Have you ever been suspended in dread?
In [i]What is Metaphysics[/I], Heidegger explains why our only contact with "the nothing" is in a state of dread:
1. Logic objects to treating nothing as a something to inquire about.
2. The act if questioning is undermined by the lack of object.
3. We encounter all of being as a whole in boredom and love, but the the nothing remains hidden. We can't just negate all of being mentally, because that would give us the idea of nothing, not the nothing itself (or lack of itselfness).
4. In dread we confront the nothing directly.
He describes this dread this way:
"All things, and we along with them, sink into indifference – but not in the sense of disappearing. Rather, as beings recede, they turn toward us. It is the receding of the whole of what-is that presses in on us and oppresses us. Without the whole there is no hold. As beings slip away, what remains and overwhelms us is precisely this “no. . .” Dread reveals the nothing."
Have you ever experienced this?
1. Logic objects to treating nothing as a something to inquire about.
2. The act if questioning is undermined by the lack of object.
3. We encounter all of being as a whole in boredom and love, but the the nothing remains hidden. We can't just negate all of being mentally, because that would give us the idea of nothing, not the nothing itself (or lack of itselfness).
4. In dread we confront the nothing directly.
He describes this dread this way:
"All things, and we along with them, sink into indifference – but not in the sense of disappearing. Rather, as beings recede, they turn toward us. It is the receding of the whole of what-is that presses in on us and oppresses us. Without the whole there is no hold. As beings slip away, what remains and overwhelms us is precisely this “no. . .” Dread reveals the nothing."
Have you ever experienced this?
Comments (118)
yeahh
Kierkegaard was a significant influence Heidegger.
Heidegger arrives at much the same conclusions through his analyses of Anxiety in section 40 of Being and Time.
I find it ironic that it is our sense of not feeling at home in the world that gives rise to the dread of losing that very world in which we do not feel at home.
Quoting frank
.
that is funny.
Do we not feel the world as unheimlich precisely because we could lose it, and thus lose ourselves, at any moment? And on the other hand whenever choices are made are we not "being towards death" in the sense that we feel the death of all the possibilities that become closed off due to choice, and the existential dread that comes with that?
Indeed.
And therein is the essence of the ironic nature of this matter.
Heidegger doesn't mean by this that a human being holds openness out into the nothing. A human being is a species of that which only shows up in this way.
I'm not sure if he's talking about the recognition of being or the genesis of being itself.
So, what does he do with it?
He continues on exploring the issue phenomenologically.
Well, I would be curious to see how a hardcore Heidegger apologist defends his bawdy use of language in phrases like Das Nichts nichtet - which needlessly undercuts what is otherwise largely a Dewey-style pragmatist message - but I think you're doomed to misunderstand him from the outset if you start with this misleading question. There's no connection between a "State-of-mind" and a "feeling" for Heidegger. For Heidegger, what bad ontology calls "a state of mind" is better understood as something like Befindlichkeit or "so-found-ness" and a feeling is better understood as something like a Stimmung or self who is attuned to some aspect of a situation he finds himself in ("so-found-ness"). So it's important to keep in mind that Heidegger considers moods a fundamental method of human attunement to reality. If you have a problem with Heidegger on the question of "dread" it's probably the broader view which you're objecting to.
He equivocates and contradicts himself. I'm not sure why. Complete disregard for his audience I guess.
Still, the meat of the essay is fascinating. All is dependent on nothing.
The paralysis of the paradox is my favorite vertigo. I am able to compartmentalize it by pretensions to fiction, but I am, if only dissociatively, able to understand the deception. Nothing, nihil, and the other lingual representations of it is so robust because it cannot be transmuted into our paltry language. It is there only a silly exercise.
I invent words in order to better comprehend my consciousness and phaneron. Doing so bequeaths unto me a sensation of puissance. However, the most excruciating blow is the knowledge that this is merely a defensive method against dread. I think that I shall someday be paralyzed or maddened by the surrender of these notions, when I am no longer able to maintain my rituals, when I am no longer able to convince myself that my trials and traumas have made a contribution to sensible development and growth, and when quietus nears. The extension of every breath, inhalation, or thought only prolongs the inevitable. To be suspended in dread is to be ululated in a lifetime of demurring by felicitous illusions, and thenceforth, delusions. The notion that I will die must be suspended amidst the background of vacuous horrors, which I may temporarily ignore.
Nothing can better inspire the pessimist or nihilist than the representation of the unknowable. I found a childhood gambit in travelling to the edges of what I could find in the concept of an afterlife. I attempted to imagine myself in an eternity, day following day, and found myself stymied by an illimited Cosmicism. I was suborned by a need to investigate that which could only be semiotically understood, much as the search for the noumenonic God has possessed some. However, nothingness does not necessarily invite theological reconciliations. Such concepts are not benevolent for humanity, nor do they hold a prodigious unholiness. The infinite and absent are dreadful because they refute everything which comforts us. I never found comfort in the ideal of a deity.
I have always adored the bewilderment of Absence. The panic of absolute and utter contradiction is delightfully unbearable. Poetically, we could easily speculate that the paradox of nothingness, when it is brought into the object of consideration, is so disturbing because it cannot directly be accessed. We might only seek a brief envisioning of that nonsense before the unheimlich devours the notion of each unbearable thought. To think upon infinity or an infinitesimal evokes the bitter barrier of the imagination, and so drowns me in thrall of my intellectual limitations. The human mind is a flawed machine, and so, we are thence reminded of our banality. We are not exquisite, or elevated above other organisms and objects.
Nothingness is a horror which defies all of our attempts to rationalize, and we there are stripped of our psychological defenses. Thomas Ligotti superbly analyzes the human machine in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.
Why caryatid?
Lawyer like yourself oughta see that, in the quote quoted, he didn't say this, at all.
But note the question faced by those who do rely on logic: why should we accept its force? It's a subtle question, but important to some of us.
I have trouble thinking of feelings as a "self" though I find the idea that moods and feelings reflect our interaction with the rest of the world quite acceptable, even apparent. Just how the feeling or mood of dread (or whatever he may want to call it) might reveal "the nothing" is a mystery to me, though claiming that it does would seem to me to assert that our interaction with reality reveals "something" which presumably isn't real. Unless, of course, it is, or is "real" enough.
But enough. I begin to feel the dread I always feel when encountering Heidegger's work which, though potent enough to me, is evidently insufficient to reveal "the nothing."
Good, because feelings are not a "self"; that would be a stupid position indeed and I'm not sure what I said in my crude characterization of Heidegger to make that seem sensible to attribute to him.
Your use of the word reflect in this context also suggests to me that you're likely having trouble appreciating how fully Heidegger rejects the notion of subjectivity.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
In plain English it's more like: the nothing reveals itself to us in the mood of dread.
My original point was more that Heidegger flatly denies the plausibility of any attempt to explain the phenomena through equating the notion of feeling to mood -- in this context the notion of a "feeling" needs to be rejected outright since it implies an ontological story about a subject who feels.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I'm pretty sympathetic to your loathing Heidegger but I'm fairly puzzled by what you're doing in this or any other Heidegger thread.
I think we have good reason to do so, but here I'm referring to language use. Now, perhaps my ignorance of the German language prevents me from understanding this. However, when we speak of "what is not" we purport to refer to something; we speak as if there is a thing which "is not." But of course there is no such thing. So we misuse language when we do.
Well, my last remark notwithstanding, I think I raise legitimate questions and would be inclined to raise them as to any philosopher. But if this thread is to be limited to those who understand what Heidegger is saying, I'm not among them and will withdraw.
Why dont you read the essay? It's not long. You won't catch on fire.
Perhaps I misspeak. I like your polemics. But I guess I just assume that the purpose of raising legitimate questions is to understand what a philosopher is saying. And I'm literally puzzled as to whether that's your motive, or if your motive is to critique or vent about Heidegger or what. It seems like you hate him so much you don't want to take the time to read him -- fair enough! -- but then you also want to offer a critique of his ideas, so I'm a tad confused. Of course I agree with and would be really curious to read what you have to say after actually reading the essay.
I do not often hear of nothingness spoken of beyond dense thought experiments. Existence is necessarily defined by something, and nothingness is not useful in the economy, in the political, or even within the mathematical. Nothingness might be used to prove innocence, such as in the absence of a crime, but the defender might speak rather upon the defendant’s innocuous activity during that time. If suspension in dread were more delicately attuned, for instance, as found in horror media, then we might see a wider resurgence in media. However, what provides the existential thrill or palsy is the obscurity of the dread. Nothingness is a perceptual disadvantage, and it arguably gives no evolutionary advantage in its reflection.
Nonetheless, absolute null is scintillating when used as an abstract misadventure. Thusly, it bears a broad usage in my profession.
Is this his inaugural address commencing his glorious term as rector of Freiburg in 1929 or something else?
No, it was....oh, I see what you did there. :wink:
To be suspended in complete oblivion is to be prepared for quietus. Death does not completely consume my thoughts, because I know that it will bring a finale to agony, and a countermeasure against eternity. To be suspended in my own lethe is somewhat comforting, because, rationally, I know that I need fear no eternal consciousness. The knowledge that I can there be saved from eternal torment lessens my own horror of the paradox. It is a blessing, or merely beneficial, to accept the lethefold, and to find there nepenthe.
Mannequins and monuments are fortunate, for they are noetically in oblivion. For many persons, however, they appear to pose an insidious animation.
When the abstract or Weird is discussed, I prefer to imagine the subject as being an exotic demesne. Acarytid, while typically referring to a pillar of feminine form, can also imply the uncanny. A being, or location, which emanates from the unimaginable might be populated by temples or architecture of obstreperesque form. The pillar might initially appear Heimlich, or near home, in a humanoid form, and thus ensnare the observer in dread. The uncanny can be found in architecture, in faces, or in stifling room. We might imagine that a carving, in its petrified glare, contemplates nothing, or that it reveals the actual state of humanity as being a mere object. Any of these concepts are routes into the unnameable, and therefore the immersion of dread.
Yes, I see what you mean, and I wasn't wanting to deny there is any irony in this aspect of the human condition. I guess I just wanted to dispel any idea that we are unwisely or even absurdly clinging on to something that gives us absolutely no comfort. Because the world does give us some comfort, it's just that it fails to give us ultimate comfort because of the seeming inevitability of its loss, so I guess I am introducing the caveat that we are not utterly failing to be at home in the world. You probably didn't intend to say that we were, anyway.
Illusions, dreams and such undoubtedly occur and take place. They're a part of the world as they're part of our existence, explainable by reference to conditions and events. They're something.
I don't think that gets us anywhere, sadly, or at least it provides no insight for me into whatever it is that, apparently, isn't. Giving it a go: When we think about what is not, do we think about nothing? I don't think we can think of nothing when we think. We may, however, not think. Are we not thinking when we think about what is not?
Some people want to say that what he was doing was entirely new. He didn't think that though. Neither do I.
That's because it's not cognizable, it doesn't admit of being put in the sort of conceptual shape necessary for knowledge.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Indeed, it will be gesturing towards an indication of the unknown, something beyond the conceptual shape required for a word, a definition, knowledge....something like, say, a mood...
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
...which is not the same as a mundane expression of feeling.
That seems about right.
Really? If it's necessary to give that a name, I think "the futile" would be more appropriate.
Thank you on behalf of the Empire. For your services to philosophy we will pay you in salt.
What is the opposite of life, alive, or living?
I think it's less like this ^ and more closely related to 'why is there something rather than nothing?' It's one of those things that remains strange no matter how long you reflect on it. He's certainly not saying that there aren't things, or that everything is 'false.' It's that there's ultimately nothing holding any of it together. The world just is.
I always took your intrusive, repetitive comments on Heidegger threads to be basically a form of bad-faith roleplaying (you get to dress up like Dewey for a second, the way some people affect a pipe). I'm starting to wonder if maybe deep down, you're secretly drawn to him. Protesting too much, and all that.
We look out at All from a transcendent position, specifically, openness held out in the nothing. This is his conclusion.
The nothing is, phenomenologically, a component of the realization of being.
Agree?
First and foremost, Heidegger would agree that medical attention is appropriate for some. But he is not talking about such people. Second and by way of clarification, Heidegger’s argument cannot be understood without grasping his distinction between fear on the one hand and dread(anxiety) on the other. And the reason he is making the distinction is to remove fear from the equation.
Fear is always related to an entity within the world whereas dread(anxiety) is never related to an entity within the world. And he only discusses fear to distinguish it from dread(anxiety). Dread(anxiety) is the issue of interest for him, not fear. Beyond that, it is an open question as to whether his concept of dread(anxiety) can be grasped without understanding his concept of world.
I guess I mean the 'swabian peasant' thing seems like the kick, the positivist tinkering just potemkin-philosophy in the service of Being Wry.
If what you're worried about is the spookiness of the language, I wouldn't disagree. It *is* a bit trumped up, and over-solemn, like Kubrick. But solemnity is a tonal preference, like wryness. Some like it, some don't. You can read Heidegger, and appreciate his thought without loving his vibe. Sloterdijk, for example, isthe polar opposite of Heidegger tonally (joyfully cynical, legitimately funny)while basing the lion's share of his thought on H's work.
Anyway, if there was no alternative, like you say, the question wouldn't make sense, even as you rephrased it. But it does make sense.
But pity those nonsensical non-beings forever not asking, 'why is there nothing, rather than something?'
Not asking, of course, because being is unimaginable to non-beings.
In some sense, "nothing" draws people in.
I sometimes think nothing and unintelligible are significantly synonymous for Heidegger. Not to mention that unintelligible is an apt description for the end result of most conversations in which people attempt to discuss "nothing."
Maybe, but not in this essay. Pay attention to his references to Hegel. This essay is not complete gibberish. It seems like you're suggesting that it is.
I think I'm going back to my psychological analysis. The shock of the womb expelling, crushing, like Monty Python's foot forever stamping you out of existence, and into the unimaginable world. It's not a question, it's a trauma.
The unimaginable (to dasfoetus) world brings into being the unimaginable possibility of non-existence. what is born, is already not what was - is already mourning the death of the womb-.world.
Could you reproduce what you consider to be the relevant/important passages? It feels like having a bit of text to work from might help give some direction to a conversation that's now sort of spinning in a void.
Also :up: :lol:
What do you see in it?
But there are other responses just as appropriate, depending on the place and time. I recently went to see a Kirtan performance and the the chanter gestured toward the question in some of his between-chants banter. In this setting, the kirtan itself is an appropriate response to the question. The chant is enriched and made deeper by the question. The chant isn't an answer, but the lack of an possible answer is built into the chant's power.
Birth-trauma isn't many degrees of separation from 'thrownness.' I like that take. It's mine too, usually. But I feel like birth trauma is more an explanation of why *I* am - why any *I* is - drawn to the question. Why is something like birth trauma possible? I think the question - why does anything exist - reaches beyond the personal, even though the personal is our way in.
I am not suggesting it is gibberish.
I am not using unintelligible as a synonym for gibberish.
For Heidegger, the only entities that can be rendered intelligible are entities that have reference within the world that we are in.
And dread (unlike fear) has no reference within the world that we are in.
As a result, we are simply incapable of rendering intelligible the nothing to which Heidegger argues that dread refers.
This dread of unknown etiology is just the case where the nothing is revealed to consciousness. A confrontation with the nothing us "dormant" in our everyday dealings with what-is. Why do you think he would say that?
I think Heidegger would agree with Wittgenstein's notion that the world is everything. And since dread (for Heidegger) refers to no entity within the world (which is everything) then dread necessarily refers to "nothing." And it reveals to consciousness that to which it refers.
Being reaches beyond the personal, not-being does not. The dreadful is the closing in. That is why the question is a reawakening of the trauma and not of the reaching beyond of birth.
Since he seemed to lack interest in clarity, I say every person's interpretation is equal. I listen to you to hear what nuggets you drew out of it.
Whenever an existential choice or commitment is made the not-being of infinite other-possibility slips away from the personal, so I would say that it is precisely not-being that reaches beyond the personal. The dreadful is the opening out into the impersonal. Perhaps dread can be coherently framed as a "reawakening of the trauma" (of birth), but I think that, for Heidegger, it is much more to do with the anxiety that inevitably comes with death, and with possibility itself. Possibility brings, ironically, a dread of nothingness, of the disappearance of all possibility. death is both the ultimate possibility and the end of all possibility.
don't you find that to be a bit convenient? Certainly there are aspects of Heidegger to which all serious Heidegger scholars would concur? And certainly you would agree that some people are simply better at articulating their interpretation than others? Or perhaps you have a different understanding of interpretation than I? Is there anything regarding the interpretation I have offered that you think any serious Heidegger scholar would dispute in any significant way? I doubt if I am on the fringes. On the other hand, I do not interact with many people who have more than a passing understanding of Being and Time.
and when it comes to clarity, which ontological treatises prior to Heidegger would you consider having adequate clarity? And if they have more clarity, is that even the test? After 500 years of Descartes, the Cartesian's believe they can explain the interaction of subject and object by calling it transcendence and then pretending that they are not using the word as if it were a synonym for magic.
Have you read Heidegger's Metaphysical Foundations of Logic?
I actually had a hard time tracking down a copy of that one. Barnes and Noble had it listed as the Metaphysical Foundations of Love.
There is a spectrum of interpretations. Put Haugeland in the mix and it's a wide spectrum.
Quoting Arne
Name a contemporary Cartesian. Most of us lean toward ontological anti-realism. An example of clarity: See here (PDF)
Quoting Arne
No. Is it good? The "walk on past logic" thing wasnt an insult btw. He explicitly stated that he was leaving logic behind in WIM.
Searle.
And the rest of us.
We are all Cartesian.
There are some philosophical paradigms that permeate culture from top to bottom.
Cartesianism is the most recent.
Prior to that it was Aristotle.
And he lacks clarity from sentence one. "The basic task of ontology is 'What exists?'" That is the basic task of metaphysics. The basic task of ontology is the nature of what exists.
What are the odds that clarity would be lost in the very first sentence of an article you consider to be an example of clarity.
Philosophy is so much fun. :smile:
It
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I'm glad you're enjoying it. Chalmers is a model of exactness as it happens.
You can't shed the Cartesian baggage by changing the name of the school.
You're out of the know my friend. Welcome to AP.
Left that sinking ship thirty years ago. Waved goodbye to Chalmers as I went.
I don't agree with first sentence tho. You said it authoritatively but I can't see why that's the case.
My thoughts, for what little they're worth. Our dread's right here with us, and for me it arises, like anything else about us, because we're creatures of a particular kind that are part of the world. I'd say we're the cause of our dread as such. If dread can be said to reveal, it reveals something about us alone, and if we encounter anything through dread we encounter only something about ourselves.
If I've offended anyone, I apologize.
Curious. If I were a solipsist, I would say, 'all being is personal, nothing is beyond it.'
Do you mean like when I just chose to make coffee, the possibility of tea slipped away from the personal? I'm not clear what an existential choice is as distinct from a non-existential one...
Because it seems that the no-tea is entirely personal, whereas coffee is for sharing and the aroma wafts up the stairs and wakens my lover.
To be a bit more radical, the fear of death and the fear of birth are the same.
Actually, that would never happen because the personal is all there is to a solipsist. So, nothing more can be said about what's 'beyond the personal'.
Quoting unenlightened
Hi Posty. What's the difference between 'nothing' and 'nothing more'?
The way my arithmetic works, 0 + 0 = 0
As an aside: I normally frown heavily on the psychologising of philosophy, but in this case exceptionally I think it is legitimate, because the philosophy is itself founded on the psychological phenomenon of dread, so my claim that its source is misidentified is pertinent.
Hey, Bob. I'm not sure. I feel as though it's the foundational difference between being a solipsist or not one.
I was referring to significant personal choices and commitments; but I suspect you know that and are just trying to be funny.
I can see how a significant personal commitment might be a kind of birth, in the sense of being a transformation that awakens new possibilities, as well as being a kind of death that closes off many others. Although there may be some trepidation on account of the birth of new possibilities, I think fear, or better in this context, anxiety is more likely to be occasioned by the closing down of possibilities which any commitment entails.
As to biological birth and death, in case that is what you have in mind, I can't see how fear of those could be the same since one is in the past and the other in the future.
Quoting Janus
Most people cannot remember their birth, and this makes what I am saying hard to relate to, but yesterday's cup of coffee is much like tomorrow's cup of coffee. The trauma of birth is the terror of annihilation - the fear is of the ending of the known, rather than of the unknown. And death is the ending of the known.
I guess when you look back to an unremembered birth it appears un-traumatic, even joyful - the opposite of death. But it is a theoretical view, not an experiential one.
Sure, but the reality of the psychological effect of birth trauma is speculative. Being an old "psychonaut" myself, I'm familiar with Stanislov Grof's work and theories and all that, but...
In any case, even if there were a subconscious memory of the past fear attending birth; that is not the same as a present conscious, or even subconscious, fear of death.
I do agree that death is the end of the known; but where the known ends, the unknown begins; so I don't see much of a significant distinction there.
You could be right.
But two technical points and both reflect failures on my part.
First, only Dasein is "in" the world. All entities not having the characteristics of Dasein are "within" the world that Dasein is "in." I do not think that affects your views/conclusions but I do hope it enhances your understanding of Heidegger.
Second and more important to this particular discussion, I should not have used the word relate(s). Instead, I should have used the word refer(s).
Heidegger is saying that what dread refers to (unlike what fear refers to) is not "within" the world that we are "in" and therefore by definition can not be traced back to us as its source. Though I suspect he would agree that it is related to us.
Though substituting refers for relates does impact your views/conclusions, I do think refer has a more outward sense to it than does relate. And as a result, it produces a more accurate presentation of Heidegger.
I certainly do not want anyone to misunderstand Heidegger based upon what I say. And if someone disagrees with my interpretation of Heidegger, I would hope they could and would tell me why. I do not know Heidegger well enough to intentionally present any extreme interpretations of his work. I am confident that any interpretation of mine that appears as extreme is a result of a mistake on my part.
But I certainly do not expect or insist that everyone or anyone agree with Heidegger or with me.
It's speculative if you have no memory, but if you have some memory, it is experiential.
Quoting Janus
I don't think you can even say that much. Possibly something begins, possibly not. From the pov of facing annihilation, of being squeezed out of existence, the unknown, in the form of bright lights and towels and breasts and noise is way beyond imagination - to say that death is the beginning of the unknown is to pretend to a knowledge that cannot be had by definition.
But I think I'd better shut up myself now, and let Heidegger deal with his problems his own way.
Strikes me as consistent with the nature of reality in general and with the concept of dread in particular.
I agree.
The invitation to psychologize is built in.
"This development has taken hold as philosophers trained in the analytical tradition of thought have turned to Heidegger’s philosophy, and discovered that it contains a wealth of insight into the limitations of certain traditional views of human existence, ‘mind’, the nature of language, and so on – traditional views that analytical philosophers, too, have struggled to overcome. At the same time, philosophers trained in the continental tradition have discovered that analytical philosophy is neither as sterile nor as irrelevant tothe ‘big questions’ of life as one might suppose, and that many analytical philosophers are engaged in projects that parallel Heidegger’s own efforts to rethink the nature of human existence and our place in the world. What is Heidegger’s contribution to thinking? Why, despite the challenges posed by his difficult and unconventional prose (the common picture of Heidegger was not wrong about that), is he worth our striving to understand? Heidegger did more than any other thinker of the twentieth century to develop a coherent way of thinking and talking about human existence without reducing it to a natural scientific phenomenon or treating it as a ghostly mind haunting the physical world. This has inspired artists and social scientists, who have struggled to acknowledge the dignity and freedom of human existence; it has inspired scientists who have tried to keep mindful of the limits of scientific inquiry; and it has challenged us all to rethink our place in history and the direction in which we as a scientific and technological culture are moving."
-- Mark Wrathall, How to Read Heidegger
good book.
Assuming that your memory is accurate and is also a memory of what it purports to be of.
Quoting unenlightened
I wasn't meaning to reify the unknown into some actuality; I was merely making the point that what is not the known is the unknown.
What I find most fascinating within the context of the OP is that "nothing" is not experienced as the negation of being or as separate from being. Instead, Heidegger maintains that certain moods (such as boredom) reveal being as a whole. But of course moods are impermanent. And with the slipping away of the sense of the wholeness of being, nothing rushes in. What is Metaphysics? At 45-47.