Heidegger

Jud wrote this, quoting Allen:

> Allen [in a mad moment of unconcealment]
>
> I taught the first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics today. I found
> myself seeing into the depthful reccesses of each word. I heard things I
> never said before, things I could not have said if I wasn’t teaching the
> first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics on this day in this class.
>
> I feel there is something ontological(sic) in saying things this way. The
> reach of the saying must be far and wide because of the relationship in
> which the saying is being said. It’s not that they are further away from
> the words than my professorial colleagues, but rather their understanding
> of the words is , and so must the words be said. I think this is
philosophizing of a rare sort.
>
> To give you an example, the students were moved to think the thinking of
> that first sentence as an ethical imperative–to love the world in the way
> it needs to be loved if it is to be what it is.
> Again, my apologies.

Jud replies:

> The sentence is guilful, untrue and directionless. All men desire to know
> - what? For Aristotle to elide the object of the sentence is a typical
> trannie trick. Futile, unacademic, meaningless, calculated semantic
> open-endedness. For a modern to regurgitate such nonsense is lamentable.
> Some men, one might even go so far as to say most men, only desire to know
> certain things and not others.

It seems to me that Aristotle is not eliding anything at all. I take it that
Aristotle is saying that men have a desire to know the knowable (which is
not everything that is, although very broad, wide-ranging, inclusive). He
goes on to speak of the senses and that men take delight in receiving from
the senses. Is he perhaps making some distinction
in knowing and perceiving, in the difference that men take delight in their
senses whereas animals…? Animals also desire things like food, sex,
shelter, etc, but man desires knowledge (as well as food, sex, shelter,
etc). Man desires knowing the knowable. One can desire (and eat) food
without knowing it (without having knowledge of food per se). Just as one
desires food, sex, etc, one desires knowledge. One doesn’t desire food of
something, or sex of something: one desires food, one desires sex; it
doesn’t need your ‘object of the sentence’, doesn’t need a qualification. My
Aristotle might well be saying that it is essentially human to want to know
(the knowable), and that is a fine way to begin a discourse on philosophy
since philo-sophy is exactly a loving (desire) of that kind of knowing that
we know [sic] as ‘wisdom’. Does that blackbird in my garden desire to know
anything? Does some human wrapped up and rapt in the pursuit of winning a
running race desire to know anything (and everything knowable, in love with
the knowable)? Is it perhaps precisely a sign of the philosophic that one
desires to know the knowable (rather than just eat, have sex, find shelter,
win races, etc) even at the cost of not satisfying or even acknowledging
[sic] such other desires? And are we concerned with what “most men” want to
know? Is that what Aristotle is concerned with, a poll, a survey, a Gallup?
Isn’t that mention of love of knowing a very fine way then to begin a
(perhaps the first) text on philosophy? Such “lamentable nonsense” as
philosophy?

Gimme “nonsense” (”give me excess of, so the appetite may sicken and so
die”) then (as well as shelter!)

regards

michaelP

Posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 2:30 pm
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