Heidegger

> Cologne 21-Jan-2008
>
> michaelP schrieb Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:31:45 +0000:
>
>> > michaelP schrieb Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:42:32 +0000:
>> >
>> >>
>> >> MP: Thanks for this elucidation. A couple of questions linger: as with
>> >> Heidegger’s showing of the abyssal gulf between the Greek
>> >> _aletheia_/_pseudos_ and the Latin _veritas_/_falsum_ (please excuse the
>> >> quickly rendered transliterations) as depicted brilliantly in his
>> >> ‘Parmenides’, I wonder about another possible gulf between _dynamis_ and
>> >> _valere_ (I should like to explore this); secondly, in my copy of Liddell
&
>> >> Scott, I note a third meaning of _dynamai_ that is captured in the
negative
>> >> expression of Herodotus: _oy dynatai_ translated there as ‘it cannot be,
is
>> >> not to be’ which brings _dynamis_ within the scope of be-ing (no less) and
I
>> >> further wonder whether the extraordinary and rich array of meanings you
cull
>> >> above for _dynamis_ bears testament to this third meaning of _dynamis_
>> >> (be-ing)? To be is to be powerful, to be able, to pass for (be worth, be
>> >> equivalent to, to signify, to be available for…) and, to prevail.
>> >
>> > ME: For Heidegger’s thinking, the answer regarding “another possible gulf
>> between
>> > _dynamis_ and L ‘valere’” is clear. In the _Beiträge_ and elsewhere, he
traces
>> a
>> > trajectory from the sister concept of _dynamis_, namely _energeia_, through
to
>> > “machination” and “devastation”. His 1931 summer lectures on Aristotle’s
>> Metaphyics
>> > Book Theta — a careful, detailed, phenomenological interpretation
precisely
>> of
>> > _dynamis_ — uncover unambiguously the ‘worm’ of productivism eating at the
>> heart of
>> > Western thinking, sending it on its “devastating” historical trajectory.
The
>> only
>> > way out that Heidegger’s thinking finds is the resort to reaching far out
into
>> the
>> > oncoming future arrival of Ereignis, the grounding of the Da as a belonging
to
>> the
>> > truth of beyng, and the passing by of the “last god”. Thus the powerless
power
>> of
>> > beyng in its “uniqueness” in his self-conjuring _Beiträge_ and _Besinnung_,
>> along
>> > with the purely single-minded, productivist view of power (ironically, a
very
>> German
>> > fantasy, for the Germans are historically the productivist people par
>> excellence,
>> > inexorably fabricating their social devastation).
>> >
>> > But, as I have presented in papers to conferences in Wuppertal and Chicago
in
>> 2006
>> > and 2007, and spelt out at length also elsewhere, there is an ambiguity
lodged
>> in
>> > the Aristotelean ontology of _dynamis_, an alternative sense that offers an
>> > alternative direction as an historical possibility, without having to
resort
>> to
>> > Heidegger’s fateful and one-eyed dichotomy between totalized technological
>> > calculability and the step back into enpropriation. There is an alternative
>> path to
>> > a belonging to groundlessness.
>> >
>> > By the way, in my last post I neglected to mention that other Greek word
for
>> > ‘value’, namely, _timae_, another weighty key word in the ancient Greek
>> > philosophical texts yet to unlock historical possibilities perchance
through
>> those
>> > few still prepared to learn to think.
>
> ME: This doesn’t rate a response?

Sorry, Michael, of course it does! But I haven’t yet formulated one. “Hold
on, I’m comin’, hold on….” [Hold On, I’m Comin’ by the highly valuable Sam
& Dave]

>> >> ME:
>> >> > Perhaps we have to learn to experience that the value of the Earth and
the
>> >> moon is,
>> >> > in the first place, that they are there — and prevail. The moon simply
>> looks
>> >> at us.
>> >>
>> >> MP: So, (he says dismally), should we not (in the first place) just leave
the
>> >> moon to prevail and simply gaze at us (as we gaze at it) and not see(k) it
>> >> for what we can exploit from it (even with its help, its availability, its
>> >> power)?
>> >>
>> >
>> > ME: Oh dear, the impotent “should” of moralism once again.
>>
>> MP: Oh dear, can we not substitute the word ‘can’ for ’should’ if it so
dismays
>> you (should/could it have been otherwise?)? I was only adhering to your “in
>> the first place” in the sense of asking why there should [!] be a second
>> place… In mentioning a “first place” you are surely pointing to a
>> priority, a firstness, an essentiality: I was suggesting that if that is the
>> case (going along with your non-moralistic imperative) why bother with
>> secondary concerns. Is it not perhaps a degradation, a decadence of power
>> (of the user and the used) for it to depend upon a using in the sense of of
>> using up a being to the potential of nothingness (using it up completely,
>> consuming it)? Can not power be-come powerlessness? You speak of the
>> “impotence” of moralism, but what of the potency of immoralism? Still I ask:
>> why not leave the moon/earth/anything alone!?

> ME: What could it possibly mean to “leave the moon/earth/anything alone”? An
> un-Earthly U-topia?

Quite. This is a question I am wrestling tacitly with; it has caused me a
great deal of agonising over the years… But, to leave something alone, to
let it be, is surely to give it its ’space’, to give it its ‘rightful’ place
in the world, not to render it out-of-place; to keepsafe the earth as
precisely earthly not un-earthly. Exactly what this means I am still
struggling with, but it certainly can not be possible through such as
exploitative ruination (plundering for some kind of profit, etc) OR pristine
conservation (zoos, nature vids, ‘wildlife parks’, etc). Perhaps humans
could leave well alone (even for a while) in order to sight and site what
looks at us from its radiance (as the wonder-evoking extraordinary in the
ordinary, the gods and demons of the Greeks?

> Does this emotionally charged response further confirm my surmise that your
> long-held standpoint is that power and value ought not to be? If so, apart
from
> having to ask what this could possibly mean at all, there is a philosophical
> critique of such a standpoint.
>
> By the way, I am not claiming any originality in the critique of the impotence
of
> the mere moralistic ought-to-be cf. e.g. Hegel Rechtsphilosophie, the second
> section, Moralität, vs.the third, Sittlichkeit.

Michael, I don’t think you represent my (even half-, nay, quarter-baked)
“standpoint” fairly with such as “emotionally charged” & “the mere
moralistic ought-to-be” & “dismal”. And I have no part in devaluing value
and disempowering power by claiming they are non-beings, that they are not,
that they ought not… But something extremely extreme sits with value-power
in this well-out-of-hand present.

“Existence well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can.
The past is now part of my future,
The present is well out of hand.
The present is well out of hand.”

[Heart & Soul by Joy Division on album ‘Close’]

regards

michaelP

Posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
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