The progress of the Being and Time reading group has been fairly smooth so far, and we have now reached the part on being-with and the Anyone. At the time, I stopped where I did in “A Preliminary Exploration of Heidegger’s Ontology of Media,” and I wrote then: “Speaking of the ‘Anyone,’ Heidegger’s related discussions of ‘being-with,’ ‘falling,’ and so on will also be drawn in. Dasein’s being-in-the-world is not only always dealing with things, but is also always dealing with others, and this is precisely where the concepts of ‘dealing with’ and ‘media’ ought to apply. However, as a very preliminary glimpse into Heidegger’s ontology of media, this article has now reached the point where it can come to a close.”
The reason I happened to “come to a close” right at that point was actually more internal, because in this respect, it may have been precisely one of Heidegger’s weak spots. The reason I was unable at the time to write out this most important aspect was that I had some hesitation on this issue, and found it difficult to continue sorting things out along Heidegger’s line of thought. After listening to Li Meng’s lectures and discussing the matter in the reading group, I reflected on this issue again, and came to feel that there does indeed seem to be an implicit difficulty within Heidegger’s philosophy here.
Heidegger’s insight is profound. For him, the problem of human communication is no longer merely a topic at the sociological, anthropological, or psychological level; it is raised to the most originary ontological level. “Others,” together with technological things and implements, or through ready-to-hand implements, or, one might say, media, become a basic existential moment of Dasein. Although Dasein is always, in some sense, myself, this “I” is precisely first of all an “other”; “others” participate in the constitution of “I” in an originary sense.
But on the one hand Heidegger elevates “others” to such an important position, while on the other hand he still seems to want to turn away and not look at others, striving to find some pure, proper, authentic self that is not dominated by others. Yet this proper, authentic self is always hollow, as Teacher Li Meng said; Heidegger himself also never really managed to fill out this self later on. Although Heidegger insightfully pointed out lines of thought such as “being-toward-death” and “being-toward-death as a way of living,” this authentic self that turns away from “others” and toward its own death is always empty. Once a person truly comes face to face with authenticity, he must still turn back toward others and face his actual life situation.
We see that in his later years Heidegger gradually shifted his focus from the nihilistic and solitary self to actual situations; he turned his gaze to “the age,” to technology, and to “dwelling.” Yet this issue of “being-with” or “others,” which is so crucial in an ontological sense, still seems to remain outside Heidegger’s field of vision. Heidegger’s rejection of “ethics” has its reasons; and yet along Heidegger’s line of thought, one could in principle also have opened up some kind of virtue ethics about “stepping forward (setting an example),” but Heidegger never attempted anything like that either. As for any issue concerning how human beings “coexist” with one another, Heidegger seems not to have delved into it very much at all.
Although in Heidegger’s ontological thinking the status of the “Anyone” and “being-with” is so originary and important, nonetheless, whether within Being and Time or throughout Heidegger’s entire academic career, there is simply too little discussion of issues such as “being-with,” “others,” and “concernful circumspection.” Even if this does not amount to a flaw, it is at least a shortcoming. So it is no surprise that thinkers influenced by Heidegger yet who also broke away from him—Levinas, Marcuse, and Arendt—paid special attention to domains such as alterity, sociality, and publicity. Heidegger’s thought pointed to such a dimension, but he himself did not sufficiently develop this line. And this dimension is precisely one that Marx had already opened up long ago. As early as Marx, “things” were no longer ready-made objects, but something that was articulated with historicity, sociality, and politics. Teacher Wu says that what Marx calls materiality is “actuality,” so what is “actuality”? In my view, it should be understood precisely from “being-with.”
The discussion paper I wanted to write this time but still cannot write also wanted to talk about related issues. I tried to use media phenomenology to explain problems in classical philosophy of science. More specifically, it first concerns such a basic question: if science seeks truth, how is it possible to seek truth, and in what sense is it “true”? Phenomenology differs from nihilism in that it will not simply abandon or nullify this “truth,” yet it also cannot understand this “truth” in a foundationalist or essentialist way. So next I turned my attention to the activity of “history.” I felt that how to “record,” rather than how to “deduce,” has become the most central issue in the philosophy of science of media phenomenology. The classic philosophy of science proposition known as the “theory-ladenness of observation” should have a deeper significance and a very different formulation in media phenomenology. Observation and recording are not simply a matter of imprinting what has actually happened; rather, through observation and recording, “what is actually going on” is unfolded or disclosed. But this act of disclosure is not subjective arbitrariness; in an originary sense it already carries objectivity. What is this objectivity? — this then draws out the basic moment of “being-with”…… So the thing I want to write would precisely have to start from the place where I previously stopped and avoided, and also from the place Heidegger himself did not turn to look at. Working through it is rather difficult; it is still in a tangled mess, and it is hard to imagine how to turn it out by January @_@ In any case, I’ll talk about it later……
December 18, 2010
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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