Heidegger

Jud,

Amongst your many services to this list is the opportunities you present for
the
diagnosis of philosophical pathologies, that is systemic errors you make
that seriously
infect any semblance of philosophical sensibility you might have once had,
the
possibility of which you might even have been born with–who am I to say.

The most tiresomely repetitious of these pathologies goes all the way back
to the
sophists, most notably Gorgias. It manifests itself most generally as the
fear-of-being-affected, more specifically, as the unwillingness to confront
the proximity
of rhetoric to philosophy. Now please listen carefully.

The fear-of-being-affected correlates with an obsessive need to be in
control, most
specifically through the power of reason. As is true of most obsessions,
reason itself
is used to fend off any possibility of overcoming itself. The very idea of
such
self-overcoming, itself overcomes the sufferer with a potentially lethal
deficient form
of rhetoric, which has come to be known in our time as “critique.” This
deficient
rhetorical form can be self justifying to a fault, making it impossible for
the sufferer
even to hear, let alone comprehend any ideas which might expose him to the
dreaded
open-ness which he associates with a complete abnegation of the independence
and
integrity of the self. This integrity and independence he feels an
overwhelming
obligation to protect , using the iron-clad capacity of reason to turn
away anything
that stands in its path back to itself, often with an ingratiating wit and
charm which
endears the sufferer to himself to a degree which sometimes results in
anti-social
behaivior, fortunately of a rather benign variety.

Now as to the unwillingness to confront the proximity of rhetoric to
philosophy. The
problem here is an inability (congenital or not, I cannot say) to recognize,
let alone
appreciate the constitutive power of language, a power often associated with
the Greek
“Poiesis,” whose relationship to truth as the Greeks conceived of it, we can
discuss at a
later session, should you choose to engage what I have to say with a good
faith effort
(words deliberately and carefully chosen) to keep the more extreme
expressions of your
obsession in check.

It might be encouraging to recollect the sophistic heights of Gorgias’s
expression of the
obsession:

Being does not exist,
If it did exist, it could not be cognized,
And even if it could be cognized, it could not be communmicated.

I have known some talented obsessives in my life, but few if any could come
up with such
an apparently thought-tight “conundrum”

Further realizing how hearing about fellow sufferers, especially well-known
ones, can
give one so afflicted some hope, I give you the best and the worst of so
called
“analytical” philosophers.

Best wishes for this new year and all those that might come, though at this
point, one
has reason to doubt.

Allen

under control.Quoting GEVANS613 at aol.com:

[Hide Quoted Text]
The rhetorical dimension of language is “of language,” we being only
partially at cause and not clearly able to understand. What I’m trying to
say here
is that in some, or large part we are subject to language and can act only
through it. I don’t think even Spinoza’s artful attempt to contain language
within a geometric frame outsmarts the determination of language to force
its
will upon us.

I think the best we can do under the circumstances is to think language as
such, language as it wants to be thought, observing our capacity to be
affected
even as it is being affected.

Jud:
Language has no *rhetorical dimension* nor does it have a *will* or the
capacity to *want* anything. Such things are in keeping with the fantasies
of
the painted savage cavorting before a baobab tree in an effort to influence
the
spirit which resides within its gnarled trunk to cast or remove a spell from
some smelly, shit-encrusted fellow anthropophagite.

No sign has any feelings. A traffic-light doesn’t give a flying fig whether
the car drivers that allow it to control them, suddenly decide to ignore the
rules of the road which they themselves have invested in its shiny pole and
flashing circuitry and smash themselves to bits in the sequel of such a
stupid
semiotic snub.

To start off the seventh year of the twenty-first century with the
suggestion that being human entails being concerned with either
subjectively accepting
and acting passively in response to the agenda of a personified language,
or
attempting to outsmart *the determination* of a personated language to
force
*its will* upon us. is utterly bizarre and evokes an image of a hairy,
unkempt creature with pronounced eyebrow ridges and a jaw which cries out
for the
attentions of a maxillofacial surgeon and orthognathic surgery, sitting
before a modern computer in a centrally-heated modern room banging his
calloused
hairy hands up and down incomprehensibly on the mud-bespattered keyboard.

It is HUMAN BEINGS who produce, generate, and agree the meaning of the
signs
we call *words* and *traffic-lights* and they have no agenda, will or
determination of their own. We can make such signs effective for
communication, or
alter the combinations and with it the effective outcomes as Heidegger did,
with the resultant communicational obfuscation, and the ratcheting-up of
anti-Semitism and with it the rhetorical road-deaths of the camps.

Tympan has a far better grasp of this rhetorical process, as can be seen in
his passage below, for he rightly identifies the *you* and the *your* and
the
*yourself* and the *children, friends or wife and lover* and the *women* and
the *men* and *Deleuze* that rocks and is rocked by the bark of language
and
NOT a *willful* *language itself* intent on allowing either intelligent
communication or semantic bedlam as the whim of the moment takes it.

But the personification of langauge apart…The Season’s Greetings to all!

Tympan:
Well yes this is what the study of rhetoric is all about,– fine feelings
that we get from polishing this surface so that it becomes more smooth and
graceful and all that jazz. No matter what, you are selling yourself
whether it
is to your children, friends or wife and lover. The tropes are similar but
the
actual words are different and with the latter I think the body is affacted
in a more erotic fashion. Drowning can be a scary thing or not… listen to
how women discuss and spin the sort of ideas men like Deleuze and us
express in
our own way:

regards,

Jud Evans.
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

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Posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 2:20 am
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