I say that I am myself, but is that really how I exist?
in an everyday way
“It could be that the ‘who’ of every Dasein just is not the I myself”
“If the ‘I’ is an essential characteristic of Dasein, then it is one which must be interpreted existentially.”
the ‘Who?’ is to be answered existentially
MitDasein
“Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with” (439)
the environment which is ‘closest to us’ is one of equipment
that is, the environment we most frequently and basically find ourselves
read 435a
“along with the equipment to be found when one is at work, those others for whom the work is destined are encountered too” 435
part of the network in which equipment necessarily appears is other people
other people are encountered as the in order to of equipment
those for whom equipment is going to serve
so, you are encountered through this classroom as those who it will allow me to teach within it
“Similarly, when material is put to use, we encounter its producer or supplier as one who serves well or badly.”
read 435b
so in encountering the room I do not ever just encounter it alone, I encounter those for whom it will serve a purpose
as well as those who have prepared it for me to do my work for you
we most often notice this in a ‘deficient mode’
it is when a room has not been cleaned that we notice the work of the cleaners in their absence
but the deficiency of the work of the cleaners points us to the cleaners, and their work
again, what is important here is not that you can think of others in your encounter with (pieces of) equipment
the others are part of what makes equipment appear as the equipment it is
the classroom would not be recognisable as a classroom without others, either known or anonymous, to fill it as students
read 436
what does it mean that “Dasien is essentially Being-with”?
not an ontic or factual point
it doesn’t matter that you can be out on the ocean alone
or that you can be alone at a party where you don’t connect with anyone
if it was meant to be a factual point, then these examples would falsify the claim (at least in its strong, essential sense)
so, it is not the case that a particular Dasein, ontically, cannot be factually alone
rather it is an existential-ontological claim
it is about what the way of existing of Dasein is
how dasein is
it can’t be ontic, because if it were
“Being with would not be an existential attribute that Dasein, of its own accord, has coming to it from its own kind of Being” 439
Being-with would be a state that dasein could be in
not an attribute that belongs to dasein itself
BW would just be an accident of the circumstance that Dasein can be in (being-with)
it would turn up in each case by reason of the occurence of others
But Dasein is Being-with even when no others are ‘factically’ around (as perceived)
when you are alone you are still bieng-with
but in the deficient mode of being-with
this is meant concretely!
it is part of our experience of being alone that we are existentially being-with
otherwise we would not experience being alone as being alone
we would not experience it as the absence of other people
“The other can be missing only in and for a Being-with.”
think of being alone on a beach
robinson crusoe
any desolate landscape
being alone on a friday night
being alone in a crowd
this is possible because the deficient mode of being with is not a factual state, but a mode of the existential-ontological being-with
“Being-alone is not obviaated by the occurrence of a second example of a human being beside me, or by ten such examples”
it is only because our way of being is being-with that we can experience the absence of others
how else could we experience something that is a ‘not’, a negative?
I mean this as structural negativity—it is not always unpleasant to experience teh absence of otehrs
think of the empty beach
It is as the they that Dasein is mitsein?
Distantiality (Abständigkeit)
“in that with which we concern ourselves environmentally the Others are encountered as what they are”
that is, the way we concern ourselves with the world we find ourselves in has to do with the other people in it
they are there as fellow students, teachers, the builders of our tools, groundskeepers, the bosses we are hoping one day to be hired for on account of our excellent resumes
“In one's concern with what one has taken hold of, whether with, for, or against, the Others, there is constant care as to the way one differs from them, whether that difference is merely one that is to be evened out, whether one's own Dasein has lagged behind the Others and wants to catch up in relationship to them, or whether one's Dasein already has some priority over them and sets out to keep them suppressed. The care about this distance between them is disturbing to Being-with-one-another, though this disturbance is one that is hidden from it. Existentially expressed, Being-with-one-another has the character of distantiality. (BT, p. 126/163–64; translation modified)” 411
“concern with what one has taken hold of”
ambitions, habits, ways of dressing, taste in music
whatever you are concerned with (the they are there)
the comparison with others’ similarities and differences is always there
this is ‘distantiality’
Colonel Cathcart from Catch 22 is a model for this:
“Colonel Cathcart was impervious to absolutes. He could measure his own progress only in relationship to others, and his idea of excellence was to do something at least as well as all the men his own age who were doing the same thing even better. The fact that there were thousands of men his own age and older who had not even attained the rank of major enlivened him in foppish delight in his own remarkable worth; on the other hand, the fact that there were men of his own age and younger who were already generals contaminated him with an agonizing sense of failure and made him gnaw at his fingernails with an unappeasable anxiety…”(19.2)
but it isn’t just this obvious, conscious comparison-making
when you set out to be a dentist you have in mind a kind of anonymous dentist being, a they-dentist
one who does good work, one who makes good money
you modely yourself after the others taht you lag behind and need to catch up to
you also distinguish yourself from the crappy dentist you already have surpassed
It’s also not just a matter of ambition
when you have a style it isn’t totally free from influence and your own independent creation
you dress like you need to in order to look like the kind of person you want to be seen as
or you dress so as not to be recognised as ‘basic’
all this is distantiality
so is the Ikea catalogue scene from Fight Club:
“Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct. If I saw something clever like the coffee table in the shape of a yin and yang, I had to have it. I would flip through catalogs and wonder, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.”
I’m not sure what Distantiality means. it’s not this:
“I maintain that they are best under- stood as complements to one another, together revealing Dasein as suspended between two poles, never entirely itself alone and yet never entirely given over to socially constituted norms. On one hand, Dasein is inescapably consti- tuted by the norms of das Man, but on the other hand, Dasein is equally inescapably unique: an ineradicable distance separates Dasein from others.” David Egan p. 300
because distantiality is in terms of others, not unique
“our essential tendency to minimize the distance between ourselves and others by subtle coercion or co-option, especially when we are not aware of doing so” Hubert Dreyfus
because it is not just a minimizing but also preserving the distance
The they
The fact that in your concern with all matters you are attending to your distantiality, means that you are not fundamentally or primarily yourself
“Dasein, as everyday Being-with-one-another, stands in subjection to Others. It itself is not; its Being has been taken away by the Others.” 411
what you are for the most part is your way of acting, what you do, what you are concerned with
but this is not something that is determined authentically by yourself
it is something that you determine through taking care of your distance with the others
The others are not defnite, they are kind of an amorphous, anonymous ‘they’
think of the expression ‘they say...’ as in, ‘they say red wine is good for your health’ or”they say red wine is bad for your health”
the they are always concerned with whether good wine is good or bad for your health
“any other can represent them” 412
“The ‘who’ is not this one, not that one, not oneself, not the sum of them all” 412
our habits are not our own, but are uniform
in using the streets, in surfing the internet “every other is like the next”
“We take pleasure as they take pleasure…” 412
“we shrink back from teh mass as they shrink back”
might also say: we rebel as they rebel
this is key, becuase it shows that it is not so easy to be different, to distinguish oneself
if you want to be a punk, there is a ‘they’ for that
if you want to find yourself through transcendental meditation, tehre isa ‘they’ for that
“Everyone is the other, and no one is himself.”
This is not a bad thing, but it is contingent on the meaning of the world into which you are thrown, and anxiety can expose this contingency—the insignificance of all significance
you are thrown into the world, but falling is when you submit to the world
“Dasein’s falling into the ‘they’ and the ‘world’ of its concern, is what we have called ‘fleeing’ in the face of itself’. (H185/6)
Thinking the ‘they-self’ and ‘idle chatter’
any time you are concerned with being some way
performing
examples:
fitting in
talking and acting the way your friends do
cliques and subcultures
being a real punk and not a poser
uses the jargon of authenticity in an inauthentic way
playing the part
performing your straightness/queerness
job performance
trying to live up to expectations and to become something/suit some role
not a bad thing:
you need to perform single straightness/queerness to let people know you’re available
you need to act ‘professional’ to be a professional
bed-side matter
professorial
business-like
the they self/inauthenticity is almost impossible to avoid
think of the authentic ways of being a punk or an eccentric artist
even if you escape society/civilisation altogether, you are escaping civilization as ‘they’ escape civilisation
nobody escapes civilisation by living in a field in the Bekaa, you’re always going to the romantic mountains
see “Into The Wild”
it is only when anxiety arises that authenticity becomes possible
because anxiety confronts you with the meaninglessness of meaning
and the they and its idle chatter is where meaning lies