Heidegger

> Cologne 11-Sep-2007
>
> michaelP schrieb Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:27:15 +0100:
>
>> MichaelE donated this just now:
>>
>> > “Etwas Rätselhaftes, daß etwas ist als das, was es zugleich nicht ist.”
>> > Martin Heidegger _Platon:Sophistes_ GA19:580
>> >
>> > “Somewhat perplexing that something is as that which, at the same time,
>> > it is not.”
>> > Martin Heidegger _Platon:Sophistes_
>>
>> Michael, can you provide a broader textual con-text for Heidegger’s
>> entanglement of being and non-being? How does this fragment arise amongst
>> its fellow (e.g., fore and aft) text fragments? Once again, Heraclitus pops
>> up (for me) with his diapheremenon and synpheremenon [’scuse spellink]…
>> although the fragment to which I refer vaguely here [can’t remember which
>> number this mo’] rather speaks of being {it} falling apart as {it is} coming
>> together, something that is differing from its self… that {is}
>> difference-qua-difference?
>
> ME: The Heraclitus connection is rather vague and tenuous in this context.. The
> page no. (p. 580) indicates that it’s late in the day. Plato’s Stranger is
> closing in on the sophist, who has put up all sorts of strategems and tricky
> manoeuvres to avoid capture. The sophist’s last supporters are Parmenides and
> Antisthenes who enable him to claim that his way of speaking, his _logos,
cannot
> possibly be false. What I quoted from Heidegger is a formulation of Plato’s
> task: to show that a false _logos_ is indeed possible. Before that, he had
> disposed of the sophist’s line of defence that non-being, _to mae on_, is
> impossible because, according to Parmenides, there is only being, and
non-being
> _is_ not at all. Parmenides therefore warns against the path of non-being,
which
> should be avoided altogether. The sophist uses Parmenides’ ontology to bolster
> his claim that it is impossible for him, the sophist, to say what is not/(does
> not exist).
>
> But through his famous dialectic of the _genae_ (genuses, stems) _on,
kinaesis,
> stasis, t’auton, heteron_, Plato shows via the idea of _heteron_, i.e. of the
> other and otherness, that the _mae on_ is/exists. Otherness as a FACET OF
BEING
> allows the one being to be different from the other. That is, the negation of
> the one being does not lead to nothing, i.e. no being at all, but to the
other.
> The other as opposite is the _mae on_ of the one. This is one of Plato’s most
> important discoveries — how otherness enables a non-being to _be_ in a
certain
> way, namely, as the opposite (_antithesis_) of something else (e.g. the ugly
as
> the non-being of the beautiful).
>
> But Plato has to go further, because the sophist can object, “OK, a non-being
is
> possible, but you still haven’t shown that the _logos_ can be connected with a
> non-being”. That is, the sophist now challenges the Stranger/Plato to
> demonstrate that a false _logos_ is at all possible. This goes against
> Antisthenes’ doctrine that says the _logos_ can only be linked with a being,
> identifying the being as the same, _t’auton_, and not with _to heteron_. Plato
> therefore sets out to analyze the _logos_ to show how otherness and therefore
> falsehood is possible within it.
>
> The crucial clue to the solution is that every _logos_ is a _logos ti peri
> tinos_ — every speaking is a saying something about something, i.e. every
> _logos_ uncovers a being _as_ something. This so-called triviality is the key
to
> solving one of the most perplexing problems, because, as Plato goes on to
> demonstrate, the _as_ contains the possibility of both truth and falsity, of
> same and other.

Thanks, Michael, for this elucidation. Could we say with Plato that false
speech (speech which speaks of that which is not) nonetheless still
discloses (uncovers) something (that which is not, as something else) and
thus, in an other sense, speaks truly (speech that speaks of what is)
because truth is disclosure: all (serious) speech speaks of (discloses)
something (saying something about some thing)? In that way, false speech
bears a kinship with true speech and is not simply its (logical) negation?
To see this, that false speech belongs to true speech (that falsity is but
a(n essential) moment of truth), is of course, strange. Like philosophy.

All of this, it seems to me, involves an as yet concealed notion of be-ing
(that which is in the way that it is) that is not exactly disclosed…

> All philosophical questioning starts with a self-evident triviality, and only
> singular genius is able to discover the abyssal mystery in it. But today more
> than ever there is a refusal and inability to think philosophically, and in
its
> stead prevail prejudices, complacency and an air of superiority that does not
> allow itself to be troubled by seemingly self-evident trivialities. The
simplest
> is overlooked.
>
> _ta gar taes toon polloon psychaes ommata karterein pros to theion ophoroonta
> adynata_ i.e. _taei tou ontos ideai_ (Sophist 254a)
> “Namely, the eyes of the multitude’s psyche are unable to persevere in looking
> at the divine” (Sophist 254a), i.e. “the idea of beings”, the facets of being
> that make up the world’s complexion.

Plato’s Socrates (Republic?) also disclosed the dictum that just as the eyes
of those who stare straight (and presumably, perseveringly) into the sun
(icon of the good) are blinded by too much light, so the psyche attempting
to divine the good (be-ing) directly becomes dazed (and fazed) and confused.
Is philosophy divine madness & lunacy of the seer or the utter undivine cool
sobriety of those who wear psychic shades?

I’m now reading Heidegger’s ‘Parmenides’ and thus thinking of falsity and
truth and their intimate relation with respect to a-letheia.

regards

michaelP

Posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
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