Reading Heidegger

(See the very helpful response to this post by Paul Ennis. Everything Paul says I'd agree with: I even left a little comment in favor of "Heidegger-speak," which I oppose to the Heidegger jargon--empty parroting in order to keep agreeing with or defending Heidegger--that I mention below. Indeed, the whole post here owes a lot to Paul: it was a sort of meditation on what Paul meant when he talked about reading Hegel on his own terms. It also, of course, owes a lot to my discussions with Jethro Masís, who is thinking deeply about all that is involved in reading Heidegger.)

Reading Heidegger is always a remarkable experience. It can be, at times, absolutely exhilarating. Other times it is a real slog. What's remarkable, though, is that none of this occurs in the regular way: what's exhilarating isn't typically exhilarating, what's a slog isn't like your usual slog (if I can say such a thing).

That is, what's exhilarating isn't happening upon anything new--though of course the first time you read Heidegger it is (if not confusing) unbelievable. It is rather that the sort of steps that you make unfold something to you concretely, and in a way that is somewhat unexpected (even if you know Heidegger). This is why I wish certain parts of Being and Time were longer... even though rereading these parts, or looking in other passages in Heidegger, will do the job of explicating whatever is at issue (and giving you deeper, even different insight). The analysis of space and Ent-fernung is one of these places.

And then the parts you slog through aren't exactly boring or confusing or difficult. They're just gaps where Heidegger seems just to need to get to someplace. Now, I'm not talking about the regular big chunks that everybody says are typical overgeneralizations of Heidegger--the way he will push an interpretation of someone (Nietzsche, say) onto a certain track, and then unfold the argument predictably, according to the general "status" he confers upon that track. I don't think that's really a productive way to see Heidegger working--you end up thinking he's always saying the same thing, when, even if he is (and I'm not sure of that), there's actually a lot of weird and interesting stuff all over the place. No, what I'm talking about is much smaller, and ultimately much less significant. I'll give an example. Heidegger is talking about how sleeping is not the same as not-being-there, and not-being-there is not the same thing as being unconscious:

After all, what we generally know about things, we know in terms of an unambiguous either/or. Things are either at hand or not at hand. [...] Human beings have a consciousness, and something can be at hand in them on which they know nothing. In that case it is presumably at hand in them, but not at hand in their consciousness. A stone either has a property or does not have it. We, on the contrary, can have something and at the same time not have it, that is, not know of it. We speak, after all, of the unconscious. In one respect it is at hand, and yet in another respect it is not at hand, namely insofar as it arises from the possibility of being conscious of something unconscious. This distinction between not being there in the sense of the unconscious and being there in the sense of what is conscious also seems to be equivalent to what we have in mind by awakening, specifically by the awakening of whatever is sleeping. yet can we straightforwardly equate sleep with the absence of consciousness? After all, there is also absence of consciousness in being unconscious (which cannot be identified with sleep), and a fortiori in death. This concept of the nonconscious, therefore, is much to broad, irrespective of the question as to whether it is at all suitable. Furthermore, sleep is not simply an absence of consciousness. On the contrary, we know that a peculiar and in many cases extremely animated consciousness pertains precisely to sleep, namely that of dreams, so that her the possibility of characterizing something using hte distinction "conscious/unconscious" indeed breaks down. Waking and sleeping are not equivalent to consciousness and unconsciousness.
-Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (GA 29/30), §16, p. 61 [91-3]

Now, everything is fine here--I'm not questioning Heidegger's point at all. But the "a fortiori in death" seems foreign to things, along with the fact that dreams, suddenly, are cases of "extremely animated consciousness." Where did this last point (that dreams are cases of consciousness) come from? It proves the point, yes, but where did Heidegger get it? I suddenly know I'll have to start hunting elsewhere for a better explanation, tying together the corpus. But, again, I'm not objecting, it all makes sense, I know why it is here: all this is here because the point we're getting to is the following:

To awaken an attunement cannot mean simply to make conscious and attunement which was previously unconscious. To awaken an attunement means, after all, to let it become and as such precisely to let it be. If, however, we make an attunement conscious, come to know of it and explicitly make the attunement itself into an object of knowledge, we achiever the contrary of an awakening. The attunement is precisely destroyed...
-Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (GA 29/30), §16, p. 61 [91-3]

That is, we had to go through the rigmarole to get here. Thus, this doesn't make the points about consciousness and unconsciousness and sleep invalid--indeed they can be seen as essential. I refer to the way of taking Heidegger's writings as a way or path that confers on certain parts of the presentation (the text or, here, lecture) a significance insofar as they develop the question at issue. But on this path, there are certain foreign elements, that just seem pulled in from elsewhere, say, in order to keep us on the path--like how dreams are suddenly cases of extremely animated consciousness. To me, these bits make reading a slog (perhaps in lecture they were more interesting).

All this is leading to a sort of distinction I want to make, which involves not just this experience of reading but the appearance of what I'm here calling foreignness in Heidegger's texts (and which makes me feel like reading is ugh, not exhilarating at all). What do we do with those moments that seem on the way, but only on the way--or rather really somewhat off the way, not even on a Holzwege? How do we see what is not on the way? Heidegger himself points out how certain phrases, say, like "die Sprache als die Sprache zur Sprache bringen," can look differently when seen on the way (to language, here) and not (where they become formulaic). But where do we draw the line?

Another way to think about this is that it troubles the notion of "reading Heidegger on his own terms." This, of course, doesn't mean reading only to agree with Heidegger--the confusion of the two is often the fate of dogmatic Heideggerians (sticking with the jargon, etc., in a way eerily similar to the way Derridians stick to the jargon, etc.). But it might at times mean something like stepping off the path or the way. That is, isn't there a difference between following the way, the path, and reading someone on their own terms?