The Individual is the locus of Dasein.
Individual:
- ‘In-‘ Used to indicate location, inclusion, or position within spatial, temporal or other limits
- ‘Divi’ As in ‘to cut,’ ‘divide,’ ‘proportion,’ or to ‘ration into ratio’, to separate
- ‘id’ as in ‘it,’ or ‘the thing itself’
Individual: The divided one
Locus
- ‘Loc’ as in ‘Location’
- ‘-us’ the singular
Locus: The one of singular definite perspective
Dasein
- Da ‘that,’ or ‘there,’ or ‘that there’
- Sein ‘be’
Dasein: to be there
[The divided one, of two ways] is
[the singular definite perspective]
of [‘being there.’]
[The individual] is
[the locus] of
[Dasein.]
The individual is the problem experiencer.
If the nature of ‘being,’ through ‘the singular definite perspective’ is to be the divided one, of two ways, then the individual is to himself a dilemma. He is of two ways: he is two ways. And this is the nature of man. He perceives two ways and he is caught between them. These two ways evidence themselves to him through his self-reconciled experience—for that is what we are saying here: he as the categorical a priori —indeed, the seer and conceiver of categories themselves— the experiencer himself, the conscious man is, unto himself, a dilemma—a ‘two ways.’ His experience is that he has a choice, a will, at bottom, an effect of which he is the eigenvector. He can take action, his own choice, his own direction. He experiences himself through his experience of the arena to his agency. His experience is that of making choices, taking actions, asserting his will, making his effect. Indeed man aims and acts to ‘make his mark.’ In this way, he is ‘one with the dilemma inside him’. The dilemma is an idea, an abstract problem, a problem cut out from the others, a representation—and ideas are indeed re-presentations, re-cognized, transmuted physical things, materials, into possibilities for their uses—through the lens of technique, techné, technology: Man’s technique-orientedness, his objectivity (which implies his subjectivity) is the categorical solution to the category of the dilemma (which implies his subjectivity). The problem of him—of his very being: his perspective-having, his perspicaciousness, his nature, his orientation toward transmuting, re-cognizing, transubstantiating physical material into psychic material, his subjective casting of ‘ought’ upon what ‘is’ in light of its utility to him, and his urge to represent the intersection of the planes that intersect and possess him—the planes of time and space that beget his blessing and his curse: his consciousness; man’s problem of his consciousness is that, by his own words’ definitions he …definitionally declares himself, his ‘being there’ at all, both a dilemma, he himself the very category of problem-seer, and thereby the category of problems, and its solution, through his orientation and application to the world of things, his technique, his artus work. Man blatantly admits that he causes himself problems to fix. And this must be the root of the divine comedy. How else could we consider ourselves but through the lens of maddened actors running about in full clamor and calamity—hence the success of the Three Stooges, and the exposition of our foolishness in Monty Python. If a comedy, then too the root of the tragedy. For if we cause our problems and are cursed to just as long as Prometheus is liver-pecked, we too are eternal recurrences—that is, comedies that do not end are clearly temporal tragedies.
The individual sees through the lens of himself as dilemma and will. From there proceed all his tragedies and triumphs. The nature of his story, and indeed history —as evidenced by all the stories he tells, whether fictional or factual— is centered around the problem —the category and source of all problems— of himself; Whether contemplative or embodied in an adversary (another perspicacious man), the individual sees —experiences— problems.
The individual is the problem experiencer.
Problem – ‘Quaestio’ (Latin)
- Qua: here
- Quae: which
- Aest: it is
- Esti: you are
- Estio: I am
“Here we are” …the nature of man, Dasein: that there be—that there exists being ‘here.’ Dasein and The Problem of problems are evidently what make man’s experience. That his language admits that he is the source and solution of and to himself. Man’s words betray his self-concept, his conceit and his guilt, his fault and his responsibility.
Experience (Latin)
- Ex: outside of
- Pe: on foot
- Per: through
- Peri: perish / death
Experience: on foot, though death — the essence of man’s experience, indeed.
Dilemma: (Latin)
- Di: god
- Dil: say
- Dilem: love me
- Lem: problem
- Lemma: theme
- Theme: story line, plot
The meta-story of life is that god says ‘love me,’ which is the problem of man and the theme of his life: to ‘love god’ which amounts to following the patterned rules of life as they are presented to him —to learn from the lessons of one’s father, that is— and the sterility this implies should one develop the Isaac Complex as Girard explicates and submit completely to the pattern of the father, of history; or to love one’s self. The plot ensues over the course of time. This is man’s history.
“A dilemma is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. The possibilities are termed the horns of the dilemma, a clichéd usage, but distinguishing the dilemma from other kinds of predicament as a matter of usage.” -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilemma
Mess with the bull (life), get the horns (dilemma). Life is the dilemma. The dilemma is life. If man is alive, man is the source and solution to all his problems—or so says his language. The Individual is [the nexus of the category of] The Problem. What marks man as special —as a species— that man’s kind experiences themselves as individuals. What indicts the species is its members’ self-awareness, which is brought on by each individual re-cognizing himself in the context of his fellows. As he gets the idea that he is one of many, he gets the idea that he is one—that he has force, effect, and will. Beyond instinct he can impute new patterns onto the world through his self-ish nature, his orientation to himself as tool-wielder and idea haver. That he finds his ‘self’ in the context of society is to begin testing his will against that of others, to test his effect. Self-awareness begets other-awareness. That he mimics and notices a break in the pattern, that he can break the pattern, in the moment that his noticing is done —in the rationality he experiences, the ratio, the difference between ‘two ways,’; this is his downfall and his speciality, his species: the self-thinker, the double-thinker, the dilemma-man, the re-cognizer of things into problems, and, thank god, solutions.