Heidegger

—–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
Van: heidegger-bounces at soca.ecu.edu.au [mailto:heidegger-bounces@soca.ecu.edu.au]Namens GEVANS613 at aol.com
Verzonden: maandag 26 juni 2006 14:34
Aan: heidegger at soca.ecu.edu.au
Onderwerp: Re: Only Rene Can save us Now?

In a message dated 26/06/2006 11:21:13 GMT Standard Time, R.B.M.deBakker at uva.nl writes:

Jud:
In all this time I have been reading your fascinating messages here on this list Rene - which I very much enjoy - I have never been able to discern EXACTLY what your political or social programme is? I continue to visualise you as a Zaratrustra-type prophet with long white locks flowing in the wind, as you cycle along the canal paths across your flat lowland landscape with a bunch of tulips sticking out of your back pocket. A not unflattering picture BTW.

I also have searched for my programme a long time, Jud, and it appeared that there was never one.

Do you hold out any hope for Europe at all? What first, important step do you see, that, if being made, would set the scene for the beginnings of a revival of the west or do you see the cogs of determinism grinding relentlessly on eventually reducing the west to silent smoking piles of ground-zero-dust?

If we do not deal with that sort of determinism, labelled by the word ‘freedom’, then yes zero-dust it will be. Heidegger speaks in 1935 of the
Dunstkreis. the dust-circle of the completion of the western tradition. Once noticed, it is not hard to see that nothing can save us from it, but
ourselves. But only when we have changed . Whether such happens, cannot be predicted. But one can maybe start to see, that, as long as we
remain subjects (slaves), change is impossible.

Do you think that America is a *lost cause* politically, socially and culturally? Too far gone - riddled and raddled with right-wing religion - and impossible now to save? Do you think that globalised Europe could extricate or untangle itself from the economic and cultural ties with the even more globalised USA - or has the relationship gone too far - the economic trammels too intricate and difficult to unpick, and a self-ensnared Europe will be dragged down towerblock-wise with her?

If something is to be successful, it concerns both. Only the colony tyhinks it is something without the motherland.
Basically there is only one chance: reflection back to the origin of the West, but this way is blocked, FIRSTLY and DECISEVELY, by the lies closest
to us: those concerning our won history. These have to be taken away first, if not man will rather prefer destruction than stop destroying.
Heidegger says, that Gestell, the essence of technology, IS the Geviert, hidden. The way technology could transform, turn into Geviert, the dimension
of world, sky and earth, which is always there, but now almost completely hidden, is inconceivable. But inconceivable does not mean out of reach.
So we have to become acqainted with the inconceivable, and not ourselves be dragged away by aversion. Hegel c.s. already did that, so we can learn
from them. The dimension of dialectics is nothing historical, it still IS, as the inevitable door towards our natural dimension.
OInly if all this, and more, is seen TOGETHER, as “the same” - is a change possible. As long as we evade dimension, i see no chances, except erring
ones.

Do you detect any signs within Europe of a realisation that we have *backed the wrong mule or elephant, * and sold our birthright for a mess of McDonald’s pottage served in polystyrene cups?

Not signs visible, for everyone. But in the change of language - which is not an human instrument - one can detect the growing uneasiness.
When i was young, Heidegger was a dead dog, sthing ethereal, and science and positivism went their ways selfrighteously. That is over now,
and that is interesting. One should always keep in mind, that the usual picture of reality is unsound. That it is much more mysterious, than we
can think. Not mystery behind it, there is nothing behind things, but in them, as them. During the thirties Heidegger was concerned with this, and
not with politics.

Hölderlin sings of bread and wine: “Bread is fruit of the earth, but it is blessed by the light.”

A great secret is mentioned here, but we do not see it. We start to see it, when we see two things TOGETHER: the plant, which obeys the principle
of ground, and: its groundless way of being. What would the plant and everything living be without the blessing from above, from the sky?

But if one is not able to let secrets pass through the most concrete and near, but if one prefers to be comforted by nightmarish visions, then
one has lost oneSELF. Don’t listen to me…

Although we British are Europeans here on our island, filtered as it is through an agenda-driven media we seldom hear the definitive European view. Because we speak the same language as the Americans and have much more, I think, in common with them than other continental countries, we tend to be exposed to a more US-orientated media coverage. Personally I like Americans a lot, and still feel a genuine feeling of gratefulness for the way they saved my country from the evil excrescence of Nazism sacrificing many of their own precious lives in the process.

There was no nazism before the first ww, and already England shouted Germaniam delendam esse, and the Americans already came too.
Only AFTER that nazism. Your turning reality upside down, shows too much, provokes thoughts.

As long as you keep apart, you are indeed closer to America than to Europe. The first thing Britain should do is go for re-uniting together with
France and Germany. There is also a past to support that. But the Americans might get quite annoyed then…

I doubt if little Britain could have withstood the might of Germany in the long term had Hitler not turned east and the Americans had not come to our aid. Now personally I do not give a damn whether they came to our aid for their own reasons in the hope of access to post-war markets, or even if the mechanisms that bore fruit in the USA declaring war upon Germany were inspired by Jewish lobbies in the Whitehouse - the bald fact is that they DID come to our aid when we needed them most, and if they had not done so we would have been under the heel of a metaphysical megalomaniac and the megalomaniacal philosophy of the Hitler-toadying Nazi Heidegger would now be dominating British higher education and the Heideggerian Zombification our universities would still be polluting the minds of our youngsters instead of being what it has recently become - a laughingstock and the butt of jokes in the corridors of shame.

i agree that the current nihilism, americanism, is more encompassing than Hitler’s, who still has some traditional smells, and is, all in all, a little
fellow compared to the greatness of America.

Well, you know well enough how I feel about Nazism and the philosopher of Nazism

You are rather the philosopher of americanism than he what you call him. The national-socialist party accused him of personal national socialism.
You are infintely more in line with the current way of ‘thinking’. The attacks on the philosopher Heidegger are the clearest sign towards the guilty.

- but putting unpleasant smells like Hitler and Heidegger on one side for a moment, I am really interested in reading a simplified version [free of Heidy-speak if possible] of what your advice would be to European leaders if you were allowed to mount the podium in Brussels and address the delegates from the European states there assembled?

Nietzsche answered, that he would politely turn aside. I do not feel any urge to go to them, i stay on my own. Actually i have never addressed them,
it was sthing else.

Could you kindly set out in very simple terms your recommendations or political policies that might go some way to reverse or change, or at least ameliorate the dreadful conditions and policies with which our lick-arse European governments have associated us with - conditions and policies which you identify - conditions which you predict will get much worse?

Europe, and that means the entire globe, incl politics itself, is to be redirected on a new basis. The current groundlessness has become merely
negative, so that already the POSSIBILITY of an alternative, of a new ground, is breathtaking. But as long as we are out of breath, such is i
mpossible, we can'’t afford that more is taken.
Suppose there will be some movement, then global conference on the destiny of an earth driven by technology, is necessary. If we don’t convince
the masses on this earth, created with the help of technology, that technology is now their real arche and telos, alpha and omega, they will simply
overflow us definitively, by war or peace. So the only thing saving us, is bringing the people back to circumstances in which they can be a people,
in their region of origin, the country which is ‘destined’ for everyone to be found by living in it together.

We might have to re-discover the Alps, the Rhine. That’s what Hölderlin was doing. When he had walked back from Bordeaux, having been ‘hit by Apollo’,
he did not go home, but wanted to go to Morea, that is: Greece, but when he was on the Gotthardt, he heared a destiny under him, having to do with
the rivers originating there (see the poem The Rhine, from 1802). Now, without the Alps and the Rhine and the Rhone, no Europe, no America, no globe.
A real problem can only be grasped, there where it begins. When i was 8 years old, we moved from the outskirts of Den Haag to a little village on the
Rhine, and only recently this has become significant to me, wihtout my being able to say exactly why and what.

For the while being, i am without worries. If there is a Gestell, then there also must be its herders, but the bringers of “freedom” are chained,
they are not what they think they are. They might appear surprisingly powerless, one day. After all, it is just polls which keep them on their
post. As everything within the sphere of subjectivity has become shaky by now.

In the words of Lenin - *What is to be Done?*

The obsession to act at any price, is to be broken through. Then the space for the acting, which thinking is, should open of itself. Here preparation is
possible, and the most necessary. Once nihilism is seen, the care to get rid of it, is certain of itself. All acting now, is structured, so one is to stay
outside of it and its public sphere, and unworried by it. That seems to me to be the only remedy against spook.

Shortly global technology is the pointer to the task to procure for all people the realm and the occasion to find a home on the earth, and so become the
mortals which we are, and everyone in their own way. If we arrive there, it will be by opposition to what is now.

thanks for the questions,
rene

regards,

Jud.

“Streams build the land”

Posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
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