The Task of Destroying the History of Ontology
If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about must be dissolved. We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of Being as our clue, we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being - the ways which have guided us ever since.

In thus demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological concepts an investigation in which their 'birth certificate' is displayed, we have nothing to do with a vicious relativizing of ontological standpoints. But this destruction is just as far from having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. We must, on the contrary, stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits; these in turn are given factically in the way the question is formulated at the time, and in the way the possible field for investigation is thus bounded off. On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself towards the past; its criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology, whether it is headed towards doxography, towards intellectual history, or towards a history of problems. But to bury the past in nullity is not the purpose of this destruction; its aim is positive; its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect.

The destruction of the history of ontology is essentially bound up with the way the question of Being is formulated, and it is possible only within such a formulation. In the framework of our treatise, which aims at working out that question in principle, we can carry out this destruction only with regard to stages of that history which are in principle decisive.



Needless to say, I had the last laugh.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 11:13, 7 replies)

Seeing as you've put it so simply....
... I agree!
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 11:39, closed)

In truth,
this is possibly the most comprehensible few sentences in the whole of Being and Time. The rest of it makes this look like The Gruffalo.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 11:44, closed)

Well DUH.
For a minute there I thought you were referencing this:
www.b3ta.com/questions/beautifulmoments2/post817369
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 12:26, closed)

Ha!
I'd forgotten I'd posted that.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 12:29, closed)

Hahahaha
When I was but a guttersnipe, I was "helping" A Senior Vagabond mark essays (by tearing off the candidate name strips and putting them in a neat pile at his request), and remember seeing him shaking his head and chuckling.

When I asked him what he was laughing at, he replied, instead of explaining the complexities of BSc-level micro biology to a five year old, "Well, er ... basically ... this candidate thinks he's a lot funnier than he actually is."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 13:09, closed)

A couple of days into my current gig
I was second-marking an admittedly-poor essay that had been first-marked by the then Head of Department.

The sum total of his feedback was, "You are much cleverer than this essay indicates, but much less clever than you think you are".
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 14:11, closed)

Apparently I don't know which is ontology and which is oncology unless I google it

(teebie jeebie, Fri 9 Nov 2012, 16:05, closed)