Heidegger

> —–Original Message—–
> From: heidegger-bounces at an-archos.com [mailto:heidegger-bounces@an-
>archos.com] On Behalf Of michaelP
> Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 10:49 PM
> To: Discussions pertaining to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger
> Subject: Re: The Truth about Being Jewish/Reading Heidegger
>
> > The reason my book didn’t didn’t sell is because people thought
> > either it’s an intended joke, or the person who wrote it a bigger
> > one. I should have hidden my message better in a title of total
> > dissemblement as did Spinoza in the “Theological-Political Tractate.”
> > This blazenly irreverent critique is written by a Jew–really could
> > have only been written by a Jew. What Spinoza does is shows how the
> > literature/philosophy of the religion of the Old Testament can be,
> > indeed must be read by any reasonable person as a passionate act of
> > universalizing Judaism: Judaism , stripped of ridiculous
> > literalisms, is a universal religion. If Marx is the last Jewish
> > prophet, Spinoza is the last Jewish rabbi.
> >
> > Allen
>
> Allen, more prosaically, one might find the reason for lack of sales
> lying
> with your publisher… but the notion of a (somewhat) dissembling title
> for
> works is itself somewhat relevant vis-a-vis Heidegger(’s thinking).
>
> I found most subversively enjoyable my first reading of Heidegger’s
> ‘Parmenides’: you’d have thought that the book would be about
> Parmenides and
> his thinking from the title; well, it starts off seemingly in that
> direction
> also mentioning Heraclitus in the same breath, but rapidly it becomes
> obvious that the title’s meaning is not obvious. The book is really an
> extraordinary thinking path that traverses the itinerary of a single
> word/concept _alethia_; and although the word is famously articulated
> and
> philosophically presenced by Parmenides, the book is rather a tracking
> of
> the careering of the notions of truth and falsity, of showing and
> hiding, of
> assembling and dissembling, etc, as they presence in philosophy.
> Heidegger,
> the se-ducer. And, isn’t that what you are talking about here, Allen?
> Moreover you also mention this slightly subversive tactic of
> Heidegger’s
> when discussing, in your book, a (Heidegger) course entitled something
> like
> ‘Aristotle’ [sorry, I can’t lay my hands on your book right now for the
> actual reference] but is very quickly about something else that is
> suggested/indicated by bringing Aristotle to mind but not really about
> Aristotle at all.
>
> My opera will be entitled ‘A Certain Silence…’. Will it be obviously
> to do
> with Heidegger? Is it a selling point, the title? What does
> Heideggerian
> music sound like? The Heidegger scholar/translator/film-maker Terence
> Malick
> produced, for me, an example of Heideggerian cinema in his masterpiece,
> ‘The
> Thin Red Line’, but it wasn’t about Heidegger, it was a war film,
> but… a
> certain questioning, a certain flair, a certain clearing in the mess of
> war…
>
> For the record, Allen, I found your book to be refreshingly inspiring,
> as
> did a friend of mine (in whose hands the book still lies, a favourite
> with
> her) and most incisive. The bringing into conversation Heideggerian
> thinking
> and Jewish practice is a brave piece of work, especially given that
> very
> ‘certain silence’ and the controversy that has raged ever since…
>
> I apologise about the rambling nature of this post but I’m rambling on
> anyway. The fern at the back of my garden looks on at me, the look of
> it is
> the look it gives me; it’s something that is…

Somehow, your fern lives in the back of my garden Michael. The exact same
one.

Yours,
Bob

>
> regards
>
> michaelP
>
> _______________________________________________
> heidegger mailing list
> heidegger at an-archos.com
> http://an-archos.com/mailman/listinfo/he…
> http://heidegger.an-archos.com/

Posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 6:30 am
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback