Task of Philosophy

The task of philosophy: learning
to see what you already see,
to understand what you already understand,
to know what you already know
and to know what you will never know.

Die Aufgabe der Philosophie: lernen
zu sehen, was du schon siehst,
zu verstehen, was du schon verstehst,
zu wissen, was du schon weißt,
und zu wissen, was du niemals wissen wirst.

Human body a used vehicle

I find it intriguing that soul, spirit, mind have traditionally been thought as having a location at all. A living being for Aristotle, e.g., is an _empsychon_ (e)/myuxon), and this has invariably been imagined as there being a soul inhabiting the body. But what about the converse hermeneutic, namely, the body inhabits, i.e. is in, the psyche, but not as a location? Why not: The immaterial, locationless psyche uses the body, thus enlivening it, just as mind (_nous_; nou=j) employs the human brain for its thinking? Modern science, of course, must scoff at this suggestion. Scientific method, from its basic (pre-)conception, is at a loss as to even approach the issues of mind, soul or consciousness, since it never occurs to science to ask what being itself -- and mind and soul as modes of being -- means.

Cf. e.g. the interesting ambiguity of Latin 'hospes', meaning both 'host' and 'guest', as in Hadrian's famous epitaph,

animula vagula blandula,

hospes comesque corporis,

which I translate against the conventional grain as
"Vagabonding, tender, little soul,
Host and companion to the body."

Embodied human being itself is 'ensouled' and 'enminded', thus enlivened and opened to the play of presencing and absencing as such in the time-clearing, for which it is used (gebraucht), to which it is ineludibly exposed. It is used also for the play of revealing and concealing, including even the self-concealing of the enigmatic abyss that is the clearing's heart. The play of presencing and absencing and the play of revealing and concealing cross as in a matrix, giving rise to various combinations, six in total.

The human body is a used vehicle.
Der menschliche Leib ist ein Gebrauchtwagen.

Further on concealment &c.: 5. Heidegger's reading of Parmenides radically simplified

Much occurs without taking place

Much occurs without taking place.
Vieles kommt vor, ohne stattzuhaben.

For instance, all the thoughts of a conceptual nature that occur to you have no place.

On the one hand, the mind is the same as the presencing and absencing of presents (occurrents) as such through which presents come to light. The temporally ecstatic play of presencing and absencing needs mind that is open to such a play to present itself as such. Otherwise the play of presencing and absencing is not, i.e. has no spectator and witness whatever.

On the other hand, space is spaced (eingeräumt) by extended, erected presents and absents (roughly: buildings, but also other large erected structures such as bridges) taking place within the time-clearing bestowed on human being. Human being itself is thus also implicitly spatial because it is always already out there also with extended things. There is not first of all an abstract space in general (such as imagined, say, by Newton and Kant) that is then filled with extended presents and absents in different places, but rather conversely: extended, erected things take their places, thus spacing space with local spots, paths and routes among them in the landscape, which itself is thereby spaced. The interconnected network of erected  things taking place spaces space, thus also making room for (smaller) things within the rooms of places.

Today's philosophers of space overlook this, complaining instead of a "privileging" or "prioritizing" of time over space in philosophical discourse, including Heidegger's phenomenology. They take both time and space for granted, neglecting the eventuating that grants.

Read on in Being Time Space

Modern science's impoverished metaphysics

All modern science must rely on experimental data that can only be given in the present, even when they refer to past occurrences. Usually, the scientist must be able to see these data, even though such seeing is invariably mediated by experimental apparatuses, today mostly enormously complex, data-records and long strings of references to trusted scientific literature that records ‘black on white’ the results of previous research. The experimental apparatuses themselves are conceived and constructed within the terms of a scientific theory, i.e. a model, that tells the scientist what he will ‘see’ via the mediation of this apparatus. Seeing is believing — that is, if you believe in seeing, and also in the model mediating this seeing. The metaphysics of modern science, with its insistence on a third-person access to the world in the present evidenced by experimental data has enormous consequences insofar as it demotes, and tendentially annihilates, the ontological status of other modes of world-access in which the second person and the other two temporal modes, past and future, as such come into play. These other modes are then ‘nothing’ compared to the hard exactness of hard science with its hard-data-fed mathematical hold on the world. But then phenomena such as love, empathy and trust have no place whatever ontologically in such a metaphysics, and practices such as psychoanalysis or psychotherapy, insofar as they rely essentially on the relating of dreams, phantasies and memories to a person of trust, must be regarded as not up to the scientific mark. Even more than that, any attempt to countenance and develop a metaphysics of the second person that ranges over all temporal dimensions must be fiercely combatted or brutally ignored. Nevertheless, modern science cannot deny the ontic occurrence of such-second-person phenomena within the scope of, and essential to, human experience of the world; it is just totally at a loss to say ontologically what mode of being they have, and does not even know, nor any interest in knowing, what ontology as the investigation of beings as beings, is. As such, modern science is in denial about its impoverished metaphysical state.

Arendt on phallic whoness

"In the section on Action in The Human Condition, Arendt does make use of the insight into plurality to introduce the problematic of how human beings “disclose” themselves “to each other” (24:176) as “who” (24:178) in “speech and action” (Gk: le/cij, pra=cij cf. 4:25), human plurality itself being “the basic condition of both action and speech” (24:175). She sees clearly that the question regarding “who somebody is” (25:181) has to be clearly distinguished from that concerning “what he is” (25:181), where this what is explicated as “his qualities, gifts, talents, and shortcomings” (24:179) that he “shares with others like him” (25:181). The shift of focus to what, that is determined in the third person singular, has “the result that his specific uniqueness escapes us” (25:181). By contrast, who someone is, is disclosed to others through
words and deeds, especially works and deeds of love, that reveal this who’s uniqueness, which is impossible “without a name” (24:180). Bearing a unique, proper name is hence a hallmark of whoness, but Arendt does not say as much explicitly, although this lies deep in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Nor does she use the term ‘whoness’ or ‘quissity’ to mark this dimension of social interaction among human beings off from the traditional category of ‘whatness’ or ‘quiddity’. “Who” for Arendt is in any case explicitly a category or dimension of disclosure, of revelation, and that within the shared public realm in which name-bearing “men” show to each other who they are through word and deed." (p.81) 

"This inconclusiveness and uncertainty constitute for her the “frailty of human affairs” whose remedy, she claims, was sought by the Greeks in the founding of a the po/lij as the “space of appearance” (27:198) in which “men” strive for “immortal fame” (27:193), i.e. a standing presence within togetherness with others whose standingness is given by the appreciative reflections from the others. The “prototype of action for Greek antiquity” is imbued with “the so-called agonal spirit, the passionate drive to show one’s self in measuring up against others that underlies the concept of politics prevalent in the city-states” (27:194). ... The end of the po/lij, its raison d’être, is therefore to provide the space of togetherness for the contestation among whos of their phallic, standing presence through speaking and acting. Phallic whoness as a mode of presencing is therefore the essence of the polis, i.e. of worldsharing,...Action, in Arendt’s sense, is therefore, properly speaking, the interplay of whos striving for phallic, standing presence in contest with one another whose result is, hopefully, lasting, indeed immortal fame. Such interplay is a power play. The ontology of phallic whoness, of course, is only ever tantalizingly implicit in Arendt." (pp.88f) 

Read on: Digital Whoness.

Deutschlandreise

Die freiheitliche demokratische Grund-Ordnung entlang,
Man fährt von Freiheit ab — und kommt in Ordnung an.

Hiatus singularity/universality

"Insofar as there remains a kind of questioning thinking in philosophy
and art beyond or outside or beside reason consummated in a purportedly
final, settled, absolute knowledge and ethical life, i.e. a kind of thinking in the
lacuna outside reason’s ambit hitherto, more or less in conformity with an
historically given casting of being, the recognition accorded to individual
self-consciousness as citizen by the “honour through the office that it
holds, through the business it operates and through its other working
activity” (Ehre durch das Amt, das er bekleidet, durch das von ihm
betriebene Gewerbe und durch seine sonstige arbeitende Tätigkeit, Hegel Enz.
§ 432 Add.) itself becomes vain and empty and cannot satisfy vital,
singular, thinking, questioning individuality. An uncanny hiatus, be it at
first ever so slight and inconspicuous, opens up, or rather, singularity and
universality were never truly closed together in a final historical
conclusion. Even in being acknowledged abstractly in its individual human
rights and enjoying the freedom of movement of particularity (which are
the great historical achievements of the West), singular individuality
therefore remains always eerily unhoused, ‘unbelonging’ and isolated
(vereinzelt, singularized, individualized) in the midst of historically
realized, ethically cemented reason, for it is left ill at ease with the claim of
infinite, absolute reason to have attained final historical consummation in
the social institutions of substantive, consolidated, objective spirit that
purportedly constitute self-consciousness’s highest identity, its ostensibly
unsurpassable, sublime belongingness to the world. In such an ever-broken
mediation between singularity and universality concretely realized in
ethical life, historical time sputters." (p.562)  Read on in Social Ontology.