Falling and Throwness

From Being and Time:

Idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity characterize the way in which, in an everyday manner, Dasein is its 'there' - the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world. As definite characteristics, these are not present-at-hand in Dasein, but help make up its Being. In these, and in the way they are interconnected in their being, there is revealed a basic kind of Being which belongs to everydayness; we call this the "falling" of Dasein. (p. 219)

Idle talk and ambiguity, having seen everything, develop the suposition that Dasein's disclosedness. which is so available and so prevalent, can guarantee to Dasein that all possibilities of its Being will be secure, genuine and full. Through the self certainty and decidedness of the "they", it gets spread abroad increasingly that there is no need of authentic understanding or the state-of-mind that goes with it. The supposition of the "they" that one is for which everything is 'in the best of order' and all doors are open. Falling Being-in-the-world, which tempts itself, is at the same time tranquillizing.
However, this tranquillity in inauthentic Being does not seduce one into stagnation and inactivity, but drives one into uninhibited 'hustle'. Being-fallen into the 'world' does not now somehow come to rest. (p. 222)

The tempting tranquillization aggravates the falling. Versatile curiosity and restlessly "knowing it all" masquerade as a universal understanding of Dasein. (p. 222)

Falling Being-in-the-world is not only tempting and tranquillizing it is at the same time alienating. (p. 222)

The alienation of falling - at once tempting and tranquillizing - leads by its own movement, to Dasein's getting entangled in itself. (p. 223)

Is this of playing and being played?

Dasein plunges out of itself into itself, into the groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic everydayness. But this plunge remains hidden from Dasein by the way things have been publically interpreted, so much so, indeed, that it gets interpreted as a way of 'ascending' and 'living concretely'. (p. 223)

Is this a description of Dasein subsumed by 'the game'?

Dasein's facticity is such that as long as it is what it is, Dasein remains in the throw, and is sucked into the turbulence of the "they's" inauthenticity. Throwness, in which facticity lets itself be seen phenomenally, belongs to Dasein, for which, in its Being, that very Being is an issue. Dasein exists factically. (p. 223)

Dasein can fall only because Being-in-the-world understandingly with a state-of-mind is an issue for it. On the other hand, authentic existence is not something which floats above the falling everdayness; existentially, it is only a modified way in which such everydayness is seized upon. (p. 224)

Might playfulness as a state-of-mind allow Dasein the freedom to travel the roads between the authentic and inauthentic?

This freedom might be an understanding act of travelling. I am tempted to say is not a resistance to falling and that it may be falling with authenticity. Embracing the authentic and inauthentic, what is Dasein's own, what is shared and what is other. Is there a possibility that in this travel itself a transcendence of what is authentic and inauthentic may occur?

Falling reveals an essential ontological structure of Dasein itself. Far from determining its nocturnal side, it constitutes all Dasein's days in their everydayness. (p. 224)

Authentic learning (I use this phrase with trepidation) seems to require immersion in the everyday with the awareness of that leads to deeper understanding. Playfulness may be able to provide a state-of-mind that allows for a freedom as understanding of moving between (or transcending?) the authentic and inauthentic ways of Being. What else might be required? Can playfulness as a state-of-mind be further explored so it has as its understanding authentic learning as well as freedom? Or could a further state-of-mind, with its own system of understanding, disclosedness and modes of discourse etc, fill this void intertwined with playfulness? If so, would this state-of-mind always be the same or differ under changing circumstances? Or have I just go too far?

And a quote to make me hold my horses:

The being of that disclosedness is constituted by states-of-mind, understanding, and discourse. Its everyday kind of Being is characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. These show us the movement of falling, with temptation, tranquillizing, alienation, and entanglement as its essintial characteristics.
But with this analysis, the whole existential constitution of Dasein has been laid bare inits principal features, and we have obtained the phenomenal ground for a 'comprehensive' Interpretation of Dasein's Being as care. (p. 224)

Meaning and intelligibility

Cheers enowning for pointing out something I had missed in Being and Time.

Idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity.

From Being and Time:

...when Dasein maintains itself in idle talk, it is - as Being-in-the-world - cut off from its promary and primordially genuine relationships-of-Being towards the world, towards its very being-in. p. (214)

The basic state of sight shows itself in a particular tendency-of-Being which belongs to everydayness - the tendency towards 'seeing'. We designate this tendency by the term "curiosity", which characteristically is not confined to seeing, but expresses a tendency towards a peculiar way of letting the world be encountered by us in perception. (p. 214)

[Aristotle] The care for seeing is essential to man's being. (p. 215)

What is to be said about this tendency just to perceive? Which existential state of Dasein will become intelligible in the phenomenon of curiosity? Being in the world is proximally absorbed in the world of concern. This concern is guided by circumspection, which discovers the ready-to-hand and preserves it as thus discovered. (p. 216)

When curiosity has become free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards it) but in order to see. (p. 216)

Curiosity is everywhere and nowhere. This mode of Being-in-the-world reveals a new kind of Being of everyday Dasein - a kind in which Dasein is constantly uprooting itself. Idle talk controls even the ways in which one may be curious. It says what one "must" have read and seen. In being everywhere and nowhere, curiosity is delivered over to idle talk. These two everyday modes-of-being for discourse and sight are not just present-at-hand side by side in their tendency to uproot, but either of these ways-to-be drags the other one with it. (p. 217)

This brings to mind some staffroom conversations I have had!

When, in our everyday Being-with-one-another, we encounter the sort of thing which is accessible to to everyone, and about which anyone can say anything, it soon becomes impossible to decide what is disclosed in a genuine understanding, and what is not. This ambiguity extends not only to the world, but just as much to Being-with-one-another as such, and even to Dasein's Being towards itself. (p. 217)

Thus Dasein's understanding in the "they" is constantly going wrong in its projects, as regards the genuine possibilities of Being. Dasein is always ambiguously 'there' - that is to say, in that public disclosedness of Being-with-one-another where the loudest idle talk and the most ingenious curiosity keep 'things moving', where, in an everyday manner, everything (and at the bottom nothing) is happening. (pp. 218-9)

Being-with-one-another in the "they" is by no means an indifferent side-by-side-ness in which everything has been settled, but rather an intent, ambiguous watching of one another, a secret and reciprocal listening-in. Under the mask of "for-one-another", an "against-one-another" is in play.
In this connection, we must notice that ambiguity does not first arise from aiming explicitly at disguise or distortion, and that it is not something which the individual Dasein first conjures up. (p. 219)

Could authentic learning be thought of as a mode of discourse which avoids idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity as framed by Heidegger? This may be direction for the nuts and bolts of my inquiry!

Being there and discourse

More from Heidegger: The fundamental existentialia which constitute the

Being of the "there", the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, are states-of-mind and understanding. In understanding, there lurks the possibility of interpretation - that is, of appropriating what is understood. In so far as a state-of-mind is equiprimordial with an act of understanding, it maintains itself in a certain understanding. (p. 203)

Does learning - when described with assertion and interpretation - feed directly back into freedom as an understanding which discloses playfulness? Possibly - a sense of freedom may engender learning and learning may enhance the understanding that is freedom. This is interesting cold learning be associated with freedom in addition to other understandings?

In clarifying the third signification of assertion as communication (speaking forth), we were led to the concepts of "saying" and "speaking", to which we had purposely given no attention up to that point. The fact that language now becomes our theme for the first time will indicate that this phenomenon has its roots in the existential constitution of Dasein's disclosedness. The existential-ontological foundation of language is discourse or talk. This phenomenon is one of which we have been making constant use already in our foregoing Interpretation of state-of-mind, understanding, interpretation, and assertion... (p. 203)

Discourse is existentially equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding. The intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there is any appropriative interpretation of it. Discourse is the Articulation of intelligibility. Therefore it underlies both interpretation and assertion. (pp. 203-4)

The way in which discourse gets expressed is language. (p. 204)

I would prefer not to limit discourse to language. Discourse with oneself and others seems to me to have many other forms - of which language is an important, shared and obvious one. I would like to think that intelligibility can be articulated in many ways.

Discoursing or talking is the way in which we articulate 'significantly' the intelligibility of being-in-the-world. Being-with belongs to Being-in-the-world, which in every case maintains itself in some definite way of concernful Being-with-one-another. (p. 204)

'Communication' in which one makes assertions - giving information, for instance - is a special case of that communication which is grasped in principle existentially. In the more general kind of communication, the Articulation of Being with one another understandingly is constituted. Through it a co-state-of-mind gets 'shared', and so does the understanding Being-with. Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of ones subject into the interior of another. Dasein-with is already essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co-understanding. In discourse Being-with becomes 'explicitly' shared; that is to say, it is already, but it is unshared as something that has not been taken hold of and appropriated. (p. 205)

In talking, Dasein expresses itself not because it has, in the first instance, been encapsulated as something 'internal' over against something outside, but because as Being-in-the-world it is already 'outside' when it understands. What is expressed is precisely this Being-outside - that is to say, the way one currently has a state-of-mind (mood), which we have shown to pertain to the full disclosedness of Being-in. Being-in and its state-of-mind are known in discourse and indicated in language by intonation, modulation, the tempo of talk, 'the way of speaking'. In 'poetical' discourse, the communication of the existential possibilities of one's state-of-mind can become an aim in itself, and this amounts to a disclosing of existence. (p. 205)

Ah, a sigh of relief. For me, at least, this seems to mean we do not have to limit our discourse to language, although we cannot deny its importance in Being-with. These quotes make me smile too - I am really interested in the co-state-of-mind, in particular in playfulness as a co-state-of-mind and the freedoms subsequently disclosed.

Keeping silent authentically is possible only in genuine discoursing. To be able to be kept silent, Dasein, must have something to say - that is, it must have at its disposal an authentic and rich disclosedness in itself. (p. 208)

Intriguing...

Our Interpretation of language has been designed merely to point out the ontological 'locus' of this phenomenon in Desein's state of Being... (p. 210)