“It is Reason that engenders self-love, and reflection that strengthens it; it is reason that makes man shrink into himself; it is Reason that makes him keep aloof from everything that can trouble or affect him: it is philosophy that destroys his connections with other men; it is in consequence of her dictates that he mutters to himself at the sight of another in distress. You may perish for aught I care, nothing can hurt me.”
-“On the Inequality of Man”
Rousseau
Preface-Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror
A Novel by Michael Ryan
What is this story about? Am I the chronicler of these events? Or has the other taken hold at last and I’ve become ancillary? Has the burden of so many stones of pain and regret weighed me down so that I cannot move?
There is something wrong with the mirror in my room. The reflection could not be mine… The eyes are wild, vacant. The face is one I do not recognize. I think it is one of those carnival fun-house mirrors. I don’t think it is very funny.
I am sick and I can’t say why. All I can remember of my life is in the distant past while yesterday or last week is dimly lit and will not yield to the light of my recollections. I need help and this pronouncement alone is enough to cause terror…
A dream…I can remember roads that appear and disappear on some mistaken drunken map; towns turning to dust; grasslands burning out of control before a north wind…lover’s scream at each other for an hour in a house next to a freeway, then make love for 10 minutes to the sounds of garbage trucks and machine guns. Their nerve endings repaired for future destruction, the couple strips the bed and washes the sheets. The woman retires to a barely functional living room and begins to read all the back issues of National Geographic. She studies the maps of exotic places as though this is the first time and not the hundredth. Her husband, an unemployed bricklayer, cracks open his 24th beer of the day and switches on the god box, preparing for the reading of the gospel according to General Mills. He is happy because he knows that soon he will be able to catch up on the ongoing drama of other mannequin lives in this Prime Time American Dream.
And ultimately I know that they are comfortable here in their highway house on the edge of the sun…and I remember this was a fine time but it was it my memory…This I cannot tell.
================
This is an excerpt from the Preface of my “Great American Novel,” Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror. I will be posting other pieces of this self-proclaimed brilliant work of fiction written after the style of Dostoevsky and Nabokov, 2 of my Literary Gods…stay tuned if you are as bored as I!
2009
“On Dasein and Anxiety”
“On Dasein and Anxiety”
by Mike Ryan
“Dasein.” OK so what the heck is Dasein? Translated literally from the German, da-sein means being there (or/and here). However, Martin Heidegger, would have a problem with this definition…Dasein means much more than just merely being there/here.
In German, Dasein is the vernacular term for existence, as in, I am pleased with my existence (ich bin mit meinem Dasein zufrieden) — or we could say in a case of anxiety and nausea, (ich bin mit meinem Dasein nicht zufrieden). For Heidegger, Dasein encompasses Being as fully conscious of self as a Being, with intentionality and temporality–Dasein illuminates and interprets the meaning of Being…in other words a human being.
Sein und Zeit (1927)
Being and Time
Note: Often Heidegger refers to human beings as “Dasein” [as a noun] meaning perhaps, to emphasize the quality of being (verb) dasein (present) as a necessary condition to being a true human being i.e. someone who was aware and conscience of their being.
In Being and Time, Heidegger’s seminal work in philosophy, he uses the term “phenomenological testimony” to describe our ordinary everyday (“ontic”) experience of phenomena. Phenomenological experiences such as guilt and anxiety are defined to us in a matter that is ontological, that is, in terms of what they reveal about the things that are definitive of human existence. For example, Heidegger argues that our feelings of anxiety, testify to the “groundlessness” of human existence, in that any identity that defines who we are comes from the past which we cannot change or a future that is uncertain, except for the inevitability of death which is beyond our control.
Looking at this explanation for anxiety in the light of Husserl’s notion of “phenomenological reduction” and the necessity of bracketing our experiences in order to achieve the state of a true transcendent ego, we can see that what is left may be called “pure being” and is perhaps without a connection to any thing (not Dasein), or any other Dasein.
This leads to many popular critiques of phenomenology in general and Heidegger in particular, that Dasein may lead to an ontological condition known as “solipsism,” where the self is the primary determiner of reality. However, it may be argued that in the light of later existentialist philosophy, the notion that one is entirely responsible for their experience and their being, all ethical decisions are then completely “owned” by the agent or operator of action.
Certainly, this notion of true ownership may not alleviate the feeling of anxiety or nausea once a Dasein confronts their “uniqueness,” (and inevitable destruction), but idea may still give them a sense of control and power over their existence… especially as Nietszche would later “destroy God” and give man a chance to own his life and his choices and thus become the Ubermensch or Superman.
Anxious we may be, but this feeling is more of a growing pain than a hinderance.
Related articles by Zemanta
Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Being and Time, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein and Zeit, Edmund Husserl, German, German language, God, Human, Martin Heidegger, Necessary and sufficient condition, Philosophy