Resonating with "Being and Time"

"Aristotle's prediction that they will always search and always be at a loss has come and is coming true for us. Aporia is a place where there is no support, where pressure is meaningless, where being gripped does not turn into a grip. We are gripped by being, but we cannot grip it, grasp it with our reach, be-greifen, take it into a con-cept. One wants to ask: what on earth is being, after all! — but one cannot even ask: one has to be in it, and if you are not in it, do not feel it, then there is nothing to talk about."

V.V. Bibikhin, "Property. Philosophy of One's Own"

In this essay, I want to address Heidegger's idea, which can be somewhat simplified as "to understand is to be." In paragraph 31 of "Being and Time" we find these lines:

"Understanding is always attuned. If we interpret it as a fundamental existential, we thereby indicate that this phenomenon is understood as the basic mode of the being of Dasein."

That is, I am by way of understanding even before I begin to "understand" in the usual sense of the word. Somehow, this kind of understanding resembles knowledge-by-acquaintance, according to Bertrand Russell. It is knowledge with one's whole being, or rather, knowledge through existence — through touching reality with all senses. Perhaps it is appropriate to speak of intuitive knowledge here. One can also recall Socrates and his guiding Daimon. But my desire to smuggle in "contraband" from other teachings and find analogues there perhaps speaks of the work of the second type of understanding — the one we are all used to. Apparently, it makes sense to pay attention to the demarcation of these two "understandings."

«"Understanding" on the contrary, in the sense of one of the possible kinds of cognition among others, say as distinguished from "explanation," must together with the latter be interpreted as an existential derivative of the primary understanding, co-constituting being t h e r e in general."

So, the usual understanding of understanding. It seems that "from my childhood days I believed that for all illnesses..." it is most useful to know and understand. To know and understand in order to control, to keep within bounds, to make predictable. The main object of such knowledge-for-the-sake-of-control is myself and the unpredictable other. And psychology promised to give such knowledge-that — and I would, like Sherlock Holmes, see right through people — for their own good — understanding how they had better deal with their lives and gifts. Such an understanding of knowledge and understanding as knowledge-domination, according to Max Scheler. Well, as my favorite thinker Hannah Arendt believes, did Cartesian doubt and Galileo's telescope bring not only little me, but all progressive humanity here, to this point? To understand as to grab, to digest, to arrange within oneself. 

At the very beginning of "Being and Time," Heidegger exclaims about the forgetfulness of being. In some ominous way, all of humanity seems to have moved into a giant experiment called "Mary's Room." We all know about red light now — its spectrum and other physical properties — but we seem to have lost access to the red color itself. What happens to us when we directly encounter the color red — not in a laboratory, not in books — but directly and very concretely? And do we encounter red or do we miss this beautiful sunset, buried in our conditional "microscopes" and "telescopes"? As if we had all read about music theory but failed to discover music when walking past a street musician.

This is also a point of not only knowledge-domination, but also a mysterious place of "nowhere." From where my gaze is from nowhere. As if I am entering a museum where objects are already arranged somehow, exhibitions change outside of my will, and viewing does too. It usually ends unexpectedly. But such is the observer I am, watching the dusty universe. In such a rupture with the world, there is also the loneliness of my observation. And no connection is proven. I can leave a review in the guest book. Perhaps. I can also learn the layout and schedule of the museum very well. I can understand how to behave with the wardens so as not to anger them. I can guess that museum cats are an important part of the exhibition. Knowledge-domination. But what am I master of? After all, I didn't even choose this museum, I didn't buy a ticket, and I don't even remember who gave it to me. And when the tour will end. An illusion rather than mastery. I am a master in my illusions, but I completely hesitate to look closely into reality. It, however, keeps trying to break in through the crevices of the museum walls. 

Heidegger interprets "understanding" in an obviously different way, not as something instrumental-cognitive — when I am not a visitor to the museum, but a part of it. And the exhibition itself is more like a constantly changing kaleidoscope. Wow, the way I stood just now is part of the exhibition plan. This is already another book being written. I literally with my own feet and, most importantly, hands create the exhibition. Hands. Touching is allowed. I am all about touch. Somewhere my unknown homeland, the point from which I was going to turn the whole world upside down, disappears. This is no longer a museum. It is some kind of immersive theater. I touch. I am touched. Something appears. Wow, through this something I can now see something. Vaguely for now, but I see you. You are. Does that mean I am, too? Does that mean the world is? We must all be familiar with this — pre-verbal — state-sensation. When the "I" in some sense disappears, and connectedness becomes apparent. 

"Dasein is always what it knows how to be and how it is its own possibility... Dasein as essentially situated has always already fallen into definite possibilities... Dasein is the possibility of being free for its very own ability to be."

Dasein and caring for the "clearing of being," which is open to various entities... For Simone Weil, this is such pure attention — availability to suffering, truth, God, which requires giving up imaginary self-illusions and utilitarian interests. It is the ability to tear oneself away from "one's business" and notice the falling Icarus, to see Icarus as an event, and not as an "obstacle."

"In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on..."

W. H. Auden 

Paradoxically, the attempt (technical, through exercises, therapy, etc.) to become more "open" is a manifestation of closeness. It seems that here the question is precisely in the grounds of the movement of attention — is it directed at "oneself" or still at caring for the clearing. And here there is some difficulty — if I want to cultivate openness, but I do it not for the world (others), but for myself — I like the more-open-me — and this is understandable — a form of closeness. But, damn it, how do we break out of this ominous closeness? How does the closed-me move toward the more-open-me? What are the conditions of that very openness (and not self-deception)?

I remember the fifth seminar at hepi, when we presented a case and participated in a live supervision. The pressure, the tension of the seminar was constantly growing and at some point literally melted my presence into some other status — I seemed to dissolve. There was a feeling of "let it be as it will be," the fuss of "which group should I run to," "and whom should I choose as a therapist?", "will I be chosen as a therapist a second time?" etc. was gone. And suddenly opportunities appear, such perspectives of being that were closed before, in a more fragmented state. Such a sense of greater wholeness and "correctness," as it were, of one's being. When I let reality touch me. I find myself in the world, and somehow already (!) orient myself in it. But actually, I've been in this world the whole time, haven't I?

But this ambitious questioning of the world, as with King Oedipus, who insists on an answer — who is his father's killer — demands an answer from the world, brings the world to answer! But the knowledge gained in this way will not be understood. Moreover, it will be destructive. Just as the Tower of Babel was destroyed. "Don't stick your neck out," says the world. In what sense? Well, not in the sense of communist party meetings — to be like everyone else, as the party commands. Not to stick out of one's already existing understanding, not to close oneself to it, but to allow oneself to be touched. Not to go, in this sense, out of oneself-in-the-world. 

Here it is appropriate to think about the gentleness, the humility of the existential therapist (but also not only the therapist), of which Rimas often spoke and which he practiced. Not to touch, but to allow yourself to be touched. To allow different entities and different possibilities to enter the clearing! And not only those that for some reason captured your attention, turned care into concern, freedom into obsession with one's "little world." More precisely, by the way, not one's own, inauthentic:

Understanding is either authentic, arising from one's selfhood as such, or inauthentic. "In-" means here that Dasein shuts itself off from its selfhood and understands "only" the world."

Paradoxically, on the one hand, I am merely (?!) "the shepherd of being," and on the other, I open up to possibilities beyond my facticity. And this openness to possibilities is very far from passivity, which might be associated with humility and gentleness. Humility does not imply a certain serenity and a-pathy of the ancient Greek skeptics. There is so much intensity in it, so much terror, so much life, so much intolerability. In this humility there is some gesture of despair. Some recognition of one's helplessness to hold, to define the world, and all this is accompanied literally by the destruction of familiar ontic structures. And indeed, it hurts a lot when the habitual supports-dependencies collapse. Suddenly I find myself outside of nations, gender, professional status, etc. I cannot but turn to Hannah Arendt here again. The feeling of alienation, of a lost home, of a ruined common world, the thought-lessness of efficiency — these are not just logical constructs in her head and books — this is what she lived through, this is what brought her into a state of disruption and what launched her original thinking.

«I know that our homes are in ruins. We entered this world through them, with a miracle-like certainty that they were more solid than we... I stand on no ground, I am neither here nor there, I am sure of nothing... When I look at my hand, I discover a foreign thing, connected to me...»

How often in working with clients we encounter helplessness — both of the client and of our own. How unbearable this state is! For me as well as for the client. But therapy begins here, doesn't it? In this recognition of the client's helplessness and, what is perhaps even more important, the therapist's helplessness. This is where the imperative of existential therapy manifests itself: to be near the client, not trying to help them, let alone cure them. And in this unbearable being-with, from which one wants to escape into doing, the contours of one's own possibilities — both of the client and of the therapist — begin to appear.

How do we differ from Oedipus? Only by losing everything do we find ourselves. Only by going blind do we begin to see.