Heidegger

Cologne 20-Jan-2008

allen scult schrieb Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:16:07 -0600:

>> In a message dated 1/18/2008 6:18:47 AM Eastern Standard Time,
>> artefact at t-online.de writes:
>>
>> “Der Bezug der Griechen zu den Göttern ist überdies ein
>> _Wissen_ und nicht ein ‘Glauben’ im Sinne eines
>> willentlichen Fürwährhaltens aufgrund autoritativer
>> Verkündigung. Wir ermessen es noch nicht, in welch
>> anfänglicher Weise die Griechen die Wissenden gewesen.
>> Weil sie es gewesen, deshalb fanden sie den Anfang des
>> eigentlichen Denkens. Nicht etwa waren sie Wissende, weil
>> sie eine Philosophie besaßen.” (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe
>> Bd. 55 S.15 “Heraklit”)
>>
>> “The relationship of the Greeks to the gods is moreover a
>> _knowledge_ and not a ‘faith’ in the sense of a deliberate
>> holding-to-be-true on the basis of an authoritative
>> annunciation. We do not yet fathom in which incipient way
>> the Greeks were the knowing ones. Because they were, they
>> found the beginning of authentic thinking. They were not
>> knowing just because they had a philosophy.”
>>
> AS: Doesn’t it make a difference that it is the RELATIONSHIP to the
> gods that Heidegger calls a knowledge? That is, open to philosophical
> questioning[knowing] as a dimension of Dasein’s existence?
> Heidegger’s point, it seems to me , has to do with with that most
> significant founding distinction between philosophy and religion first
> made by Heraclitus. As a relationship in which dasein participates,
> religion is a phenomenon ( “as real as the train station in
> Freiburg”)which philosophy must take seriously in its investigation of
> dasein as “das Lichtung des Seins,” that is the relationships that
> dasein en-lights as being-in-the-world.

> Heraclitus opens up this primary relationship of religion to
> philosophy’s way of knowing, when he focuses on ambiguities like, “The
> lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives
> signs(which then must be interpreted). (93) Heidegger expresses a
> similar idea in his discussion of “the call.’ (Pardon my
> approximations here, my copies of Sein und Zeit are in another place,
> so to speak). He distinguishes between the experience of “the call”as
> coming from a foreign power invading dasein, and the truth of the
> phenomenon–dasein as both the caller and the called. The recognition
> and understanding of this distinction enables something like “The
> Phenomenology of Religious Life,” the early twenties course also
> absent from my present place.of being there.

ME: The connection between giving signs and knowing seems of the pith
for the Greeks’ canny-uncanny dwelling with their gods. Here’s another
quote from GA55:

“Wenn der Denker sagt: _kai entautha_ — ‘auch da’, _en tooi hipnooi_ —
‘im Backofen’, west das Ungeheuere an, dann will er in Wahrheit sage:
nur da ist Anwesung der Götter. Wo nämlich? Im unscheinbaren
Alltäglichen. Ihr braucht dem Vertrauten and Geheueren nicht
auszuweichen und dem Ausgefallenen, dem Aufregenden and Aufreizenden
nachzujagen in der trüglichen Hoffnung, so dem Ungeheueren zu begegnen.
Ihr sollt euch nur an euer Tägliches and Geheueres halten, wie ich hier,
der im Backofen sich aufhält and sich wärmt. Ist das, was ich tue and
wobei ich mich aufhalte, nicht genug erfüllt mit Zeichen?” (Heidegger,
GA55:8 Heraklit)

“When the thinker says: _kai entautha_ — ‘here too’, _en tooi hipnooi_
– ‘in the oven/kitchen’, the monstrous/unordinary is present, then in
truth he wants to say that only here do the gods presence. Where? In the
inconspicuous everyday. You don’t need to evade what is familiar and
ordinary and go in pursuit of what is exciting and stimulating in the
deluded hope of encountering the unordinary in this way. You should just
keep to your daily and ordinary affairs, like I am doing here, staying
in the kitchen to keep warm. Isn’t what I am doing and that with which I
am occupied not sufficiently filled with signs?” (Heidegger, GA55:8
Heraklit)

So one does not even have to go to Delphi for signs, but into the
kitchen to keep warm for signs enough? The mystery is already there in
the kitchen, the out-of-the-ordinary in the ordinary, if one is simply
there in a thoughtful way, thinking on the signs? No tying-back through
the practice of religious cult is necessary for this, and no faith, but
an openness to the uncanny in the canny, i.e. in that which we already
well know and with which we are thoroughly familiar in everyday life,
the mysterious unknown present in the mundane known.

Giving of signs:
_ho anax, hou to manteion esti to en Delphoi, oute legei oute kruptei
alla saemainei._ (Heraclitus Diels-Krantz Fragment 93)
“The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither says nor hides but gives
signs.” (Heraclitus Diels-Krantz Fragment 93)

_gnoothi se’auton_ “Know thyself!” Over the entrance at Delphi.

Socrates received a sign from Delphi that there was no man wiser than
he. He did not accept this sign on faith, but tested it in practising
his philosophical dialogues with his fellow citizens of Athens, coming
thus to self-knowledge.

_genoi’, hoios essi mathoon_ Pindar 2. Pyth. Vers 72
“Become, learning who you are!”

_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ _-_-_-_- artefact at t-online.de _-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred (c)_-_-
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
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