Heidegger

>> > In a message dated 06/07/2007 04:35:46 GMT Standard Time, Bernx at aol.com
>>writes:
>>> In a message dated 7/5/2007 6:19:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>>GEVANS613@aol.com writes:
>>> Reveal the name of your authority,
>>> It has already been self-revealed as the Logos.
>>> B.
>>>
>>> Jud:
>>> Logos is merely the ancient Greek for *word.* Of course all kinds of
>>> religious nuts and other loonies have crawled out of the wanker-infested
>>> woodwork to claim that THEIR particular version of the *logos* represents
>>> the import of the word. From snake-handlers to paraquat guzzlers, from
>>> pederast priests, to TV evangelist adulterous conmen, from Mystic Meg, to
>>> conjuring spoon-benders, from Catholic torturers to Protestant gunmen -
>>> they ALL claim that the *logos* represents their particular crackpot
>>interpretation.

mP:
>>Now, Jud, I don’t wanna get involved in your whambam discussion with BernX,
>>but I feel the need to point something out: whatever the rich number of
>>resonances and interpretations the greek logos word has thrown up in the
>>past few millennia, one absolutely can not say that “it is merely the
>>ancient Greek for *word.*”. In some cases, of course, it can be so
>>interpreted, but to say “merely” as if that said anything thoughtful…

Allen:
> Hi Michael,
>
> I love exploring “merely’s,” (Remember I come from “merely rhetoric),
> so thanks for the opportunity.
>
> MERELY a WORD!? My word! Being a word, a word wording, is the most
> extraordinary event since photosynthesis. A word means, it asserts,
> it reasons, it lays out, opines, it states, it promises, just to name
> a few of its ways of being. As a matter of fact, if you know
> anything about barley, you process it amongst other beans in brewing
> chicken broth, and in half a day, you have a word. So don’t talk to
> me about mysticism. Of course, these are the very same possibilities
> of being that accrue to “logos.” It’s not so much that the Greeks
> were smart, so much as good cooks.
>
> Best regards,

Firstly, to BernX: interesting stuff but (perhaps mistakenly, psychedelic
soup, ummmhhh) I was not so much interested in the krithi part of
krithilogos as the logos part, which surely would make little sense if its
meaning were restricted to Jud’s “merely” “word” (we would then have
krithilogos meaning ‘barley-word’ or somesuch instead of Plutarch’s and
Harrison’s ‘barley-gatherer’ for the one (krithilogos) who brings in the
barley for the rituals.

Secondly to Jud: Like Allen, I cannot but shrink from your “merely”
(although it does point to the way the extraordinary can, in some hands,
become less than mundane), but I think you missed my main concern (which was
not whether the result of painstaking or otherwise scholarliness — I am not
a scholar or a philosopher — was correct or not concerning the origins and
meanings of the word, the mere word, logos, but with the narrowing of its
multiple resonances to a singular taken-for-granted (”merely”) “word”,
“merely” the word for word. I utilised the Harrison text in order to
demonstrate that it could subtend the angle of ‘gather’, ‘collect’,
‘assemble’, etc, as well as those connected with linguisticality (word,
saying, account, etc), and could perhaps enable a debate concerning that
connection (gather, et al) with the other set of meanings (reason, ground,
thought, etc).

Thirdly to Allen: as above, Allen, I agree with your “merely!!!! a word!!!”.
But I wonder whether (lockshen soup aside) in the linguistique context of
logos’ meaning, logos might better signify the (for want of a better word)
‘power’ of linguisticality itself, the very possibility of words (sentences,
assertions, etc) to be wording (saying, pointing, referring, asserting,
etc), the possibility of signifiers to signify at all, etc. That an
assertion can assert that something is the case or not, that something in
the world has an order of some sort that is more or less reflectable in the
linguistic order in assertions (etc), is an amazing thing, no? Rather than
‘word’ (etc) can we not say that logos is the very possibility of words
(etc) qua words? And, does not that possibility, that power, not lie in a
world that *is* more or less understandable: that language can resonate with
the world *because* the world *is* understandable, is ordered, etc. This
very intelligibility (of and in the world) that language can house, can
embrace is perhaps the logos? Logical, no? This is how Heraclitus can
(logically!) enthuse that we take heed of the logos rather than his speech
(even the speech that recommends we listen to the logos…) — presumably
because that very speech is oriented to that very power that animates all
speeches (whether in tune or not to the animating power)?

I must curtail this discussion (as far as I’m concerned, for now) and take
my leave due to work-pressures.

But before I leave, a song I never wrote:

“There is nothing like a name
Nothing-in-the-world
There is Nothing you can name
That is: any thing like a name.”

sorry…

regards to all

michaelP

Posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
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