Naive Idealism

Abstract

Tim Hyde's summary of Tool-Being is both vigorous and largely accurate. On the whole, his review displays a balanced sense of what my argument actually achieves and what it merely hints at without yet having the means to complete. His overview of the book is certainly lucid, but of even greater importance is his willingness to grapple over basic philosophical issues: a trait widely eroded by the stylistic credo of continental philosophy, which understandably prefers to appreciate the total legacy of great philosophers rather than slicing them up into isolated propositions. The first half of Hyde's article contains no serious inaccuracies, and it would be pointless to quibble over minor disagreements. But the latter portions of his account do misread the book in at least one significant way. More seriously, they are based on a philosophical prejudice for which Hyde offers no clear defense, and which serves to undo most of the positive steps in Tool-Being that he claims to appreciate. Since our chief disagreement is expressed by Hyde himself in the section entitled As-Is, I will confine my remarks to that section. Hyde accurately identifies the two most important systematic points in Tool-Being: the reading of Heidegger's fourfold, and the radical expansion of the as-structure to include beasts, plants, and inanimate objects rather than human Dasein alone. But while Hyde is persuaded by my reading of the fourfold as an intersection of two great axes of the world, he has serious objections to my account of the as-structure. In an especially clever twist, he even holds that the double axis of the fourfold already serves to undercut what he regards as my needlessly flat version of the asstructure. This leads Hyde to reject the hyperbolic claim of Tool-Being that this structure can be extended beyond the human sphere. In this way, he enters into strategic alliance with a more traditional view of the privileged human subject, and even with some of the more mainstream Heidegger commentaries (though he otherwise endorses my wish that they not be encouraged). The whole of Hyde's argument hinges on whether his vision of the as-structure is more true to the world than my own. That is the question that ultimately needs to be addressed in these remarks. Hyde further identifies two major features in my model of the as-structure, and lodges objections against both. First, there is my claim that the difference between as and non-as is absolute, so that the gap between an object and any access or relation to it would have to be infinite. second, there is my assertion that the asstructure cannot support a distinction between different types of comportment: since the asstructure is present everywhere at all times, and since it is always a distortion of that to which it is related, it provides no way to distinguish between theory, praxis, the creation of artworks, animal instinct, and sheer causal interaction. Hyde is correct that both of these notions are among the very pillars of the book. My perception of a volcano is indeed hopelessly distant from the dark reality of volcano-being, no matter whether I conduct diligent geological research or merely take a superficial stroll along the edge of the crater. In addition, the same difficulty haunts inhuman relations as well, since the whole of the volcano's reality is also not unlocked by the rocks or sunlight or bewildered moths that vanish into its cone. Against the first point, Hyde objects that the distance between things and relations cannot possibly be infinite, since otherwise we would never be able to talk about objects at all. Against the second point, he insists that human Dasein must retain its privileged status in philosophy, and that I will need to modify my wild and outrageous position in a more traditional direction (assuming that I am granted at least three additional years of survival and sanity to pull off the job, as Hyde kindly wishes). But both objections are weak, and cause Hyde to become immobilized in a worn-out philosophical position that ought to bore anyone possessing the degree of mental energy and wit displayed in his review. …