Disjunctive Heidegger: on the Necessity of the Question?

B^T 1 [2,1]: “ And when Hegel finally defines "being" as the "indeterminate immediate," and makes this definition the foundation of all the further categorial explications of his Logic, he remains within the perspective of ancient ontology-except that he gives up the problem, raised early on by Aristotle, of the unity of being in contrast to the manifold of "categories" with material content.”

Peirce had been dead for 13 years by the time Being and Time was published, however if you read “On a New List of Categories” the material is virtually identical, minus the Hegelian schism. Hegel disjuncts; Peirce conjuncts.

The disjunct is particularly apt to the problems of the subject at hand. The Cogito is open to outside influence, Leibniz’ criticism, in allowing unconscious perceptions into judgement. As noted by Jung, word associations disclose complexes and an unconscious complex can take over the persona. This is generally an outline for Jung’s description of Nietzsche’s mental breakdown.

A thought provoked by the Leo Strauss Foundation on X

Dasein is constrained to the corporality of its experience while looking out the door of ontology. Dasein cares, the Heideggerian Cogito, stretched out to the complexity of second order predication. The “thinking” subject, “I”, is to the self what a point is to geometric space. The “I” is like a shadow on the wall of its own corporeal experience: a particular point with spatial potential. The pragmatic question is how to mobilize the object of experience toward the potential of futurity.

Heidegger and Strauss

 Transcendent truth is not necessarily falsehood (bivalence), it is mere experience yet to be had, understood and determined true or false. But, this shows what Heidegger is getting at with the notion of Dasein, that its being is not the being of things at hand, but is the being of the indeterminate immediate, a notion with continuity of meaning between Hegel, Peirce and Heidegger. 

C. S. Peirce had an example in the form of the question “What is the color of paint at the point where two different colors of paint meet?” The answer is, both colors. The intent of the question is to keep the mode of inquiry open until the question can be suitably demonstrated. The being of Dasein, unlike some questions of pragmaticism, has no end to be suitably demonstrated, but nevertheless becomes constrained in time by death.

Since there is no such thing as a private language, then language is a public medium. The end of freedom of speech is in the saying, not the constraint of language to keep speech from being said. The fact that language is a medium is important for freedom of speech in at least two regards. 1) for the maintenance of freedom of speech. 

2) “For being that is mediated, we shall reserve the expression Existenz” Hegel, Philosophy of Spirit. Existenz is also referred to as Dasein, with the qualification that all Dasien is determinate being, but not all determinate being is Dasien (Hegel, Science of Logic, di Giovanni translation.) The issue here is mediation.

Language is mediated in the public sphere, hence it is a form of determinate being. Dasein is also determinate being and one mechanism seems evident, language. This much can be derived from Hegel and Heidegger. How the mechanism works is not clear in these philosophers, so C.S. Peirce’s notion of mediation from his Semeiotics will be adopted. The sign always mediates between the object and the interpretant.

To clarify: insofar as we move from object to interpretant, it is determinate being {Kant: understanding}; insofar as we move from interpretant to object, it is indeterminate {Kant: reason}. 

It was Descartes’ hypothesis that has brought us to a conundrum in need of clarification. Note that the sole criterion for the validity of a hypothesis is whether or not it posses a heuristic value, whether it has explanatory power or not. What is that hypothesis? The Cogito, which bases an infallible inference on doubt. The Cogito is based on Cartesian doubt, yet concludes with the infallibility of a clear idea, which Kant “dogmatically adopted”. 

“Such was the distinction of Descartes, and ones sees that it was precisely on the level of his philosophy. It was somewhat developed by Leibnitz*. This great and singular genius was as remarkable for what he failed to see as for what he saw. That a piece of mechanism could not do work perpetually without being fed power in some form, was a thing perfectly apparent to him; yet he did not understand that the machinery of the mind can only transform knowledge (ens increatum), but never originate it, unless it be fed with facts of observation (ens creatum). He thus missed the most essential point of the Cartesian philosophy, which is, that to accept propositions which seem perfectly evident to us is a thing which, whether it be logical or illogical, we cannot hep doing.” (EP1: 126.)

I added the parenthetical content to contrast that Heidegger understood this about Descartes, and set out to destructure ontology.

I will here conjecture that it is Heidegger’s ultimate contribution to political philosophy that he distinguishes 1st order ontic beings from 2nd order ontological being, with out the semeiotic foresight that both token and type are determinate and to different degrees. They are both subject to mediation as is demonstrated in The One Law of Mind. Heidegger’s latter notion of Dasein as historical attempts to look at time, but Peirce’s notion of Abduction proposes a clearer forward view (weathervane), perhaps one of the “boundaries” mentioned by Heidegger in section 6.

The notion of Heidegger’s Being and Time as political philosophy is taken from the cue in Strauss’ essay “What is Political Philosophy,” where he mentions that the proper form of Political Philosophy is presented as a treatise: “explicitly” the ontological priority in the business of philosophers. And it is my previsionary hypothesis that Strauss means treatise in a similar sense that Heidegger means historical. 

*Leibniz used the term ‘apperception’ to criticize Descartes’ Cogito for allowing unconscious perception into judgment; unconscious perception: Jung's complex.