The Infinite Project: Sub Section What We Have Been Reading:
2nd Part of the Third Part
of
2nd Part of the Third Part
of
Letters, Journals, Diaries
THE PROBLEM OF "BLACK-SPACE"
The Part Two means this is part two of a large document I have on which parts of the Post: What Have I (We) Been Reading and some of my so-called Dewey Decimal Project results are forming.
I want to also duplicate all this or some of it onto my other Blog.
One reason for this is that I know that some people dislike the black background here. I understand this the background or 'Richard, you Must try to be more focused' which is the "Control Blog" where indeed I mean to put a lot of stuff on that has been neglected for some time. On there also I talk or will talk more directly to
potential readers. Note that I proceed regardless of "popularity".
The black background I have continued and will do for things also as it was a deliberate strategy to use that background. To be noted is my early use of what I call "black-space". I published completely empty spaces as early I think as 2006 or possibly earlier. The point of these is to signify a number of potential interpretations.
To simplify: 1. The space represents a published nothingness which is de facto actually of semantic
significance. So, perhaps as with John Cage's use of silence etc, he composed the silence.
This was not trivial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3
This leads to 2. Perhaps as with Cage the "black-spaces" represent silence. While black can here also have say a negative connotation of death, nothingness etc (I don't necessarily see these as negative but it we take this aspect then it can signify a kind of negativity: death say, but see below): in my case here one signalling is to the beauty of silence. For me that is one of the primary beauties. There is always some sound. Deeper indeed it reaches also for soundlessness. In that mode the need for cell phones, music etc, chatter, is
counter-attacked. In personal conversations I bombard people with my talk. It gets out of hand in fact, I realise this but this is in part due to medication I have been taking for years, otherwise it works to kind of impose a kind of barrier (in some cases). But in the main a deeper than deep silence is reached for. Say
a kind of reaching for the absolute zero of silence. Absolute zero is theoretical point (so far) of -273 degrees celcius. Of course at these points there is a kind of impossibility (impossibility is something that fascinates me)...also indeterminacy interests me. But simply put it is silence I want here.
So 3. The blackness can be a kind of nothingness, even a total Nothingness. In a book I read about
"Nothing" (yes, there are such books e.g. the short short books and one other I read which was about or called 'Reality' which was shown to be, in deep terms, impossible to define or establish like things such as truth, what gravity is, God or not-God, infinity and so on: the Platonic Ideal Forms postulated by Plato in his problematic 'Republic' a dialogue, typical of Socrates-Plato "full of holes" or logical elisions (his Plato or Socrates interlocuters fail to pursue clearly dubious "conclusions" Plato comes to. Beautiful though, is his concept of the Cave and so on. But again these a priori Forms are questionable: although it seems in some say logic spaces, certain a priori assumptions are needed. But this leads to Kant and his use of a priori
and also a posteriori postulations.
But if we do (a frightening and immensely difficult thought experiment) the Nothingness is indeed NO-THINGS. Not just a mathematical space or a vacuum with or without ether, is no thing. We would not exist in it, nothing exists in it. Of course talking of nothing always leads to double negations and confusion so here
Nothing is assumed to be that no thing state.
The Christian Church philosophers, for example, needed a state both of free will AND Nothingness. From this impossibilty God or some Force was able to create the Universe. By allowing free will we allow God to be able to create something from Nothingness. That Nothing, it was postulated by Hegel, for example, as being possible to create or be created by some method of his dialectic. This means that Nothing + Something --> Being. The dialectic being that a Thesis combining with an antithesis leads to synthesis. Although as this is some kind of continual process it is hard to think of this. Another way of thinking of the initiation of all things is that they always were and always are. Here Science, Philosophy and Religion collide but for me they are all important in this.
For me, this Nothingness represented by the Black-Space can also thus signal the immense potentiality and fecundity of that nothingness as it holds the enormous (near-infinite) potential for existence to begin and all possibilities are there as a probability state.
This could echo Maori mythology of the beginning of the Universe (or other Creation theories). Science's "Big Bang" is no more satisfactory than any religious view of the origins of things or any mythological view.
In any case this is another signalling of the "black-space".
4. I can also signal death, the end, or depression and darkness. This negative side is not psychological.
5, It can just be something that challenges the mind. A white sheet of paper with nothing on it is another way of seeing this perhaps. John Ashbery said of his poem 'Litany' that (written in two parts side by side with a white section in the middle a la the Langauge poets who experimented with forms and ideas of language and what meaning is if it can be defined and so on): Ashbery said that what fascinated him almost most was the "emptiness" between the two blocks of text.
6, In some of the black spaces I have placed a single "e" in the centre. The letter "e" is central in significance and signalling a number of things in Eyelight and the I.P. also.
There are other aspects of meaning potential signaled by the black-spaces.
In art we have Malevich's black square. The black and other colour squares of Ad Reinhadt, and the even
perhaps more signalling works of Rothko and many others (not just The Supremacists or the Abstract Expressionists but certainly these and indeed our own Ralph Hotere of 'Black Windows' are important in this context).
Added to that the black-spaces can be seen simply as black-spaces or areas of blackness with no significance except my own desire to do some thing that I thought was original at the time.
There are many other things signalled or that people might find through these black-spaces.
That my Eyleight Blog (called Eyelight...the 'Richard, you Must try...' Blog is also part of Eyelight and the Infinite Project. The Infinite Poem preceded both and is inherent in them. The Inf. Project is more complex.
Eventually, and potentially, this project, which comprises and involves everything: will be handed over to everyone. That is it points to an inclusive rather than an elitist or inclusive field of endeavour. But now it tries to move towards a multi-logical or multiplex project which also involves the Random. It points to things but does not state any position or judgement as such. There is no attempt to make the world a better place or anything. Such ideas are dubious. Such political and ethical questions simply lead into the Bog of epistemology and ontological metaphysics....under the surface, my "philosophy" kind of runs in the background from time to time but contradictions will everywhere be seen.
Perhaps one advice can be given: read the images and view the writing (with all the wierd and sometimes deliberately garish and somewhat gauche writings, the tautologies repetitions, pseudo "pronouncements" such as 'Repetition is Truth' and so on. Some humour is there of course. The spirit of Rabellais (of say Bakhtin -- of Bahktin's Rabellais (and my edition illustrated by Heath Robinson) "haunts about the shape" of this "vase" of writing and images, whatever it is....
[All media is implied so potentially braille, audio, movies and many other things would be here or implied in al this but this at this stage is mostly theoretical so far.]
________________ _____________________________________ ___________________________
Best known in this country for having
forged the term "deconstruction," Jacques Derrida follows
Nietzsche and Heidegger in elaborating a critique of "Western
metaphysics," by which he means not only the Western
philosophical tradition but "everyday" thought and language
as well. Western thought, says Derrida, has always been structured in
terms of dichotomies or polarities: good vs. evil, being vs.
nothingness, presence vs. absence, truth vs. error, identity vs.
difference, mind vs. matter, man vs. woman, soul vs. body, life vs.
death, nature vs. culture,-speech vs. writing. These polar opposites
do not, however, stand as independent and equal entities. The second
term in each pair is considered the negative, corrupt, undesirable
version of the first, a fall away from it. Hence, absence is the lack
of presence, evil is the fall from good, error is a distortion of
truth, etc. In other words, the two terms are not simply opposed in
their meanings, but are arranged in a hierarchical order which gives
the first term priority, in both the temporal and the qualitative
sense of the word. In general, what these hierarchical oppositions do
is to privilege unity, identity, immediacy, and temporal and spatial
presentness over distance, difference, dissimulation, and deferment.
In its search for the answer to the question of Being, Western
philosophy has indeed always determined Being as presence. Derrida's
critique of Western metaphysics focuses on its privileging of the
spoken word over the written word. The spoken word is given a higher
value because the speaker and listener are both present to the
utterance simultaneously. There is no temporal or spatial distance
between speaker, speech, and listener, since the speaker hears
himself speak at the same moment the listener does. This immediacy
seems to guarantee the notion that in the spoken word we know what we
mean, mean what we say, say what we mean, and know what we have said.
Whether or not perfect understanding always occurs in fact, this
image of perfectly self-present meaning is, according to Derrida, the
underlying ideal of Western culture. Derrida has termed this belief
in the self-presentation of meaning "1ogocentrism," from
the Greek word Logos (meaning speech, logic, reason, the Word of
God). Writing, on the other hand, is considered by the logocentric
system to be only a representation of speech, a secondary substitute
designed for use only when speaking is impossible. Writing is thus a
second-rate activity that tries to overcome distance by making use of
it: the writer puts his thought on paper, distancing it from himself,
transforming it into something that can be read by someone far away,
even after the writer's death. This inclusion of death, distance, and
difference is thought to be a corruption of the self-presence of
meaning, to open meaning up to all forms of adulteration which
immediacy would have prevented. In the course of his critique,
Derrida does not simply reverse this value system and say that
writing is better than speech. Rather, he attempts to show that the
very possibility of opposing the two terms on the basis of presence
vs. absence or immediacy vs. representation is an illusion, since
speech is already structured by difference and distance as much as
writing is. The very fact that a word is divided into a phonic
signifier and a mental signified, and that, as Saussure pointed out,
language is a system of differences rather than a collection of
independently meaningful units, indicates that language as such is
already constituted by the very distances and differences it seeks to
overcome. To mean, in other words, is automatically not to be. As
soon as there is meaning, there is difference. Derrida's word for
this lag inherent in any signifying act is diff erance, from the
French verb diff irer, which means both "to differ" and "to
defer." What Derrida attempts to demonstrate is that this diff
erance inhabits the very core of what appears to be immediate and
present. Even in the seemingly nonlinguistic areas of the structures
of consciousness and the unconscious, Derrida analyzes the underlying
necessity that induces Freud to compare the psychic apparatus to a
structure of scriptural diff er-ana, a "mystic writing-pad. "I
The illusion of the self-presence of meaning or of consciousness is
thus produced by the repression of the differential structures from
which they spring. Derrida's project in his early writings is to
elaborate a science of writing called grammatology: a science that
would study the effects of this diff erance which Western metaphysics
has systematically represneted in its search for I. See "Freud
and the Scene of Writing, in Writing and Differance, trans.
Alan Bass (Chicago: Universicy of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 196-23 1.
x self-present Truth. But, as Derrida himself admits, the very
notion of a perfect! y adequate science or -logy belongs to the
logocentric discourse which the science of writing would try,
precisely, to put in questio'l. Derrida thus finds himself in the
uncomfortable position of attempting to account for an error by means
of tools derived from that very error. For it is not possible to show
that the belief in truth is an error without implicitly believing in
the notion of Truth. By the same token, to show that the binary
oppositions of metaphysics are illusions is also, and perhaps most
importantly, to show that such illusions cannot simply in turn be
opposed without repeating the very same illusion. The task of undoing
the history of logocentrism in order to disinter diffirance would
thus appear to be a doubly impossible one: on the one hand, it can
only be conducted by means of notions of revelation, representation,
and rectification, which are the logocentric notions par excellence,
and, on the other hand, it can only dig up something that is really
nothing-a difference, a gap, an interval, a trace. How, then, can
such a task be undertaken? II. Supplementary Reading Any attempt to
disentangle the weave of diffirance from the logocentric blanket can
obviously not long remain on the level of abstraction and generality
of the preceding remarks. Derrida's writing, indeed, is always
explicitly inscribed in the margins of some preexisting text. Derrida
is, first and foremost, a reader, a reader who constantly reflects on
and transforms the very nature of the act of reading. It would
therefore perhaps be helpful to examine some of the specific reading
strategies he has worked out. I begin with a chapter from Of
Grammatology entitled "That Dangerous Supplement," in
which Derrida elaborates not only a particularly striking reading of
Rousseau's Confessions but also a concise reflection on his own
methodology. Derrida's starting point is the rhetoric of Rousseau's
discussions of writing, on the one hand, and masturbation, on the
other. Both activities are called supplements to natural intercourse,
in the sense both of conversation and of copulation. What Derrida
finds in Rousseau's account is a curious bifurcation within the
values of writing and masturbation with respect to the desire for
presence. Let us take writing first. On the one hand, Rousseau
condemns writing for being only a representation of direct speech and
therefore: less desirable because less immediate. Rousseau, in this
context, privileges speech as the more direct expression of the self.
But on the other hand, in the actual experience of living speech,
Rousseau finds that he expresses himself much less successfully in
person than he does in his writing. Because of his shyness, he tends
to blurt out things that represent him as the opposite of what he
thinks he is:
I would love society like others, if I
were not sure of showing myself not only at a disadvantage, but as
completely different from what I am. The part that I have taken of
writing and hiding myself is precisely the one that suits me. If I
were present, one would never know what I was worth. It is thus
absence that assures the presentation of truth, and presence that
entails its distortion. Derrida's summation of this contradictory
stance is as follows: Straining toward the reconstruction of
presence, [Rousseau] valorizes and disqualifies writing at the same
time...
Rousseau condemns writing as
destruction of presence and as disease of speech. He rehabilitates it
to the extent that it promises the reappropriation of that of which
speech allowed itself to be dispossessed. But by what, if not already
a writing older than speech and already installed in that place? (Pp.
14 1-42) In other words, the loss of presence has always already
begun. Speech itself springs out of an alienation or differance that
has the very structure of writing. It would seem, though, that it is
precisely through this assumption of the necessity of absence that
Rousseau ultimately succeeds in reappropriating the lost presence. In
sacrificing himself, he recuperates himself. This notion that
self-sacrifice is the road to self-redemption is a classical
structure in Western metaphysics. Yet it can be shown that this
project of reappropriation is inherently self-subverting because its
very starting point [language as a substitute or reaffirmation of
speech in speech (myself here, R.T.] is not presence iself, if but
the desire for presence, that is, the lack of presence. It is not
possible to desire that with which one coincides. The starting point
is thus not a point but a differance: Without the possibility of
differance, the desire of presence as such would not find its
breathing-space. That means by the same token that....
Quoted in Of Grammatology (trans.
Gayatri Chakravorry Spivak [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1974]), p. 142. Page numbers in brackets folIowing references
to 0/ Grammatology refer to J. M. Cohen's translation of Rousseau's
Confessions (Penguin, 1954), which I have sometimes
substituted for the translation used by Spivak.
....this desire carries in itself the
destiny of its nonsatisfaction. Differance produces what it forbids,
making possible the very thing that it makes impossible. (P. 143) The
same paradoxical account of the desire for presence occurs in
Rousseau's discussions of sexuality. On the one hand, masturbation is
condemned as a means of "cheating Nature" and substituting
a mere image (absence) for the presence of a sexual partner. On the
other hand: . This vice, which shame and timidity find so convenient,
h;;s a particular attraction for lively imaginations. It allows them
to dispose, so to speak, of the whole female sex at their will, and
to make any beauty who tempts them serve their pleasure without the
need of first obtaining her consent. (P. 15)
I
hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the
depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth,
through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake
me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs. Up here my
eyes are green leaves, unseeing. I am a boy in grey flannels with a
belt fastened by a brass snake up here. Down there my eyes are the
lidless eyes of a stone figure in a desert by the Nile. I see women
passing with red pitchers to the river; I see camels swaying and men
in turbans. I hear tramplings, tremblings, stirrings round me. “Up
here Bernard, Neville, Jinny and Susan (but not Rhoda) skim the
flower-beds with their nets. They skim the butterflies from the
nodding tops of the flowers. They brush the surface of the world.
Their nets are full of fluttering wings. ‘Louis! Louis! Louis!’
they shout. But they cannot see me. I am on the other side of the
hedge. There are only little eyeholes among the leaves. Oh, Lord, let
them pass. Lord, let them lay their butterflies on a
pocket-handkerchief on the gravel. Let them count out their
tortoise-shells, their red admirals and cabbage whites. But let me be
unseen. I am green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge. My hair
is made of leaves. I am rooted to the middle of the earth. My body is
a stalk. I press the stalk. A drop oozes from the hole at the mouth
and slowly, thickly, grows larger and larger. Now something pink
passes the eyehole. Now an eyebeam is slid through the chink. Its
beam strikes me. I am a boy in a grey flannel suit. She has found me.
I am struck on the nape of the neck. She has kissed me. All is
shattered.”
“I
was running,” said Jinny, “after breakfast. I saw leaves moving
in a hole in the hedge. I thought, ‘That is a bird on its nest.’
I parted them and looked; but there was no bird on a nest. The leaves
went on moving. I was frightened. I ran past Susan, past Rhoda, and
Neville and Bernard in the tool-house talking. I cried as I ran,
faster and faster. What moved the leaves? What moves my heart, my
legs? And I dashed in here, seeing you green as a bush, like a
branch, very still, Louis, with your eyes fixed. ‘Is he dead?’ I
thought, and kissed you, with my heart jumping under my pink frock
like the leaves, which go on moving, though there is nothing to move
them. Now I smell geraniums; I smell earth mould. I dance. I ripple.
I am thrown over you like a net of light. I lie quivering flung over
you.”
The
question of the meaning of Being must be formulated. If it is a
fundamental question, or indeed the fundamental question, it must be
made transparent, and in an appropriate way. 1 We must therefore
explain briefly what belongs to any question whatsoever, so that from
this standpoint the question of Being can be made visible as a very
special one with its own distinctive character. Every inquiry is a
seeking [Suchen]. Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is
sought. Inquiry is a cognizant seeking for an entity both with regard
to the fact that it is and with regard to its Being as it is. 2 This
cognizant seeking can take the form of ' investigating'
["Untersuchen"], in which one lays bare that which the
question is about and ascertains its character. Any inquiry, as an
inquiry about something, has that which is asked about [sein
Gefragtes]. But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning
of something [Anfragen bei ... ]. So in addition to what is asked
about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated [ein Befragtes]. In
investigative questions-that is, in questions which are specifically
theoretical-what is asked about is determined and conceptualized.
Furthermore, in what is asked about there lies also that which is to
be found out by the asking [das Erjragte] ; this is what is really
intended:3 with this the inquiry reaches its goal. Inquiry itself is
the behaviour of a questioner, and therefore of an entity, and as
such has its own character of Being. When one makes an inquiry one
may do so 'just casually' or they
don’t break down all meaning – there is still semantic
significance whether in the frame of what they say or in the language
potential of the multiplex utterances they devise and their challenge
to conventional “linear” meaning – the sign either takes center
stage or the conjunction of signs – as it is put – “the
materiality of the signifier” – and in the most exploded text
there is significance. By being conventionally meaningful there is a
danger of total absorption that tactics such as “ostranie”
counterattack…and there is much else.
There is danger of too much meaning – too much coercive truth or assertion.
These comments highlight some of the pitfalls.
But even since Modernism –ambiguity has been essential for the rejuvenation of intense and significant language that struggles against the
ubiquity of
The Text
and
received History
– the Fascism of Enlightenment struggles
with the wonderful beauty of undecidability – the Humanist strangulation of
creative Anarchy.
...........The immense power and Awe of the Vacuum into which the spider and the shopkeeper equally peer….
.....................WHAT AM I DOING HERE ?
tertius said...
The revelation and dissemblence of the nobody..'i think therefore i am a dinosaur'. Democracy spread your pillars and lets enter your chamber...there is a gift here...ready to be opened...
eternal sections golden dark eye light black light light black eternal red sections eternal eyelight thinking into black light white light one may …..
There is danger of too much meaning – too much coercive truth or assertion.
These comments highlight some of the pitfalls.
But even since Modernism –ambiguity has been essential for the rejuvenation of intense and significant language that struggles against the
ubiquity of
The Text
and
received History
– the Fascism of Enlightenment struggles
with the wonderful beauty of undecidability – the Humanist strangulation of
creative Anarchy.
...........The immense power and Awe of the Vacuum into which the spider and the shopkeeper equally peer….
.....................WHAT AM I DOING HERE ?
tertius said...
The revelation and dissemblence of the nobody..'i think therefore i am a dinosaur'. Democracy spread your pillars and lets enter your chamber...there is a gift here...ready to be opened...
eternal sections golden dark eye light black light light black eternal red sections eternal eyelight thinking into black light white light one may …..
________
____________ _____________ _________________ ____________
However
much this understanding of Being (an understanding which is already
available to us) may fluctuate and grow dim, and border on mere
acquaintance with a word, its very indefiniteness is itself a
positive phenomenon which needs to be clarified. An investigation of
the meaning of Being cannot be expected to give this clarification
at the outset. If we are to obtain the clue we need for Interpreting
this average understanding of Being, we must first develop the
concept of Being. In the light of this concept and the ways in which
it may be explicitly understood, we can make out what this obscured
or still unillumined understanding of Being means, and what kinds of
obscuration-or hindrance to an explicit illumination-of the meaning
of Being are possible and even inevitable. Further, this vague
average understanding of Being may be so infiltrated with traditional
theories and opinions about Being that these remain hidden as sources
of the way in which it is prevalently understood. What we seek when
we inquire into Being is not something entirely unfamiliar, even if
proximally we cannot grasp it at all. In the question which we are
to work out, what is asked about is Being -- that which determines
entities as entities, that on the basis of which [1 'zunachst'. This
word is of very frequent occurrence in Heidegger, and he will discuss
his use of it on H. 370 below. In ordinary German usage the word may
mean 'at first', 'to begin with', or 'in the first instance', and we
shall often translate it in such ways. The word. is, however, cognate
with the adjective 'nah' and its superlative 'niichst', which we
shall usually translate as 'close' and 'closest' respectively; and
Heidegger often uses 'zunachst' in the sense of 'most closely', when
he is describing the most 'natural' and 'obvious' experiences which
we have at an uncritical and pre-philosophical level. We have
ventured to translate this Heideggerian sense of'zuniichst' as
'proximally', but there are many border-line cases where it is not
clear whether Heidegger has in mind this special sense or one of the
more general usages, and in such cases we have chosen whatever
expression seems stylistically preferable. [Being and Time INT.
I ] woraufhin entities are already understood, however we may
discuss them in detail. The Being of entities 'is' not itself an
entity. If we are to understand the problem of Being, our first
philosophical step consists in not [ a Greek or Latin word or
expression here ] in not 'telling a story'- that is to say, in not
defining entities as entities by tracing them back in their origin to
some other entities, as if Being had the character of some possible
entity. Hence Being, as that which is asked about, must be exhibited
in a way of its own, essentially different from the way in which
entities are discovered. Accordingly, what is to be found out by the
asking-the meaning of Being-also demands that it be conceived in a
way of its own, essentially contrasting with the concepts in which
entities acquire their determinate signification. In so far as Being
constitutes what is asked about, and "Being" means the
Being of entities, then entities themselves turn out to be what is
interrogated. These are, so to speak, questioned as regards their
Being. But if the characteristics of their Being can be yielded
without falsification, then these entities must, on their part, have
become accessible as they are in themselves. When we come to what is
to be interrogated, the question of Being requires that the right way
of access to entities shall have been obtained and secured in
advance.
__________________________________________________________
..11 Mualsinhill
Rd
Bridgend
Greenock
14/10/34
My dear you friend of the green eyes.
You apologised for taking a month
to answer my letter what should
I do when I've taken over two to
reply to yours?...............Now dont look cross it never improves
anyone's beauty.
Well, we had a very slow trip
comoing over, taking fifty three or four days from Australia.
....Have you ever heard of Dakar? Well that was the port & we
arrived at 9 P.M. & left again at 5 A.M. ....
I only spent one day in London
before going on to Ireland where I had one
glorious week. Although it was
midsummer I could not stay in the water fro more than ten minutes at
a time or I'd have frozen stiff....Then I came over to Glasgow
starting work at Kincaid's the day after my arrival. Since then I've
been working hard....I've only been to one dance here & that was
a week ago....
15.20.34 I did not finish this
yesterday owing to a lzy feeling I've had for about a week....pain
[in his stomach caused by the excessive fried food diet in Scotland
compared to Banaba I presume] ...Everything is fried & if I had
my way, the frying pan would take the place of the thistle on the
Scottish national emblem & I'd ban the manufacture & use of
the rotten things for ever!
.....The prices [of "digs"]
ranged from 18/- a week, washing included, to 30/- a week without
washing.[I think he meant the reverse] ........Mind you things are
very cramped in this part of the world & there are six children
besides the father and mother in this house!...
I see a good deal of Bert Stone
these days & we generally mock around together on the weekends.
Together with another Australian, we went p to see the launching of
the 534or "Queen Mary." It was a glorious sighteven if the
weather was foul, and was well worth [it all]....
Last week four of us went to a
Spiritualist meeting & I received two readings. Of course it was
a lot of rot especially as I did not give them satisfactory replies
to their questions. I was a hard job not to laugh and the girl next
to me made it no easier by nudging. If we had laughed we'd have been
put into the street.
There are some very nice girls in
this part of the world but unfortunately they are rather
matrimonially inclined & you cant have a dance with them just as
chums like you can with the Australian ones.
....[Here in Grenock (or Greenoch),
Scotland (just West of Glasgow]...Once you get off the road by the
river you commence to climb & most of the hills have a grade of
about one in two. The city of Greenoch is very dirty & full of
slums but ten minutes walk takes you out into the heather clad hills
& what a view! It looks best about dusk on a clear day as then
the shaddows soften the ugly points of the city as if nestles at the
foot of the hills. Beyond it is the broad expanse of the Clyde with
the various lochs branching off it. The further bank has several
small towns scattered along its edge whilst at the back of them rise
more hills where lower slopes are dotted with farms & small
woods. Beyond these again one can only see the outline of rugged
heather covered mountains. It would be grand here in the summer when
the evenings are long.
...maybe I'll see you in the
islands. For the present I'll say au revoir. Wishing you a very happy
Xmas and New Year.
Love from
Yours anciently
Len.
P.S.
I feel 90 in the shade tonight.
.............................................................................................................................
“ They
wont understand it. But that's for the best – understanding makes
the
mind lazy.”
But
there are many things which we designate as 'being' ("seiend"],
and we do so in various senses. Everything we talk about, everything
we have in view, everything towards which we 7 comport ourselves in
any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. Being
lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in
Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein;
in the 'there is' .1 In which entities is the meaning of Being to be
discerned? From which entities is the disclosure of Being to take its
departure? Is the starting-point optional, or does some particular
entity have priority when we come to work out the question of Being?
Which entity shall we take for our example, and in what sense does it
have priority? If the question about Being is to be explicitly
formulated and carried through in such a manner as to be completely
transparent to itself, then any treatment of it in line with the
elucidations we have given requires us to explain how Being is to be
looked at, how its meaning is to be understood and conceptually
grasped; it requires us to prepare the way for choosing the right
entity for our example, and to work out the genuine way of access to
it. Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing,
access to it-all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our
inquiry, and therefore are modes of Being for those particular
entities [1 'Sein liegt im Dass- und Sosein, in Realitiit,
Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, im "es gibt".' On
'Vorhandenheit' ('presence-at-hand') see note 1, p. 48, H. 25. On
'Dasein', see note 1, p. 27. INT. I Being and Time ] which we,
the inquirers, are ourselves. Thus to work out the question of Being
adequately, we must make an entity-the inquirer-transparent in his
own Being. The very asking of this question is an entity's mode of
Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is
inquired about-namely, Being. This entity which each of us is himself
and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its
Being, we shall denote by the term "Dasein".1 If we are to
formulate our question explicitly and transparently, we must first
give a proper explication of an entity (Dasein}, with regard to its
Being. Is there not, however, a manifest circularity in such an
undertaking? If we must first define an entity in its Being, and if
we want to formulate the question of Being only on this basis, what
is this but going in a circle? In working out our question, have we
not 'presupposed' something which only the answer can bring? Formal
objections such as the argument about 'circular reasoning', which can
easily be cited at any time in the study of first principles, are
always sterile when one is considering concrete ways of
investigating. When it comes to understanding the matter at hand,
they carry no weight and keep us from penetrating into the field of
study. But factically there is no circle at all in formulating our
question as we have described. One can determine the nature of
entities in their Being without necessarily having the explicit
concept of the meaning of Being at one's disposal. Otherwise there
could have been no ontological knowledge heretofore. One would hardly
deny that factically there has been such knowledge. Of course 'Being'
has been presupposed in all ontology up till now, but not as a
concept at one's disposal-not as the sort of thing we are seeking.
This 'presupposing of Being has rather the character of taking a look
at it beforehand, so that in the light of it the entities presented
to us get provisionally Articulated in their Being. This guiding 1
The word 'Dasein' plays so important a role in this work and is
already so familiar to the English-speaking reader who has read about
Heidegger, that it seems simpler to leave it untranslated except in
the relatively rare passages in which Heidegger himself breaks it up
with a hypthen ('Da-sein') to show its etymological construction:
literally 'Being-there'. Though in traditional German philosophy it
may be used quite generally to stand for almost any kind of Being or
'existence' which we can say that something has (the 'existence' of
God, for example), in everyday usage it tends to be used more
narrowly to stand for the kind of Being that belongs to persons.
Heidegger follows the everyday usage in this respect, but goes
somewhat further in that he often uses it to stand for any person who
has such Being, and who is thus an 'entity' himself. See H. 11 below.
B 'faktisch'. While this word can often be translated simply as 'in
fact' or 'as a matter of fact', it is used both as an adjective and
as an adverb and is so characteristic of Heidegger's style that we
shall as a rule translate it either as 'facti cal' or as
'factically', thus preserving its connection with the important noun
'Faktizitiit' (facticity'), and keeping it distinct from
'tatslichlich' ('factual') and 'wirklich' ('actual'). See the
discussion of 'Tatslichlichkeit' and 'Faktizitlit' in Sections Ill
and 119 below (H. s6, 135)· 8 ' ••• deren faktischen Bestand
man wohl nicht leugnen wird'. Being and Time INT. I activity of
taking a look at Being arises from the average understanding of Being
in which we always operate and which in the end belongs to the
essential constitution1 of Dasein itself. Such ' presupposing' has
nothing to do with laying down an axiom from which a sequence of
propositions is deductively derived. It is quite impossible for there
to be any ' circular argument' in formulating the question about the
meaning of Being; for in answering this question, the issue is not
one of grounding something by such a derivation; it is rather one of
laying bare the grounds for it and exhibiting them. 2 In the question
of the meaning of Being there is no ' circular reasoning' but rather
a remarkable ' relatedness backward or forward' which what we are
asking about (Being) bears to the inquiry itself as a mode of Being
of an entity. Here what is asked about has an essential pertinence to
the inquiry itself, and this belongs to the ownmost meaning [
eigensten Sinn] of the question of Being. This only means, however,
that there is a wayperhaps even a very special one-in which entities
with the character of Dasein are related to the question of Being.
But have we not thus demonstrated that a certain kind of entity has a
priority with regard to its Being? And have we not thus presented
that entity which shall serve as the primary example to be
interrogated in the question of Being? So far our discussion has not
demonstrated Dasein's priority, nor has it shown decisively whether
Dasein may possibly or even necessarily serve as the primary entity
to be interrogated. But indeed something like a priority of Dasein
has announced itself.
Saturday 20 February [1937]
‘People go on passing,’ said Louis. They pass the window of this eating-shop incessantly. Motor-cars, vans, motor-omnibuses; and again motor-omnibuses, vans, motor-cars — they pass the window. In the background I perceive shops and houses; also the grey spires of a city church. In the foreground are glass shelves set with plates of buns and ham sandwiches. All is somewhat obscured by steam from a tea-urn. A meaty, vapourish smell of beef and mutton, sausages and mash, hangs down like a damp net in the middle of the eating- house. I prop my book against a bottle of Worcester sauce and try to look like the rest.
Orville Lester Rusher was a 21-year-old engineer from Missouri.
He mailed the letter to his sister on Nov. 25, 1941.
“He was a farm boy from Missouri,” said Vicki Borlin, Rusher’s great-niece.
“That’s what the letter talks about. That he misses Missouri snow and that it’s hot (in Hawaii) and everybody thinks it’s cold when it’s 70 degrees. He wanted to come home.”
But Rusher's family didn't receive the letter until December 8, a day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
His remains were never recovered.
Borlin says she found the letter about 15 years ago while digging through a box in her mother's garage.
After learning her son's high school band would be performing at the Pearl Harbor Visitors Center this Memorial Day, she says she thought it was the perfect opportunity to honor her late uncle.
"We've had the letter for a very long time, and I decided we needed to give it to somebody who could take care of it," Borlin said.
Borlin, who lives in Illinois, hand-carried the letter to Hawaii.
After the band’s performance Monday, Borlin and her son Maxx presented the letter to the National Park Service.
Officials say historical documents like these give people a glimpse into the past.
"What's remarkable about the letter is that it is somewhat unremarkable in its tone. He's talking about the things any young sailor here would experience. Kind of the calm before the storm, not realizing what's going to come down in the future in just a matter of days," said park ranger Daniel Brown.
The Borlins also presented a wreath in honor of Rusher and those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
While they never had the chance to meet him, they say they feel close to him just by being here.
"I could never imagine what he went through and those experiences, but just to be here is crazy," said Maxx Borlin.
“It really means a lot more to be here and to see that his remains are still on the ship,” said Vicki Borlin.
I
turn my eyes away from the Press as I go upstairs, because there are
all the Review copies of The Years packed and packing. They go
out next week: this is my last week end of comparative peace. What do
I anticipate with such clammy coldness? I think chiefly that my
friends wont mention it, will turn the conversation rather awkwardly.
I think I anticipate considerable lukewarmness among the friendly
reviewers – respectful tepidity; and a whoop of red Indian delight
from the Grigs who will joyfully & loudly announce that thhis is
the long drawn twaddle of a prim prudish bourgeois mind, & say
that now no one can take Mrs W. seriously again...I must expect a
very full exposure to this damp firework atmosphere. They will say
its a tired book; a last effort... Well, now that I have written that
down I feel that even I can exist in that shadow. That is if I keep
hard at work. And there is no lack of that. I discussed a book of
illustrated incidents with Nessa yesterday; we are going to produce
12 lithographs for Xmas printed by ourselves. As we were talking,
Margery Fry rang up to see Julian Fry about Roger. So that begins to
press on me. Then L. wants if possible to have 3 Gs. For the autumn:
& I have my Gibbon, my broadcast, & a possible leader on
biography to fill in the chinks. ….
3·
The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being
When
we pointed out the characteristics of the question of Being, taking
as our clue the formal structure of the question as such, we made it
1 'Wesensverfassung'. 'Verfassung' is the standard word for the
'constitution' of a nation or any political organization, but it is
also used for the 'condition' or 'state' in which a person may find
himself. Heidegger seldom uses the word in either of these senses;
but he does use it in ways which are somewhat analogous. In one sense
Dasein's 'Verfassung' is its 'constitution', the way it is
constituted, 'sa condition humaine'. In another sense Dasein may have
several 'Verfassungen' as constitutive 'states' or factors which
enter into its 'constitution'. We shall, in general, translate
'Verfassung' as 'constitution' or 'constitutive state' according to
the context; but in passages where 'constitutive state' would be
cumbersome and there is little danger of ambiguity, we shall simply
write 'state'. These states, however, must always be thought of as
constitutive and essential, not as temporary or transitory stages
like the 'state' of one's health or the 'state of the nation'. When
Heidegger uses the word 'Konstitution', we shall usually indicate
this by cafitalizing 'Constitution'. ' ... weil es in der
Beantwortung der Frage nicht um eine ableitende Begrundung, sondern
um aufweisende Grund-Freilegung geht.' Expressions of the form 'es
geht ...' appear very ofen in this work. We shall usually translate
them by variants on -1s an 1ssue for . . . . INT. I Being and Time 29
‘Now,’
said Bernard, ‘the time has come. The day has come. The cab is at
the door. My huge box bends George’s bandy-legs even wider. The
horrible ceremony is over, the tips, and the good-byes in the hall.
Now there is this gulping ceremony with my mother, this hand-shaking
ceremony with my father; now I must go on waving, I must go on
waving, till we turn the corner. Now that ceremony is over. Heaven be
praised, all ceremonies are over. I am alone; I am going to school
for the first time.
‘Everybody
seems to be doing things for this moment only; and never again. Never
again. The urgency of it all is fearful. Everybody knows I am going
to school, going to school for the first time. “That boy is going
to school for the first time,” says the housemaid, cleaning the
steps. I must not cry. I must behold them indifferently. Now the
awful portals of the station gape; “the moon-faced clock regards
me.” I must make phrases and phrases and so interpose something
hard between myself and the stare of housemaids, the stare of clocks,
staring faces, indifferent faces, or I shall cry. There is Louis,
there is Neville, in long coats, carrying handbags, by the
booking-office. They are composed. But they look different.’
‘Here
is Bernard,’ said Louis. ‘He is composed; he is easy. He swings
his bag as he walks. I will follow Bernard, because he is not afraid.
clear
that this question is a peculiar one, in that a series of fundamental
considerations is required for working it out, not to mention for
solving it. But its distinctive features will come fully to light
only when we have delimited it adequately with regard to its
function, its aim, and its motives. Hitherto our arguments for
showing that the question must be restated have been motivated in
part by its venerable origin but chiefly by the lack of a definite
answer and even by the absence of any satisfactory formulation of the
question itself. One may, however, ask what purpose this question is
supposed to serve. Does it simply remain-or is it at all-a mere
matter for soaring speculation about the most general of
generalities, or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic
and the most concrete? Being is always the Being of an entity. The
totality of entities can, in accordance with its various domains,
become a field for laying bare and delimiting certain definite areas
of subject-matter. These areas, on their part (for instance, history,
Nature, space, life, Dasein, language, and the like), can serve _ as
objects which corresponding scientific investigations may take as
their respective themes. Scientific research accomplishes, roughly
and naively, the demarcation and initial fixing of the areas of
subject-matter. The basic structures of any such area have already
been worked out after a fashion in our pre-scientific ways
of
experiencing and interpreting that domain of Being in which the area
of subject-matter is itself confined. The 'basic concepts' which thus
arise remain our proximal clues for disclosing this area concretely
for the first time. And although research may always lean towards
this positive approach, its real progress comes not so much from
collecting results and storing them away in 'manuals' as from
inquiring into the ways in which each particular area is basically
constituted [Grundverfassungen ]-an inquiry to which we have been
driven mostly by reacting against just such an increase in
information. The real 'movement' of the sciences takes place when
their basic concepts undergo a more or less radical revision which is
transparent to itself. The level which a science has reached is
determined by how far it is capable of a crisis in its basic
concepts. In such immanent crises the very relationship between
positively investigative inquiry and those things themselves that are
under interrogation comes to a point where it begins to totter. Among
the various disciplines everywhere today there are freshly awakened
tendencies to put research on new foundations. Mathematics,
which is seemingly the most rigorous and most firmly constructed of
the sciences, has reached a crisis in its 'foundations'. In the
controversy between the formalists and the intuitionists, the issue
is one of obtaining and securing the primary way of access to what
are supposedly the objects of this science. The relativity theory of
physics arises from the tendency to exhibit the
interconnectedness of Nature as it is 'in itself'. As a theory of the
conditions under which we have access to Nature itself, it seeks to
preserve the changelessness of the laws of motion by ascertaining all
relativities, and thus comes up against the question of the structure
of its own given area of study-the problem of matter. In biology
there is an awakening tendency to inquire beyond the definitions
which mechanism and vitalism have given foF "life" and
"organism", and to define anew the kind of Being which
belongs to the living as such. In those humane sciences which are
historiological in character, 1 the urge towards historical actuality
itself has been strengthened in the course of time by tradition and
by the way tradition has been presented and handed down : the history
of literature is to become the history of problems. Theology is
seeking a more primordial interpretation of man's Being towards God,
prescribed by the meaning offaith itself and remaining within it. It
is slowly beginning to understand once more Luther's insight that the
'foundation' on which its system of dogma rests has not arisen from
an inquiry in which faith is primary, and that conceptually this
'foundation' not only is inadequate for the problematic of theology,
but conceals and distorts it. Basic concepts determine the way in
which we get an understanding beforehand of the area of
subject-matter underlying all the objects a science takes as its
theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this
understanding. Only after the area itself has been explored
beforehand in a corresponding manner do these concepts become
genuinely demonstrated and 'grounded'. But since every such area is
itself obtained from the domain of entities themselves, this
preliminary research, from which the basic concepts are drawn,
signifies nothing else than an interpretation of those entities with
regard to their basic state of Being. Such research must run ahead of
the positive sciences, and it can. Here the work of Plato and
Aristotle is evidence enough. Laying the foundations for the sciences
in this way is different in principle from the kind of 'logic' which
limps along after, investigating the status of some science as it
chances to find it, in order to discover its 'method'. Laying the
foundations, as we have described it, is rather a productive logic-in
the sense that it leaps ahead, 1 'In den histcrischen
Geistlswissenscluzften ••• [' Heidegger makes much of the
distinction between 'Historie' and 'Geschichte' and the corresponding
adjectives 'historisch' and 'geschichtlich'. 'Historie' stands for
what Heidegger calls a 'science of history'. (See H. 375, 378.)
'Geschichte' usually stands for the kind of' history' that actually
happens. We shall as a rule translate these respectively as
'historiology' and 'history', following similar conventions in
handling the two adjectives. See especially Sections 6 and 76 below.
INT.] I Being and Time as it were, into some area of Being, discloses
it for the first time in the constitution of its Being, and, after
thus arriving at the structures within it, makes these available to
the positive sciences as transparent assignments for their inquiry.1
To give an example, what is philosophically primary is neither a
theory of the concept-formation of historiology nor the theory of
historiological knowledge, nor yet the theory of history as the
Object of historiology ; what is primary is rather the Interpretation
of authentically historical entities as regards their historicality.
2 Similarly the positive outcome of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
lies in what it has contributed towards the working out of what
belongs to any Nature whatsoever, not in a 'theory' of knowledge. His
transcendental logic is an a priori logic for the subject-matter of
that area of Being called "Nature". But such an inquiry
itself-ontology taken in the widest sense without favouring any
particular ontological directions or tendencies-requires a further
clue. Ontological inqury is indeed more primordial, as over against
the ontical inquiry of the positive sciences. But it remains itself
naive and opaque if in its researches into the Being of entities it
fails to discuss the meaning of Being in general. And even the
ontological task of constructing a non-deductive genealogy of the
different possible ways of Being requires that we first come to an
understanding of 'what we really mean by this expression "Being"
'. The question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the a priori
conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examine
entities as entities of such and such a type, and, in so doing,
already operate with an understanding of Being, but also for the
possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the
ontical sciences and which provide their foundations. Basically, all
ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of
categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from
its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning
of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.
Ontological research itself, when properly understood, gives to the
question of Being an ontological priority which goes beyond mere
resumption of a venerable tradition and advancement with a problem
that has hitherto been opaque. But this objectively scientific
priority is not the only one. [1 ' •.• als durchsichtige
Anweisungen des Fragens •.. ' 2 ' ••• sondem die
Intepretation des eigentlich geschichtlich Seienden auf seine
Geschichtlichkeit'. We shall translate the frequently occurring term
'Geschichtlichkeit' as 'historicality'. Heidegger very occasionally
uses the term 'Historizitiit', as on H. 20 below, and this will be
translated as 'historicity'. 3 While the terms 'on tisch' ('ontical')
and 'ontologisch' ('ontological') are not explicitly defined, their
meanings will emerge rather clearly. Ontological inquiry is concerned
primarily with Being; ontical inquiry is concerned primarily with
entities and the facts about them. 32 Being and Time 4· The
Ontical Priority of the Question of Being INT. I] Science in general
may be defined as the totality established through an interconnection
of true propositions.1 This definition is not complete, nor does it
reach the meaning of science. As ways in which man behaves, sciences
have the manner of Being which this entity-man himself- possesses.
This entity we denote by the term "Dasein". Scientific
research is not the only manner of Being which this entity can have,
nor is it the one which lies closest. Moreover, Dasein itself has a
special distinctiveness as compared with other entities, and it is
worth our while to bring this to view in a provisional way. Here our
discussion must anticipate later analyses, in which our results will
be authentically exhibited for the first time. Dasein is an entity
which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is
ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that
Being is an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive
state of Dasein's Being, and this implies that Dasein, in its Being,
has a relationship towards that Being-a relationship which itself is
one of Being. 2 And this means further that there is some way in
which Dasein understands itself in its Being, and that to some degree
it does so explicitly. It is peculiar to this entity that with and
through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of
Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein's Being. Dasein
is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological. 3 Here
"Being-ontological" is not yet tantamount to "developing
an ontology". So ifwe should reserve the term "ontology"
for that theoretical inquiry which is explicitly devoted to the
meaning of entities, then what we have had in mind in speaking of
Dasein's "Being-ontological" is to be designated as
something "pre-ontological". It does not signify simply
"being-ontical", however, but rather "being in such a
way that one has an understanding of Being". That kind of Being
towards which Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and
always does comport itself somehow, we call "existence"
[Existen]. And because we cannot define Dasein's essence by citing a
"what" of the kind that pertains to a subject-matter [eines
sachhaltigen Was], and because its essence lies rather in the fact
that in each case it 1 ' ••• das Ganze eines
Begriindungszusammenhanges wahrer Satze ... ' See H. 357 below. 2 'Zu
dieser Seinsverfassung des Daseins gehort aber dann, dass es in
seinem Sein zu diesem Sein ein Seinsverhaltnis hat.' This passage is
ambiguous and might also be read as: ' •.. and this implies that
Dasein, in its Being towards this Being, has a relationship of
Being.' a' •.. dass es ontologisch ist'. As 'ontologisch' may be
either an adjective or an adverb, we might also write : ' ... that it
is ontologically'. A similar ambiguity occurs in the two following
sentences, where we read 'Ontologisch-sein' and 'ontisch-seiend'
respectively. INT. I Being and Time 33 has its Being to be, and has
it as its own,1 we have chosen to designate this entity as "Dasein",
a term which is purely an expression of its Being [als reiner
Seinsausdruck]. Dasein always understands itself in terms of its
existence-in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not
itself. Dasein has either chosen these possibilities itself, or got
itself into them, or grown up in them already. Only the particular
Dasein decides its existence, whether it does so by taking hold or by
neglecting. The question of existence never gets straightened out
except through existing itself.
I'VE GOT A HUNCH
Thomas Wolfe to Maxwell Perkins
In July 1938, as he travelled the American West having
recently handed in a
manuscript to his publisher, renowned novelist, Thomas
Wolfe was struck down
with pneumonia and taken to hospital. He was soon
diagnosed with having tuber-
culosis of the brain from which he would never recover;
Wolfe died on September
15th, aged just 37. A month before his death, as he lay
in hospital certain that he
was soon to pass away, Wolfe wrote this moving letter to
his old editor Maxwell
Perkins, a once dear friend with whom he had fallen out
in 1936, but still loved
dearly.
Providence Hospital Seattle,
Washington
August 12, 1938
Dear Max I'm sneaking this against orders, but "I've
got a hunch" --- and I wanted
to write these words to you.
I've made a long voyage and been to a strange country,
and I've seen the dark man
very close; and I don't think I was afraid of him, but
so much of mortality still
clings to me --- I wanted most deserately to live and
still do, and I thought about
you all a thousand times, and I wanted to see you all
again, and there was the
impossible anguish and regret of all the work I have no
done, of all the work I had
to do --- and I know now I am just a grain of dust, and
I feel as if a great window
has been opened on life I did not know about before ---
and if I come through this
I hope I am a better man, and in some strange way I
cannot explain, I know that I
am a deeper and a wiser one. If I get on my feet and out
of here, it will be months
before I head back, but if I get on my feet, I'll come
back.
Whatever happens --- I had this "hunch" and
wanted to write you and tell you, no
matter what happens or has happened, I will always think
of you and feel about
you the way it was that Fourth of July day three years
ago when you met me at the
boat, and we went out on the cafe on the river and had a
drink and later went on
top of the tall building, and all the strangeness and
the glory and the power of life
and of the city was below.
Yours
always
Tom
The
understanding of oneself which leads along this way we call
"existentiell". 3 The question of existence is one of
Dasein's on tical 'affairs'. This does not require that the
ontological structure of existence should be theoretically
transparent. The question about that structure aims at the analysis [
Auseinanderlegung) of what constitutes existence. The context
[Zusammenhang] of such structures we call "existentiality".
Its analytic has the character of an understanding which is not
existentiell, but rather existential. The task of an existential
analytic of Dasein has been delineated in 11dvance, as regards both
its 1 3 possibility and its necessity, in Dasein's ontical
constitution. So far as existence is the determining character of
Dasein, the ontological analytic of this entity always requires that
existentiality be considered beforehand. By "existentiality"
we understand the state of Being that is constitutive for those
entities that exist. But in the idea of such a constitutive state of
Being, the idea of Being is already included. And thus even the
possibility of carrying through the analytic ofDasein depends on
working out beforehand the question about the meaning of Being in
general. Sciences are ways of Being in which Dasein comports itself
towards entities which it need not be itself. But to Dasein, Being in
a world is something that belongs essentially. Thus Dasein's
understanding of Being pertains with equal primordiality both to an
understanding of something like a 'world', and to the understanding
of the Being of those entities which become accessible within the
world.a So whenever an ontology takes for its theme entities whose
character of Being is other than that of Dasein, it has its own
foundation and motivation in Dasein's own ontical structure, in which
a pre-ontological understanding of Being is comprised as a definite
characteristic. 1 ' ••• class es je sein Sein als seiniges zu
sein hat ... ' ll We shall translate 'existenziell' by
'existentiell', and 'existenzial' by 'existential' There seems to be
little reason for resorting to the more elaborate neologisms proposed
by other writers. 3 • ••• innerhalb der Welt . . . '
Heidegger uses at least three expressions which might be translated
as 'in the world' : 'innerhalb derWelt', 'in derWelt', and the
adjective (or adverb) 'innerweltlich'. We shall translate these
respectively by 'within the world', 'in the world', and
'within-the-world'. B 34 Being and Time INT. I Therefore fundamental
ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can take their rise,
must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein. Dasein
accordingly takes priority over all other entities in several ways.
The first priority is an ontical one : Dasein is an entity whose
Being has the determinate character of existence. The second priority
is an ontological one : Dasein is in itself 'ontological', because
existence is thus determinative for it. But with equal primordiality
Dasein also possesses-as constitutive for its understanding of
existence-an understanding of the Being of all entities of a
character other than its own. Dasein has therefore a third priority
as providing the ontico-ontological condition for the possibility of
any ontologies. Thus Dasein has turned out to be, more than any other
entity, the one which must first be interrogated ontologically. But
the roots of the existential analytic, on its part, are ultimately
existentiell, that is, ontical. Only if the inquiry of philosophical
research is itself seized upon in an existentiell manner as a
possibility of the Being of each existing Dasein, does it become at
all possible to disclose the existentiality of existence and to
undertake an adequately founded onto- 14 logical problematic. But
with this, the ontical priority of the question of being has also
become plain. Dasein's ontico-ontological priority was seen quite
early, though Dasein itself was not grasped in its genuine
ontological structure, and did not even become a problem in which
this structure was sought. Aristotle sa lcmv.vl "Man's soul is,
in a certain way, entities." The 'soul' which makes up the Being
of man has [Greek word here I assume] among its ways of Being, and
in these it discovers all entities, both in the fact that they are,
and in their Being as they are-that is, always in their Being.
Aristotle's principle, which points back to the ontological thesis of
Parmenides, is one which Thomas Aquinas has taken up in a
characteristic discussion. Thomas is engaged in the task of deriving
the 'transcendentia'-those characters of Being which lie beyond every
possible way in which an entity may be classified as coming under
some generic kind of subject-matter (every modus specialis entis),
and which belong necessarily to anything, whatever it may be. Thomas
has to demonstrate that the verum is such a transcendens. He does
this by invoking an entity which, in accordance with its very manner
of Being, is properly suited to 'come together with' entities of any
sort whatever. This distinctive entity, the ens quod natum est
convenire cum omni ente, is the soul (anima).v11 Here the priority of
'Dasein' over all other entities emerges, although it has not been
ontologically clarified. This priority has obviously nothing in
common with a vicious subjectivizing of the totality of entities. By
indicating Dasein's ontico-ontological priority in this provisional
INT. I Being and Time 35 manner, we have grounded our demonstration
that the question of Being is ontico-ontologically distinctive. But
when we analysed the structure of this question as such (Section 2),
we came up against a distinctive way in which this entity functions
in the very formulation of that question. Dasein then revealed itself
as that entity which must first be worked out in an ontologically
adequate manner, if the inquiry is to become a transparent one. But
now it has been shown that the ontological analytic of Dasein in
general is what makes up fundamental ontology, so that Dasein
functions as that entity which in principle is to be interrogated
beforehand as to its Being. If to Interpret the meaning of Being
becomes our task, Dasein is not only the primary entity to be
interrogated; it is also that entity which 15 already comports
itself, in its Being, towards what we are asking about when we ask
this question. But in that case the question of Being is nothing
other than the radicalization of an essential tendency-of-Being which
belongs to Dasein itself-the pre-ontological understanding of Being.
...Who tree are you? It's too snow for you who stare, grey-eyed, and
with a fierce and centred blankness into the endless leaflands
wherein the lettered men of mail, full chained: and some mention of
the velocity or the cable factor, and group delay...all is ringing
with something where Death crouches, like a face you'd aquainted oh
yesteryear, and who maw, that sic & nausous riggly rictus, is
greying, gapped by 2 broken front teeth the Hady gape... hard
was our making, parodic but gradual, and the songs began...hard
was our way, and cruel and hard and agony and acting...knowing only
the very torment of the very untouched – the flame-circle in a Dead
One's dream – yet the massif, it never ceased, the tomb lied: it
shrug-shouldered as everything does – even if we could have
deciphered the writing, The Very Itself, for slug-a-bed nothing is
again....elsewhere in dream action the enact “nots”, as
occurences very of hope and the drama is slyly computed into the fury
of new and ancient ceramic seas....
‘I
see a ring,’ said Bernard, ‘hanging above me. It quivers and
hangs in a loop of light.’
‘I
see a slab of pale yellow,’ said Susan, ‘spreading away until it
meets a purple stripe.’
‘I
hear a sound,’ said Rhoda, ‘cheep, chirp; cheep chirp; going up
and down.’
‘I
see a globe,’ said Neville, ‘hanging down in a drop against the
enormous flanks of some hill.’
‘I
see a crimson tassel,’ said Jinny, ‘twisted with gold threads.’
‘I
hear something stamping,’ said Louis. ‘A great beast’s foot is
chained. It stamps, and stamps, and stamps.’
‘Look
at the spider’s web on the corner of the balcony,’ said Bernard.
‘It has beads of water on it, drops of white light.’
‘The
leaves are gathered round the window like pointed ears,’ said
Susan.
‘A
shadow falls on the path,’ said Louis, ‘like an elbow bent.’
‘Islands
of light are swimming on the grass,’ said Rhoda. ‘They have
fallen through the trees.’
‘The
birds’ eyes are bright in the tunnels between the leaves,’ said
Neville.
‘The
stalks are covered with harsh, short hairs,’ said Jinny, ‘and
drops of water have stuck to them.’
‘A
caterpillar is curled in a green ring,’ said Susan, ‘notched with
blunt feet.’
‘The
grey-shelled snail draws across the path and flattens the blades
behind him,’ said Rhoda.
‘And
burning lights from the window-panes flash in and out on the
grasses,’ said Louis.
‘Stones
are cold to my feet,’ said Neville. ‘I feel each one, round or
pointed, separately.’
‘The
back of my hand burns,’ said Jinny, ‘but the palm is clammy and
damp with dew.’
‘Now
the cock crows like a spurt of hard, red water in the white tide,’
said Bernard.
‘Birds
are singing up and down and in and out all round us,’ said Susan.
‘The
beast stamps; the elephant with its foot chained; the great brute on
the beach stamps,’ said Louis.
‘Look
at the house,’ said Jinny, ‘with all its windows white with
blinds.’
‘Cold
water begins to run from the scullery tap,’ said Rhoda, ‘over the
mackerel in the bowl.’
‘The
walls are cracked with gold cracks,’ said Bernard, ‘and there are
blue, finger-shaped shadows of leaves beneath the windows.’
‘Now
Mrs Constable pulls up her thick black stockings,’ said Susan.
‘When
the smoke rises, sleep curls off the roof like a mist,’ said Louis.
‘The
birds sang in chorus first,’ said Rhoda. ‘Now the scullery door
is unbarred. Off they fly. Off they fly like a fling of seed. But one
sings by the bedroom window alone.’
‘Bubbles
form on the floor of the saucepan,’ said Jinny. ‘Then they rise,
quicker and quicker, in a silver chain to the top.’
‘Now
Billy scrapes the fish-scales with a jagged knife on to a wooden
board,’ said Neville.
‘The
dining-room window is dark blue now,’ said Bernard, ‘and the air
ripples above the chimneys.’
‘A
swallow is perched on the lightning-conductor,’ said Susan. ‘And
Biddy has smacked down the bucket on the kitchen flags.’
‘That
is the first stroke of the church bell,’ said Louis. ‘Then the
others follow; one, two; one, two; one, two.’
‘Look
at the table-cloth, flying white along the table,’ said Rhoda. ‘Now
there are rounds of white china, and silver streaks beside each
plate.’
‘Suddenly
a bee booms in my ear,’ said Neville. ‘It is here; it is past.’
‘I
burn, I shiver,’ said Jinny, ‘out of this sun, into this shadow.’
‘Now
they have all gone,’ said Louis. ‘I am alone. They have gone into
the house for breakfast, and I am left standing by the wall among the
flowers. It is very early, before lessons. Flower after flower is
specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks
rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made
of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am
the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth
dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I
am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is
pressed to my ribs. Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. I am
a boy in grey flannels with a belt fastened by a brass snake up here.
Down there my eyes are the lidless eyes of a stone figure in a desert
by the Nile. I see women passing with red pitchers to the river; I
see camels swaying and men in turbans. I hear tramplings, tremblings,
stirrings round me.
‘Up
here Bernard, Neville, Jinny and Susan (but not Rhoda) skim the
flower-beds with their nets. They skim the butterflies from the
nodding tops of the flowers. They brush the surface of the world.
Their nets are full of fluttering wings. “Louis! Louis! Louis!”
they shout. But they cannot see me. I am on the other side of the
hedge. There are only little eye-holes among the leaves. Oh Lord, let
them pass. Lord, let them lay their butterflies on a pocket-
handkerchief on the gravel. Let them count out their tortoise-
shells, their red admirals and cabbage whites. But let me be unseen.
I am green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge. My hair is made
of leaves. I am rooted to the middle of the earth. My body is a
stalk. I press the stalk. A drop oozes from the hole at the mouth and
slowly, thickly, grows larger and larger. Now something pink passes
the eyehole. Now an eye-beam is slid through the chink. Its beam
strikes me. I am a boy in a grey flannel suit. She has found me. I am
struck on the nape of the neck. She has kissed me. All is shattered.’
Straining
toward the reconstruction of presence, [Rousseau] valorizes and
disqualifies writing at the same time . .. . Rousseau condemns
writing as destruction of presence and as disease of speech. He
rehabilitates it to the extent that it promises the reappropriation
of that of which speech allowed itself to be dispossessed. But by
what, if not already a writing older than speech and already
installed in that place? (Pp. 14 1-42) In other words, the loss of
presence has always already begun. Speech itself "r springs out
of an alienation or differance that has the very structure of
writing. It would seem, though, that it is precisely through this
assumption of the necessity of absence that Rousseau ultimately
succeeds in reappropriating the lost presence. In sacrificing
himself, he recuperates himself. This notion that self-sacrifice is
the road to self-redemption is a classical structure in Western
metaphysics. Yet it can be shown that this project of
reappropriation
is inherently
self-subverting
because its very starting point is not presence itself: If but the des-ire for presence, that is, the lack of presence. It is not possible
to desire that with which one coincides. The starting point is thus
not a point but a differance: Without the possibility of differance,
the desire of presence as such would not find its breathing-space.
That means by the same token that this
desire carries in itself the destiny of its nonsatisfaction.
Differance produces what it forbids, making possible the very thing
that it makes impossible. (P. 143) The same paradoxical account of
the desire for presence occurs in Rousseau's discussions of
sexuality. On the one hand, masturbation is condemned as a means of
"cheating Nature" and substituting a mere image (absence)
for the presence of a sexual partner. On the other hand: This vice,
which shame and timidity find so convenient, has a particular
attraction for lively imaginations. It allows them to dispose, so to
speak, of the whole female sex at their will, and to make any beauty
who tempts them serve their pleasure without the need of first
obtaining her consent. (P. 15 1 [109J) It is thus the woman's absence
that gives immediacy to her imaginary possession, while to deal with
the woman's presence would inevitably be to confront differance.
Masturbation is both a symbolic form of ideal union, since in it the
subject and object are truly one, and a radical alienation of the
self from any contact with an other. The union that would perfectly
fulfill desire would also perfectly exclude the space
of
its very possibility.
To
ETHYL SMYTH Monk's House, Rodmell,
near
Lewes, Sussex
Sept.
20th [1940]
Your
letter came this morning – the letter poeted on the 17th.
I hastily continue my story. We went to London on Friday. Bomb still
unexploded. Not allowed in. Off it went next day. Blew out all the
windows, all ceilings, and smashed all my china – just as we'd got
the flat ready! – oh damn. Uninhabitable now apparently – Press
has been moved to Letchworth – What remains of it. Sale of Roger of
course ruined.
I
try to let down a fire proof curtain and go on reading, writing,
cooking. Mabel, afraid of invasion here, has left. Its a mercy: for
now I'm kept busy. We go up on Tuesday to see what can be done at the
flat, and rescue what we can get into the car.
The
othe day we drove through an air raid. London like a dead city. We
took shelter at Wimbledon in a gun emplacement with an East end
family whose house had been bombed. There they wee cheeful as grigs
with a rugh a kettle adna spirit lamp: had been there for 3 nights:
wind blowing through gun holes.
Oh
dear! I'm worried to think of you with an incendiary next you. Here
save at nights is more peaceful – All the talk of invasion. I'm off
to lay in supplies – not that, with this gale blowing, it seems
immenent. Theyve got guns in front of the garden and all down the
river.
This
is only a stop gap. I'll write again.
So
do you. Ys, I'm sure the safety curtain – a heavy iron drop of ones
own scene – is the only preservative. But I admit it doesn't always
work. Please write.
V.
IN
designating the tasks of 'formulating' the question of Being, we have
shown not only that we must establish which entity is to serve as our
primary object of interrogation, but also that the right way of
access to this entity is one which we must explicidy make our own and
hold secure. We have already discussed which entity takes over the
principal role within the question of Being. But how are we, as it
were, to set our sights towards this entity, Dasein, both as
something accessible to us and as something to be understood and
interpreted?
[
invoked invoked invoked:
invoked the catastrophe
allows
nature 'a hand' in the work
the hand reaches in
the hand reaches in
into the work
into the work
reaches
the hand ]
----------------
----------------------------------------------------------
------------------------
MATAURANGA
WISDOM
In
demonstrating that Dasein in ontico-ontologically prior, we may have
misled the reader into supposing that this entity must also be what
is given as ontico-ontologically primary not only in the sense that
it can itself be-grasped 'immediately', but also in that the kind of
Being which it possesses is presented just as 'immediately'.
Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us-even that which
is closest : we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this,
or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is
farthest. To be sure, its ownmost Being is such that it has an
understanding of that Being, and already maintains itself in each
case as if its Being has been interpreted in some manner. But we are
certainly not saying that when Dasein's own Being is thus interpreted
pre-ontologically in the way which lies closest, this interpretation
can be taken over as an appropriate clue, as if this way of
understanding Being is what must emerge when one's ownmost state of
Being is considered1 as an onto· logical theme. The kind of Being
which belongs to Dasein is rather such that, in understanding its own
Being, it has a tendency to do so in terms of that entity towards
which it comports itself proximally and in a way which is essentially
constant-in terms of the 'world'. In Dasein itself, and therefore in
its own understanding of Being, the way the world is
...is
always from full resonance to that sense that one is forever always
part of something else that moves the ornate file that hols, in its
miniscule gorge, large lists – nay, great lists – but they'll
never unweave the poison will always withhold itself. something
like a pink bottle beside a rusty RSJ that beams. .. the giant lovers
configurate the field, annoying my consciousness like a green-black
blow-fly...the singers are back beside themselves....
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
MATANGA
EXPERIENCED
E kore e mau i kore
he
wai kai pakiaka
You will not catch the feet accustomed to running
among
the roots
........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
c
/o Managers Office
CAC.
Day St.
Ham. East.
Dearest
Joy,
I am writing this in the drawing room of the Warwick Hotel listening
to
the conversation and trying to write at the same time.
You
seem to be having lots of fun and games down your way. All contribut-
ions
thankfully received. Robin says he and Jean have collected and
amazing
assortment
of household goods, he says it pays to have a Church Wedding and
advertize
things properly. I think I will set out a printed circular announcing
my
marriage,
giving a list of the sort of things I want and also most important of
those
that I don't want. I don't want any pictures or ornaments because I
feel those
things
are a matter of personal taste. And I don't want any wax fruit in a
glass case
or
any stuffed fruit or birds and I particularly don't want an
aspidistra. Otherwise
I
shall be very easy to please.
Dearest
girl, why do you think that I don't want you to come here next
month.
I wrote and told your Dad that I couldn't face the summer's day
without
you.
But if you really want more time I must be patient and wait for you.
I
have applied for one of the state flats and you must give me some
approx-
imate
idea when we shall want it. I should like to move in and by
myself until
until
you arrive but they wont allow that. I dont think you will like the
flats but
it
will be a kick off and cheaper than living in a Hotel.
The
housing problem is is very great in Hamilton, its the best I can do
for a
start.
I
would like to come to Auckland and see your mother but this damn
strike
is
putting the kybosh on things. Even if I could wangle a permit the
Sat.
afternoon
trains wont be running. Perhaps you and your mother could stay
a
night in Hamilton on your way back to Tauranga.
I
heard the other day that you are all going to be chased out of the
Dilworth
Building.
They must have a lot of pull to be able to push such an important
concern
as the B.P.C. Out into the cold and unkind world. You will appreciate
what
we were up against when we had to move a whole factory of machinery
as
well
as our office, and several hundred workers.
Hope
your Mother is resigned to the awful fate that is in store for her
darling
child.
Darling
I bought some Fuji Silk pajamas the other day, pale cream in
colour,
so they wont clash with anything you wear. So thoughtful of me
don't
you think.
I
have only got four coupons left and I want a new suit and a spare
pair
of
pants and some socks, so I will have to wait for a new coupon book.
Housekeeping my poor sweet is going to be tough with no
jam to be
bought
and little fruit or vegetables and everything very dear. War time is
not
the happiest time for a new wife tackling a new job but I think my
girl
has
plenty of determination or I am a Dutchman.
When
are you going home? Will you be in Auckland the weekend after
next?
I don't think there is a hope of getting down next weekend.
Hope
you get rid of your bad throat. The weather is getting warmer now
which
improve matters.
Cherio and my regards to Mother
PS.
Did you find out about the Chateaux?
….............................................................................
........................... ................................
.................................................
...as
slip slip detectives arrive, laughing: they have ridiculously
forgotten their
alloted
crimes (for, as you know, in this misdelusion, the effect effects its
own
resultant
cause, and thus enables the unvanishing of the Ming Dynasty): and
indeed, the coppers have mislaid the massacres etc and the whole
pageant whirls into the abyss....
produce
one picture. Her bleak architectural spaces are constructed within
a
tiny studio in a disued hardware store on an east.......side street,
indeed...will be....
WHAT
LIES BENEATH
will
be visible
‘People go on passing,’ said Louis. They pass the window of this eating-shop incessantly. Motor-cars, vans, motor-omnibuses; and again motor-omnibuses, vans, motor-cars — they pass the window. In the background I perceive shops and houses; also the grey spires of a city church. In the foreground are glass shelves set with plates of buns and ham sandwiches. All is somewhat obscured by steam from a tea-urn. A meaty, vapourish smell of beef and mutton, sausages and mash, hangs down like a damp net in the middle of the eating- house. I prop my book against a bottle of Worcester sauce and try to look like the rest.
................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................................................
Mauri tu
mauri ora
...............................................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
‘Yet
I cannot. (They go on passing, they go on passing in disorderly
procession.) I cannot read my book, or order my beef, with
conviction. I repeat, “I am an average Englishman; I am an average
clerk”, yet I look at the little men at the next table to be sure
that I do what they do. Supple-faced, with rippling skins, that are
always twitching with the multiplicity of their sensations,
prehensile like monkeys, greased to this particular moment, they are
discussing with all the right gestures the sale of a piano. It blocks
up the hall; so he would take a Tenner. People go on passing; they go
on passing against the spires of the church and the plates of ham
sandwiches. The streamers of my consciousness waver out and are
perpetually torn and distressed by their disorder. I cannot therefore
concentrate on my dinner. “I would take a tenner. The case is
handsome; but it blocks up the hall.” They dive and plunge like
guillemots whose feathers are slippery with oil. All excesses beyond
that norm are vanity. That is the mean; that is the average.
Meanwhile the hats bob up and down; the door perpetually shuts and
opens. I am conscious of flux, of disorder; of annihilation and
despair. If this is all, this is worthless. Yet I feel, too, the
rhythm of the eating- house. It is like a waltz tune, eddying in and
out, round and round. The waitresses, balancing trays, swing in and
out, round and round, dealing plates of greens, of apricot and
custard, dealing them at the right time, to the right customers. The
average men, including her rhythm in their rhythm (“I would take a
tenner; for it blocks up the hall”) take their greens, take their
apricots and custard. Where then is the break in this continuity?
What the fissure through which one sees disaster? The circle is
unbroken; the harmony complete. Here is the central rhythm; here the
common mainspring. I watch it expand, contract; and then expand
again. Yet I am not included. If I speak, imitating their accent,
they prick their ears, waiting for me to speak again, in order that
they may place me — if I come from Canada or Australia, I, who
desire above all things to be taken to the arms with love, am alien,
external. I, who would wish to feel close over me the protective
waves of the ordinary, catch with the tail of my eye some far
horizon; am aware of hats bobbing up and down in perpetual disorder.
To me is addressed the plaint of the wandering and distracted spirit
(a woman with bad teeth falters at the counter), “Bring us back to
the fold, we who pass so disjectedly, bobbing up and down, past
windows with plates of ham sandwiches in the foreground.” Yes; I
will reduce you to order.
‘I
will read in the book that is propped against the bottle of Worcester
sauce. It contains some forged rings, some perfect statements, a few
words, but poetry. You, all of you, ignore it. What the dead poet
said, you have forgotten. And I cannot translate it to you so that
its binding power ropes you in, and makes it clear to you that you
are aimless; and the rhythm is cheap and worthless; and so remove
that degradation which, if you are unaware of your aimlessness,
pervades you, making you senile, even while you are young. To
translate that poem so that it is easily read is to be my endeavour.
I, the companion of Plato, of Virgil, will knock at the grained oak
door. I oppose to what is passing this ramrod of beaten steel. I will
not submit to this aimless passing of billycock hats and Homburg hats
and all the plumed and variegated head-dresses of women. (Susan, whom
I respect, would wear a plain straw hat on a summer’s day.) And the
grinding and the steam that runs in unequal drops down the window
pane; and the stopping and the starting with a jerk of
motor-omnibuses; and the hesitations at counters; and the words that
trail drearily without human meaning; I will reduce you to order.
‘My
roots go down through veins of lead and silver, through damp, marshy
places that exhale odours, to a knot made of oak roots bound together
in the centre. Sealed and blind, with earth stopping my ears, I have
yet heard rumours of wars; and the nightingale; have felt the
hurrying of many troops of men flocking hither and thither in quest
of civilization like flocks of birds migrating seeking the summer; I
have seen women carrying red pitchers to the banks of the Nile. I
woke in a garden, with a blow on the nape of my neck, a hot kiss,
Jinny’s; remembering all this as one remembers confused cries and
toppling pillars and shafts of red and black in some nocturnal
conflagration. I am for ever sleeping and waking. Now I sleep; now I
wake. I see the gleaming tea-urn; the glass cases full of pale-yellow
sandwiches; the men in round coats perched on stools at the counter;
and also behind them, eternity. It is a stigma burnt on my quivering
flesh by a cowled man with a red-hot iron. I see this eating-shop
against the packed and fluttering birds’ wings, many feathered,
folded, of the past. Hence my pursed lips, my sickly pallor; my
distasteful and uninviting aspect as I turn my face with hatred and
bitterness upon Bernard and Neville, who saunter under yew trees; who
inherit armchairs; and draw their curtains close, so that lamplight
falls on their books.
….....................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................
ATAWHAI
Compassion
..................................................................................................................................
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Na koutou tangi na
tatau katoa
When you cry your
tears are shed by all
…...............................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
..................................................................................................................................…...............................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
..................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
sometimes I feel so
terribly alone
we all of us mortal
end
and pass into
endlessness
..................................................................................................................................
…...............................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................
Ma te ngakau
aroha koe arahi
Let a loving heart guide your
decisions
The endlessness: the coiling
brain ropes, the thoughts, the long ropes are that endlessness of
seeming unending engines of turmoiled thoughts: the endless
endlessness of thought.
Then the weight of material
which also can have associations.
The weight of brains: they are
rolled up balls of rope held with screws.
Any material is a possiblity.
It opens up questions. Life is the largest inspiration.
Time or temporality.
Transcience. This action is an act of aggression. The presents
its
presence in the room. Raum. Ja.
It claims the space for itself.
..................................................................................................................................…...............................................................................................................................
Kia u ki te pai
..................................................................................................................................
..................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
‘Now
the wind lifts the blind,’ said Susan, ‘jars, bowls, matting and
the shabby arm-chair with the hole In
demonstrating that Dasein is ontico-ontologically prior, we may have
misled the reader into supposing that this entity must also be what
is given as ontico-ontologically primary not only in the sense that
it can itself be-grasped 'immediately', but also in that the kind of
Being which it possesses is presented just as 'immediately'.
Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us-even that which
is closest : we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this,
or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is
farthest. To be sure, its ownmost Being is such that it has an
understanding of that Being, and already maintains itself in each
case as if its Being has been interpreted in some manner. But we are
certainly not saying that when Dasein's own Being is thus interpreted
pre-ontologically in the way which lies closest, this interpretation
can be taken over as an appropriate clue in
it are now become distinct. The usual faded ribbons sprinkle the
wallpaper. The bird chorus is over, only one bird now sings close to
the bedroomThus
to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make an
entity-the inquirer-transparent in his own Being. The very asking of
this question is an entity's mode of Being; and as such it gets its
essential character from what is inquired about-namely, Being. This
entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as
one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term
"Dasein".1 If we are to formulate our question explicitly
and transparently, we must first give a proper explication of an
entity (Dasein) with regard to its Being. Is there not, however, a
manifest circularity in such an undertaking? If we must first define
an entity in its Being, and if we want to formulate The bird chorus
is over, only one bird now sings close to the bedroom the question
of Being only on this basis, what is this but going in a circle? In
working out our question, have we not 'presupposed' something which
only the answer can bring? Formal objections such as the argument
about 'circular reasoning', which can easily be cited at any time in
the study of first principles, are always sterile when one is
considering concrete ways of and the rhythm is cheap and worthless;
and so remove that degradation which, if you are unaware of your
aimlessness, pervades you, making you senile, even while you are
young. To translate that poem so that it is easily read is to be my
endeavour. I, the companion of Plato, of Virgil, will knock at the
grained oak door. I oppose to what is passing this ramrod of beaten
steel. I will not submit to this aimless passing of billycock hats
and Homburg hats and all the plumed and variegated head-dresses of
women. (Susan, whom I respect, would wear a plain straw hat on a
summer’s day.) And the grinding and the steam that runs in unequal
drops down the window pane; investigating. When it comes to
understanding the matter at hand, they carry no weight and keep us
from penetrating into the field of study. But factically there is no
circle at all in formulating our question as we have described. One
can determine You seem to be having lots of fun and games down your
way. All contribut-
ions thankfully In demonstrating that Dasein is ontico-ontologically
prior, we may have misled the reader into supposing that this entity
must also be what is given as ontico-ontologically primary not only
in the sense that it can itself be-grasped 'immediately', but also in
that the kind of Being which it possesses is presented just as
'immediately'. Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to
us-even that which is closest : we are it, each of us, we ourselves.
In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically
that which is farthest. To be sure, its ownmost Being is such that it
has an understanding of that Being, and already maintains itself in
each case as if its Being has been interpreted in some manner. But we
are certainly not saying that when Dasein's own Being is thus
interpreted pre-ontologically in the way which lies closest, this
interpretation can be taken over as an appropriate clue received.
Robin says he and Jean have collected and amazing assortment of
household goods, he says it pays to have a Church Wedding and
advertize things properly. I think I will set out a printed circular
announcing my marriage, giving a list of the sort of things I want
and also most important of
those that I don't want. the nature of entities in their Being
without necessarily having the explicit concept of the meaning of
Being at one's disposal. Otherwise there could have been no
ontological knowledge heretofore. One would hardly deny that
factically there has been such knowledge. Of course 'Being' has been
presupposed in all ontology up till now, but not as a concept at
one's disposal-not as the sort of thing we are seeking. This
'presupposing of Being has rather the character of taking a look at
it beforehand, so that in the light of it the entities presented to
us get provisionally Articulated in their Being. This guiding 1 The
word 'Dasein' plays so important a role in this work and is already
so familiar to the English-speaking reader who has read about
Heidegger, that it seems simpler to leave it untranslated except in
the relatively rare passages in which Heidegger himself breaks it up
with a hypthen ('Da-sein') to show In demonstrating that Dasein in
ontico-ontologically prior, we may have misled the reader into
supposing that this entity must also be what is given as
ontico-ontologically primary not only in the sense that it can itself
be-grasped 'immediately', but also in that the kind of Being which it
possesses is presented just as 'immediately'. Ontically, of course,
Dasein is not only close to us-even that which is closest : we are
it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just
this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest. To be sure,
its ownmost Being is such that it has an understanding of that Being,
and already maintains itself in each case as if its Being has been
interpreted in some manner. But we are certainly not saying that when
Dasein's own Being is thus interpreted pre-ontologically in the way
which lies closest, this interpretation can be taken over as an
appropriate clue its etymological construction:At this hour, this
still early hour, I think I am the field, I am the barn, I am the
trees; mine are the flocks of birds, and this young hare who leaps,
at the last moment when I step almost on him. Mine is the heron that
stretches its vast wings lazily; and the cow that creaks as it pushes
one foot before another munching; and the wild, swooping swallow; and
the faint red in the sky, and the green when the red fades; the
silence and the bell; the call of the man fetching cart- horses from
the fields — all are mine. literally 'Being-there'.
window. I will pull on my stockings and go quietly past the bedroom
doors, and down through the kitchen, out through the garden past the
greenhouse into the field. It is still early morning. The mist is on
the marshes. In
demonstrating that Dasein in ontico-ontologically prior, we may have
misled the reader into supposing that this entity must also be what
is given as ontico-ontologically primary not only in the sense that
it can itself be-grasped 'immediately', but also in that the kind of
Being which it possesses is presented just as 'immediately'.
Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us-even that which
is closest : we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this,
or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is
farthest. To be sure, its ownmost Being is such that it has an
understanding of that Being, and already maintains itself in each
case as if its Being has been interpreted in some manner. But we are
certainly not saying that when Dasein's own Being is thus interpreted
pre-ontologically in the way which lies closest, this interpretation
can be taken over as an appropriate clue
The day is stark and stiff as a linen shroud. But it will soften; it
will warm. At this hour, this still early hour, I think I am the
field, I am the barn, I am the trees; mine are the flocks of birds,
and this young hare who leaps, at the last moment when I step almost
on him. Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and
the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another munching;
and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and the
green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of the
man fetching cart- horses from the fields — all are mine
To
ETHEL SMYTH Monk's House, Rodmell,
[Sussex]
Feb
1st 41
I've
written you ever so many beautiful letters – cigarette letters –
you know the kind, when one's devotion to Ethel rises like a silver
smoke, too fine for words. These are the letters I write to you,
about 3 on a wet windy morning. Unlike Margot, I dont keep a pencil
at my head and I forget where we left off – you were going into the
snow in snow boots. You had seduced the wife of a woodcutter – and
then? I have a far away lover, to match your translator – a
doctor,a cousin, a Wilberforce, who lives at Brighton and has – by
a miracle – head of you. If I were in London, I'd ask you to meet.
She has heard of Jersey cows and sends me a pot of cream weekly. Oh
theres Margot – I cant fathom her – I get now almost daily a
letter written in bed at 3 am in the Savoy. Why at this last lap of
tiem should she fabricate an entirely imaginary passion for me, who
am utterly incongrous “You ad Frances Horner” she says this
morning “are the olny women I've ever loved”. The rest of
womankind, as I can well imagine, seeing her clothes, she hates....
____________________________________________
...Did
I tell you I'm reading the whole of English literature through? By
the time I've reached Shakespeare the bombs will be falling. So I've
arranged a very nice last scene: reading Shakespeare, having
forgotten my gas mask, I shall fade far away, and quite forget... The
bought down a raider the other side of Lewes yesterday, I was cycling
to get our butter, but only heard a drone in the clouds. Thank God,
as you would say, one's fathers had a taste for reading! Instead of
thinking, by May we shall be – whatever it shall be: I think, only
three months to read Ben Jonson, Milton, Donne and all the rest!
Today however, to make me quicken my pace, I saw a yellow woodpecker
bright green against ruby red willows. Lord!...how I started, and
then saw coming across the marsh, Leonard, looking like a Saxon Earl,
because his old coat was torn and the lining flapped around his gum
boots.
I
did walk through London the other day – Oh but I told you about the
Temple, didnt I, all rubble and white dust? – and how, to put heart
into me, I ate Turkey at Buszards [Oxford Street]? I have so seldom
gloried in food, all alone. But there must be an end to this
drivel,....
...I
read and read like a donkey going round a well; pray to God, some
idea will flash. I leave it entirely to nature. I can no longer
control my brain...
Now
Ethel dear, you will perhaps very kindly write to me. ….But now, in
God's name, I must open this damned industrious American [Clifford],
who's spent 20 years shadowing Mrs Thrale. I would like to ask, quite
simply, do you still love me? Remember how I waved that day in Meck
Sqre. Do love me.
V.
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
...........................................
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
Ocean
30 October 1941
Dear
Joy
Ocean
wirless are are at it again suggesting that Christmas mail should be
despatched. Received a long letter of yours a short time ago. Was
pleased to hear you, your mother father are all well.
This
will have to ????? as a Christmas note to them, please/ for
this [?] will be only one of a few letters I propose to write
tonight. You notice I said propose.
Ocean
Is News You're itching for I guess. This year of course no Melbourne
Cup dance but a [?] night instead, ticket £
1 -
15/- The town chief [?]
his notice reads
“10th
Annual Cup Sweep” etc etc
The proceeds towards a patriotic fund
and being the
[?]
fund is Melbourne Sporting [?] “ [?] for ] fund”
They
are at last rebuilding the picture house after the lines of Nauru
building - using the same concrete floor
Here
we've broken a record this month. I suppose you can guess what it is.
Did
you see J. E. Beece and Ho with his laugh cum giggle cum sniggle.
Barry
left to enlist. Remington - do you remember him - a Captain and
stationed in Malaya.
Roger
carrying on as cashier these days so to ease things outside.
Learned with a shock that Obeta, a boy in the office was a few days
ago after a short stay in hospital, sent on to Tarawa as a leper.
In
the celebrations at Tapiwa last week end Bishop Turiemal [?] Hill
and Father Pujabel's [?] new church opened. [?] I suppose is the
word. The church looks well.
Mr. L.
[?] is building a new one too but I fancy I've already mentioned
this.
Gallagher
dead, did you hear? Died in the [?] and buried at the foot of the
“jolly old flag pole”. A very nice fellow what little I knew
of him. I knew W-- [?] more than Broughton and Gallagher.
All
my brothers are in uniform now. One in the anti aircraft company
stationed at Darwin. The other two in the RAAF and still training.
Have
you heard of Jean Hester [?] lately, wondered how the nursing was
progressing. She did [?] didn't she!
Give
my sincere [?] feelings to Mrs Ryall, Miss [?], Miss Enting, [?]
please.
Could
send some cards but have never liked the idea of using them. Rather
admit one's lack of time or laziness than cover it up with a card –
still that's only my idea. Am enjoying this bottle of beer V.B.
Brand - - ever heard of it! Still only ¼ thank you.
I [
?] I've rambled on over the pages but the pen's [ ?] [?] better days
I'm afraid. Am writing this to the strains of [ ?] He brought it
back from leave, only plays a few records and then he has to wind it
up, [?] have accepted it as payment for a debt but it has a
magnificent cabinet, and a [ ? ] selection, as you can imagine, of
Bing Crosby and such like. He's still the same, has not as yet
developed Alice's shrewd look. But then he has a litlle more to do I
think.
Anyway
enough little as it is until another time A Merry Christmas
Sincerely
Lindsay [Lineley?]
And
not forgetting Tauranga [?] and good health.
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
‘Susan,
I respect; because she sits stitching. She sews under a quiet lamp in
a house where the corn sighs close to the window and gives me safety.
For I am the weakest, the youngest of them all. I am a child looking
at his feet and the little runnels that the stream has made in the
gravel. That is a snail, I say; that is a leaf. I delight in the
snails; I delight in the leaf, I am always the youngest, the most
innocent, the most trustful. You are all protected. I am naked. When
the waitress with the plaited wreaths of hair swings past, she deals
you your apricots and custard unhesitatingly, like a sister. You are
her brothers. But when I get up, brushing the crumbs from my
waistcoat, I slip too large a tip, a shilling, under the edge of my
plate, so that she may not find it till I am gone, and her scorn, as
she picks it up with laughter, may not strike on me till I am past
the swing-doors.’
‘Now
the wind lifts the blind,’ said Susan, ‘jars, bowls, matting and
the shabby arm-chair with the hole in it are now become distinct.
The usual faded ribbons sprinkle the wallpaper. The bird chorus is
over, only one bird now sings close to the bedroom window. I will
pull on my stockings and go quietly past the bedroom doors, and down
through the kitchen, out through the garden past the greenhouse into
the field. It is still early morning. The mist is on the marshes.
The day is stark and stiff as a linen shroud. But it will soften; it
will warm. At this hour, this still early hour, I think I am the
field, I am the barn, I am the trees; mine are the flocks of birds,
and this young hare who leaps, at the last moment when I step almost
on him. Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and
the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another munching;
and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and
the green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of
the man fetching cart- horses from the fields — all are mine.
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PAKARI -
Resiliance
He
toku tu moana
As durable as a rock pounded by the sea
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
‘I
cannot be divided, or kept apart. I was sent to school; I was sent
to Switzerland to finish my education. I hate linoleum; I hate fir
trees and mountains. Let me now fling myself on this flat ground
under a pale sky where the clouds pace slowly. The cart grows
gradually larger as it comes along the road. The sheep gather in the
middle of the field. The birds gather in the middle of the road —
they need not fly yet. The wood smoke rises. The starkness of the
dawn is going out of it. Now the day stirs. Colour returns. The day
waves yellow with all its crops. The earth hangs heavy beneath me.
‘But
who am I, who lean on this gate and watch my setter nose in a
circle? I think sometimes (I am not twenty yet) I am not a woman,
but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the
seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the
mist, the dawn. I cannot be tossed about, or float gently, or mix
with other people. Yet now, leaning here till the gate prints my
arm, I feel the weight that has formed itself in my side. Something
has formed, at school, in Switzerland, some hard thing. Not sighs
and laughter, not circling and ingenious phrases; not Rhoda’s
strange communications when she looks past us, over our shoulders;
nor Jinny’s pirouetting, all of a piece, limbs and body. What I
give is fell. I cannot float gently, mixing with other people. I
like best the stare of shepherds met in the road; the stare of gipsy
women beside a cart in a ditch suckling their children as I shall
suckle my children. For soon in the hot midday when the bees hum
round the hollyhocks my lover will come. He will stand under the
cedar tree. To his one word I shall answer my one word. What has
formed in me I shall give him. I shall have children; I shall have
maids in aprons; men with pitchforks; a kitchen where they bring the
ailing lambs to warm in baskets, where the hams hang and the onions
glisten. I shall be like my mother, silent in a blue apron locking
up the cupboards.
‘Now
I am hungry. I will call my setter. I think of crusts and bread and
butter and white plates in a sunny room. I will go back across the
fields. I will walk along this grass path with strong, even strides,
now swerving to avoid the puddle, now leaping lightly to a clump.
Beads of wet form on my rough skirt; my shoes become supple and
dark. The stiffness has gone from the day; it is shaded with grey,
green and umber. The birds no longer settle on the high road.
‘I
return, like a cat or fox returning, whose fur is grey with rime,
whose pads are hardened by the coarse earth. I push through the
cabbages, making their leaves squeak and their drops spill. I sit
waiting for my father’s footsteps as he shuffles down the passage
pinching some herb between his fingers. I pour out cup after cup
while the unopened flowers hold themselves erect on the table among
the pots of jam, the loaves and the butter.
We are silent.
‘I
go then to the cupboard, and take the damp bags of rich sultanas; I
lift the heavy flour on to the clean scrubbed kitchen table. I
knead; I stretch; I pull, plunging my hands in the warm inwards of
the dough. I let the cold water stream fanwise through my fingers.
The fire roars; the flies buzz in a circle. All my currants and
rices, the silver bags and the blue bags, are locked again in the
cupboard. The meat is stood in the oven; the bread rises in a soft
dome under the clean towel. I walk in the afternoon down to the
river. All the world is breeding. The flies are going from grass to
grass. The flowers are thick with pollen. The swans ride the stream
in order. The clouds, warm now, sun- spotted, sweep over the hills,
leaving gold in the water, and gold on the necks of the swans.
Pushing one foot before the other, the cows munch their way across
the field. I feel through the grass for the white-domed mushroom;
and break its stalk and pick the purple orchid that grows beside it
and lay the orchid by the mushroom with the earth at its root, and
so home to make the kettle boil for my father among the just
reddened roses on the tea-table.
‘But
evening comes and the lamps are lit. And when evening comes and the
lamps are lit they make a yellow fire in the ivy. I sit with my
sewing by the table. I think of Jinny; of Rhoda; and hear the rattle
of wheels on the pavement as the farm horses plod home; I hear
traffic roaring in the evening wind. I look at the quivering leaves
in the dark garden and think “They dance in London. Jinny kisses
Louis”.’
‘How
strange,’ said Jinny, ‘that people should sleep, that people
should put out the lights and go upstairs. They have taken off their
dresses, they have put on white nightgowns. There are no lights in
any of these houses. There is a line of chimney-pots against the
sky; and a street lamp or two burning, as lamps burn when nobody
needs them. The only people in the streets are poor people hurrying.
There is no one coming or going in this street; the day is over. A
few policemen stand at the corners. Yet night is beginning. I feel
myself shining in the dark. Silk is on my knee. My silk legs rub
smoothly together. The stones of a necklace lie cold on my throat.
My feet feel the pinch of shoes. I sit bolt upright so that my hair
may not touch the back of the seat. I am arrayed, I am prepared.
This is the momentary pause; the dark moment. The fiddlers have
lifted their bows.
The Task of Destroying the History of Ontology All
research-and not least that which operates within the range of the
central question of Being-is an ontical possibility of Dasein.
Dasein's Being finds its meaning in temporality. But temporality is
also the condition which makes historicality possible as a temporal
kind of Being which Dasein itself possesses, regardless of whether or
how Dasein is an entity 'in time'.
Historicality, as a determinate
character, is prior to what is called "history"
(world-historical historizing).1 "Historicality" stands for
the state of Being that is constitutive for 20 Dasein's 'historizing'
as such; only on the basis of such 'historizing' is anything like
'world-history' possible or can anything belong historically to
world-history. In its factical Being, any Dasein is as it already
was, and it is 'what' it already was. It is its past, whether
explicitly or not. And this is so not only in that its past is, as it
were, pushing itself along 'behind' it, and that Dasein possesses
what is past as a property which is still presentat-hand and which
sometimes has after-effects upon it: Dasein 'is' its past in the way
of its own Being, which, to put it roughly, 'historizes' out of its
future on each occasion. 2 Whatever the way of being it may have at
the time, and thus with whatever understanding of Being it may
possess, Dasein has grown up both into and in a traditional way of
interpreting itself: in terms of this it understands itself
proximally and, within a certain range, constantly. By this
understanding, the possibilities of its Being are disclosed and
regulated. Its own past-and this always means the past of its
'generation'-is not something which follows along after Dasein, but
something which already goes ahead of it. This elemental
historicality of Dasein may remain hidden from Dasein itself. But
there is a way by which it can be discovered and given proper
attention. Dasein can discover tradition, preserve it, and study it
explicitly. The discovery of tradition and the disclosure of what it
'transmits' and how this is transmitted, can be taken hold of as a
task in its own right. In this way Dasein brings itself into the kind
of Being which consists in historiological inquiry and research. But
historiology, or more precisely historicity is possible as a kind of
Being which the inquiring Dasein [
possess,
only because historicality is a determining characteristic for Dasein
in the very basis of its Being. If this historicality remains hidden
from Dasein, and as long as it so remains, Dasein is also denied the
possibility of historiological inquiry or the discovery of history.
If historiology is wanting, this is not evidence against Dasein's
historicality; on the contrary, as a deficient mode1 of this state of
Being, it is evidence for it. Only because it is 'historical' can an
era be unhistoriological. On the other hand, if Dasein has seized
upon its latent possibility not only of making its own existence
transparent to itself but also of inquiring into the meaning of
existentiality itself (that is to say, of previously inquiring into
the meaning of Being in general) , and if by such inquiry its eyes
have been opened to its own essential historicality, then one cannot
fail to see that the inquiry into Being (the ontico-ontological
necessity of which we have already indicated) is itself characterized
by historicality. The ownmost meaning of Being which belongs to the
inquiry into Being 21 a s a n historical inquiry, gives us the
assignment [Anweisung] of inquiring into the history of that inquiry
itself, that is, of becoming historiological. In working out the
question of Being, we must heed this assignment, so that by
positively making the past our own, we may bring ourselves into full
possession of the ownmost possibilities of such inquiry. The question
of the meaning of Being must be carried through by explicating Dasein
beforehand in its temporality and historicality; the question thus
brings itself to the point where it understands itself as
historiological. Our preparatory Interpretation of the fundamental
structures of Dasein with regard to the average kind of Being which
is closest to it (a kind of Being -i.Q. which it is therefore
proximally historical as well), will make manifest, however, not only
that Dasein is inclined to fall back upon its world (the world in
which it is) and to interpret itself in terms of that world by its
reflected light, but also that Dasein simultaneously falls prey to
the tradition of which it has more or less explicitly taken hold.11
This tradition keeps it from providing its own guidance, whether
ininquiring or in choosing. This holds
true-and by no means least-for that‘How
strange,’ said Jinny, ‘that people should sleep, that people
should put out the lights and go upstairs. They have taken off their
dresses, they have put on white nightgowns. There are no lights in
any of these houses. There is a line of chimney-pots against the sky;
and a street lamp or two burning, as lamps burn when nobody needs
them. The only people in the streets are poor people hurrying. There
is no one coming or going in this street; the day is over. A few
policemen stand at the corners. Yet night is beginning. I feel myself
shining in the dark. Silk is on my knee. My silk legs rub smoothly
together. The stones of a necklace lie cold on my throat.
understanding which is rooted in Dasein's ownmost Being, and for the
possibility of developing it-namely, for ontological understanding.
When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that
what it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the
most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has
come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our
access to those primordial 'sources' from which the categories and
concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn.1
Indeed it makes us forget that they have had such an origin, and
makes us suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources is
something which we need not even understand. Dasein has had its
historicality so thoroughly uprooted by tradition that it confines
its interest to the multiformity of possible types, directions, and
standpoints of philosophical activity in the most exotic and alien of
cultures ; and by this very interest it seeks to veil the fact that
it has no ground of its own to stand on. Consequently, despite all
its historiological interests and all its zeal for an Interpretation
which is philologically 'objective' ["sachliche"],
Dasein no longer understands the most elementary conditions which
would alone enable it to go back to the past in a positive manner and
make it productively its own. ‘How
strange,’ said Jinny, ‘that people should sleep, that people
should put out the lights and go upstairs. They have taken off their
dresses, they have put on white nightgowns. There are no lights in
any of these houses. There is a line of chimney-pots against the sky;
and a street lamp or two burning, as lamps burn when nobody needs
them. The only people in the streets are poor people hurrying. There
is no one coming or going in this street; the day is over. A few
policemen stand at the corners. Yet night is beginning. I feel myself
shining in the dark. Silk is on my knee. My silk legs rub smoothly
together. The stones of a necklace lie cold on my throat. We
have shown at the outset (Section 1) not only that the question of
the meaning of Being is one that has not been attended to and one
that has been inadequately formulated, but that it has become quite
forgotten in spite of all our interest in 'metaphysics'. Greek
ontology and its history -which, in their numerous filiations and
distortions, determine the conceptual character of philosophy even
today-prove that when Dasein understands either itself or Being in
general, it does so in terms of the 'world', and that the ontology
which has thus arisen has deteriorated [
verfallt] to a tradition in which it gets
reduced to something self-evident -merely material for reworking, as
it was for Hegel. In the Middle Ages this uprooted Greek ontology
became a fixed body of doctrine. Its systematics, however, is by no
means a mere joining together of traditional pieces into a single
edifice. Though its basic conceptions of Being have been taken over
dogmatically from the Greeks, a great deal of unpretentious work has
been carried on further within these limits. With the peculiar
character which the Scholastics gave it, Greek ontology has, in its
essentials, travelled the path that leads through the Disputationes ,
metaphysicae of Suarez to the 'metaphysics' and transcendental
philosophy ·of modern times, determining even the foundations and
the aims of Hegel's
'logic'. In the course of this history certain distinctive domains of
Being have come into view and have served as the primary guides for
subsequent problematics : the ego cogito of Descartes, the subject,
the "1", reason, spirit, person. But these all remain
uninterrogated as to their Being and its structure, in accordance
with the thoroughgoing way in which the question of Being has been
neglected. It is rather the case that the categorial content of the
traditional ontology has been carried over to these entities with
corresponding formalizations and purely negative restrictions, or
else dialectic has been called in for the purpose of Interpreting the
substantiality of the subject ontologically. If the question of Being
is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened
tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has
brought about1 must be dissolved. We understand this task as one in
which by taking the question of Being as our clue, we are to. destroy
the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those
primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of
determining the nature of Being-the ways which have guided us ever
since. In thus demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological
concepts by an investigation in which their 'birth certificate' is
displayed, we have nothing to do with a vicious relativizing of
ontological standpoints. But this destruction is just as far from
having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition.
‘How
strange,’ said Jinny, ‘that people should sleep, that people
should put out the lights and go upstairs. They have taken off their
dresses, they have put on white nightgowns. There are no lights in
any of these houses. There is a line of chimney-pots against the sky;
and a street lamp or two burning, as lamps burn when nobody needs
them. The only people in the streets are poor people hurrying. There
is no one coming or going in this street; the day is over. A few
policemen stand at the corners. Yet night is beginning. I feel myself
shining in the dark. Silk is on my knee. My silk legs rub smoothly
together. The stones of a necklace lie cold on my throat. We
must, on the contrary, stake out the positive possibilities of that
tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits ; these
in turn are given factically in the way the question is formulated at
the time, and in the way the possible field for investigation is thus
bounded off. On its negative side, this destruction does not relate
itself towards the past;' iu criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the
prevalent way of treating the history of ontology, whether it is
headed towards doxography, towards intellectual history, or towards a
history of problems. But to bury the past in nullity [Nichtigkeit) is
not the purpose of this destruction ; its aim is positive; its
negative function remains unexpressed and indirect. The destruction
of the history of ontology is essentially bound up with the way the
question of Being is formulated, and it is possible only within such
a formulation. In the framework of our treatise, which aims at
working out that question in principle, we can carry out this
destruction only with regard to stages of that history which are in
principle decisive. In line with the positive tendencies of this
destruction, we must in the first instance raise the question whether
and to what extent the Interpretation of Being and the phenomenon of
time have been brought together thematically in the course of the
history of ontology, and whether the problematic of Temporality
required for this has ever been worked out in principle or ever could
have been. The first and only person who has gone any stretch of the
way towards investigating the dimension of Temporality or has even
let himself be drawn hither by the coercion of the phenomena
themselves is Kant. Only when we have established the problematic of
Temporality, can we succeed in casting light on the obscurity of his
doctrine of the schematism. But this will also show us why this area
is one which had to remain closed off to him in its real dimensions
and its central ontological function. Kant himself was aware that he
was venturing into an area of obscurity : 'This schematism of our
understanding as regards appearances and their mere form is an art
hidden in the depths of the human soul, the true devices of which are
hardly ever to be divined from Nature and laid uncovered before our
eyes.'1 Here Kant shrinks back, as it were, in the face of something
which must be brought to light as a theme and a principle if the
expression "Being" is to have any demonstrable meaning. In
the end, those very phenomena which will be exhibited under the
heading of 'Temporality' in our analysis, are precisely those most
covert judgments of the 'common reason' for which Kant says it is the
'business of philosophers' to provide an analytic. In pursuing this
task of destruction with the problematic of Temporality as our clue,
we shall try to Interpret the chapter on the schematism and the
Kantian doctrine of time, taking that chapter as our point of
departure. At the same time we shall show why Kant could never
achieve an insight into the problematic of Temporality. There were
two things that stood in his way : in the first place, he altogether
neglected the problem of Being; and, in connection with this, he
failed to provide an ontology with Dasein as its theme or (to put
this in Kantian language) to give a preliminary ontological analytic
of the subjectivity of the subject. Instead of this, Kant took over
Descartes' position quite dogmatically, notwithstanding all the
essential respects in which he had gone beyond him. Furthermore, in
spite of the fact that he was· bringing the phenomenon of time back
into the subject again, his analysis of it remained oriented towards
the traditional way in which time had been ordinarily understood; in
the long run this kept him from working out the phenomenon of a
'transcendental determination of time' in its own structure and
function. Because of this double effect of tradition the decisive
connection between time and the 'I think' was shrouded in utter
darkness; it did not even become a problem.
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To
Leonard Woolf [Monk's House, Rodmell,
Sussex]
Tuesday
[18? March 1941]
Dearest,
I
feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we cant go through
another of those terrible times. And I shant recover this time. I
begin to hear voices, and cant concentrate. So I am doing what seems
the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible
happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I
dont think two people could have been happier till this terrible
disease came. I cant fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling
your life, that without me you could work. And know that I am
spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I
know. You see I cant even write this properly. I cant read. What I
want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You
have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say
that – everybody knows it. I anybody could have saved me it would
have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your
goodness. I cant go on spoiling your life any longer.
I
dont think two people could have been happier than we have been.
V.
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All
this afternoon I have been trying to arrange some of my father's old
books....
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Kia u ki te pai
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[Ocean Island is Banaba]
Ocean Island Central Pacific Sept
10th 1941
Dear Jack
No doubt you will be
surprised to hear from me but when I heard from Gower [?] the other
day that you had received a letter from Sallie [?] earlier on in the
year well I felt that ashamed
so I decided I would write the next
mail and let you know some of the news of this little old isle. I
suppose you know ere this that we are all living the bachelor life as
there are only two ladies left on the place – Mrs Barley and the
B.P.C [British Phosphate Commission] Sister [there was a hospital on
Ocean Island.] So you would not know the place if you were to return
here suddenly. Most of them dine in the mess room so you can't
imagine the rush there sometimes. Of course there have been a lot of
departures amongst the staff that you used to know so I will rattle
them off whilst I can remember them. Goudie [?] has gone down to join
up also Warburton from the office and Gough [?] the steward. Stokes
ex the hardware store has left for the same purpose some time
ago.Sloggett ex hardware [?] is in the airforce in Canada and is now
a Flying Officer. Keith Simpson [?] in the airforce [?] Also McBrae
from Nauru. I have not heard anything of Don Bates but would imagine
him to he in a Home Defence position. Jack Hallfall [?] is in the
East and a brother of his killed in action, [as was] a brother of
Harry Dowan [?]George Holt gets mail regularly from Grieves in the
East also and I believe a three stripe man. You will remember Alan
Walker who was in the C.E.[?] Office when I first came here – news
arrived here that he has just been killed in action in Crete. He held
a Captain's commission and if you remember he left here to take a
position in Cyprus. He evidently enlisted with the A.I.F. [Australian
Infantry Forces] over in the East. You have already heard I suppose
that Gilmore won the M.C. [Military Cross] in Greece. Well Jack that
is about all the overseas news. Our old friend Bridges arrived back a
few weeks ago fatter than ever and just got his [bark?] back
yesterday. There is no doubt about him, the staff are all on edge as
you know these days but he still has his little pick.. Jack Lee came
back with him looking older than ever and still the same – forgets
everything – as of yore. I did not get the carpenter shop after all
as Barney [?] was put into it much to everybody's disgust. He
painted out the office in the shop whilst Jack was down,varnished the
clock, and polished up the table and chairs, moved in the telephone,
and didn't Jack snort when he arrived back..”It was a work shop and
not an office” and he still leaves burning cigarettes on the much
to Barry's disgust.
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Tauranga
June 28th
42
My Dear Joy.
You say you are very
happy about your engagement
to Leslie and that is all
that matters to your mother and myself.
We cannot hope nor do we
wish to keep you to ourselves
so we wish you a happy
life in your companionship with Leslie.
If you affection for one
another can survive the ups and
downs of life as well as
ours has done you will be happy.
You must not look for
the ideal in man. Perfection would
be sickening. Toleration
for each other's imperfections or faults
with other leven of a
sense of humour will help you over the
rough spots.
I have not seen much of
your Leslie but he appears to have
a reasonable and sensible
outlook on life which is worth a great
deal.
Best of wishes to you
both and good luck for the future.
With love
Yours
affectionately
father
J R Miller
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The Attack on Pearl Harbor was 7th
December 1941
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HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - A
young sailor’s letter, written onboard the USS Arizona days before
the attack on Pearl Harbor, was donated to the national memorial by
his family on Monday.
Orville Lester Rusher was a 21-year-old engineer from Missouri.
He mailed the letter to his sister on Nov. 25, 1941.
“He was a farm boy from Missouri,” said Vicki Borlin, Rusher’s great-niece.
“That’s what the letter talks about. That he misses Missouri snow and that it’s hot (in Hawaii) and everybody thinks it’s cold when it’s 70 degrees. He wanted to come home.”
But Rusher's family didn't receive the letter until December 8, a day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
His remains were never recovered.
Borlin says she found the letter about 15 years ago while digging through a box in her mother's garage.
After learning her son's high school band would be performing at the Pearl Harbor Visitors Center this Memorial Day, she says she thought it was the perfect opportunity to honor her late uncle.
"We've had the letter for a very long time, and I decided we needed to give it to somebody who could take care of it," Borlin said.
Borlin, who lives in Illinois, hand-carried the letter to Hawaii.
After the band’s performance Monday, Borlin and her son Maxx presented the letter to the National Park Service.
Officials say historical documents like these give people a glimpse into the past.
"What's remarkable about the letter is that it is somewhat unremarkable in its tone. He's talking about the things any young sailor here would experience. Kind of the calm before the storm, not realizing what's going to come down in the future in just a matter of days," said park ranger Daniel Brown.
The Borlins also presented a wreath in honor of Rusher and those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
While they never had the chance to meet him, they say they feel close to him just by being here.
"I could never imagine what he went through and those experiences, but just to be here is crazy," said Maxx Borlin.
“It really means a lot more to be here and to see that his remains are still on the ship,” said Vicki Borlin.
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Kaore te kumara e korero mo tona ake reka
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‘I
have torn off the whole of May and June,’ said Susan, ‘and twenty
days of July. I have torn them off and screwed them up so that they
no longer exist, save as a weight in my side. They have been crippled
days, like moths with shrivelled wings unable to fly. There are only
eight days left. In eight days’ time I shall get out of the train
and stand on the platform at six twenty five. Then my freedom will
unfurl, and all these restrictions that wrinkle and shrivel — hours
and order and discipline, and being here and there exactly at the
right moment — will crack asunder. Out the day will spring, as I
open the carriage-door and see my father in his old hat and gaiters.
I shall tremble. I shall burst into tears. Then next morning I shall
get up at dawn. I shall let myself out by the kitchen door. I shall
walk on the moor. The great horses of the phantom riders will thunder
behind me and stop suddenly. I shall see the swallow skim the grass.
I shall throw myself on a bank by the river and watch the fish slip
in and out among the reeds. The palms of my hands will be printed
with pine- needles. I shall there unfold and take out whatever it is
I have made here; something hard. For something has grown in me here,
through the winters and summers, on staircases, in bedrooms. I do not
want, as Jinny wants, to be admired. I do not want people, when I
come in, to look up with admiration. I want to give, to be given, and
solitude in which to unfold my possessions.
‘Then
I shall come back through the trembling lanes under the arches of the
nut leaves. I shall pass an old woman wheeling a perambulator full of
sticks; and the shepherd. But we shall not speak. I shall come back
through the kitchen garden, and see the curved leaves of the cabbages
pebbled with dew, and the house in the garden, blind with curtained
windows. I shall go upstairs to my room, and turn over my own things,
locked carefully in the wardrobe: my shells; my eggs; my curious
grasses. I shall feed my doves and my squirrel. I shall go to the
kennel and comb my spaniel. So gradually I shall turn over the hard
thing that has grown here in my side. But here bells ring; feet
shuffle perpetually.’
‘I
hate darkness and sleep and night,’ said Jinny, ‘and lie longing
for the day to come. I long that the week should be all one day
without divisions. When I wake early — and the birds wake me — I
lie and watch the brass handles on the cupboard grow clear; then the
basin; then the towel-horse. As each thing in the bedroom grows
clear, my heart beats quicker. I feel my body harden, and become
pink, yellow, brown. My hands pass over my legs and body. I feel its
slopes, its thinness. I love to hear the gong roar through the house
and the stir begin — here a thud, there a patter. Doors slam; water
rushes. Here is another day, here is another day, I cry, as my feet
touch the floor. It may be a bruised day, an imperfect day. I am
often scolded. I am often in disgrace for idleness, for laughing; but
even as Miss Matthews grumbles at my feather-headed carelessness, I
catch sight of something moving — a speck of sun perhaps on a
picture, or the donkey drawing the mowing-machine across the lawn; or
a sail that passes between the laurel leaves, so that I am never cast
down. I cannot be prevented from pirouetting behind Miss Matthews
into prayers.
‘Now,
too, the time is coming when we shall leave school and wear long
skirts. I shall wear necklaces and a white dress without sleeves at
night. There will be parties in brilliant rooms; and one man will
single me out and will tell me what he has told no other person. He
will like me better than Susan or Rhoda. He will find in me some
quality, some peculiar thing. But I shall not let myself be attached
to one person only. I do not want to be fixed, to be pinioned. I
tremble, I quiver, like the leaf in the hedge, as I sit dangling my
feet, on the edge of the bed, with a new day to break open. I have
fifty years, I have sixty years to spend. I have not yet broken into
my hoard. This is the beginning.’
‘There
are hours and hours,’ said Rhoda, ‘before I can put out the light
and lie suspended on my bed above the world, before I can let the day
drop down, before I can let my tree grow, quivering in green
pavilions above my head. Here I cannot let it grow. Somebody knocks
through it. They ask questions, they interrupt, they throw it down.
‘Now
I will go to the bathroom and take off my shoes and wash; but as I
wash, as I bend my head down over the basin, I will let the Russian
Empress’s veil flow about my shoulders. The diamonds of the
Imperial crown blaze on my forehead. I hear the roar of the hostile
mob as I step out on to the balcony. Now I dry my hands, vigorously,
so that Miss, whose name I forget, cannot suspect that I am waving my
fist at an infuriated mob. “I am your Empress, people.” My
attitude is one of defiance. I am fearless. I conquer.
‘But
this is a thin dream. This is a papery tree. Miss Lambert blows it
down. Even the sight of her vanishing down the corridor blows it to
atoms. It is not solid; it gives me no satisfaction — this Empress
dream. It leaves me, now that it has fallen, here in the passage
rather shivering. Things seem paler. I will go now into the library
and take out some book, and read and look; and read again and look.
Here is a poem about a hedge. I will wander down it and pick flowers,
green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May, wild roses and ivy
serpentine. I will clasp them in my hands and lay them on the desk’s
shiny surface. I will sit by the river’s trembling edge and look at
the water-lilies, broad and bright, which lit the oak that overhung
the hedge with moonlight beams of their own watery light. I will pick
flowers; I will bind flowers in one garland and clasp them and
present them — Oh! to whom? There is some check in the flow of my
being; a deep stream presses on some obstacle; it jerks; it tugs;
some knot in the centre resists. Oh, this is pain, this is anguish! I
faint, I fail. Now my body thaws; I am unsealed, I am incandescent.
Now the stream pours in a deep tide fertilizing, opening the shut,
forcing the tight-folded, flooding free. To whom shall I give all
that now flows through me, from my warm, my porous body? I will
gather my flowers and present them — Oh! to whom?
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Sunday
21 February [1937]
Isherwood
& Sally [Chilver] last night. I[sherwoo]d rather a find: very
small red cheeked nimble & vivacious. We chattered. He lives in a
pension at Brussels; is heir to an E[lizabe]than house near
Manchester; & likes my books. (13. The last put some colour into
my cheeks. He said Morgan & I were the only living novelists the
young – he, Auden, Spender I suppose – take seriously. Indeed he
admires us both I gather warmly. For M.'s books he has a passion.
“I'll come out with it then Mrs Woolf – you see, I feel youre a
poetess: he does the thing I want to do....a perfect combination.”
But I was satisfied with my share of the compliment wh. Came very pat
in these days of depression. Auden & he are writing away
together. He does the prose, A. the poetry. A, wants innumerable
blankets on his bed, innumerable cups of tea; then shuts the shutters
and draws the blinds and writes. Id. Is a most appreciative merry
little bird. A real novelist I suspect, not a
poet [yes, I think he was a great novelist but not for the reason
most people like him – for his deeply moving scenes rather than his
'Berlin night life etc' as in Letter from
Berlin]; full of acute
observations on characters and scenes. Odd how few 'novelists' I
know: it wd. interest me to discuss fiction with him. Sally rather
smudged and pale: but then Id. & I were such chatterboxes.
Suddenly he said he must meet John Andrews...
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This is a papery tree.... .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Sunday 28 February
I'm
so entirely imbued in 3 Guineas that I can hardly jerk myself away to
write here. (here in fact again I dropped my pen to think about my
next paragraph – universities – how they will lead to professions
& so on.) Its a bad habit. Yesterday it was effectively broken by
Desmond who came punctually at one, & stayed till 7.15. nor did
we stop talking all that time...Anyhow, he was well lit – dear old
Desmond – as round as a marble: a paunch pendant; but nearly bald:
with an odd 18th
Century look, as if he had been dining at the Club with Johnson – a
kind of Goldsworth or Boswell; a congenial spirit. And as full of
human kindness as a ripe grape with juice. I think he had set himself
now not to write a great book but to be nice to other people. What
can I do for you, was his last remark on the stairs. Alas he carried
off The Years wh. Means – well, never mind. We talked, so easily
and merrily. I went back to old talks with Lytton – talking shop
about Kipling's style: he had the same quotation – about the man
who cut his throat & looked like a robin redbreast – that I
had. (22. Then how Jack Squire has imposed another false self upon
his true self.....
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(22. See Something of Myself
(1936) (story) by Rudyard Kipling, p. 87
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(13, Christopher Isherwood (B. 1904),
two of whose books had already been, and two more were to be,
published by the Hogarth Press, was living a nomadic life on the
continent with his German lover, trying to evade the latter's
conscription into the Wehrmacht. He was at present in London
for the rehearsals at the Mercury Theatre of The Ascent of F6,
the second of three plays which he wrote in collaboration with his
friend the poet W. H. Auden (1907 – 1973). Isherwood was due to
inherit both Marple Hall and Wyberslegh Hall (where he was born) near
Stockport in Cheshire on the death of his uncle.
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[Chilvers (neé
Graves) was a historian and anthropologist who later became an expert
n the Cameroons, and African history.]
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As
understanding, Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities. This
Being-towards-possibilities which understands is itself a
potentiality-for-Being, and it is so because of the way these
possibilities, as disclosed, exert their counter-thrust [Rűckschlag]
upon Dasein. The projecting of the understanding has its own
possibility-that of developing itself [sich auszubilden]. This
development of the understanding we call "interpretation".
3 In it the understanding appropriates understandingly that which is
understood by it. In interpretation, understanding does not become
something different. It becomes itself. Such interpretation is
grounded existentially in understanding; the latter does not arise
from the former. Nor is interpretation the acquiring of information
about what is understood ; it is rather
the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding. In
accordance with the trend of these preparatory analyses of everyday
Dasein, we shall pursue the phenomenon of interpretation in
understanding the world-that is, in inauthentic understanding, and
indeed in the mode of its genuineness. In terms of the significance
which is disclosed in understanding the world, concernful
Being-alongside the ready-to-hand gives itself to understand whatever
involvement that which is encountered can have.1 To say that
"circumspection discovers" means that the 'world' which has
already been understood comes to be interpreted. The ready-to-hand
comes explicitly into the sight which understands. All preparing,
putting to rights, repairing, improving, rounding-out, are
accomplished in the following way : we take apart2 in its
"in-order-to" that which is circumspectively ready-to-hand,
and we concern ourselves with it in accordance with what becomes
visible through this process. That which has been
circumspectively taken apart with regard to its "in-order-to",
and taken apart as such-that which is explicitly understood-has the
structure of something as something. The circumspective question as
to what this particular thing that is ready-to-hand may be, receives
the circumspectively interpretative answer that it is for such and
such a purpose [ es ist zum ... ] . If we tell what it is for [des
Wozu], we are not simply designating something; but that which is
designated is understood as that as which we are to take the thing in
question. That which is disclosed in understanding that which is
understood-is already accessible in such a way
that its 'as which' can be made to stand out explicitly. The 'as'
makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is
understood. It constitutes the interpretation. In dealing with what
is environmentally ready-to-hand by interpreting it circumspectively,
we 'see' it as a table, a door, a carriage, or a bridge ; but what we
have thus interpreted [Ausgelegte] need not necessarily be also taken
apart [auseinander zu legen] by making an assertion which definitely
characterizes it. Any mere pre-predicative seeing of the
ready-to-hand is, in itself, something which already understands and
interprets. But does not the absence of such an 'as' make up the
mereness of any pure perception of something? Whenever we see with
this kind of sight, we already do so understandingly and
interpretatively. In the mere encountering of something, it is
understood in terms of a totality of involvements; and such seeing
hides in itself the explicitness of the assignment-relations (of the
"in-order-to") which belong to that
totality
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