Heidegger

MichaelE donated this recently:

> “Der Tod, wenn wir jene Unwirklichkeit so nennen wollen, ist das
> Furchtbarste, und das Todte festzuhalten, das, was die größte Kraft
> erfordert. Aber nicht das Leben, das sich vor dem Tode scheut und von
> der Verwüstung rein bewahrt, sondern das ihn erträgt und in ihm sich
> erhält, ist das Leben des Geistes. Er gewinnt seine Wahrheit nur, indem
> er in der absoluten Zerrissenheit sich selbst findet. Diese Macht ist er
> nicht, als das Positive, welches von dem Negativen wegsieht, wie wenn
> wir von etwas sagen, dies ist nichts oder falsch, und nun, damit fertig,
> davon weg zu irgend etwas anderen übergehen; sondern er ist diese Macht
> nur, indem er dem Negativen im Angesicht schaut, bei ihm verweilt.
> Dieses Verweilen ist die Zauberkraft, die es in das Sein umkehrt.”
> (Hegel, Briefe)
>
> “Death, if we want to call this unreality thus, is the most terrible
> thing, and to firmly hold what is dead, is what demands the greatest
> power. But the life of thinking spirit is not the life that shies away
> from death and keeps itself pure, untouched by devastation, but the life
> that bears death and maintains itself in it. The thinking spirit gains
> its truth only by finding itself in absolute turmoil/tornness. This
> power it is not as the positive which looks away from the negative, like
> when we say of something that it is nothing or false, and now, over and
> done with, pass on away from it to something else, but it is this power
> only by looking the negative in the face, tarrying with it. This
> tarrying is the magical power that turns it around into being.” (Hegel,
> Letters)
>
> Fancy getting a letter like that.
>

…. and we just have (thanks, Michael). To whom was this letter originally
written? Can you say what translates to “thinking spirit” in the second and
third sentences? I remember that, given Derrida’s considerable and subtle
energies in this, Heidegger’s (thinking and speaking of) ’spirit’ has a most
convoluted and complex trajectory in his thinking (much like ‘metaphysics’
in a way that accompanies his thinking in both tension and relaxation,
turnings and rest, strife and love, (even, mention and use)). Is it simpler
in Hegel?

regards

michaelP

ps: I have largely avoided reading Hegel (in much the same way I used to
avoid hearing Beethoven), but every now and then his thinking seems so
utterly essential and certainly necessary for hearing and bearing
Heidegger’s thinking-fugues.

Posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 5:50 am
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