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Re: Is there any such thing as 'Being'?

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This is a reply to Nick Dippie's reflections on my
original post.

It just so happens that I have a copy of BT to hand;
and although it has been a good few months since I
read it, I did (finally) manage to locate your quote. 
Yes, you are right to say that in BT Heidegger is
attempting to formulate the question of Being (I would
argue that his whole subsequent philosophy is an
attempt to prepare for the 'question' -- but he never
actually asks it, let alone provides an answer!).

Nevertheless, I do not believe that Heidegger ever
thought that the 'question of Being' was meaningless
or unanswerable.  Rather, he sees the way the question
has been traditionally formulated as inadequate,
because those philosophers that have even come close
to asking it have 'jumped the gun' (so to speak): 
Without first inquiring into the nature of human
existence (Dasein) and the world in which humans
exist, the question of Being is meaningless, because
there is no firm 'structure' from within which the
question can be asked.  (Your brief summary says all
that needs to be said for this point, so I shall not
add anything further here.)

However, what is new in BT (to my knowledge at least),
is not just the approach Heidegger takes towards the
question, but the fact that he attempts to 'ask' it at
all: prior to his preparations for the 'question of
Being', philosophers had only asked about beings as
opposed to Being itself.

"Nick: the key point here is that Dasein's Being is
essentially Being-in-the-World, which means that we
cannot possibly exist outside of the spatio-temporal
framework that the world around us provides. if you
think of any object, you think of it within a context,
within certain surroundings [...] he doesn't believe
we can even imagine anything outside of the world."

That was the starting-point for my original post.  The
reason why I tried to 'get at' Being from within the
context of the 'existence' of the world's everyday
objects (building up from their properties to
'existence', and then to 'Being'), was because there
seemed to be no other logical place to start from.  I
wanted to introduce the topic to somebody who was
unfamiliar with it by starting with concrete realities
rather than abstractions.  (In fact I say this, pretty
much directly, in one of the later sections: how can
we know anything unfamiliar but through things in the
world that are already familiar to us?)

?Nick: 'when talking about the cup we could say that
it IS for such-and-such a purpose (drinking) and IS,
in addition to its colour, a certain shape (mainly
cylindrical).  Which of these properties is essential
to the definition: to the concept of 'cup-ness'? 
Which 'is' takes priority here?'

is this about the distinction between the ready and
the present-to-hand??

No it isn't, but you have flagged up what I should
have spotted myself!  I was in fact building up to my
discussion of 'existence' (the concept of it at
least).  As I said, the piece was aimed at someone who
was new to Heidegger's philosophy.  Therefore, I
wanted to try and get what 'to be' meant straight in
my own head (using everyday examples), before moving
on to 'existence in general', and then contrasting
this with 'Being' in Heidegger's sense of the term
(his sense of it in BT at least).  ?Which 'is' takes
priority here??, is asking (out of all the properties
a cup may possess) which property is the most
fundamental?  Which is the essence of 'cup-ness':
which 'is' means to be 'cup-like'?

We cannot find such a property itself just by looking
at the cup, but why not ? since we can determine all
its other properties just by looking at it?  None of
the ?is's? listed can take priority definitively,
because each person's answer would be different
(depending on which property was considered most
important to the definition of 'cup').  What we are
left with then are a series of properties which can be
applied to the object before us, but only very
arbitrarily.  What we are looking for is 'existence',
but is that a property of a thing?  Can we even have
an adequate conception of it at all?

Of course, Heidegger provides an answer (as you point
out) to at least the first part of my question: the
'ready-at-hand' and the 'present-to-hand' give us a
definite structure from within which to prioritise our
?is's? and their properties.  I don't, at first sight,
see the cup in all the abstract glory of its many
properties: I pick it up in order to drink out of it. 
The cup is 'ready-to-hand' 'equipment' that I see as
immediately useful to me in some way (that was how I
was able to 'see' it in the first place).

If what instinctively attracts us to objects in our
world is their usefulness to us, then the ?is's? that
would take priority in my own list would be those that
relate to the cup's practical function as an object
for drinking out of.  If it is only when the cup
breaks, goes missing, or becomes unusable as a cup in
some way that we start to think about it other than as
an immediately useful piece of 'equipment', then all
those other properties: colour, shape and weight etc,
would be revealed as 'present-to-hand' ('hidden'
behind the cup's everyday function, thus we do not pay
as much attention to them).

Just as a concluding point.  I tried to make clear in
the original post that its purpose was to give a
person unfamiliar with Heidegger a basic introduction
to the question at the centre of his philosophy (even
if he never actually got round to asking that
question).  I never intended for the piece to be a
commentary on any of Heidegger's works.  I thought to
myself that if it were even possible to ask such a
question: ?what is Being??, then where would you have
to begin?  From the objects of your everyday world of
course!  I know that Heidegger says that Being cannot
be accessed through beings, but since we use these to
explore and navigate our world with, there seemed
little alternative.  After-all, we cannot begin with
anything outside of the world (I am with Heidegger on
that one).  The failure of essay to scratch even the
surface of the question (ending as it did in
pessimistic defeat) demonstrated that both beings and
'existence' were unsuited to the task (even the 'raw'
conceptualisation of the latter I found to be
impossible).

In any case, I did not neglect 'Dasein' or
'being-in-the-world': I merely neglected to mention
them.  If I want to engage someone who is quite new to
this area of philosophy, then the last thing I must do
is to confuse the hell out of her with abstract
terminology.  Therefore, I tried to get my purpose and
meaning across as well as I could using the plainest
English possible.  Perhaps I did not succeed?  Well,
at least I tried.



		
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