Heidegger

On 03/06/2006, at 6:10 PM, michaelP wrote:

Malcom asks:

> If anyone else on list or on the site would care to discuss the problem
of
> “terror”, pro or contra, please feel free to join in.

Malcom, the question of terrors and terrorisms (and of related errors and
errorisms) where we of necessity begin thinking these in the very middle of
their topicalities and embrace (we are both sub-ject to such, terrorised,
and they remain a subject for our ruminations) involves such a confusion and
complexity that it seems necessary (to me) for any discussion to proceed,
without too much initial error, we ought to try and ask what the heck
terror(ism) is without merely and only resorting to providing
question-provoking examples to illustrate and argue it… I remember
somewhere Heidegger asks as to the nature of (technological) pain… as a
question (he) left unanswered. Further, perhaps questions of pro/contra are
part of the confusioning and might enter later once we have thought terror
itself.

Hi Michael,

I disagree with your proposition that for these discussions to proceed we
need to forgo any ontic examples without first discussing the concept of
“terror” in the abstract. This is a multi-threaded open forum for discussion
and quite capable of sustaining multiple threads on the problem of “terror”
from multiple perspectives and catering to multiple interests.

hi malcom, before going any further let me add that I did say (wrt to prior
thinking terror) we ought to discuss what terror is “without merely and
only” providing illustrative examples (around which, it seems, there is
initial disagreement and disjunction {e.g., whether the USA is terrorising
Iraqis or whether Hamas is terrorising Israelis, etc}; I didn’t suggest we
dispense with examples.

What you would need to do is first open another thread, perhaps titled
“terror and error” then proceed to lay out the terms of reference for your
argument.

I have opened a thread ‘terror and error’, yes? I don’t exactly want to
“argue” or even lay out such an “argument” (I have no beef yet…); rather,
I should like a discussion to begin asking as to the essence of terror, and,
of course, I should begin with making suggestions myself on this beginning,
which, I shall, as soon as I have thought more…

The most obvious point of reference for this discussion (to me) would be
Heidegger’s notion of the they-self and its fascination with death, as in
its constant denial of the authentic angst of death, which also means of
dissolution, time and of the threat of the ‘other’, in constantly turning
away to the distracting curiosities of everyday life.

This might be promising, but I cannot but note that it is exactly
terror(ism) (amongst other nasty pleasures such as serial killers,
disasters, etc) that has become a “distracting curiosity” (all those movies,
news broadcasts, etc: great entertainment — but do the entertaining
whereupons of mass distraction provide what terror is?)

The concept of “terror” for us privileged overfed moderns is something that
is mostly confined to the idiot box and its never ending stream of annoying
‘terror threats’, ongoing war, reports of fundamentalist terrorists laying
wait under the bed, of government leaders voicing grandiose inanities while
ransacking the public wealth, of torture, mass murder, illegal detention,
domestic surveillance, oil supply problems, economic problems, potentially
catastrophic environmental problems and so on.

We live with “terror”, and over the last 5 years it has come to dominate the
background noise of our everyday lives, so yes, since you brought it up,
what do you think about “terror” itself?

Yes, but I should like to suggest that terror is other than the inane
production of the idiot box and the newspapers, etc; if noise (media, common
understandings, sabre rattlings of politicos, etc) be noise(y) then it is
not terror as such unless noise itself is terror too… I want to think
terror filtered out from the noisy background as some kind of signal, sign,
something significant in its standing out precisely from the noisy nonsense
of the noisome machinations of the media et al. As much as asking for the
essence of terror I ask for the terrorising of essence…

regards

michaelP

Cheers,

Malcolm

Posted on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 at 1:20 pm
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Tags: ontic» ontology» terror»