Heidegger

>Cologne 09-Jan-2007
>
>michaelP schrieb Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:42:06 +0000:
>
>> > michaelP schrieb Mon, 08 Jan 2007 07:50:47 +0000:
>> >
>> >> MichaelE (philosophy) versus JudE (sophism) brings this to bear:
>> >>
>> >> > ME: Precisely. Which only goes to show that the category of “something”
>> >> > is ontologically PRIOR to “frog” and “lily-pad”, and NOT merely derived
>> >> > (for convenience and by convention) from summing together all the
>> >> > singular entities (which are ontologically invisible without the
>> >> > category, “something”) into a convenient pop-up sign called “pronoun”.
>>
>> mP:
>> >> Precisely, Michael, which is why I have hesitated in calling the likes of
>> >> something, anything, thing, etc, abstractions: they have
>>precisely not been
>> >> extracted, abstracted, generalised, drawn, modelled, etc, from this thing
>> >> and that thing in some exercise of rough commonness, etc, etc. We always
>> >> already have wind of thinghood, be-ing, stuffness, matter, etc, in order
>> >> that we can ever (re)cognise this thing and that thing as this thing and
>> >> that thing and as a thing at all; moreover, despite contrary
>>claims (it will
>> >> have nothing of be-ing and other ‘fictions’), science utterly depends for
>> >> its dependability on this prior-ority of be-ing (which is no abstraction,
>> >> rather is the most concrete). But that’s just me.
>>
>> MichaelE:
>> > From Plato’s Sophist [240b]:
>> > _Xenos: ara to alaethinon ontoos on legoon;
>> > Theaitaetos: houtoos._
>> >
>> > “Stranger: Saying what is true is saying what really is.
>> > Theaitaetos: Precisely.”
>> >
>> > The _ontoos on_ is untranslatable into standard English, since
>>_ontoos_ is the
>> > abverb from ‘to be’, thus “beingly being”.
>> > “The true [is] saying [what is] beingly being?”
>> > “You bet.”
>>
>> “If every thing then is just what it is and nothing else, it is impossible
>> for there to be any speech, either true or false, for speech is impossible
>> unless something can be put together with something else.”
>> [From: Seth Benardete - Plato’s Sophist. Part II of The being of the
>> beautiful - Chicago, Chicago University Press (1986) pp. XII-XIII.]
>>
>> Surely, Benardete prescribes the peculiar position of the sophist amongst us
>> in the above… an other way of saying that the (unfortunately) interminable
>> speech of such a sophist terminates (nay, even begins) in analytic silence.
>>
>> The relation between speech (true or false) and what it speaks of (being or
>> non-being) points to the unspeakable, that is: what the speech says rather
>> than merely speaks. Without that relation, speech is nothing, i.e.,
>> analytically, it says nothing, being just what it is and nothing else (i.e.,
>> it is not even speech at all but just a collection of signs and sounds etc).
>> Are we not speaking of logos? Given that logos enables (co-lects) speech to
>> be speech and not just a bunch of signs (con-fused masses), can we speak of
> > logos at all? If we can, then how can we speak of that which we are in the
>> grip of whenever we speak properly at all (rather than just sport a bunch of
>> (possibly clever too clever) mouthings)?
>>
>> What say you?
>>
>> regards
>>
>> michaelP
>
>ME: Interesting quote from Benardete there, MichaelP. Yes, we are speaking of
>_logos_, but not in a way that satisfies the linguistic
>analyticians, who ridicule
>an Hegelian formulation such as that the simple sentence, “This is a
>frog.” is an
>identity of identity and difference. We can speak of _logos_ only by
>reflecting upon
>what is going on when anything is addressed by language, and what
>the conditions of
>possibility for this addressing are. To say anything, ’something’
>must have always
>already (a priori) gathered itself into a view and offer itself to
>view for being
>addressed. Such a gleaning draws the contours, defines the horizon
>(_horizein_ = ‘to
>define the boundaries’), and is not originarily a human act, but
>rather, we human
>beings are given over to (enpropriated to) the originary gleaning in
>which beings
>_as such_ shape up and show themselves. That, at least in my view,
>is what came into
>view for philosophy from Herakleitos and Parmenidaes through to Heidegger, who
>retrieves this insight once more in very lucid interpretations.
>

How do we judge the value of a thinking? How do we value thinking?
The thinking said above appeals to my imagination, how I might
imagine the bringing to words of that which has always already been
there needful of thinking/saying, due to its significance. I
appreciate the risk taken in calling the condition of such
possibilities “apriori.” Is this the ordering, the gathering and
laying out of that which is to be thought and said , the “Logos”?
The Logos held, maintained in safe-keeping at just the right
temperature (so to speak) that Heidegger so beautifully refers to
(speaking of the words of Parmenides) at the end of “Was Heisst
Denken” ?

Can thinking take this gist into its hands, that is, take it
to heart, in
order to entrust it in Leigein, in the telling statement, to
the original
speech of language?

It occurred to me as I copied this passage from the text how
generously Heidegger’s way of saying offers
itself to interpretation by means of the open-ness of his syntax,
precisely what Heidegger finds in
in the saying of Parmenides in which he shifts the words around in
order to make meaning “paratactically.”
Pardon the sloppy transliteration–my spirit is willing, but my
keyboard is unresponsive:

cre ta legein te noien t’on emenai.

I don’t mean to interrupt Michaels, please go on.

Thanks,

Allen

Posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 6:15 am
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