notes on Heidegger’s appropriative thinking

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Professor Halteman-Zwart,

Thanks for your stimulating review of F.J. Gonzalez, Plato and Heidegger: A Question of Dialogue. You write very well. I’m being self-indulgent below, but this was fun. So, I might as well share with you what you occasioned, recalling and refocusing my sense of Heidegger, thanks to the event of your review of Plato and Heidegger.

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“Affinities” indeed: It seems to me that Heidegger’s quotation from “The Sophist” at the beginning of Being and Time signals that the entirety of B&T is an appropriative response to Plato above all. Heidegger’s ’20s lectures on “the Sophist” could be regarded as a prelude to B&T, such that B&T deserves to be the hermeneutical, retrospective frame on Heidegger’s earlier, emerging sense of Plato.

But I’m looking at the matter from a perspective on the entirety of Heidegger’s career (which he recommended that one do, re: earlier work).

a note on self valuation

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‘Ego’ has become such a common word, we might forget (or never knew) that it just means “I”. Egoism is just a concept of I-ism or selfism, which tends to be selfish in the worst sense: exclusive much more than inclusive. But ‘ego’ itself was initially a technical notion of selfidentification or active self conception, but narrowly: apart from fleshed-out instances of full persons who may be variably interested in their own (or ownmost) life.

need, want, desire

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The normal meaning of ‘need,’ ‘want,’ and ‘desire’ are such that a person may desire, but not need. But wanting may be either needing or desiring. Needing implies both wanting and desiring; if you need S, then you want it, and you desire it. If you desire S, you want it, but may not need it. So, I regard wanting as ambiguous (it could mean need; it could mean desire). Whether “want” associates to need rather than desire or the converse depends on context. I regard need and desire as basically different. There is much that one may desire but not need. But in cases of both need and desire, it’s normal to say that one wants.

textual intimacy

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This posting has been moved to here.

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Self/personal difference irt multiple perspectivity

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life as literary psychology, part 1 of 5

Beyond “my” assimilating what others say (or accomodating it to one’s own interests), we commonly want to implicitly appreciate the other’s perspective, assess the other’s genuineness, or keep up with a play of perspectives. “Knowing They Know That You Know” renders so-called “mind reading” as “one person’s ability to interpret another person’s mental state...in order to assess its validity” such that interaction—interpersonal action—involves “keep[ing] track of ... different mental states at [the same] time.” Selves can be considered irt “how well an individual is able to track multiple sources,” when the “source” is another person.