Heidegger

Re: [polemos] boycott boycotts (was: [polemos] boycott israel)
—– Original Message —–
From: michaelP
To: Discussions pertaining to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [polemos] boycott boycotts (was: [polemos] boycott israel)

A division of labour, Bob: in what?
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between head, heart and hand, ie, mentation, affect, and activism

Intellectual labour? Ideological production and reproduction? How can the labouring of the thinker *not* “ensue from whole be-ing”? Thinking be-ing is necessarily knowingly or unknowingly exposed to everything that can influence and determine it; why do you make this distinction (Marx never did)?
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he did indeed, …right thinking is only accessible thru activism

Why is it “luxuriating in one’s self” to ask of philosophy that it be concerned with the nature of morality and morals (for example) whilst bringing to bear the (opinions on) morality of currency as it surfaces in the media, the inevitable taking of sides as they appear in their compelling and exhausting fashion?
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divorced from the facticity of the world and the other, phil is just mirror gazing

That philosophy take on the task of looking at the very opinionating of what surfaces as those different and differing perspectives, interests, commitments, ideologising, propogandising, etc, simply because we are merely men, and men are always in some situation (historically, socially, class-wise, geographically, culturally, linguistically, etc) and thus offer up a view from that situation?
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life is messy, complex, etc. philosophical making sense of it cannot legitimately be done by eliding the vulgar, confusing, or inconvenient.

Should not philosophy — if it is to be something other than situated speech, the ordinary speech of ordinariness (wherever, whenever, however it occurs, however (and precisely because) it is ubiquitous and insisting, compelling loudest music…), however fascinating, interesting, street-cred, reasonable, right-minded, etc — show its difference in its aspiration to be some kind of surmounting of, overcoming of (as in verwindung {sorry if I’ve spelt it wrongly, I mean something other than uberwindung}), transcending of, beyonding of, etc, such ubiquitous expression, preaching, understanding, perspectivising? If not, it seems to me that either all speech is philosophical or (which amounts to the same thing) the difference that philosophy makes is silent, that philosophy, like ordinary speech, says nothing and the distinction between speaking and saying (something) is void: and isn’t this nihilism?
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the contemptuous terminology only betrays your prejudice, closed-minded-ness. obviously idle chatter is mindless, and mindlessness is obviously not phil., but the koine is capable of significant expression as much as mandarin of nonsense. the quotidian is not eo ipso nihilism. and it is temporality, the matrix of meaning and nihillism.

I know you never called me a zionist, but I was not referring to myself when I suggested that your circular to the list might be ad hom or incendiary to someone(s). It’s similar to Jud’s calling this list(’s members as belonging to) a cult: my sensibilities were outraged that some kind of ‘we’ was being accused, and I have always taken that as a back-hand ad hom (one that is outraged that it be considered so and thus then engages in seemingly defensible explicit ad hom in counterpoint…)
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that’s a bit of a perverse construction. the playground bully-boy is beating the weakling, stealing his lunch and bicycle and someone says ‘let’s stop this’, and you’re offended by the call to intervene?

As for “abominate[ing] both alike”, presumably (in this case) you mean the zionist entity (Israel, international zionists, et al) and the anti-zionist entity (hamas, hezbollah, Iran, Syria, et al), my professing of a commitment to philosophy (as far as my abilities will take me…) forbids me to (qua philosophy as I understand it) express any sympathy of the kind you find easy to express: that does not mean I do not have any [far from it], just that this is not the place to profess such, and, that I am highly committed to thinking beyond/under whatever loud music assails my ears and engages my most vulnerables. In that spirit, I do not abominate both sides, because that would be taking the side of neither-side: and that would not be looking a-side at the sided-ness of taking sides (taking sides is, in this case, siding with a war-like entity, which is waging war by other means). Rather, the phenomenon of siding offers me the possibility of looking at sidedness itself (all sides, any sides, the besides, the asides, siding…).
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empty formalism

If philosophy (that which you designate as “exquisite harmony of rarefied narcissism”) is the expression of feelings/impressions (everyone has them), the statements of facts (everyone makes them), the indication of preferences (everyone has them), the siding with sides (everyone does), etc, then everyone is a philosopher and thus philosophy loses its distinction and becomes analytically nothing, silent.
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not what i meant at all. rather the empty formalism in preceeding para

And then, Bob, I wonder what in hell is the “exquisite harmony of rarefied narcissism”: sounds like hell to me. Given, the philosophical life (if lived committedly, authentically) is not an easy one (it must run counter to ‘commonsense’ and obviousness, since what is obvious is, er, obvious and does not need to be said, and philosophy, whatever it is or not, must *say* something and not just speak interminably of what is simply or immediately evident. Philosophy, science and religion (to mention the three most obvious contenders for serious thinkerly speech) must say something about beings that is not obvious, not immediately evident, other than commonsense, etc, since these constitute the environment of the most immediate and ubiquitous, and thus do not need repeating, since they are what is most apparently intimate, close, nearest, all-prevailing. Given you do (in your latest posts concerned with the horror that is the current war between Israel and Hezbollah et al) provide in your speeches what is already a current and widely held set of viewpoints and keenly take a most definite and well-known and proliferated side in the conflict as reported ad nauseam, it seems to me that you do not sit in the discomfort of not doing so, rather your guilt/shame/rage/impotence is the very stuff that proliferates war, and thus lies in the comfort zone (in the sense that war and violent conflict is what has typified human existence for a long long time and thus can be seen as a way of not changing, as conservative; to claim that one side is the poor disenfranchised oppressed the other the imperialistc oppressor, etc, is what everyone has always done and so the revenge, the continuance of the comfort of war as a permanent state, a state of nature, etc). To not take sides (philosophically) whilst nonetheless feeling sided (as a man) is not comfortable and hardly harmonic; to take sides (philosophically) is what everyone does (unphilosophically) and thus is to remain conservative, to challenge nothing, to (philosophically) say nothing.
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you’re saying that it’s the part of philosophy to stand by and calmly watch the bully beat the weakling. than phil is a monster of insouciance or a coward.

I am willing to discuss the (mediated) concrete phenomena (that “mid-east” war, for example) and what is spoken regarding them, but (for me, as I take philosophy) this discussion needs to be on the way to something else, otherwise, again, it’s just a hi-falutin pub chat and war by other means.

You say that things are turning my way: genuinely, what do you mean? “Delete you” Bob? Never! Why? Have I?
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only meant that the list clamor for making phil think “the horror” of the worlding of western imperialism in the mid-east at this moment seems to have subsided; and, to be about settling back into its wonted complacency of narcissist philological quibbling.
and except for the discouragement of folks’ blindness to the magnificence of the hezbollah resistance to the full apocalytical force of the US imperial war machine in south Lebanon, and the stupendous tragedy of their impending destruction, …jesus’ via crucis right before our eyes, and mostly we’re like auden’s depiction of the scene with the donkey scratching himself against the cross perfectly oblivious to the suffering and dying god.

bob

Good cheer you say: I am gutted by what is going on.

En avant?

michaelP

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Posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 3:25 am
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