If I try to explain it practically, it is something like this: it is not an attempt to force one’s way through an obscure set of words that has been deliberately complicated.
It is more like finding, in another text, a confirmation of some very old personal thought — something one has carried for a long time, but could not quite formulate and was not fully sure of. The text may be obscure, but it resonates with one’s own understanding of the world.
And perhaps it cannot be explained in simple words because ordinary language does not yet have the precise network of references needed for the thought that is trying to be said.
I do understand this. I went through some Derrida in close detail with another member here some years ago and I had a similar experience, a taste if you like.
Obscurity, attack, and risk by definition give no guarantee. After all, in darkness there is not necessarily something there; it is simply the unknown. And risk means that something may succeed, but it may also fail.
Risk should not be equated with chaos or destruction for its own sake. It has to be a fully conscious wager.
I’m all for risky, situated judgements. Indeed, the alternative is paralyzed passivity — or cowardly hesitation.
My point is that we “betray ourselves” when we call something “nonsense.” But also when we celebrate it. By “betray” I mean we give ourselves away, commit ourselves, become determinate.
At this point I don’t hesitate to vouch for the greatness of Heidegger as a philosopher. I realize that this will be “misunderstood” by those who are deaf to Heidegger. I am tainted by his taint, read as a victim of sophistry, etc.
It’s a social risk for some. Will Dawkins put away his too-easy schtick of picking on believers and surprise us all with praise for Being and Time ? I doubt it.
On the other hand, “postmodernists” and “spiritualists” pass on the usual thoughtless gossip about positivism and phenomenalism. Of course my too-easy categorization of them here is intended to suggest a stereotype that an ambitious thinker will want to avoid. All of these old labels are correctly judged as threats to genuine identity. If you are “just another X,” then you basically aren’t ( anything.)
If you play along with your presentist peers, you fit in forgettably. For the ox this is a good life perhaps, but not for the lion.
I like this. While sometimes a philosopher surprises me and convinces me at the same time, many philosophers find words for —make relatively crystalline — what was latent and amorphous already for me. They return myself to me, but clarified and strengthened.
Consider Emerson’s take on this:
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
I would only perhaps object that this is not always a matter of choice or education. Sometimes the inner gleam is not something one learns to detect, but something one fails to extinguish, even after making real efforts to do so.
Thanks for taking this on. It helps me realize how a very simple question (mine, in this case) can be promoted to something profound, when that wasn’t at all the intention.
Let me explain what I meant when I said that my question about the sentence was grammatical. I’m not asking about any of the following:
Heidegger’s philosophy;
Heidegger’s vocabulary;
the meaning of Sichverbergen;
ontological difference;
the “presence” of what is present.
I’m asking for a grammatical clarification about the sentence itself. Specifically: I don’t understand the syntactical reference of “self” in “self-concealment,” in this sentence. Is “what is to be thought” the thing which does the concealing (of itself)? If not, to what does the sentence attribute “essential self-concealment”?
To ask such a question is to make no presuppositions about the subject matter, nor to assume a “gotcha” attitude, implying there could not be a sensible answer. I just want to understand how the sentence is working, before I can start to think about what it is saying.
BTW, in the original context, this was part of a sentence, though I see that we’re now talking about a phrase. The same syntactic questions apply, however.
This is a translation from Heidegger. Essential self-disclosure, as I understand it, is the way being reveals itself through essence. Heidegger did not replace the subject with Dasein for no reason, since his model is not Cartesian. It is not that a subject cognizes; rather, being reveals itself through essence.
In Heidegger, Dasein does not “cognize” being as an object. Dasein is the site of openness in which being lets itself be thought, but it gives itself in such a way that it simultaneously withdraws and conceals itself.
Some time ago, in another forum, I tried to write a piece that argued for the usefulness of vague terms. Mostly for use to describe vague concepts, but for other purposes too, if we encounter them. I rather like the approach these words (above) take. Much better put than I could’ve managed.
Thank you, but again, my question has been “promoted” to a question about philosophy. It isn’t. It’s a question about the grammar of a sentence. Can you perhaps help with this?:
That’s ALL I’m asking. Honest! Questions about philosophy can come later, after we’re clear on the syntax of the sentence.
English is not my native language, so unfortunately I may be missing the grammatical nuance you are asking about.
I tried to explain how I understand the sentence as a whole, but I am not sure I understand the question about the syntactic function of each word. My impression is that “self-” here does not have to refer only to one isolated word, but can refer to the movement of the thought as a whole.
There is an obscurity in essential thinking. That obscurity arises from the essential self-concealment. The thing doing the self-concealing is what is to be thought. Heidegger identifies “what is to be thought” as Being. Thus, syntactically, the self-concealing agent is Being itself (under the description “what is to be thought”), not the thinker and not thinking.
Again, philosophically, “self” probably refers to many things, but in this sentence it modifies “concealment”, and the compound term is the subject of the clause “self-concealment of what is to be thought” – or so it appears. I’m questioning whether this can be the right interpretation of the syntax because, ordinarily, in English, if we say “the X of Y,” Y is meant to possess or perform X, and it’s difficult to see how that could be the case here when X is “self-concealment” and Y is “what is to be thought.”
Notice that I’m not scoffing at Heidegger for writing such an “obscure” sentence. I’m looking for a charitable interpretation, a different syntactical analysis that doesn’t run into the problem of how “what is to be thought” can function as a possessor or performer. Or, conversely, perhaps there’s a way of understanding the “X of Y” relation in this case that I’m not seeing.
EDIT: Just saw @Joshs 's response after posting this. I’ll ponder it, as it seems to address directly what I just said here.
OK, that’s admirably clear. In the context of what I wrote to @VerticalOntology , you’re taking the second path and saying that the normal “X of Y” syntactical interpretation is indeed the correct one. You’re saying that “what is to be thought” can be an item that performs self-concealment. I definitely see how “what is to be thought” can be concealed. But can you explain how it can conceal itself? That seems to require more agency than I would have attributed to an item designated as “what is to be thought”. Or do you (and Heidegger) perhaps mean that it is in the nature of “what is to be thought” that it must be concealed? I really don’t think of that as “self-concealment” but it’s only a bit of a stretch, so perhaps that’s it.
If I were to try to write a self-review, I would say that my aim was to bring together Heidegger’s thought about the darkness of thought — as I understand it — and to use Brodsky and his reading of Auden in order to show that thought is not merely dark, but that there is also a certain aggressive movement within it.
All these reflections are no more than a dark intuition, and I am simply not ready to arrange a deep syntactic analysis of the quotation. This is not a strictly logical claim, but rather a certain intellectual or spiritual experience that I shared in the hope that someone else had felt something similar.
I understand, and what you’re doing is valuable. I don’t need to pursue my questions on this thread, though I appreciate your efforts to accommodate me.
