PHIL4205 - Heidegger and difference of world

The discussion today centered mostly around Agamben's "The Open" and its criticism of Heidegger's Fundemental Concepts of Metaphysics. Agamben emphasizes in his response to Heidegger, who supposedly is parting ways with Cartisian idealism, that he relies on the subject centered tradition that priveleges the objective capacity to observe things in their being "as such". Although Heidegger's intention is to distinguish man in his essential difference from animal or stone, one must conceed that there is, in posing the question, some assurance that a world or world formation is a possibility for man. However, Agamben cautions that this world perspective disregards man's biological being, which is distinct from the being-in-the-world that is formed existentially for Dasein. Rather than relying on the weight place on cognition, Agamben suggests that the condition that underline man's beingin-the-world can be formed by his substansive essential existence - what he refers to as "bare life". But even in light of this emphasis on the preconitive present in Agamben's work, the perspective of world cannot be divorced entirely because it comes out of man's being. It seems to be up to the reader to decide whether his treatment is truely balanced or if his argument relies on the same selective process designed to disable its idle operation of the antropmorphic machine. In otherwords, Agamben has a particular agenda and doesn't make light of his intention when he states that we could potential jam the machinery of homogenity of animal and man.

While Heidegger priveledges the "as such" observance of being as a distinguishable difference between man and animal, it seems difficult for us to avoid the possibility of man in the ontological fact of Dasein's awareness. Even if we were capable of returning to the point of a primordial origin, there would still be the problem of our own prejudice that cannot be disarmed. Moreover, the assurance of any self, as Hanna Arendt suggests, is only possible by our being in relation to others. Therefore it is a combintion of physical and cognitive being that limit our access to any bare being - what we are calling animal. In and through the act of language our seperation from animals is quite notable and distinct. And yet does this fact alone warrent the division that empowers one and not the other?

Agamben describes the meaning of human as being shaped in its contrast to animal. Throughout many cultures and traditions, there has been care taken to seperate man from the being of animals. This represents for Agamben an overarching project where the world has been informed by the anthroporic perspective that gives first the highest priority to Man. Agamben seems to suggest that while man has been a constructed concept, it has not altogether eliminated our bare life that is shared with the animal.

In Heidegger's text, he does not claim that the animal is without world, for it is there existing in relation to things and man. He supports his claim that animal is poor by its inability to comport itself to being(s) with the curious qualification of regarding them "as such". The animal is in a sense draw by its various drives, or what is refered to as the state of captivation, that represents both a possibility and the limit of the animal's experience of world. It does not regard the being or beingness of what it encounters it is only shows interest in as much as it satisfies or continues to captivate it. He goes on further to regard the occurance of captivation takes place when the animal is disinhibitted that changes, quite forcefully and suddenly, to change its comportment in the world. But yet it is still denied of the world or anything in it by the precondition of this capacity to regard a thing "as such".

In my initial reading of Heidegger, I was struck by the way in which this sets up a type of hierarchy in which the capacity of man is held in high esteem over those poorer capacities of the animal. I suppose, in my nievity, that I wanted him to find an essence that was common to both that was beyond categorization - a sense of a shared being-in-the-world. Now that I think of this expectation, did Heidegger really privelage the human over animal? Are his distinction of "poor in world" and "world forming" not demonstrate the reliance on the anthropomorphic perspective that biases human understanding of animal and man? What then is the alternative? Is there some sort of reconciliation possible within the divide that has been produced by an anthropological machine?

Professor Jowette, with good reason, is right to be suspicious of this emphasis on equalization between the status of man and animal that is neither the project of Heidegger or Agamben. In fact, Agamben earlier on in the open makes reference to this as the classical form of anthropomorphism, which denies the animal its own distinction by means of collapsing the animal and human together as has been a feature in Christian escotological myth - a reconcilation of animal and spiritual nature. The differences between animal and man, though imparted by a process of anthropomorism, nonetheless represent a noteable point of distinction. The fact that animal or man is even questionable, whether one claims this is only a product of language, can be taken into account as siginificant. But I would venture to ask whether there was not still the hint of the thing which is prereflective. A commonality that is so general a basis of life that categorization fails to capture it fully - in otherwords, what Agamben calls "bare life".

What then would follow this regard for bare life, how would the relation to human or animal life change? As Agamben mentions in his closing statement, the objective is to stop the machine or announce the "Shabbat" of both man and animal. This is not however an elimination of the differences or even the thing which produces these differences, rather in observing the operation of the machine we gather a sense of its processes and where it has been employed. Will this understanding of the categorization of man and animal fundementally change anything? Hardely. The level at which this anthropomorphic perspective that forms the world that man appears in overwelms our efforts and cannot be all together removed without disolving man as we know it. Is there an existence for man beyond this knowledge, I would have to argue that there is. In a way, what I take from Agamben is that he is not suggesting we could be on equal status with animals but rather it is to be conscious of the limitations of our knowledge of animals. In a way by recognize how outside knowledge is from what consistutes our basic relation to animals, our earlier presuppositions become accessible when their limitations are unconcealed. Because the animal cannot object to being assessed through human standards, we take responsility for the consequences of such a capacity that makes possible the tyranny of Man.