A Note on the World Picture

In contrast to the modern age of the world picture, Heidegger invokes the world of the Greeks:

“Man is the one who is looked upon by that which is; he is the one who is – in company with itself – gathered toward presencing, by that which opens itself. to be beheld by what is, to be included and maintained within its openness and in that way to be born along by it, to be driven about by its oppositions and marked by its discord – that is the essence of man in the age of the Greeks.”

‘to be driven about..” Note how man is here the object of something which encompasses and precedes him. As such, he must attune himself to, respond to that prior world and the demands it makes. For the Greeks, says Heidegger, the world is an extended or continuous question addressed to man. Man is defined by this answerability to this address; he is beholden to that which beholds him. The presence of the non-human works to distribute across humanity a kind of ontological humility.

All this (irrespective of whether it accurately ‘depicts’ the Greeks) is significant as the exact reverse of modern man. We look at, direct and interrogate the world – an interrogation always for human ends. We do not apprehend the world we represent or enframe it. We render it as a picture.

The idea is that to render something as a ‘picture’ is to render it manipulable. The proverbial Lacanian mirror image: the self has slipped inside a frame and become, thereby, an object of control. To say picture is to imply frame. The picture is framed by and for us. And the frame sunders us from the world, is an immediate exemption certificate.

It’s here I’d like to pause again. I wonder if the notion of the modern world picture, and its contrast to that other sense of being ‘beheld’ by the world, can productively be brought into proximity with some of what Lacan says about picturing and about the ‘gaze’ as embedded in the world outside us. For Lacan too speaks of being seen by things, by ‘points’ outside us in the world, but this within a rather different set of concerns and problems from Heidegger. So there may be no overlap here. These two ‘genres’ of thinking may be simply on different planes. Any comments welcome.

Comments

[Steve]

Sorry, my argument is kind of fragmented...but these are tough questions you raise...and maybe you can join together what I am saying. And kindly avoid any type of "blogger depression".

For me, it comes down to: these are varying opinions about what is "behind" the image or "picture."

For Heidegger, it is Dasein. Some thing real and supersenuous, but "hidden," that manifests itself in the image of the "World." In other words, our "being" is a picture that is framed by "Being" or the "One". Dasein preceded the world; It will even survive without the existence of the World! Hell, it will even eventually create a world without man at all, but possibly a "higher" technology. But still, this superior "Dasein" manifests itself through the totality of "being"...aka the "World"...in whatever form that takes.

But when I capture an image, I am not capturing the World...or any totality at all. As a matter of fact, I only see one side of the subject; the rest remains hidden. I can either turn the subject, for my purposes, to see the other sides, or, I can change my location as an observer and travel around the subject to see the other sides. But whichever I choose, something that was once visible, now disappears, or it is blocked by a "fold." And yet, I know that it is there, on the "other" side...and if I reverse my directions, it will become visible to me again. This is the nature of our vision: it is always limited or enframed or blocked.

For "modern man," what stands behind our limited vision is not Dasein, it is nothingness. And, if I travel around a mirror, I will find nothing there. But, because I know that nothing is behind the mirror, I become fascinated with what I see in the mirror. An image opens our future up to new possibilities and critiques. Yes, a mirror has a frame. But, I can move in the frame or out of the frame at will.

I look at a mirror to critique - to see how something appears to me - before I decide to buy 'it' or take 'it' back...since changes / exchanges can be made at will. Whereas, I have no way of critiquing "Being" or essence: these things have merely become my constraints. An image, on the other hand, as you say, Mark, is "manipulable".

With "being," you have nothing "special"...because there is no real possibility to change it. One's life has already been decided by the "One"; and the "nothingness" one feels as a result is called "anxiety." Yes, one can choose to become "inauthentic" in response to this "nothingness," or, they can resign themselves peaceably to their "thrown-ness"..but no "being" can really critique the "Being" it is a small part of.

Image, on the other hand, loans us its prestige. We can even make something appear to be real, when it is not.

So with an image, our vision, which is our interpretation, structured upon possibility and critique, is based upon error and false representation, since nothingness is behind it. Whereas, with
Heidegger, we have an anxiety or a "nothingness" that blinds us to any real possibility and critique...since representation (or "truth") comes before any kind of interpretation.

Question: What kind of nothingness would you rather have?

[Steve]

Oh, by the by...about the connection with Lacan's Mirror Stage...here is an excerpt of "Making Something out of Nothing: Lacan and Nietzsche on reading philosophy" by Joanne Faulkner, 2003...I have been talking about it on my blog too.

"...the concept of nothing negates ‘unity,’ just as unity is determined by the nothingness that permeates it.

A third sense in which there is nothing behind the mirror can be understood more literally, and recalls Lacan’s demonstration in Écrits. The difference, he says, between the chimpanzee, which is rather more mature in the order of motor coordination, and the incoherent infant — the important difference that will render one a speaking subject and the other a mere ape — is that the child realises that there is no thing behind the mirror that gives the appearance, that there is no second child, and yet is still enthralled by the image. The chimpanzee will pass its hand behind the mirror, and when it is found to be empty, will dismiss the whole thing. The child, on the other hand, is “captured” by the empty image, which from this point onward becomes a symbol of her self, by which she organises her bodily experience, her relation to others, the meaning of the world. The empty image is a pure Gestalt, a form, always ready to organise an inchoate content that the child is only too willing to provide. The gap between the uncoordinated child and the unified image thus appears to have been closed, in this premature encounter. The closing of the gap seems to be evidenced in the child’s jubilation at the sight of its image. Yet, tragically, the euphoria of misrecognition is where the gap opens: the moment that precipitates the slide backwards into anxiety about disunity, the body-in-bits-and-pieces.

After the mirror stage, the symbol comes to perform the role that the mirror image initiated. In itself, it is empty: it is a presence that signifies absence. But the emptiness of its structure organises our world such that, even momentarily, we can reproduce a feeling of jubilation at the prospect of unity, or at least keep anxiety at bay. For instance, the child says ‘Dada’ because Dada is away, and thus she recalls him to her. The signifier is predicated upon the possibility of absence, and absence gives rise to the signifier. Yet absence, and the anxiety that it arouses, are even conceivable only after the initial organising gesture of the child’s recognition — or misrecognition (méconnaissance) — of itself in the mirror. There is no sense of absence without the sign, or the image, that stands in for presence and unity. Accordingly, Nothingness’s proper home is the symbol that promises wholeness."

[amie]

A couple of points I do not quite understand:
"Note how man is here [for the Greeks] the object of something which encompasses and precedes him."
But isn't Heidegger's entire argument that for the "Greeks" man is not thought in terms of subject-object?
A little later you suggest that Heidegger's depiction of the Greeks is "significant as the exact reverse of modern man."
Is the suggestion that the Greek and the modern for Heidegger are two symmetrical, opposed terms?

Putting the question of the Weltbild in such terms, runs the risk of minimizing that Heidegger is attempting to think the Weltbild in its historicity (Geschichte).
And with Lacan, doesn't the "mirror stage" have a temporal-genetic dimension?

[Newapple1]

Thanks for the post!
http://www.exactboots.com/vero-cuoio-replicas-1094.html