Heidegger

Cologne 24-Jan-2008

michaelP schrieb Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:15:40 +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?
>
> MP: 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?
>
> MP: 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?

ME: Value, power, profit are loaded terms, and in so-called ‘critical’ discourses
most often function as ’slam dunk’ concepts requiring no thought but only a show of
‘critical’ credentials that one is on the ‘right side’. All three concepts belong to
human being itself, so a rejection of them very soon lands one in mere moralism
about how ‘we’ ’should’ be. (value associated e.g. with tacky tinsel consumerism,
power with subjugation, profit with exploitation, and so on). But I don’t think any
of these concepts (i.e. ways of being) can be rejected out of hand as ‘bad’.. Nor can
they be embraced ‘uncritically’ as ‘good’ (although each of them has its good side).
They belong to the worldplay. The astonishment at nothing can still presence in the
business of life, like Heraclitus’ gods, recall to mind who we are as “placeholders
of nothingness”, and so free. Freedom is our jewel and burden.

In 1928 Heidegger called the understanding of being the Overpowering qua Holiness
(Übermächtiges qua Heiligkeit). The Overpowering also empowers human being qua
Dasein.

The word ‘virtue’ (which standardly renders Gk _aretae_ ‘excellence’, ‘ability’)
derives from both power ‘vis’ and man ‘vir’, thus something like ‘powerful
manliness’. In Christianity, virtue is merely a moral category.

> > ME: 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.
>
> MP: 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.

ME: I’m trying to avoid any polemicizing about where I inkle you stand, instead
attempting to put this inkling as well as I can into words, and without wanting to
nail you personally. The problems with Ought-to-be philosophically in any case need
to be on the table, and go beyond any personal stance.

>
> “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’]
>

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Posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 11:05 am
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