Schickelgrüber*s
*Being*

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The
Ontological Difference.
Or
An Existentialist  Play on Words




A Comedy of The Third Reich 
  by
Martin (Heil der Fuhrer) Heidegger

(Nazi Party Membership Card Number: 312589)



Starring
Sebastiania Snide
as


(Hannah (Candle in-the-Window) Arendt


and featuring

The Captivating



Frau Elfride (Elefantarsch) Heidegger

As the Lovely*Daseina*
*Being There*  as a Nazi  (in a big way)

                                *Dear Patron of the Existentialist Theater of the Absurd:

The title of this piece does not refer to, or insinuate that anyone who reads this is a*dummy,* but is meant as an allusion to those ubiquitous introductory yellow books to be found on the shelves of most bookshops –*Windows for Dummies* or  *Excel for Dummies* etc. Whereas those worthy yellow books are targeted to further an understanding of the computer and other matters, this piece addresses the equally fascinating area of linguistic semiotics and how Heidegger*s misunderstanding of a certain vital component of this coding led him in such a disastrous direction.

We must however face up to the sad fact that there exist in western society at large, and in academia in particular, many people in positions of some influence and  power, who, in  the word*s of Lewis Carroll's  Red Queen, could believe: *as many as six impossible things before breakfast time , * and in order to be able to combat this cognitive cancer in our society we must make an effort to understand this transcendentalist drivel in order to oppose it. The publishers of the:  *For Dummies...*   books are in no way connected with this posting, for [as yet] there is no book with the title  *Dasein for Dummies.*

*Existence* or *Being* can never be a predicate – never a  so-called *property* or the existential mode of an entity's presence.   The key to an understanding of  existence is an understanding of the *attributive of modality*  of the word *BE* in its many conjugational guises. (was, were, is, am, are, being, etc.)

The Daseinic  mechanism is Heidegger's  attempt at a grammatical and semantic transcendentalist trick in order to elevate  existence or  BEING to the ontological status of a predicate.

Annabelle is the sum of her total existential  fleshy bodily agglomerate. Heidegger attempts to drive in a wedge and distinguish a dichotomy or duality between the named   *ontic* entity Annabelle, (which he characterises wrongly as: *anything that is*) and the existentially modalic denotatum (that which is named and referenced  by the word  Annabelle) 

Like most other things regarding  the sentential, syntactic and semantic aspects of *BE*  Heidegger failed to detect that the words *IS* and *BE* and *BEING*   help provide (introduce or point to) ontological individuation and are ontological secenators which allow us to separate and tease out individual or multiple existential modalities (*Annabelle is a student* for example)  singled out from the matrix of the total states and activities of Annabelle.

Putting it bluntly - it is the object known as Annabelle that exists - not the fact that she exists
Annabelle exists - not her *Being.*

In theory a sentence containing the multitude of existential modalities of an entity could be strung out until the fingers of the typist making a list of them were bloodied, for  one could never record a fraction of the existential modalities that comprise  the existential totality of the living, active Annabelle.

The expression *Annabelle is beautiful* presents an individual characterisation of a particular existential modality of  Annabelle*s. This ontological individuation is carried out in most European languages in the form of the well known paradigm of: Subject  - Verb -  Predicate or some other such combination, and although certain languages [German for example] display variant systematic word-order arrangements and inflected forms of the key words, these variants are easily explained by any trained linguist or grammarian.

                                              Why Choose the Name Dasein?
It is very important for students of Heidegger to enquire: *Why did he choose the name Dasein for his metaphysical mannikin? * Our first reaction is that Heidegger, being a German speaker was perhaps forced to use this construction because of some hidden grammatical obligation imposed upon him by the contingencies of German grammar? Next we wonder why, if he was anxious to universalise the human condition with a neutral name for his illegitimate representation of *Being* that he did not create a name along the lines of the one created by John Bunyan in his masterpiece: *The Pilgrim's Progress.* After all he could, had he so chosen, have employed the German word for*Everyman* [Jedermann] or, failing that, he might well have chosen*somebody* [ Jemand] or *anybody** [Irgendjemand?]

Why on earth did he reject all these universalistic alternatives and insist on naming his protagonist with the gerundial construction  *Das-sein* (being there) which is the continuous present form of BE and the obsessional  words which were his ontological nemesis –*BE – IS – BEING.

What onto-grammatical skullduggery is afoot?  Why,  when he was dealing with words which he had already admitted in writing that he didn*t understand, (he admitted publicly in his *Basic Concepts*  that he  never discovered what IS meant, and admitted getting the meanings of *being* confused) did he go ahead and play around with the 3rd-person continuous-tense version of the BE word (being,) even going to the extent of wrapping it up with the locative*there* word to form a fake*noun* which he called *Dasein?* The answer is Yes!

For a deeper understanding of Heideggers admitted ignorance of the word *is* see my:
EIN GESPRÄCH MIT PROFESSOR HEIDEGGER: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/gesprachmittheidegger.htm

Heidegger gambled [correctly] that the average reader,  not expecting to be bamboozled, would, after a while forget the real underlying meaning of the 3rd-person continuous present fragment –*being* and gradually internalise *being*  and the gerundial  *being there*  as legitimate names for his human everyman's existence.   *Dasein* also means *existence* in German) so bingo,  the fact that existence is unpredicable would be forgotten by the readers of *Being and Time,* after a chapter or two and for the purposes of his occult agenda it would be accepted into the philosophical lexicon as a fully fledged noun, which is the way he boldly treats it in his writings.

Labouring under the same miaprehension of the Russian Name Worshipping cult which holds that  that if one names something it psychologically instantiates it,   he smuggled *IS* and *Being* into his nominological vocabulary in the form of the gerundial noun  phrase *being there* in order to avoid the more obvious existential duality that the word  *Being*  implies* if it is bereft of an existential modality or modification to indicate, such as: *Jack  is being silly.*etc.

Dasein (being-there) is presented as a noun – as a pseudo-entity which as a noun might be expected to have an existence – but it is an illusion, for it is no more than a BE word in drag – a 3rd-person conjugation or continuous *being* word in sheep*s clothing. It must be remembered therefore that when he uses the word Dasein, he is using it to substantiate or instantiate the verb being as a noun and thus when he talks of the *being of Dasein* he is really saying the *being of being.* {compare the*dancing of dancing.*]

The*being in the world* (*dasein* or the 3rd-person continuous present metaphysical manoeuvre) may assist Heidegger to escape from the ambuscade of his own somewhat bizarrely named *Ontological Difference,* but of course he remains as dependent as he ever was upon the BE mechanism. Heidegger*s employment of the Daseinic device as a disclosive mechanism with which to reveal *being* is a transcendentalist turkey, for it is only those aspects of the existential Gesamtsumme which are observed visually, [either actually or representationally] or singled out by a speaker or writer for exposure by the semiotic communication of language through the factorisation of the modal introductants [is, are or being etc] which are available to initiate modalic disclosure.

It is only with our own physical senses and with the help of BE that we can lift the ontological curtain and glimpse a selected, occasional, ephemeral coup d*oeil of the existential human singleton that lies beneath. The Daseinic 3rd-person continuous  con-trick completely ignores this multitudinous seething molecular mass of existential modalities that wriggle and writhe upon and beneath the surfaces of the entities it purports to address. What few existential modalities it does manage to strip away and expose with the help of BE, it packages and labels as exhibiting the *Being* of the entity in question. The answer of course is that the the existing entity IS the entity in the first place, and its *existing*  cannot be separated out from its material actuality. Thus we have  the farcicality of Heidegger*s *Ontological difference.*

Heidegger*s casuistical dichotomy between  *the ontic and the ontological* therefore is one and the same thing – two sides of the same dud coin. Cast in Heideggerian terms:
The being of the entity is the entity, and the entity is the sum its own being.

*An apple exists as an apple.*There is of course a physical difference between the word *apple* and the object referred to by the word apple, but who would argue that there is a difference between the communicative meaning of the the word-sign we use to reference the denotatum of the word*apple* and the denoted object towards which the sign points? But the entity and the in-toto modalities that comprise the entity are not separate of different things - they are the same thing, the only difference involved is the human descriptive methodologies.

In the same way, nobody would contend that there is a difference between the way an apple exists and the apple - would they? When we decide to single out a specific existential modality of an apple however, we are forced to employ a mechanism, which makes it perfectly clear that it is not the simple presence of the apple that is being addressed, but one of its existential modalities. That mechanism is the BE mechanism. Hence: *The apple is red.*

So we can see that whilst a specific existential characteristic of the apple has been disclosed,(its redness) the infinite multitudinous modalic makeup of the apple, which is the apple, remains undisclosed.

Heidegger was so confused that he believed that the being of an apple was in someway separate or different from the apple itself - and for him whilst the apple itself was an*ontic* entity, the phenomenological fact of its cosmic presence was a separate*ontological* physicality he called by the mysterious name *Being.* There is no difference at all between Heidegger*s ontic and ontological, the name of an entity is no more than a convenient specified epithet for the purpose of both individuating it from other entities, and substituting a simple name for the plethora of infinite and undisclosed and un-disclosive existential modalities which form the entity itself.

Aristotle in his   *Categories* classifies all existential modalities into ten ultimate types, and in the*Topics* introduces the as different kinds of predication that can be predicated of subjects. AITism claims that there is only ONE category to which all existential modality*belongs* and that category is named with the name of the entity itself. Thus the Gesamtsumme of Annabelle's existential modalities is Annabelle, and Annabelle is the Gesamtsumme of Annabelle*s existential modalities

*Existence is the link of a being as one with itself as a multiplication.*

*Schelling. Naturphilosophie. 1801.

Jud Evans.