Dissertation Construction 09

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Intercontsituent Ecologies 

09

I aim to explicate an understanding of wildhood in terms of worldhood. This means that the understanding of wildhood as worldhood is rolled up and I want to unroll it. What does it mean to understand? What is worldhood? I have briefly gone into understanding previously when I stated that to understand something is to have clarity on the matter. In everyday speak, it is to "get it" in the sense of being "dialed in" or "on the wavelength" of the matter. 

Being-in-the-world

Before delving to deeply into worldhood we ought to get clear on being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world "stands for a unitary phenomenon" (BT, p. 78). Being-in-the-world is constituted by 1) world and its ontological structure of worldhood; 2) somebody in everyday dealings; and 3) Being-in as such. Before setting out, it's important to note that being-in-the-world is a unity that must be considered holistically even though the structures maybe be considered constitutively. Let's take the third constituent first. Being-in means being immersed in something or being completely enmeshed. To understand being-in-the-world takes consideration of what else shows up in that world. "Being-in-the-world--gets its ontological understanding of itself in the first instance from those entities which it itself is not but which it encounters 'within' its world, and from the being which they possess" (BT, p. 85). It is important to stress the co-constitution of somebody being-in the world. It is not the case that somebody dwells within a personal bubble that is transcended through representational thinking when knowledge is grasped. There is no encapsulation. For somebody [Dasein], "its primary kind of being is such that it is always 'outside' alongside entities which it encounters and which belong to a world already discovered" (BT, p. 89).

Worldhood

Worldhood has to do with being and it "stands for the structure of one of the constitutive items of being-in-the-world" (BT, p. 92). Heidegger unrolls worldhood "through an ontological Interpretation of those entities within-the-environment [within-the-umwelt] which we encounter closest to us" (BT, p. 94). To understand worldhood we need to have a clear grasp of average everydayness. Somebody is in average everydayness in the mode of undistinguished and unremarkable normal behavior emerges as "'dealings' in the world with entities within-the-world" (BT, p. 95). This means that understanding worldhood is done with a certain jumping off point and that jumping off point is the average everydayness of somebody dealing [Umgang]. This German term unites prefixes gang by um. Gang is the manner in which a human or animal goes. Colloquially, we can say it is how somebody "rolls". By adding um we get a signification of the manner in which somebody walks around or goes about in the world with entities within-the-world" (BT, p. 95).

This is how Dr. Steve Brule rolls.

These manners of going about in-the-world show up through our concern with entities in-the-world. Concern is the way in which somebody relates to entities that they are used-to. "Those entities... which are used or which are to be found in the course of production--become accessible when we put ourselves into the position of concerning ourselves with them in some such way" (BT, p. 96). We need a clear grasp of these entities being dealt with in-the-world. In a word, those entities encountered in concern are "das Zeug" (BT, p. 97), that is, those entities are gear.

We must be quick to point out that gear (translated as equipment by Macquerrie & Robinson (1962) do not show up individually. "Taken strictly, there 'is' no such thing as an equipment" (BT, p. 97). Gear shows up in a referential whole. Next we will turn to in order to as it is constituted by Verweisung. In doing so, we may gain a clear grasp on the way to understanding worldhood.

HEADS UP! for anybody interested, beginning on Monday, October 7, 2013. I will be blogging on my new site: http://wildhood.net/blog

Dissertation Construction 08

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Interconstituent Ecologies

08

The ontic definition of world is "as that 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'. "World has here a pre-ontological existentiell signification. Here again there are different possibilities: 'world' may stand for the 'public' we-world [Mitwelt], or one's 'own' closest (domestic) environment [Umwelt]" (BT, p. 93).

Ontic refers to specific entities. Ontological refers to the way of being of entities. Heidegger asks the question of the meaning of being. There is a perplexity and sense of wonder in the question of being. Sean Kelly differentiates philosophic wondering and scientific curiosity. The mood of wonder and perplexity characterizes the thinking that is dissatisfied by reduction of wonder to a description of material processes. If we wonder about being, what are we wondering about? Being is the ground of intelligibility as a background such that we rarely have an explicit understanding of being to the point that we take things for granted. However, we need the background of being to stand forth as a human being understanding ourselves and what we stand for in-the-world. The stand we take on our being is what we mean to be. Standing forth is how we co-constitute the way in which we matter in-the-world and the way in which things-in-the-world matter to us.

Dasein is factical, not factual. Factual refers to mere facts. Facticity, based on Kelly's interpretation (see previous link) is how somebody stands as a being against a backdrop of being in all that somebody's foreground and background understandings of themselves as a being. 

What does it mean to have a "pre-ontological existentiell signification"? To be characterized as existentiell relates to things that are existentialia. This is to be considered against a notion of categories. Categories are formal indications that attribute the factual aspect of entities. Existentialia are the basic structures of somebody's (Dasein's) mode of being. To have an existentiell signification refers to playing a role in the co-constitution of the way in which somebody matters in-the-world and the way in which things-in-the-world matter to somebody.

To have pre-ontological signification is to exist as something neither actively or passively. To say that the world is pre-ontological is to say that the world is neither a matter of a subject (somebody) taking on the world actively, nor is it a matter of a subject's passively being given it. It is a matter of somebody and the world coming together in co-constitution.  

Dissertation Construction 07

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