, so it seems, the negated."
>
> "But under the ruling and never challenged doctrine of "logic," negation
> is a specific mental act."
>
> "How then can we with the question of no-thing, and indeed with the
> question about its questionability, hope to bid adieu to the intellect?"
>
> "Are we that certain about what we presuppose here?"
>
> "Does the not ["das Nicht"], negativity [die Verneintheit], and hence
> negation have about it a higher
> determination under which no-thing, as a particular species of the
> negated, falls?"
>
> "Is there no-thing only because there is the not, i.e., negation?"
>
> "Or is it the other way around?"
>
> "Is there negation and the not only because there is no-thing?"
>
> "This has not been decided; indeed not once has the question been
> expressly raised."
>
> "We maintain that no-thing is more original than the not and negation."
>
> "If our thesis is correct, the possibility of negation as a mental act,
> and therewith the intellect itself, depends in some way upon no-thing."
>
> "What hope is there then to decide about this?"
>
> "Does the seeming absurdity of the question and answer regarding no-thing
> rest solely on the blind single-mindedness of our far-ranging intellect?"
>
> "However, if we do not allow ourselves to be led astray by the formal
> impossibility of the question about no-thing and still confront the
> question,
> we must then at the very least satisfy what is still as the basic
> requirement of the possible development of any question."
>
> "If no-thing is to be questioned in the way questioning works, then it
> must itself be given in advance."
>
> "We must be able to encounter it."
>
> "How do we go after no-thing?"
>
> "How do we find no-thing?"
>
> "In order to find something, must we not already know that it is there at
> all?"
>
> "Indeed!"
>
> "First and foremost, a person is able to look for something only if he has
> already anticipated the actual presence of what is being sought."
>
> "But what is sought here is no-thing. In the end, is there seeking without
> some anticipation, a seeking to which a proper finding belongs?"
>
> "Be that as it may, we know no-thing even if only as that which we
> casually talk about day in and day out."
>
> "Without further ado, we can work out a definition of this pale no-thing,
> which in all the colourlessness of self-evidence so inconspicuously hangs
> around our talk."
>
> "No-thing is the complete negation of the generality of being."
>
> "In the end, isn't this characteristic of nothing a sign of the only
> direction from which it can encounter us?"
>
> "Generality of being must be given beforehand in order to be made invalid
> as such by negation, in which no-thing itself then must manifest itself."
>
> "But even if we ignore the questionability of the relation between
> negation and no-thing, how should we as finite essences, make the whole
> of being
> in its generality accessible in itself and to ourselves in particular.
>
> "If need be, we can think of the whole of be-ing as an idea, and then
> negate what has been thus thought up and "think" of it as negated. In
> this way
> we do reach the formal concept of a "thought up" no-thing, but never
> no-thing itself."
>
> "But no-thing is nothing, and no difference can prevail between the
> thought up no-thing and real no-thing, unless no-thing represents
> something other
> than the complete absence of difference.
>
> But real no-thing itself, isn't it once again that concealed and absurd
> concept of an actual no-thing [eines seienden Nichts]?"
>
> "For one last time now the objections of our intellect would call a halt
> to our search, the legitimacy of which can be demonstrated only through a
> fundamental experience of nothing."
>
> "As surely as we never get a sure grasp of the generality of be-ing in
> itself, just as surely do we all the same find ourselves somehow placed
> in the
> midst of the generality of bare being."
>
> "In the end, there continues to be an essential difference between getting
> a grasp of the whole of being in itself and finding oneself in the midst
> of being as a whole."
>
> "The former is impossible in principle."
>
> "The latter happens all the time in our existence."
>
> "Of course, it looks just as though in our everyday comings and goings we
> were holding fast to only just this or that [kind of] being, as though we
> were lost in this or that realm of being. But no matter how fragmented the
> daily round may seem, it always maintains being in the unity of a "whole"
> although only in the shadows."
>
> "Even then and precisely just then, when we are not especially busy with
> things, this "as a whole" overcomes us; for example, in genuine boredom.
> This
> is a long way off far off when this or that book or
> play, job or leisure activity, is boring. It breaks out when "it's boring"
> Profound boredom, like a silent fog insinuating itself in the depths of
> existence, pulls things, others and oneself into it altogether with
> remarkable indifference. Such boredom reveals being as a whole. Another
> possibility
> of such revelation lies concealed in our joy in the present existence, not
> merely the person, of someone we love."
>
> Being attuned in such a way that we "are" one way or another, we find
> ourselves in the midst of
> being as a whole being attuned by it.
>
> "Not only does the situatedness of mood disclose being as a whole in its
> own way, but this disclosing, far from being a mere incident, is at the
> same
> time the fundamental event of our being there" (which is the title of a
> novel -- now a film with Peter Sellars).
>
> ----- THE CENTRAL PASSAGE regarding the 'nichtet' is as per below. If
> 'selbst' is understood as objective, it may mean that the nothing noths
> itself.
> Of course, 'itself' is a trick. "The fish itself did it" (Wanda, suppose)
> does not involve this objective use of 'itself': 'itself' is merely
> emphatic. So there is an ambiguity here. Grice said,
>
> "Avoid ambiguity".
>
> But since he also said that Heidegger was the greatest living philosopher,
> once can pardon one ambiguity ("or two" as Geary colloquially adds) to the
> greatest living philosopher (as Heidegger was when Grice said that -- in
> Grice's view -- He never liked Sartre, much).
>
> Heidegger writes:
>
> "The turning away, however, is as such an expelling of be-ing as a whole
> that lets it slip out of one's grasp. The whole rejecting expulsion of
> be-ing as a whole that is slipping away, which is the way dread closes in
> on
> existence, is the essence of no-thing: nihilation [die Nichtung]. Neither
> is
> it an annihilation of be-ing nor does it come from negation. Nor can
> nihilation be accounted for by annihilation or negation."
>
> "No-thing nihilates of its own."
>
> In the vernacular that irritated Carnap:
>
> "Das Nichts selbst nichtet."
>
> In the fifth edition (1949), Heidegger slightly changed his mind slightly,
> or rather refined his prose.
>
> "als Nichten west, währt, gewährt das Nichts."
>
> i.e. "in the way nihilating makes be, sustains, gives (up) no-thing]."
>
> I have to grant that there is sermon quality (Protestant sermon) in the
> quality of Heidegger's dicta. He was after all lecturing to philosophy
> students, and it would be good to know what kind of 'dialogue' Heidegger
> extracted
> from his students.
>
> Teaching is not of course essential to being a philosopher, and it is when
> we do NOT Heidegger as teaching (or preaching) that his statements (like
> "Das Nichts selbst nichtet") should be considered, eschatologically,
> almost.
> This may be an individual act: and each reader will derive from it whatever
> implicature whom Grice called "the greatest living philosopher" is aiming
> at.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
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--
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