Heidegger

ps: [coming before the main response] MichaelE, Anthony, Rene — I’m sorry I
still haven’t concretely responded to the important discussions with each of
you I either initiated or joined in with in the last month or two; I am
still (oh so slowly) assembling my responses and I shall write when I can in
the reasonably near future… each of these discussions have rattled my cage
and stimulated my slothful but nonetheless excited thinking and so…

back to the present…

Allen:
>>> I was putting a DVD in place to watch it, one I’ve been wanting see
>>> again for quite a while. I was struck by how long I’ve been without
>>> this and other pleasures of the present, feeling the melancholy of
>>> the comparatively short time left to me to enjoy these pleasures(the
>>> DVD player being one of the very minor ones, but one that will stand
>>> in for others of a more personal sort) when came this thought:
>>>
>>> This is really the only time I’ve ever lived and for all intents and
>>> purposes, it lasts forever.

mP:
>>Allen, for some intents and purposes (of this speech), what you say reminds
>>me of Nietzsche (or at least, the Nietzschean strand in Heidegger’s
>>thinking), of amor fati, of a highly active acceptance of be-ing (as both
>>beings-as-a-whole and as the be-ing of your being), the thanks of
>>thinking… and the accomodation of the eternal in the moment (augenblick)
>>that sits nicely with Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Have you
>>thrown off that infernal monkey (in Zarathustra)?

Allen, of course I meant the dwarf at the temporal crossroads not “monkey”!

>> How can anything, any
>>thing, have been any different (properly asked and affirmed), leads neatly
>>to an eternal embracing of the moment as one that is for ever in its
>>momentness (encompassing all intents and purposes). Apart from the odd (and
>>wonderful and welcome) insight, this embrace is a tricky business and poses
>>the questions of the “short time left”, the not-forever, the cleavage in the
>>very structurings of time in the moment, of the presencing of beings (as and
>>how and when they are). But never mind: this is the time of your (our) life.

Allen:
> Hi Michael,’
>
> Amor fati is one of the more important ideas I’ve gleaned from
> Nietzsche. Your rendering of it as “active acceptance” takes in
> other Nietzschian ideas, and is just plain a good idea.
>
> It seems to me the time factor is crucial here. Enter Heidegger.
> Could it be that Heidegger teaches Nietzsche? Definitely.

Allen, yes, and chronologically later Heidegger echoes amor fati with
gelassenheit; in my opera, Nietzsche begins to critique Heidegger gently
(and not just on Heidegger’s take on Nietzsche)… attempting to bring
Heidegger’s unblossomed (thinking) blooms a-blooming.

> It’s similar to the rather radical (that is, held by radical rabbis)
> rabbinic notion, that the Oral Torah preceded the written Torah.

Can you refer me to where you have gleaned this extraordinary notion?

> That is the interpretation, the way of understanding, the understood
> precedes the Torah text itself.

….in the beginning was the logos (not words as such, but the
intelligibility, understandability, possibility of words); is this
comparable, do you think, of the Derridean (taken humorously from
Heideggerian notions of destinings) notion that these (deep philosophical,
pre-scriptural) pre-textual understandings were, as it were, sent (posted)
ahead to be later encountered, invisibly and silently, accompanying and
escorting later readings of texts (themselves once accompanied by these
pre-posted understandings)? The sacred texts are themselves interpretations?

> Heidegger enunciates similar notions by way of indicating the place
> of his work in the wider philosophical scheme of things. First he
> says that Plato can only be understood through Aristotle’s
> lens(Plato’s Sophist), then later (The Nietzsche lectures) that the
> great thinker never thinks his greatest thought.

…. but he sends it packing ahead, cryptically enclosed in the crypt of
be-ing (understanding that be-ing is necessarily cryptic, that it can only
be exposed as a crypt, as something hidden, is Heraclitus’ gift to the
thinker).

> The New Year comes awfully early this year. Go figure that out.

It’s already autumn in Sandwich (it used to patiently wait until well into
September and normally after a goodly summery summer, but I hardly noticed
the summer this year).

> Best regards,

and to you

michaelP

> Allen

Posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
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