Cormagh wrote:
"...holds itself out into the nothing." I haven't read this, so I may
be reaching, but in Being in Time, nothing means a point at which
significance has disappeared. "It's nothing!" So he may only be making
a point about the role and importance of the "null" in discerning
scientific truth: Something can not be true unless you've eliminated
the probability that the null hypothesis is valid. Because the
statement is so convoluted, my best guess is that he didn't really
write this, and it is taken from a student's notebook, or it is a
terrible translation.
On a more Heideggerian level, I infer on Being and Time Hp. 186 that by
"nothing" he is referring to the home of "a special factical
pontentiality-for-Being".
The philosopher of "ordinary everydayness" on Hp. 187 says, "The utter
insignificance which makes itself known in the 'nothing and nowhere',
does not signify that the world is absent, but tells us that entities
within-the-world are of so little importance in themselves that on the
basis of this *insignificance* of what is within-the-world, the world
in its worldhood is all that still obtrudes itself." He is, of course,
speaking of the psychological effect of nothingness, since
psychological effects is really what S&Z is all about.
But there is another, darker side in B&T. Nothing is the home of
anxiety, "where Dasien confronts the possibility of its non-being". So,
in other words, Dasien has to continually recreate itself out of
nothing. On Hp. 308 he says, "The 'nothing' with which anxiety brings
us face to face, unveils the nullity by which Dasein, in its very
*basis*, is defined; and this basis itself is as throwness into death."
Anxiety is not to be confused with work, however. On Hp. 352, he
states, "Whenever we 'go to work' and seize hold of something, we do
not push out from the 'nothing' and come upon some item of equipment
which as been presented to us in isolation; in laying hold of an item
of equipment, we come back to it from whatever work-world has already
been disclosed."
But it's not really anxiety, it's more like preoccupation. We are thrown
into the world and preoccupied with what is going on around us and with
what we do or have to do. Anxiety conveys fear, but it's not really
fear, it's more like worry. We worry about stuff, about everyday
occupations. The the essential mode of being of the dasein is
preoccupation (or "soucis" in French).
That's what I remember anyway.
In metaphysics, of course, H. is just ripping off Plato/Hegel (He gives
Hegel and "the Greeks" plenty of credit.) - things disappearing and
appearing in time, out of and into.. nothing. For me, what's unique
about Heidegger is his combining all of these elements, metaphysics,
science, philosophy and psychology in a very meaningful way. (All
quotes are Macquarrie & Robinson, Harper & Row, 1962)
--
The Dude once said,
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."
.
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