Heidegger

>Allen: It’s no big thing. As a matter of fact it’s a small thing, a
>very small thing. But I think it’s only basic list decorum that if
>you’re not going to respond to someone who responded to you under a
>certain subject heading (especially someone who put himself out to
>appreciate something you said), before you set off on another path
>in your own direction, change the subject heading.
>
>Tympan: Sorry, I read you but had nothing immediate to say so I
>picked up my thoughts again and threw them out into the universe. I
>asked you questions but you don’t have time to answer them or you
>just ignored them. I thought that your concern there about (is it
>the “allegorical” interpretation?) not respecting the purity of the
>object of thoughts if this is the right way of putting it was
>interesting for working out questions about the imagination and
>symbolical interpretation or at least the distinction between the
>spiritual meaning and the literal meaning but you dropped it.
>
>It turns out that every time I think I’m right about being wronged,
>I’m wrong. Leads me to think once again the obvious: to give up
>being right. Sounds to me like another consolation both for
>philosophy which already knew, as well as me, who also already knew.
>
>I thought the following, dropped in my last post related to our
>concerns about the literal and the allegorical:
>
>Of course I’m thinking in a literal manner. Any metaphor, spiritual
>or otherwise, comes to us in words, what the words themselves mean.
>Then comes the midrashic, the allegorical (permitted to guys like us
>by al Gahzali), the metaphorical, first and foremost fitting with
>the letter of the word. Then [and only then has it] earned the
>right to go off on its own: “Love, and do what you will”
>
>But I’m sure there’s more to what you brought up. I’ll look back.
>
>
>tympan: Or maybe less, the above sounds complicated and a bit
>distracting if I can say this. I was reading Georges Florovsky’s
>_The Eastern Fathers of the Chruch Fourth Century_ which is a source
>I trust. In it he discusses Nyssa’s discussion of using names to
>describe God, he quotes Nyssa saying that “Some names attempt to
>express a conception of God’s being and others attempt to express
>the mode of His being. But until this very day God is ineffable and
>has not been explained by what has been said about him”. The radical
>conclusion it seems is that even words like “God” or “Jesus” or
>”Isreal” are only names and don’t reach the essence of what is at
>issue. But language is all we have to try and talk to each other.
>All we have are visible things like names and bushes that burn or
>mountains to go into and clouds that turn into pillars of fire and
>such. It’s all a human *invention* (_epinoia_ sometimes associated
>according to Florovsky with _dianoia_ (judgement)) although inspired
>by the ineffable. Nyssa like Basil says that it is through these
>visible things and so through language that the unknown is known.
>The ineffable is ‘known’ through things that are close to us and
>better known. There is a ‘deduction’ from the easily known and close
>by to the harder to see and unknown. According to Forosvky the
>theory here is influenced by Plato’s Cratylus where a thing is not
>known by its name but by “observation and contemplation” which are
>superior to language.
>
>
>
>
>
>I am not changing the subject heading as it fits whatever I write
>which tends to explore the conversion of thoughts that I am getting
>at. I think the heading and most of what I write tries to get at the
>transformation of thinking where the old habitual tracks change
>course to other habits like that of dwelling on the verge of I don’t
>know what.
>
>Go forth with my blessings
>
>
>
>That having been said, I’ve been reading Boethius “Consolation of
>Philosophy.” He seems to have a similar sense of the value of
>ascesis (I like the word. To my own unschooled ears, it sounds like
>phronesis, a way of acting in the world which somehow aims at truth).
>
>
>
>Tympan: Which is a link worth exploring. In the writers I am reading
>ascesis means a “return to oneself”
>
>Allen Anew: Could be related to the word for repentence in Hebrew
>(T’shuvah) which means “a turn towards return.” Buber makes a lot
>of it.
>
>Tympan Anew: Sounds like what the ancients say is what one goes
>through which involves a mortification of the flesh or appetites, of
>the I’s need. But yes, repentance or penitence with a good measure
>of fear of the Lord. One could go too far though and become like
>that psycho from Opus Dei, Salis in the Da Vinci Code with that
>celice that he wears like a crown of pain. The body has to be kept
>exercised somehow though. The old monks would stand in place all day
>to train the body. Today it is enough to go for a jog or lift
>weights to take care of this monastic requirement and keep the
>muscles breaking down and healing again week after week. In
>moderation the body has to be exercised somehow and made to feel a
>little pain and discomfort.
>
>Allen Anew: :The traditional interpretation, of course, is return to
>God, but the expression itself has, in this case, dropped “God”
>because obvious, thereby, perhaps inadvertently, but it doesn’t
>matter, leaving it open to interpretation.. Anyway, I think the
>basic ” return to” is what’s essential here–the movement, the how.
>. .
>
>Tympan anew: Ultimately it is impossible to say, well, it’s a return
>to this or that thing that is called such and such or a name in
>general. The mind just goes silent and becomes unable to express
>whatever it is that one is experiencing which as soon as it comes to
>language is no longer that. But yet the proliferation of names shows
>how slippery the incomprehensible and utterly unknowable is.

Allen anewnew: I’m very much attached to the notion of one man, one
name. For me it’s YHWH (I use here the root “consonants” of the Name
as we find it in the Torah, rather than Yahweh, because it’s the
letters with which one comes to be on intimate terms. Not so with
Allah or Jesus. Each of the names of God co-responds with a way of
contemplation, as you might call it. Name-of-God-wise, I’m a heavily
invested monotheist. That’s the only way it works, I think.
Slippery and incomprehensible to comprehend or hold onto perhaps, but
not to practice. And out of practice comes possibilities for
thought, at least for me. Kabbalists like Abulafia and Isaac the
Blind focus too hard on the name and its letters (There’s a
relationship we could spend some time on!), but their writings give
one “pause” to think on, enriching the moments of thoughtful intimacy
with the letters and the aura they give off for those who think in
relationship to them, that is in relationship the singular Thou.

>Tymp: I think today we would use the word “metonomy” to describe
>this displacement of the object of our desire rather than our needs
>or appetites? But yeah that is my mantra, the how… is it not a
>turning movement or conversion of the mind such that it is not
>governed by the appetites or need but it’s beautiful shiny object
>and goal up in the heavens?

Allen anewnew: That’s part of the work of (consolation of)
philosophy. I have trouble with “governed” in any version of the
“how.” It’s not so much a choice you make ( maybe that’s not what
you meant), but an altered mood in which you find yourself, after
giving yourself over to the work, but, of course, not always.

The appetites, on the other hand, come and go. How they come and go
is between me and them. (Time to switch to the first person.) The
stoics, beautiful as they are, apply philosophy too directly to the
task, I think. But as with the Kabbalists, they do give one pause to
think. And then there’s eros, especially in the Phaedrus. I delay
figuring that one out because it’s too active, or perhaps I’m too
re-active. I’ll let you know.

Regards,

Allen

>The answer is yes and no as so many names can describe that which is
>at issue but all fail to capture it and only the tongue that is held
>in reserve and falls silent gets it by letting go of language and
>the need to described that which is completely unimaginable and
>frustrating for an intellectual to figure out. But the way we circle
>back to the beginning is also the ability to be alone, to be by
>oneself. Make no mistake we have to be alone here and no one is of
>any help. One has to be comfortable with himself so that there is no
>need to go elsewhere, or there is no appetite to go in an adventure
>do because we need something to complete us. The person that is not
>needy is the one who is alone with himself and therefore able to
>*be* love and so be loved. It is difficult to fall in love with
>people who are constantly expressing their needs. In a more Roman
>context Boethius writes in his “Consolations” Book III, XII that the
>real truth is found when one “turns unto himself his inward gaze,/
>And brings his wanderings thoughts in circle home/ And teaches his
>heart that what it seeks abroad/ It holds in its own treasure chests
>within.”

I read this expression of stoicism

> He is thinking of various things but partly of Plato’s “return”
>i.e. ananmnesis or an immemorial memory as Levinas would say or the
>prenatal experience of a facilitating environment that we call our
>soul or sometimes Isreal that gives an immaculate birth to the Word
>after she welcomes the Bridegroom of course. What you think so far?
>Boethius writes in this chapter that this expresses a “natural
>instinct” and that is the “love for self-preservation” of *owning*
>oneself and so I would say of being accountable and having the
>possibility of being responsible. This is the old Stoic notion of
>self-sufficiency which is very much a part of a neoplatonic
>_paideia_ as well. When we let our will or intentions be governed by
>an external authority i.e. by TYRANNY then we are not self-possesed
>and free citizens but governed by Pharoah and our Egyptian needs and
>the appetites of the flesh.

I read this aspect of

>
>
>regards,
>tympan
>
>
>
>
>Tympan old: so it’s pretty close to immediate everyday experience.
>More to the point it targets the transformation of the appetites so
>that they don’t influence the operation of the mind (nous) so much
>and them our thoughts can be turned towards ‘heaven’ to use an
>illustration or to that which remains to be thought or is simply
>impossible to think and so unheard of, unseen, untasted, unfelt or
>nothing to do with the senses. Isn’t this how Waerner Jaeger thought
>of paideia? (”Since self-government was important to the Greeks,
>Paideia combined with ethos (habits) made a man good and made him
>capable as a citizen or a king. (1a) This education was not about
>learning a trade or an art, which the Greeks called banausos
>(mechanical) unworthy of a citizen, but was about training for
>liberty (freedom) and nobility (The Beautiful). Paideia is the
>cultural heritage that is continued through the generations.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paideia). Do you think perhaps
>phronesis is something like an education of free citizens?
>
>Or, the education of citizens for freedom.Freedom from the tentacles
>of doxa is seen by Jaeger to be essential to Socrates’ teaching.
>The passages on “care for the soul” are left somewhat ambiguous
>regarding the body, though I fear that what you say above is
>correct: the majority opinion in philosophy, one might say.
>
>
>
>
>I really will try to get back to the rest later. Promises, promises!
>
>Regards,
>
>Allen (for the moment, over-obligated)
>
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Posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 3:35 am
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