Notes on Heidegger's Being and Time, Part IV

Dasein's metaphysics of unity, the symmetry of the intellects, and the symbolism of work

The asmāʾal-ḥusnā (Iran, 19th century)

*

—Summary of insights, aka tl;dr:

1. “Being-in-the-world” and “Dasein” are one and the same reality, expressed from different standpoints, and with differing emphases.

2. “Facticity”, for Dasein, is a fabric of distinctive unities (unique-ness) within integral Unity.

3. An apophantic approach to Dasein would both theoretically clarify its structure and amplify its expression. That is, apophansis has both a theoretical significance and the practical significance of an ascesis.

4. Given Dasein’s intellective universality, there are no “beings which Dasein is not”, unless “Dasein” is taken in the sense of a caprigenus.

5. Because of its dependence on symbolic speech, one could say that any rigorous phenomenology has already been carried out in advance by our language.

6. The interruption of the flow of work that occurs when a tool is made “present at hand” has a Promethean significance. In this capacity, Prometheus is unveiled as the force that liberates us from technology, by means of technology.

*

“being-in-the-world indicates...a unified phenomenon...must be seen as a whole...[and] gives us a threefold perspective”

(53)

Another passage that, for the most part, requires no further comment. It all too clearly indicates the intellective character of being-in-the-world. One could also say that, if Dasein is passive intellect as “subject” (with all due reservations respecting the limits of this expression), then being-in-the-world is passive intellection taken in its operational character. That is simply to say that Dasein and being-in-the-world constitute the same phenomenon taken from different standpoints—Dasein as the “subject” (but only in a manner of speaking) of which being-in-the-world is the “experience”. In reality, these two are not divided one from the other, but constitute one and the same phenomenon. The “threefold perspective” here seems to mirror the triplicities with which the metaphysics of active intellect is often associated. In this case, the primary emphasis of the triplicity is on being in its “existential” sense (or “existentiell”, for the pedants), whereas in the metaphysics of active intellect the primary emphasis always relates to knowledge. Active intellection is (representable as) a union of the knower and the “object” to be known in the “act” of knowledge. Here, in what amounts to a metaphysics of passive intellection, we have a union as a “being-in”, a here-being, of the being for whom being is a question, with the world that constitutes the horizon of the being in question.

*

“facticity”

(56)

It is through notions such as “facticity”, among others, that Dasein's metaphysics of possibility shows up. Tentatively, one might propose as a definition of Dasein “the totality of possibilities (or, perhaps, better yet, the horizon of possibilities) which circumscribe the passively intellective pole of manifestation”—thus, even more concisely, Dasein is All-passively-intellective-possibility. Within that horizon, there are yet other metaphysical “aspects” which render intelligible certain regions of possibility within Dasein—facticity, for instance, which is none other than Dasein's possible factualness (and, it should be stressed at this point that “possible” is inclusive of “actual”, not its opposite which would be “potential”). The “number” of such “aspects” might, in theory, constitute a “multitude that surpasses all number”, as Guenon puts it (see the third chapter of “Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus”), though, like the “ninety-nine names of Allah” (the asmāʾal-ḥusnā), a certain symbolic figure might prove adequate to a circumscription of the totality of such aspects—that is, a certain symbolic number may prove tactillectively appropriate.

*

“With its facticity, the being-in-the-world of Dasein has already dispersed itself in definite ways of being-in, perhaps even split itself up. The multiplicity of these kinds of being-in...”

(57)

The specifics of the parallels between the metaphysics of active intellect (i.e. antique metaphysics) and the metaphysics of passive intellect (i.e. Heideggerian ontology) are important to map out, not necessarily in order to be exhaustive, but for the sake of deepening the comparison. Here we find one such structural similarity. “Facticity” seems to act for Dasein as the numerical “1” which is the basis of all subsequent multiplicity. This facticity, through a sort of “repetition”, is productive of all diverse “factual situations” which constitute Dasein's manifest actuality (or, rather, its specifically passive character in mind—that which constitutes its “inconspicuous potency”). One might characterize “facticity” as the gnosensiential specificity of Dasein's situation, or the factual diversity internal to any situation. It is not simply a matter of objectively present “facts”, but of their intelligible relevance and “innerwordliness”. Each “fact” is an intelligible whole within and inseparable from the intelligible whole of the situation—so many “ones” within “the one” of the surrounding world, gnosensientially specified expressions of “the one”, each distinctly and indistinctly “one”, distinct because of its “one-ness” (which is to say, “unique”) and indistinct in its “one-ness”. Facticity is intelligible unity multiplied in unity, and not mere numerical unity, but that unity which is more truly a unity by virtue of its distinctness, i.e. that which is unique. To enumerate these unities is to enter into objective presence. Dasein's facticity is the integral tapestry of the unique.

*

“The phenomenological demonstration of being-in-the-world has the character of rejecting dissimulations and obfuscations”

(58)

This methodology for accessing Dasein is apophantic—“neti, neti” [1]. Here, its deployment is only toward (or, primarily toward) producing an account of Dasein, but presumably, this should be convertible into an “ascesis” which realizes Dasein (passive intellect) in its profounder possibilities—that is, theory should be convertible into practice. Indeed, it is quite likely that many readers of Heidegger have experienced such realizations in the course of their study, that his writing has induced them to see in a new way (only really “new” for one who primarily identifies with the subjective-objective states characteristic, eminently, of modernity), since, in order to really be understood, that which Heidegger discusses must be seen and not only thought about. At the same time, this effect of his writing undoubtedly also explains the tendency towards sycophancy among his followers. This apophantic approach obviously also dovetails with his insistence on a “destruction” of traditional ontology. What seems to really be in question here is the banishment of transcendental subjectivity as limit, and only insofar as it enforces itself as limit, not “in itself”. That the transcendental horizon constitutes the limit of possible ways of being and knowing is the “illusion” which this method aims to dispel. This illusion has taken for itself diverse historical forms, such as scientism, and continually invents new ones for itself. Because Dasein's real “content” is basically “positive”, to negate (a negation “aiming” at passive intellection rather than active) these limits suffice to render Dasein phenomenologically transparent. Thus, while apophaticism, in an unconditioned sense, tends toward the realization of the Unconditioned “as such”, there are also subsidiary apophaticisms corresponding to the two intellects, ways of negation aimed at removing the (predominately “subjective”) obstructions standing in the way of intellection, whether of a passive or active modality.

1: A cataphatic approach would be just as legitimate. Such an approach would be most appropriate when Dasein is studied in a “traditional” context, in ritual life, even in the “primitive world”. To study Dasein cataphatically is, optimally speaking, to study it in its intensive expression, though the cataphatic stuff of everydayness is also serviceable for such a study.

*

“Dasein understands itself ontologically...initially in terms of those beings and their being which it itself is not”

(58-59)

Given the frequency of Heidegger's use of the expression “those beings which Dasein is not” (or variations thereof), it is worth noting that, insofar as Dasein truly is itself, there are no beings which Dasein is not, and this follows necessarily from the intellective nature of Dasein, the intelligible unity of its constitution. Moreover, this contrastive understanding (Dasein over against beings), while regular for Dasein, is not, existentially its eminent state of being, nor its metaphysically (or principially) initial understanding (though, in the history of any given Dasein, this understanding may be more or less temporally initial). The intellectively unitary understanding is necessarily (ontologically) prior to, and acts as the ground of, any contrastive way of being. The inconspicuousness of the everyday, when expressed intensively, is also the indistinction of Dasein and its world with all its innerworldly beings.

*

“being-in has for the most part been represented exclusively by a single exemplar—knowing the world”

(59)

Here Heidegger intimates, though I am not sure that he ever fully elaborates, the problem that I have previously referred to as the “Gordian knot of knowing and being”, as well as its relation to the eminence of knowing and being for active intellect and passive intellect, respectively. In the sentences that follow, Heidegger makes it clear that he only recognizes “knowing” in the most secondary sense, a knowing which is “theoretical” and of which the subject-object relation forms the horizon. To the extent that a more primary mode of knowing is possible, it is usurped by Dasein and identified with being-in-the-world. In this way, Heidegger skews the metaphysical symmetry of knowing and being in favor of the eminence of being through passive intellect, just as the traditional metaphysics skews it in favor of the eminence of knowing through active intellect.

*

“Knowing is a mode of being of Dasein as being-in-the-world”

(61)

This, of course, is a perfectly valid derivation of “knowing”, depending on the sense that one takes it. That “knowing” which is derivative or subsidiary to the being of Dasein is either that way of understanding that it has through being-in-the-world (which is indeed a knowing, but not in an eminent sense), or is that which is characteristic of transcendental subjectivity, the latter of which follows through the narrowing or specification of Dasein's being. At the same time, this “second knowing”, that which characterizes transcendental subjectivity, is just as plausibly derivable from knowing in a “higher” and more eminent sense—that is, from gnosis, jñāna, active intellection. In the first case (derivation of knowing from being), transcendental subjectivity is the possibility [1] for specification, for rendering as presence-at-hand a world that is all continuous flow, an unbroken Dionysian circle of bacchants. Here, the preliminary stages of “knowledge” consist in the world's leaping into our awareness piecemeal. Each thing, leaping out of its context (with which it previously seemed indissolubly united), comes before us encircled in mystery, and that “mystery” is none other than the privation of context which now surrounds it. Thought rushes in to thread this open wound (interpretation as interpenetration). In the second case (derivation of “knowing” from knowing), transcendental subjectivity is the possibility of constraining intuition within the structures of discursive thought or “transcendental categories” (e.g. res extensa). In the first case, we have a “greater and a lesser phenomenon”—phenomenon as that which unveils itself within the womb of the world, and phenomenon as an appearance which I, as subject, behold (“stare at”). In the second case, we have a “greater and lesser logos”—Logos as the symbol mysteriously identified with the symbolized (that is, intelligibility manifest in, as, and through the symbol), and logos as the proliferation of discursive concepts (whose proper order and structure depends on the previously established intelligibility which has now been “translated” into conceptual thought). Next to these two derivations is a third derivation [2]—the paradoxical derivation of transcendental subjectivity from out of itself. That is, first transcendental subjectivity (or that nothing which later “becomes” transcendental subjectivity) intrudes into primordial intellect, and only then is it born. This indicates the Promethean character of the transcendental subject—not only its capacity for making provision for the future, but that it seems to reach into the present (indeed, even to the past) from out of the future, to such an extent that one can say that it is its own son before it is its own father, that its not-yet is the cause of its presently-is. The transcendental subject is not only toward the future, it is from the future.

1: A possibility for a world already sundered and polarized along the two intellects, but an impossibility in itself, as it were.

2: Also worth considering here the derivation of being from knowing, knowing from being, and being from being, in the cases of passive and active intellect. Otherwise, the above account is incomplete. At present, I think it suffices to leave this as a suggestion.

*

“We can describe the 'outward appearance' of these beings...but that is obviously a pre-phenomenological business...it is ontic”

(63)

On the contrary, it is precisely a post-phenomenological affair. Unless phenomenology, as essentially a mode of intuition [1] (or a mode of expression adequate to passively intellective intuition), assumes its own priority over all merely ontic specification, it loses its whole meaning and raison d'etre. Indeed, it is not only the phenomenon “itself”, in its initial unveiling, which is prior to any particular ontic specification, but the original logos of phenomena, as well. This rudimentary phenomenal-logos inheres in the metaphoric basis of language, hence Heidegger's continual recourse to grounding his speculations in etymology. The real “work” of phenomenology has already, effortlessly, been carried out in advance by the very language we speak. This metaphoric (not in a trite, “literary” sense) and poetic dimension of language finds its complement in the simultaneously present symbolic dimension of language. In Greek antiquity, these complementary dimensions of language find their exemplars in Plato the metaphysician (symbolic dimension; explored throughout his dialogues, most eminently in the “Cratylus”), and in Homer the poet who Plato, somewhat unjustly, banished from his Republic. Nevertheless, in spite of this literary banishment, Plato's body of work as a whole evinces a deep reverence for Homer.

1: That is obviously only one kind of phenomenology, but, in the first place, one could say that it is phenomenology par excellence since it not only shows beings but shows beings in their being, and, in the second place, it is, for the most part, the kind of phenomenology pursued by Heidegger.

*

“The Greeks had an appropriate term for 'things': πράγματα, that is, that with which one has to do in taking care in dealings” (πρᾶξις)”

(68)

Here one can find the point of access from Heidegger into the theory of “pragmapathy”. If “praxis” is understood as the unity of theory and practice, then here we find a more primordial form of “praxis” (with its roots in the “first ontopolitanism”) wherein a pretheoretical disposition is united, integrally, with “practice”, here understood as a seamless integration into the already-present equipmental whole, the integrally constituted work-world. This is not yet an “authentic” pragmapathy, which implies the possession of an eminently theoretical disposition. Thus, pragmapathy can be more adequately contextualized as a mode of human activity which is most eminently characteristic of the “second ontopolitanism”, and therefore necessarily associates itself with a communistic form of social production. Pragmapathy is not free-floating ideology, which can be applied just anywhere and anyhow, but a definite social and historical stage of human activity. While it may have had various precursors “before its time”, its widespread proliferation as a mode of activity depends on very definite social and historical factors (i.e. primarily the advent of communism).

*

“What we encounter as closest to us, although we do not grasp it thematically, is the room...A totality of useful things is always already discovered before the individual useful thing”

(68)

Here, that which is symbolically primary for Heidegger demonstrates itself with a specific illustration. Already, Heidegger has highlighted the importance of “Umwelt”, and here a specific instance of the “Umwelt” (the room) demonstrates its own “position” vis a vis Dasein's being-in-the-world. Enclosing space is that which is symbolically (symbolically = intelligibly) nearest to Dasein, the primary factor in the intelligibility of any “thing”. Therefore, even if unstated, any specific determination Heidegger makes can always be presupposed to have, as the ground of its intelligibility, some sort of “Umwelt” lying “behind” it. This priority of the “Umwelt” in Heidegger's metaphysics may lead one to wonder whether his emphasis on passive intellection might find its support in a metaphysics which treats Prakriti as primary (and, moreover, allows it to speak “from its own point of view”). Furthermore, how does this priority on “the feminine” differ from that found in Shaktism?

*

“The kind of seeing of this accommodation to things is called circumspection [Umsicht]”

(69)

Another very curious parallel to the traditional repository of symbols here. The primary way of acting in the world, for Dasein, has a “circular” form (circum-spect; the “Um” in “Umsicht” also suggests a sur-round-ing). Likewise, the symbolic character of traditional activity (when it is not specifically initiatic) consists in traversing the periphery, in circumambulation, which can be ritually instantiated in keeping to the cyclical and yearly festivals, or in ritual orientation (qibla), etc. That is, it consists in a movement oriented with reference to the “center”, without necessarily moving toward it (which would be characteristic of specifically initiatic activity). This traditional symbolism, then, seems even to invisibly condition Dasein's everydayness. Thus, the thesis that passive and active intellection have analogous structures finds confirmation here, even as pertains to the non-intensive expression of passive intellection in the form of everydayness”.

*

“What everyday dealings are initially busy with is not tools themselves, but the work”

(69)

In a sense, then, Dasein's “authentic being” is a remnant of the shadowy mytho-historical era of man's slavery to the gods, and reactionary thought, especially to the extent that it draws on or resembles Heidegger's rubric, is a nostalgia for the more “comfortable” era in which man, as divine slave, was exempt from all real responsibilities, in which life nothing but the seamless integration into all that which was determined-in-advance for man by the gods (as expressed later in this text, Heidegger only fully affirms this integration when it, in turn, is affirmed “resolutely” and “authentically”—no matter, the end result is the same). In this nostalgia, therefore, there is also regret for the Promethean deed that interrupted this “integral” slave-existence, this paradisal dream of heavenly custodianship. The interruption, in question, is that which brings the tool, a divine gift from a divine rebel, into sharp focus, and makes it accessible to man's manipulation. Thus, it is not purely and simply that Prometheus gave us tools, as in the Greek myth, but just as crucially, as in the Biblical myth, he “opened our eyes” so that we saw the distance between tool and work, assessing it, and its possible ends, for good or evil. It is this distance, according to the conventional religious view a terrible curse, which allows us to modify both the tool (technological development) and the work (social revolution, which also entails determining new avenues and contexts for work). There is no question whatsoever of a non-technological state of being, for man. Paradisal existence, too, was thoroughly technological. The Promethean rebellion liberates us from technology in the only way possible—by continually innovating and modifying the “work-world” of technological implements, by disrupting the integral fabric of being-in-the-world. Paradise is a work-world so closely bound together that the possibility for innovation of any kind is inconceivable within its horizon. Hence, the need, exemplified in the myth, for an outside intervention into the human domain by a divine rebel. What the actual character of this “outside intervention” was, in a historical sense (for instance), can only be a matter of speculation, more or less groundless.

*

“The simple conditions of craft contain a reference to the wearer and user at the same time. The work is cut to his figure; he 'is' there as the work emerges”

(70)

Here, the fundamentally social character of intellect is unveiled. Work, especially (but not only) in the mode of passive intellection, acts as the real , “metaphysically concrete” nexus which unites producer and society here and now, in a sort of ecstatic temporality, whether through the “ecstatic becoming” of passively intellected being-in-the-world, or through the “eternal presence” of actively intellected ritual work. This is why the fruition of communism cannot be realized within the exclusive limits of its “Protestant” origins, namely, because Protestant religiosity is, for the most part, intellectively privative. Communism begins there (in “theoretical Protestantism”), establishes its “theoretical freedom” (the freedom of the “transcendental nothing”) there, but can only find completion, socially, in the integral sociality of the intellective (that is, on “Catholic soil”, as it were). Naturally, the union of these two streams, transcendental and intellective, “Protestant” and “Catholic”, acquires very distinctive qualities as compared with either taken separately, and cannot be reduced to their mere sum. This union, of course, is the “second ontopolitanism” which, in more historically concrete terms, is communism or proletarian dictatorship, and in mythic terms is Atlantis or the Tower of Babel.

*

“Here the world is encountered in which wearers and users live...The work taken care of in each case is not only at hand in the domestic world of the workshop, but rather in the public world. Along with the public world, the surrounding world of nature is discovered and accessible...Nature is discovered as having some definite direction on paths, streets, bridges, and buildings. A covered railroad platform takes bad weather into account, public lighting systems take darkness into account, the specific change of the presence and absence of daylight...Clocks take into account specific constellation in the world system”

(70-71)

This shows some of the limitations of Heidegger's method, alluded to elsewhere, in which he takes Dasein's everydayness within modernity as the exemplary case of Dasein's manner of being. While this elucidation of Dasein is certainly illuminating, it fails to capture Dasein at its most essential and primordial (worse yet, Heidegger mistakes Dasein's “authenticity” with its essence and primordiality—but more on this later). Nonetheless, even here we can see the symbolic character of Dasein's way of being, in which each symbol's intelligibility is the plenitude of the intelligibility of every other. Here the various “tools” that surround us have the character of symbols, though Heidegger, only dealing with these tools in a “profane” capacity, reduces them to mere “references” and “signs”. A fully symbolic account of roads, to take one example, would look toward the multitude of their antique associations, e.g. the “herma”, Hecate, etc, and then situate them in the context of passive intellection. Heidegger's later philosophy attempts to come to grips with this, situating Dasein in the context of “the gods” and sacrality, after a fashion.

*

“Handiness is the ontological categorial definition of beings as they are 'in themselves'”

(71)

This is particularly true, of course, chiefly from the standpoint of passive intellect. This is, indeed, a highly appropriate way of representing passive intellect, of conceptualizing the “in itself” of things viewed in terms of passive intellect. It is at the level of the resultant split between active and passive intellect, from “out” of primordial intellect, that being and knowing take on the appearance of a polar relationship, with one mode of intellect tending toward being (passive intellect) and the other toward knowing (active intellect). In either case, unions between being and knowing are achieved, but these unions evince “inverse” constitutions in relation to one another. Put another way, passive intellect unites knowing and being in such a way that being is prioritized, and active intellect such that knowing is prioritized. The prioritization of being shows up as a being-in-the-world, and that manner of being-in is essentially inseparable from a manner of living, of dealing with things, of handling things, and so on—and in such a way that an understanding (read: “knowing”) of being is projected, determining the character of beings in advance. Thus, “handiness” is that manner of being in which things are known to passive intellect. In a manner of speaking, one could say that passive intellect is “active” (oriented toward activity), as paradoxical as that might sound. Active intellect, then, is contemplative (which, incidentally, is a sort of “passivity”). The beings which active intellect encounters are not handled, but noetically penetrated, or, better yet, allowed to noetically penetrate oneself, presenting themselves in their most interior quality to our interiority. Beings (in more than a merely “ontic” sense) are merely the icons of knowledge. The union of knowing and being, as effected by active intellect, means the transparency of beings to knowledge, or, again, to put it another way, that one (or the mirror of one's “mind”) becomes clear and transparent, like a pool of water wherein beings show themselves. For passive intellect, knowledge is being, that is, a way of being-in-the-world. For active intellect, beings in their being are known in knowledge, that is, beings are “doorways” leading onto knowledge, as well as the icons exemplifying that knowledge, being that knowledge. Granted, such discursive formulations of the symmetry of the intellects have a certain awkwardness to them, and they can never serve as a substitute for the gnosense of this distinction.

*

“The whole workshop...as a totality that has continually been seen before and in our circumspection. But with this totality, world makes itself known”

(74)

If this “world = workshop” equation is extended in an initiatic direction, one is tempted to make comparisons with the craft-based and demiurgic symbolism of Freemasonry. If one furthermore considers that the initiatic structure of Freemasonry primarily centers on the exercise of active intellect, as do all hitherto initiatic structures (or so it would seem), then one is confronted with the rather tempting prospect of integrating the theoretical findings of Heidegger, which approach craft from the standpoint of passive intellect, into this prior framework. The union of these two standpoints could facilitate the reinvigoration of that same tradition, and at the same time help it break out of the degraded “organizational” and needlessly “secretive” framework with which it is saddled. Indeed, it could be the precondition of an “esoteric populism”, of the kind I have alluded to elsewhere. More generally, such a passively intellective “reconceptualization” of work could support an integral and initiatic appropriation of craft and labor in a broader sense, including, most crucially for our period, industrial labor. We have a template for such a form of organization, albeit adjusted to the proportions of artisinal labor, in the futuwwa guilds of the Middle Ages. These guilds merit closer study, with the preceding considerations in view.

*

“Thus the formal, universal character of relation becomes apparent...Finally, we must even show that 'relation' itself has its ontological origin in reference because of its formal, universal character”

(76-7)

In a sense, then, reference is the “ontological inverse” of the symbolic, on the side of passive intellection. That is, reference is for passive intellection what the symbolic is for active intellection. Naturally, it is only a matter of Heidegger's peculiar terminology. There is nothing preventing us from referring to passive intellect's “referential structure” as a “symbolic structure”, even if we understand the “symbol” somewhat differently in the case of passive intellect as compared with active intellect, and, in fact, the term “reference” is rather sterile and awkward by comparison. In either case, “reference” (more precisely, “referential totality”) or “symbol”, an integrally intelligible structure is indicated, a structure one knows and is “embraced” by. In any case, if this hypothesis holds any water, then the various existential structures of Dasein should be comprehensible as “reference” or “symbol” (e.g. dwelling, taking care, etc). We shall have to wait and see if Heidegger makes this connection between existential structure and referential totality explicit. As an aside, it is also worth noting that Heidegger's use of the term “universal”, above, conforms more to the sense of “generic” or “abstract” rather than intellective universality. In any case, it is clear that “reference” has precisely the same function as the symbolic, namely, of drawing things into intelligible and integral connection with one another (in the case of the symbolic, in the usual sense, this can be termed a “qualitative affinity”) and at the same time drawing them into connection with “the essential” (for the “symbolic”, this is knowledge, eminently in the contemplative sense; for the “referential”, this is being as being-in-the-equipmental-whole = world).

*

“Signs...are useful things which explicitly bring a totality of useful things to circumspection”

(78)

—in brief, passively intellected symbols, “relations” which integrally anchor us in an intelligible context and, vis a vis the passively intellective mode that we are prioritizing here, facilitate “heedful dealings” with beings, securing the uninterrupted flow of our being-in-the-world.

*

“Signs indicate what is actually 'going on'. Signs always indicate primarily 'wherein' we live, what our heedfulness is concerned with, what relevance it has

(79)

Heidegger's reflections on sign and reference help clarify the essential character and shortcomings of the surrealist movement. Indeed, they help in unmasking the basically “hyper-rationalist” character of the surrealists. Their task, fundamentally, presupposes the sign as an obstacle to being (or being-in-the-world) rather than an access point or nexus of our “heedful living”. Being, for the surrealist, can only be broken into through the accumulated derangement of signs, as though the more signs one distorted the closer one were to get to “real” being and essentiality (it should come as no surprise that in a late surrealist like David Lynch this “real being” is reduced to sex and violence). In the first place, therefore, they presuppose a purely formal meaning for all signs rather than an ontological one. Since rationality, as the sign-saturated world, is primary for them, being can only be the privation of this rational order of things. All that which is not rational is taken as less than rational and proceeds by a subtraction of the rational. At no point, however, is intelligibility ever evaded or excluded. Intelligibility is implicit in every expression whatsoever, no matter how indirectly. The method and tendency of surrealism, however, is from a starting point in hyper-rationalist presupposition toward a telos of sub-rationality. It aims, implicitly, at the exclusion of intelligibility, an exclusion it can never actually accomplish. Such “hyper-rationalist irrationalism”, or the rudiments of it, can also be found in a variety of intellectual currents, without necessarily resulting in anything “surreal”, such as the work of Nietzsche.

*

“But the character of not emerging and keeping to itself, which we described, belongs to the being of innerworldly beings at hand closest to us. Thus circumspect dealings in the surrounding world need a useful thing at hand which...takes over the 'work' of letting things at hand become conspicuous [i.e. the sign]”

(79)

That is, the sign has the function of manifesting the “hidden” portions of being, and it bears recalling that for Heidegger “being” means, primarily and in a grounded and “practical” sense, being-in-the-world. That which is hidden for passive intellection, is hidden within the flow of temporal existence (especially, perhaps, within the “work world”), hidden in the inconspicuousness of everyday taking care, not in the inaccessible heights of initiatic knowledge. An intensification of passive intellection, e.g. through ritual means, would tend in the opposite direction of objective presence, an entrance into the depths of the inconspicuous, to become inconspicuous oneself, to accomplish all “effortlessly”. This is Dasein at its most essential, at the opposite pole of its “authenticity”—less conspicuous than everyday dealings in the They, less “authentic”, not more, not the Dasein which says “I” but the Dasein that wanders eyeless in the cavern of the world, more anonymous than any crowd, invisible to itself, plainer than a clod of dirt. Being is unremarkable. Through the tactillection of a sign (or symbol, ritual), that which stands forth “skillfully”, intelligibly, integrally—through this bright opening we enter into the obscurity of being.

*

“The narrowness of intelligibility and use corresponds to the breadth of what can be indicated in such signs”

(80)

“Signs” delimit regions of being (albeit, not in such a way as to render objectively present), a function which is exactly parallel to the symbolic with respect to active intellect. Moreover, the “skillful” constitution of such “signs”, the “breadth of what they can indicate”, corresponds to what I have elsewhere termed “tactillection”, an adaptation of the Sanskrit “upaya”. “Use”, in the above passage, means inconspicuous and circumspect taking care, and thus is roughly equivalent to “intelligibility” as taken from the standpoint of passive intellect. This might imply that tactillection is eminently a function of passive intellect. At its most intensive expression, tactillection is for passive intellect what uninterrupted flow of contemplation is for active intellect, or what is otherwise known as “samadhi” [1]. The skillful presence of tactillection retains skillful absorption even in the event of a breakdown of the equipmental whole, adapting itself instantaneously, converting obstacles into instruments. A condition of insconspicuous dealings is obviously in question here which is not that of Dasein's mere conformity to the everyday “publicness” of the They, though also obviously related to such, similar in kind to this “publicness” and different in kind from “authenticity”. To be clear, active intellect's relationship with the symbolic can equally be characterized as “tactillective”, but not eminently so. Tactillection is not something which is merely constituted as useful for Dasein (passive intellect), but is its very manner of being—skillful dealings which never rupture the anonymity of inconspicuous taking care. The anonymity of this condition is sagacious, as astonishing is it is ordinary. This is Dasein at its most intensive and essential, qua Dasein.

1: As an equivalent rendering of “samadhi”, over and against “tactillection”, we might provisionally forward “concentrillection”—both the intact preservation of the concentric sphere of intelligibility, and a concentrated absorption in contemplation (naturally expressing itself in varying degrees), a term signifying integrity and intensity. Concentrillection is for active intellect what tactillection is for passive intellect, and just as tactillection can be equally applied to active intellect and its operation, but not eminently, just so with concentrillection vis a vis passive intellect.

*

“Primitive world, signs etc”

(80-81)

I only wish to mark these passages down as providing some of the most explicit indications of the parallels between the traditional metaphysics of symbols and Heidegger's philosophy. In light of such passages, it could not be more abundantly clear that Dasein is, in fact, an intellect, and that the phenomenology of Dasein, when carried out rigorously, is inevitably a metaphysics.

*

“This discussion should tell us on what fundamentally undiscussed ontological foundations the interpretations of the world after Descartes, and especially those preceding him, are based”

(87)

An absurd methodology, and precisely what I have elsewhere accused Heidegger of. He works backwards from Descartes toward the ancient (and medieval) ontology. He assesses the ancient ontology as though it were a proto-Cartesianism. This is why he fails to see his own structural parallels with the traditional articulations of metaphysics.

*

“Medieval ontology left the question of what being itself means just as unquestioned as did ancient ontology”

(92)

To the extent that this is true, it is because ancient and medieval metaphysics takes its point of departure from active intellection and this places an emphasis on knowing rather than being. Heidegger is derelict toward knowing in a manner symmetrical with the ancient ontology's dereliction toward being. He leaves unexamined how and what knowing knows, or how knowing knows being, what kind of a “knowing” the knowing of being is. Heidegger, in essence, “reduces” knowing to a “mode” of being, just as the ancient metaphysics “reduced” being to a mode of knowing (an identification that occurs in and through intellective contemplation, or else the summit of intellective contemplation when it is a question of “pure Being”).

*

“Descartes explicitly switches over philosophically from the development of traditional ontology to modern mathematical physics and its transcendental foundations”

(94)

The “transcendental turn” in philosophy is the mother of modern theoretical science. Credit should be given where credit is due. At the same time, we should not lose sight of the fundamental problem which Heidegger has set upon addressing, namely, the fact that being has been forgotten as a consequence of this “transcendental turn”. Heidegger, however, imputes this forgetfulness to Plato, Parmenides, Aristotle etc by projecting Cartesianism backwards to antiquity. There is a limited truth to this interpretation, in the sense that this stream of philosophizing prioritizes knowing over being. We should forget neither being nor knowing. However, if we approach the recollection and repossession of being as a sort of “imperative”, we are then in danger of forgetting the “transcendental turn”. There is no reasonable justification for discarding this development. It is only as a limiting horizon that transcendental subjectivity is really objectionable. “Authenticity”, too, is a limiting horizon. “Authenticity” is none other than the idolatry of being, the imperative to make being into a limiting horizon. It is not being pure and simple, being as it just is, but being plus the imperative of “resolute fidelity” to being (as though being “required” that of us!). Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that a sort of parallel development would not have resulted had this forgetfulness of being never occurred and, instead, the development of metaphysical thought (and, let there be no doubt, Heidegger's existential ontology is a metaphysics) had proceeded through a forgetfulness of knowing wherein being was emphasized. Undoubtedly, different sorts of deviations would have occurred socially, culturally, and philosophically, just as rueful as those which the forgetfulness of being has produced. Transcendence turns to the transcendental, by the grace of Prometheus. Revolution is the destiny [Geschick] of the earth, and emancipation is the fate [Schicksals] of earth-born humanity.

*

“Spatiality”

(99-110)

Extensive discussion of spatiality, directionality, etc, with far reaching parallels to the traditional metaphysics of space, ritual orientation, etc. Like the already mentioned passages on the “primitive world” of Dasein, these are worth revisiting with the intellectivity of Dasein in mind.