Heidegger

Cologne 31-Dec-2006

ME: Eliminativism is truly (self-)eliminating; it is understanding that does not
realize what it is saying.
The principal truth of eliminativism is:
You name it, it doesn’t exist.
According to eliminativism, only singularities exist; universals do not exist.
To name anything, even if only to address it as ‘it’ or as a ’singularity’, is
to assert the existence of a universal, for ‘it’ and ’singularity’ are
universals. To say anything at all is to say universals. To name any singularity
is to say it is a universal, even if one says a tautology. Furthermore, to say
anything that is not a mere tautology is to say that something is what it is
not, i.e. to say anything is a contradiction. (Anything that exists is a
contradiction — a truth that understanding cannot understand.)

Eliminativism is an inverted mirror-image of sophistry. The sophists claimed
that what does not exist cannot be said (because, following Parmenides, they
claimed that non-being simply _is_ not). so that everything they said was
necessarily true. The eliminativist says, on the contrary, that for all x, x
does not exist, and eliminativism is therefore self-obliterative although,
unfortunately, due to its irrepressible opinionatedness, it is not
self-effacive.

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“Marie Mainil” Allen schrieb Sun, 31 Dec 2006
02:05:32 +0000:

> 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…
>

Posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 12:50 pm
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