Heidegger

In a message dated 12/07/2006 18:17:20 GMT Standard Time,
allen.scult at DRAKE.EDU writes:

Peter and Rene,

I was going to start a new thread entitled “The Spinozan Fallacy,” But
attaching it here seems more social, which I like to be, when I can. I have
taught portions of the “Theological-Political Treatise,” numerous times, because
as a serious critique of Biblical Religion, it has no peer. But there is a
glaring blind spot (metaphor deliberate) reflecting Spinoza’s lack of
perspective on his own perspective–indeed he appears not to recognize that he even
has a perspective:

“. . .I determined to examine the Bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and
unfetterd spirit, making no assumptions concerning it, and attributing to it
no doctrines which I do not find clearly therein set down. (8)

I’m afraid not Baruch. The Ethics can be built on a foundation of such a
rigorous Cartesion logic, but here you’re not figuring ontology. In this case
you are reading a text in which the “logic” is necessarily a hermeneutical
one, built around the structure of interpretation.

This perhaps is old news, but what I wish to announce here is a conceptual
formula for understanding Spinoza’s mis-reading in all its fullness. It
comes from Deleuze:

“A recent commentator (J.-P . Osier) is able to say that the true
originality of the Treatise is in considering religion as an EFFECT. Not only in the
causal sense, but in the optical sense, an effect whose process of production
will be sought by connecting it to its rational causes as they affect men who
do not understand them.”

>From the sublime (Spinoza and Marx) to the ridiculous (our own Gevans[and
lately Peter, who is not ridiculous, but there’s no space in the parenthesis
for a fourth man}), the error is in mistaking the process of production for the
thing itself, in this case, what religion IS, as a possibility of existence..
Through the eyes of the phenomenologist, especially the “hermemeutical
phenomenologist (Gadamer), Spinoza and Marx are working with a very
short-sighted lens, one that is simply not equipped to follow the circular movement of
understanding which IS religion (among other things).

Regards,

Allen

Jud:
There is no error is in mistaking the process of production for *the thing
itself.* There is no *thing itself* there are only the crazed two-legged
religionists themselves. I see *ontological purity* - a world outlook cleansed of
the utter foulness of that which is called *religion* as the most important
objective for philosophy in that the evil of *religion* is at the core of all
the wickedness that mankind has ever wrought. Look at the Mumbai bombs -
Hindu fanatic against Muslim fanatic and vice versa. Look at Israel wallowing in
a disgusting, nauseous sea of *holy* spilt *religious* blood. The New York
attack - Islam against Christianity. Anywhere you look in the world you see
the same. Priests and nuns abusing the young and every day a new religious
scandal hits the press. For me the rest of the *stuff* that philosophers play
around with [and for which the taxpayer picks up the bill] is really a waste of
time. They should concentrate aon and solve the ontological problems first -
earn their bread as philosophers if you like - and THEN turn their attention
to other subjects.

Determinism simply points out that humans have no ontological [emperor’s]
clothes, that we are no different deterministically from any other causal
object in the cosmos. It is in a sense a deflationary,
take-the-posers-down-a-peg-or-two philosophy which takes the puff out of humans who think they are
something special and above the hoi polloi. It is particularly corrosive of
transcendentalism - particularly the more lunatic fringe versions such as
Heideggerianism, where the individual is seen as having the *will* to change the way
he exists by waving some individualistic metaphysical magic twinkle-stick
pedalled in germany as per Nietzsche, who, [unknown to himself] was actually
under the malign/benign deterministic influence of the constantly
engorging/disgorging of his gay-twink’s twinkle-stick located in his trousers.

My comments are directed towards the religious and the transcendentalist
Heideggerian apologist - him of the metaphysical rump and the Heideggerian
metastasistic lump - the intellectual lumpen. I use a wide-angle lens to view
humanity and its societal structures as a whole against the wider background of
the history of our species - not as a philosophy based upon the sad crassness
of inter-war Germanic Heimatical kitsch..

In that sense I am more concerned with mankind as it functions in the
cosmos. Because no single star or planet is more important than any other of the
countless mega-trillions we may ask why should any single human be considered
so? And why should white-raincoated Sartreans and pimplyfaced
sauerkrautanistas wish it to be so?

I appreciate that the individual ‘I’ which is - for all intents and
phenomenological purposes - the centre of this vast cosmic system - and once gone we
will return no more, and I also agree that to lose faith in ourselves as
creative individuals opens the door to a corrosive nihilism that would destroy
most sensitive creatures like us, and has already patently wreaked its
dastardly work on most of those poor lost souls on the Heidegger list.

At the moment I am struggling to come to terms with - or find a way of
accommodating my eliminative determinism with my belief in myself as a creative
and unique singleton. I am conscious of the fact that it will be all over for
me in ten or perhaps twenty-years - but I still want to sort it all out
without the help of some German liar. When I do eventually slide into senility -
I want it to be a senility unencumbered with any vague, shadowy, half
understood regrets or doubts - I want my senility to be a triumphant, satisfactory,
easeful, contented closure to my life, free of fleeting, nagging, mumbled
incertitude

Regarding the Trannies’ belief that one is capable of living an *authentic
life.* I have always believed that whatever kind of life anybody lives is
*authentic.* To be *authentic* is to conform to fact and therefore be worthy of
self-belief, but somebody or something who does NOT *conform* to others’
facts and is therefore unworthy of belief is… as far as I am concerned…. as
authentic, in that he, she or it is somebody or something who does NOT
*conform* to fact and therefore be worthy of others versions of self-belief.. In
other words all fakes are *genuine or authentic fakes,* [even Heideggerian
fakes] just as much as all genuine or authentic articles are *authentic
articles.*

Gary:
All in all, if it had been a matter of free will, of choice, I am sure he
would have said, like any sensible rational person, ‘No thank you! I’ll pass on
that’ But he was determined, bound by things he had no choice over as he
knew himself, some of which are objectively verifiable, some of which can be
easily deduced from his impossible personal situation. [Were his migraine
headaches an escape from his problems or caused by them?]

Jud:
Yes, I agree - he is a prime example of somebody deterministically driven.

Gary:
This, actually, was what got us together at the old Heidegger site. I said,
Yes, one can choose to be insane rather than live in an intolerable
situation [Actually, I think he planned ‘to die at the right time’ that is, suicide,
but he waited too long.]. R. D. Laing said the exact same thing about
schizophrenic children in schizoid families. ‘The family that has sex together,
stays together,’ and other nasty variations that use to be utterly inescapable
for a child, and is little different now, just better hid. My thesis was,
insanity could be an escape. I really had little to go on, only Laing and my
personal experience with schizophrenics who gave me – still do – the overpowering
sense they know much more about how the world really is than I did – or do
now.

Jud:
They [schizophrenics] certainly know a lot more about *their* world than we
will ever know about *our* world that’s for sure. I was attracted to you on
the Heidegger list because you shone out like a beacon of sanity and
intelligence amongst the agglutinative gloom of philosophical gimp-land.. Which
[following from the sentence I have just written] brings me to a question I would
like to ask you and the folks on this list. Do you believe it is possible to
be *intelligent* and to believe in God? Yes, yes, I know that many of these
theologians have degrees and can write uncommonly good English, and perhaps can
understand algebra and do their own servicing on the engines of their cars,
and speak Latin and maybe Greek, and would be damn good company on a tour of
the Greek islands with all their knowledge of history - but doesn’t a potty
belief in a beneficent *God* [in view of the historical and extremely
un-beneficent things that happen to innocent humans] negate this intelligence? Surely
the sum of their intelligence becomes subverted and corrupted when it is
brought together, and the various components of understanding are utilised in a
the cosmic guffaw of a consideration of *God* as the creator and loving
father of mankind? How can *intelligent* people be so damn stupid - and does this
not question their *intelligence* in the first place?

Jud

Posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
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