How is it with being in Iraq?

Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online is back in Baghdad. He's in a car with two other Iraqi journalists.

There's a checkpoint ahead. Incoming traffic has to slow down in front of a Hummer of the Iraqi Defense Forces. A soldier is talking to the driver of a van. Suddenly there is a shot. The soldier falls to the ground, right before our eyes, screaming in pain. He is not dead instantly. His companion, by the Hummer, takes some time to react, then also starts shooting. People duck in their cars; general wisdom is that if these were US troops, they would be shooting at random and every car would be sprayed with bullets.

With Escobar's account, one is light years away from the kind of being Heidegger chooses to discuss in Being and Time or its companion piece, "The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics" in Introduction to Metaphysics (trans. Fried and Polt), Yale, 2000. The first line of the latter is "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?" Under what circumstances is a question like that going to arise? Shall we assume that the checkpoint scene described by Escobar is one where such a question not only would not be asked, but would be regarded as perverse?

Heidegger worries a lot about the claim that philosophy, in general, is useless, and that his philosophizing, in particular, exaggerates and intensifies this uselessness. Here's an instance of his reaction to such a charge:

Everything that reaches us and that we reach out for goes through the spoken or unspoken "it is." That this is the case -- from that fact we can nowhere and never escape. The "is" remains known to us in all its obvious and concealed inflections. And yet, as soon as this word "being" strikes our ear, we assert that we cannot imagine what falls under the term, that we cannot be thinking of anything when using it.
   Presumably this hasty conclusion is correct; it justifies our being annoyed at talk -- not to say idle talk -- about "being," so annoyed that "being" becomes a laughingstock. Without giving thought to being, without recollecting a path to it, one has the presumption to make oneself the court that decides whether the word "being" speaks or not. Hardly anyone takes offense anymore at having thoughtlessness in this way elevated to a principle. ("Kant's Thesis about Being" in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill, Cambridge, 1998, p. 337.)

And yet when Heidegger provides examples of being, he is quite constrained. For someone who believes that death is the real horizon of being that makes time possible, his examples are decidedly angst-ish. Is that because scenes like Escobar's are too "busy" to be dealing with being? Better to reserve recollecting a path to being when one is bored, or when one is having trouble deciding between scratching one's nose or saving the world. "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?" is a question that comes up, Heidegger says,

In great despair, for example, when all weight tends to dwindle away from things and the sense of things grows dark, the question looms. Perhaps it strikes only once, like the muffled tolling of a bell that resounds into Dasein and gradually fades away. The question is there in heartfelt joy, for then all things are transformed and surround us as if for the first time, as if it were easier to grasp that they were not, rather than that they are, and are as they are. The question is there in a spell of boredom, when we are equally distant from despair and joy, but when the stubborn ordinariness of beings lays open a wasteland in which it makes no difference to us whether beings are or not -- and then, in a distinctive form, the question resonates once again: Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? ("The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics," pp. 1-2.)

And yet in a certain sense the question of "being" is more radically posed in Escobar's checkpoint experience. A shot rings out, but the soldier "is not dead instantly." His colleague is shot, but the other soldier "takes some time to react" because the suddenness of the threat to being is unexpected. The question of being is pushed away in the midst of an immediate threat to being. But not to worry. Perhaps while everyone is so busy securing being the question of it is bracketed, but in fact the challenge to being presented by these experiences will return to demand a hearing.

The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed since April 2003, the more than 4 million exiled and internally displaced, the overlapping ethnic cleansing neighborhood by neighborhood, the abysmal impotence of the Nuri al-Maliki government to seriously work with the Sunni Arab elite, the American imposition of the Baghdad gulag: all these factors dissolve in the deadly embrace of the Red Zone -- where a human life means absolutely nothing and to stay alive in one piece is a victory to be earned minute by minute. The Red Zone soundtrack is the hum of the power generator, punctuated by Kalashnikov shots, explosions, bombings, the sirens of police cars and ambulances and the roar of US choppers flying almost at roof level. The air is heavy, dusty, and the sun usually does not shine through the thick haze -- a Hollywood-like special effect. The Baghdad gulag has the feel of an eerie version of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles -- dusty and dead instead of glitzy palm trees, living-dead characters covered by a thick layer of sand and soot. The urban tissue is of a dissected cadaver -- filthy, exposed parts separated from one another, fear and loathing impressed on blood, sweat, tears and viscera. This is the real face of Bush's surgeland.

Comments

[CBR]

I'm not sure why the existence of certain crises or limit situations where access to the question of being as Heidegger frames it is not possible leads to the conclusion that Heidegger's philosophy is out of touch with life as it is lived, or the real issue of being; this seems like a non-sequitor. Heidegger himself frames this problem when he talks about fear vs. angst.

I think part of the problem is a mistaken equation of ontic=unimportant or secondary. Most of the very most important things that confront us are ontic matters.

In the case of an immediately life-threatening situation, my horrorat a specific danger would merge with my angst about my being; these would become one in a certain sense. Heidegger thinks more ordinary situations are more fruitful for his analysis, not more important or more typical of our innermost humanity. So I'm not sure what the thrust of your Heidegger remarks is.

[Swifty]

Well I'm wondering why Heidegger thinks that, and wondering too about how the choice of examples skews the text, if any, and then just honestly wondering how Heidegger's thinking would impact the kind of scene Escobar describes, where danger to one's existence is present. But I join you in thinking Heidegger's thinking on being is not irrelevant to the kind of scene Escobar describes. If I gave the impression that I thought Heidegger thought life as lived was unimportant, I regret it. I actually don't think much of the claim that philosophy or Heidegger's version of it is 'irrelevant,' but I am struck at the number of times Heidegger addresses this attack. Adorno is also a regular commentator on this topic.

[Malfeasancio]

Heidegger and Adorno! Yes/ there's a pair. Kant and Nietzsche. Hitler Stalin.

like Nietzsche, Heidegger DETESTED f-n marxists and socialists: haven't you figured that out?

[CBR]

Yeah, those are valid questions. I think it actually does point to an important philosophical question about Being and Time, which is to what extent a hermeneutics of facticity disfigures the purity of ontological analysis, making SZ (to quote Nietzsche) an "impossible book." So on second thought, the choice of examples must be anything but innocent. This relates to the last thread--SZ fails because it cannot both be a transcendental ontology and a hermeneutics of facticity. Being must be historically determined, even in its horizons. So there must be certain practical assumptions informing the choice of examples, and more than examples, what Heidegger calls the "factical ideal."

[Cornchops]

This is an interesting combination, and I mostly agree with the comments made. I would add, I think in concord, that thinkers who undertake ontologies are not necessarily laying claim to all of being, such that a pointed example could disprove their 'hypothesis.' An ontology, like any work of writing or any thoughtful art will reflect the place from which it is written more than it will discover essential truths (it could discover contingent truths > ?). Maybe Heidegger was trying to achieve an awareness of that in his writing? And now I'll get petty: I find it funny when scholars try to "apply" an ontology to their special interests, hence the scores of essays on what Deleuze can teach us about nursing or why Badiou vindicates Global Warming or Heidegger and the telephone (Freud and Dinosaurs: see the pun?). Of course, if an ontology is at all rigorous, it might have something to say about most facets of life, but that does not mean that it deserves to be "applied" a la conjectures and refutations. What does one do with an ontology? Rude, I know. What's my point... maybe just appreciate the wierdness of Heidegger and don't expect so much from your ontologists.

Oh, and PJ: it was "primal scenes."

[Cornchops]

sorry, a clarification. I'm not suggesting you're trying to "apply" Heidegger to Iraq; I think your setup is really interesting (like I said), not an application but a, what, a tension, a montage. Mine was a comment about the uses and abuses of ontology that flowed more naturally from things I later edited out. Yeesh! Trying to keep it civil, as I know H-dog gets the angries.

[Mowbray]

The first line of the latter is "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?"

Another bon mot demonstrating Heidegger's crypto-theologian-ness. And really to answer that requires a rather Kierkegaardian sort of dive, does it not? The point being (no pun intended) that any great causal Being is not substantially different than JHVH in his various manifestations: so is a nuke-equipped supercarrier (or perception thereof) a manifestation of Gott-Being? Not likely: the northern primates just have more effective clubs than the desert chimps have.

[Joseph Kugelmass]

At the moment that such an event takes place, there is, of course, not time to ponder the fundamental questions of metaphysics. However, that does not mean that the situation is not constructed from long before by metaphysical fields, including theology and doctrines of right and force.

We are probably all familiar with The Stranger, a novel where a very similar crisis -- an unplanned and unjust shooting -- proves uninterpretable until the question of Being is raised.

[00100100]

Shakespeare's in Hell. First noble Twooth

[Tom]

I remember the year before last chatting in London with the son of an Iraqi academic still living in Baghdad, and the son told me good-naturedly his father must be going senile or something because he kept asking him to bring back a couple of books, a blue one and a brown one, no title or anything. I suddenly had a thought and I suggested maybe he'd meant Wittgenstein and the son replied oh my God, maybe that was who he said. Even at that time I gather the father had been threatened at gunpoint more than once by a student keen not to fail his class. A random anecdote, but it maybe in such terrible circumstances abstraction and abstract philosophical questions can become a desperate need.

[Tom]

By the way, if cornchops is still around, he/she might find this worth a giggle.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bsc/jan/2002/00000040/00000001/art00005

I am a nurse, btw.

[Swifty]

A kind of Heideggerian psychoanalysis would not be too difficult to imagine -- especially since what else is Derrida up to. We're all familiar with stories of Iraq war veterans (and before them Vietnam War veterans, and before that "The Best Days of Our Lives") having a lot of difficulty resetting to the normal American level of being. Some reup because they can't imagine readjusting and are more comfortable back in Iraq. In fact, re-enlistment rates are probably one of the things keeping this tottering war effort moving forward. (Very high cash bonuses for re-enlistment also play a role.) Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome -- it's a kind of "culture shock," perhaps.

[CBR]

I thought reenlistment was low, hence the "stop-loss" policies.

There was a Heideggerian psychoanalysis movement, with one Medard Boss at the helm, apparently. He wrote a few books about it which I haven't read, but one can read Marty himself teaching the practicioners of "Daseinanalysis" in the Zollikon Seminars, and it's a fascinating book because in the 60s Heidegger is again talking in Being and Time-y terms.

[Nadaland]

that's right swifty-cheK; do your stalinism-lite. Heidegger the clown would most likely approve of the war, as he approves of locking up soi-disant leftists.................

[Swifty]

Hey CBR thanks for the Zollikon reference. I'm going to go check it out right now.