Heidegger

In a message dated 6/24/2009 8:27:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
michael at sandwich-de-sign.co.uk writes:

moi earlier:

>> The exquisite difficulty faced in Heidegger’s thinkerly walk is that he
>> seeks a thinking path that is not representational, that is not an act of
>> will; and the initial ‘problem’ is how to not even will the not-willing
(how
>> to not represent the non-representational). Long’s walking helps us
because
>> he accompanies his non-representational artworks with representational
>> souvenirs (comings with/before, underlying/accomanying). For the thinker
>> this might mean that the post-metaphysical thinking that Heidegger seeks
in
>> the Conversation can be accomapanied by metaphysical (representational,
>> calculative) souvenirs; that the restitution of thinking when thinking is
>> brought into the region of the non-representational can be realised
without
>> the total abandonment of the calculative (will). Although the
Conversation
>> begins far from human habitation, it is nontheless walked/talked by human
>> walkers/talkers. For both Long and Heidegger the ‘aim’ with each
footfall of
>> their paths is to listen sensitively to that which calls for each
footfall,
>> the eros of walking and stalking and talking. The Conversation is
enacted as
>> a conversation in the soul (Plato’s path in the Socratic dialogues) and
thus
>> is just as solitary as Long’s long walks and traipses into the deserted
(by
>> productive/calculative/mobilised civilisation).

responds BernX:

> Hi MichaelP;
> Good to keep in mind that the “non-representational” is better addressed
as
> the irrepresentational or more to the Aristotelian point, and long before
> Heidegger, the empty pleroma of pre-disposition to form otherwise known as
> potentia. Potential is necessarilly empty except as the field of
> pre-formal (proto-Morphe) predispositions. How can something that is
> nothing generate something? Go ask Anaximander with what he called apieron
> (the boundless), the something that is nothing that Aristotle called empty
> and formless potentia. What Heridegger calls it, I have not the slightest
> idea except for his walk circulus in probando. I realize, of course, how
> difficult it is for thinking to free itself from its tautological rose
> garden except to first generate *enantia*.

Hi Bernard, I don’t see why the non-representational is simply nothing at
all, rather just what is not representable; the example I’ve given in
contemporary art are the walks of Richard Long; the art works are not the
photographic souvenirs displayed in museums and galleries (visual
representations); they (the photos) are rather the parergonal, the
alongsides of the work. Of course, something non-representational can be
represented but then that representation is not of the non-representational
but merely that of the non-representational that can be represented in some
form: i.e., a misrepresentation, misrepresenting because it has represented
something else but without saying so… Also, given my possibly erroneous
notion of potential, what I mean by the non-representational is definitely
not what is potential (nor actual, because not potential); it is neither
potential nor actual but nonetheless it is. What the camera cannot catch in
its own manner of catching (imaging) is not nothing, meaning simply that the
camera’s catches miss what is not image-able, not catchable in that way. You
might think this: instead of thinking of what we can grasp (sub-ject as
object, whether with camera or other apparatuses or with concepts) we might
think of what we are in the grasp of (in thinking (of what we can grasp)).

ps: Bernard, pray, what is a “pleroma” empty or otherwise? And by “enantia”
do you refer to a species of flutterby?

regards

michaelP
Hi Michael;
“Pleroma” may be empty or full. If you are an old Greek like Anaximander
that which is without boundary (Horos) is empty in the sense of eide or
particular “elements.” What is winnowed out (apocrisis) from the Boundless is
without substance but the principle of enantia (opposites). This principle
potentiates an enantiadroma (the dynamics of opposites as the conflict or
reconciliation of opposites). It was Empedocles who determined enantia concerned
eide or substantial material “elements” (air, water, earth and fire) that
paired up in the dynamic of enantia. In this sense Anaximander’s apieron
(boundless) is a pleroma of pure potential devoid of differentiated elements (of
matter).
On the other hand, “pleroma” in the Christian, neo Platonic and Gnostic
sense was always full because its tradition could not abide the possibility of
nihil qua potentia. Thus Plotinus found it necessary to provide a concept of
(steresis), the privatio boni, evil, or material reality, as simply the
abscence of of the Good or better say, dread as trhey were to acknowledge it,
the unthinkable notion of the Abscence of God. Significantly enough, this
view contradicts the Biblical account of Genesis where the first day of
Creation is identical to the Greek Apieron and a concept of the irrepresentational
*pleroma* of predisposition to form.

But you are right about your notion of the “Non-representational” and which
I cannot address simply
because as a “Non” or negation of what is (ti esti) is without substance
and not grounded in ousia. Indeed, it is a nothing qua negation but,
accordingly, hardly qualified as potentia. This would put it in league with steresis
and the privcation negation. All dialectic logic is thus subject to
circulus in probando (tautology) or self predication. For the Greeks the only
allowable tautology was “Ur” or archai reality of *ti esti*, It is because it is
grounded in the proto-hyle known as ousia ( as essence, eidos or principle
of matter)
Bernard X Bovasso

Posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 6:00 am
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