Text, Dance, and Time

[VerticalOntology]

@Joshs

What are we doing when we talk about that which exists outside the human being? Are these beings, materiality, objects? Do these exist in themselves? If not, so they only exist in relation to each other? And if so, how would you articulate the nature of this structural relationality of a world outside of the human being?

I think this is fairly simple. To exist means to manifest itself in some way, to enter into relations, to leave some trace or effect. That which is completely hidden, which does not interact with anything and produces no effects, does not exist for the world either — at least not as part of any world we can meaningfully speak about.

A text on a clay tablet can manifest itself as text only for a human being. Chemical processes, decay, or biological processes — grass, moss, and so on — do not depend on the text on the tablet in any way. Therefore, the sign exists only for the human being.

By contrast, the sunrise or the growth of grass can take place independently of our existence, because they belong to chains of interaction that do not require human interpretation.

[VerticalOntology]

@Joshs

As far as thinking of time in terms of rest or motion, each implies the other, and for Heidegger the problem with using the metaphor of motion to describe time is that a thing which moves must remain fixedly what it is throughout the iteration of its spatial displacement. If each quantitative change in position were accompanied by a qualitative difference in kind, it would make no sense to talk about ‘this same thing’ in motion. It would make no sense to talk about motion at all.

I would not reduce time to the “motion of the unchanged.” And in general, I doubt that time can be reduced to any definite metaphysics.

In my view, this is also only a part of Heidegger’s ontology. Beings are simpler in this respect: a being is that which manifests itself in time in some way. More simply, beings are what exist in time.

The fact that beings at once reveal and conceal Being is only one manifestation of time. As far as I understand Derrida, he takes this as the final definition. It is close, but no closer than the metaphor of the river, or any other metaphysics.