Heidegger

> Cologne 16-Jan-2008
>
> michaelP schrieb Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:00:23 +0000:
>
>> Allen spake thus:
>> >>> I thought some people might be interested in a realization I came to
>> >>> while preparing the syllabus for a course entitled “Philosophy of
>> >>> Religion.”
>> >>>
>> >>> I was thinking anew about what a philosophy of religion might be. (I
>> >>> learned this approach from Heidegger.)
>> >>> What I came to is not as important as how I came to it. First I
>> >>> decided what I would like the course to be about, perhaps what I
>> >>> think it “should” be about philosophically; and then I figured out
>> >>> how to make philosophy out of my concern, my preoccupation with
>> >>> religion. My conclusion was that I needed to put it ( the idea I
>> >>> wanted to investigate)into the form of the question, “What is
>> >>> religion?” That is, what is the quality or characteristic that makes
>> >>> religion religion( akin to Socrates’ question in the Euthyphro: What
>> >>> is the characteristic that makes pious actions pious?
>> >>>
>> >>> Questioning religion in this way assumes that religion is fundamental
>> >>> to the being of Dasein, which seems to me the only way a philosopher
>> >>> can study a phenomenon, that is in the light of dasein’s seeing. How
>> >>> else could a philosopher investigate anything? It would be all up to
>> >>> the psychologists, and we all realize how dull that is.
>>
>> Ant responded:
>> >>First and foremost, it seems, would be the strict dichotomy between
>> >>religion and the sight of scientific knowing. This has been acknowledged
>> >>equally both by scientists (to whom religion is deficient in evidence)
>> >>and by theologians (to whom the need for evidence would be a
>> >>deficiency). This parallels Heidegger’s distinction between concernful
>> >>circumspection (which science sees as deficient in thoughtful analysis -
>> >>”just” using “without” stopping to think) and knowing (which is
>> >>deficient in comparison to concernful circumspection due to a separation
>> >>from original meaningful context).
>> >>
>>
>> Allen:
>> > Obviously, but I don’t think Heidegger would say (and even if he
>> > would, I wouldn’t) that religion, qua religion, is most essentially
>> > defined by its not being science. As a phenomenon, religion comes
>> > about not as a way of knowing, but as a dimension of dasein as
>> > being-in-the-world, or more precisely, as being-with-the-other.
>> > Religion answers to dasein’s need for an other that is not another
>> > being. This is Eckhart’s opposition to Aquinas. God is not being,
>> > rather being is God(”esse est deus” rather than “deus est suum esse”).
>>
>> MP: Allen, a little while back I was reading (slowly as is my wont) that
>> strange
>> text by Heidegger, ‘Parmenides’; I remember that in discussing ‘looking’
>> which we moderns normally think in terms of looking at, an action directed
>> towards (and subjecting) beings (as objects of knowledge, as items of
>> aesthetic consideration, as things of value, as things of no value, etc);
>> Heidegger, in speaking of the (ancient) Greeks in their absorption in
>> (embraced in the life of) mythos, speaks of looking (the look) in terms of
>> being looked at by that which is extraordinary inhabiting the ordinary; that
>> in order for the modern notion of looking-at (capturing the appearance and
>> appearing of) to have become possible, be-ing-in-the-world had firstly (in
>> the sense of priority not chronologically) to ’suffer’ being looked at,
>> which for the Greeks was being looked at by the(ir) gods, the first
>> glimmerings of something like religious experience. This glimmering, however
>> ‘greyed out’ now, this be-ing-looked-at, has something to do with a
>> conferring of human-ness to the humans, beings who look (at beings and each
>> other) and live in/with mythos & logos (the word).
>>
>> Or, something like that…
>>
>
> ME: Reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s line:
> “And the flowers had the look of flowers that are looked at.”
>
> And the phenomenon of value must not be thought subjectivistically as the
value
> put on beings by human looking-at, but, on the contrary, as the look offered
by
> beings themselves in their own potentiality, powers, possibilities.
>
> Such are the secret lines of communication between power (_dynamis_) and value
> L. (valere). Don’t expect any help from Heidegger on this point.

Michael, without getting into our long and enlongated desultory engagement
with the notion of value (esp with respect to the earth/moon, etc), I wonder
about the earlier/prior Greek (if any) version of your latin valere; whilst
dynamis is a powerful term, what is the equivalent (if any) of the valuable
(aristos? the good of Plato?)? If nothing, then did the Romanic ethos
produce the highly-valued concept of the valuable? Why not the Greeks?
Certainly one could, with Nietzsche, see the entire history of
philosophy/nihilism in terms of a repeated three movement piece on value
(valuation, devaluation, revaluation). I am attracted to, indeed intrigued,
by the notion that value be proferred by beings themselves (rather than the
extremely common and often destructive human (d)evaluation of things), but
need some further elaboration. I’m not bothered whether Heidegger helps or
provides or hinders or dissimulates, rather, I’m interested in how things
speak to us in their gleaming/glittering, and what it is that looks at/to us
in the things as they appear to be what, that and as they are.

regards

michaelP

Posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
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