Ontological inquiry

So if there are revolutions happening in the ontic sciences then how much more important to have such a revolution with respect to Ontology itself, if that is possible. And the reason we think it is possible is that our whole idea of what Ontology is has ossified as we can see by the presuppositions that block our understanding of it.

But there are some interesting things in this paragraph. For instance he calls the ontological task a “non-deductive geneology of different was of Being”. the terms non-deductive geneology is very suggestive of the kinds of work Foucault ended up doing with respect to the Clinic and Prisons rooted in the Geneology of Morals of Nietzsche. He says that such research with respect to Being requires a further clue. Genealogy is a following of clues. The Genealogy is non-deductive because we are dealing with an a priori synthesis. DaSein projects, is projected, is projecting its own projection, but this whole process that is pre-ontological, Ontic, and Ontological is itself an a priori synthesis. And it is into this a priori synthesis that we want to make our way analytically but non-reductively.

Peirce calls this kind of non-deductive analysis “precission” which is different from the precision of reductive analysis. Precission attempts to look at the parts as they are in the whole without taking the whole apart. Today with MRIs and CTscans, and other non-invasive imaging techniques we are used to looking within things without destroying their natural synthesis and their integrity. But traditionally analysis meant taking things apart. For Kant human beings create a priori syntheses of spacetime and of the categories, but Heidegger has the idea that human beings are themselves in their projection process an a priori synthesis which is different than the unity that Kant posited. For Kant there was Unity, Totality and the Singular. DaSein the projector is certainly singular. But there is also wholeness as well that is something more than unity and totality, something prior to them. And if this is an A priori synthesis then how do we look inside it without taking it apart, and his answer is a genealogical method that looks for origins, always already lost origins.

This reminds us of micro-genesis in which Gestalts arise producing intermediate forms prior to the gestalt that can be very different from the final gestalt. Foucault looked for that in institutions. Dreyfus contends that Foucault basically kept to the structure of Beng and Time in his own analysis but merely substituted Power and Knowledge for Being. And it is interesting to think of Being and Time as following a Genealogical Method as well looking at preursors, but knowing that the origin itself will not be found. When Heidegger is tracking down the precursor for Being, and looking for clues as to the structure of the question of Being and its actual meaning he is led to Dasein as the site at which this concept gets implemented in the world. By thinking of it as a site (DA-Sein) then it is not necessary to think of it as a machine which can be taken apart, like a film projector. Rather we are looking at the whole situation of projection, the projector, the screen, the audience, the technician that runs the projector, the ticket seller and ticket taker. There is a natural differentiation of the elements that take part in the projection. And what we see on the screen is a movie about the theater and the movie goers and the projection that is happening. So there is the projection of the movie, there is the movie about the theater and the movie goers and there is the making of the movie about the the experience of watching the film. All this is from Heidegger’s point of view is an a priori synthesis. And we can differentiate the parts of this situation through precission in which we distinguish the parts without taking them apart.

So notice that in the viewing situation there are elements, and in the movie about watching the movie and its projection there are elements, and in the process of creating the movie about watching the movie also has its elements. All these elements are mirroring each other or are duals of each other. So we have the duality between the camera and the projector. We have the duality between the camera operator and the projector operator. We have the duality between those watching the filming and those watching the movie. But then also there are differences that cannot be replicated, like we seldom sell tickets to watch the movie being made. We can distinguish this from Kant and Hegel. Kant merely says that there is a projection going on and he identifies the projector, i.e. transcendental subject and the constraints on the projection process. Hegel of course, realized that there had to be the process of making the movie in history and that movie making had changed over time. But in the end there was a production of an ultimate movie like Andre Rublev for instance. Heidegger adds the fact that the movie that we are seeing is about the making of the movie and the watching of the movie, but all these elements are in fact equal to each other and themselves form a whole. Thus we have not really ever departed from the analogy of Plato’s cave. We have merely described in detail the different aspects of the projecting of the projection which is our project.

When we are within this situation and we start to try to figure out its unfolding genealogy we are going to look at the mirroring of the elements of each other in the entire situation. And what I want to say is that this entire situation is in fact a Meta-system. Projecting the movie is a system. Making the movie is a system. The movie itself about its making and the watching is a system, but the entire situation is a meta-system, a site of the happening off all the modalities working together. Systems and Meta-systems are inverse duals of each other. But the Meta-system is obscured in our tradition. When we read the DA-sein as the site of situatedness of the entire projection we are getting a picture of the entire scene in which projection takes place. By focusing on the place where the projection takes place in all its ramifications we see it as a whole. Meta-systems are de-emergent while systems are emergent. Meta-systems are wholes less than the sum of their parts while wholes are wholes greater than the sum of their parts. Meta-systems are wholes full of holes, and those holes are the niches in which the parts of the systems fit into the entire scene. I want to say that the reason Heidegger’s B&T is so incomprehensible is that it is the first work that really formulates a meta-systemic approach, and that is why it is so revolutionary. By looking at the situation Heidegger can see that as whole. Wholeness can either be systematic or meta-systematic (or we find out later it can be though the Special Systems). Heidegger uses meta-systemic wholeness of situatedness as a means of access the parts of the transcendental unity of apperception.