Representation and Its Limits

Abstract

Dasein; the aletheic space as the space of human attunement to Being; freedom as relatedness to Being, as letting beings be, without mastery or appropriation, as congenial engagement with beings; dual (active/passive) conception of the gaze; the gaze, the divine, and Being, are names for the aletheic space; gazing, encountering, engaging with the Other; gazing and seeing; the intentionality of sight; human vision as responsiveness to Being’s gaze; knowledge is constituted by responsiveness to Being’s solicitation; modernity’s conception of the gaze as the reflexive act of a sovereign subject, an act that doubles beings by representing them; Heidegger’s critique of the modern conception of gaze; two kinds of gaze corresponding to two human types, Greek man and metaphysical man; the relation between metaphysics and modernity, between encountering and conquering; egoism, subjectivity, and selfhood; man as zoon logon echon and as animal rationale; Heidegger’s reading of the cogito; representation as imposing the subject’s calculative, numeric, measures on the represented thing; modernity’s assumption that nature is configured in measures accessible to human understanding (mathesis universalis); the violence of representation: appropriation of the represented thing for the sake of affirming the representing thing (the subject); modern consciousness as reifying, as self-consciousness; representation and the I; modernity identifies Being with representedness; Heidegger’s reading of Protagoras’ ‘man is the measure’ dictum; Protagoras’ “measure” does not originate in man, but in belongingness to the aletheic space, which entails self-delimiting in line with Being; mindfulness and be-ing; two kinds of thinking; two kinds of consciousness; two kinds of man.