File spoon-archives/bataille.archive/bataille_1999/bataille.9908, message 185


Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 23:23:38 -0700
From: "J. Foster" <borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net>
Subject: Re: Tao, paradox, heraclitus


Ariosto:
>For Heidegger,  in an Introduction to  Metaphysics this union of
>opposites  is found in  Heraclitus who says in  Fragment 8: "opposites
>move back and forth, the one to the other."  Heidegger comments that
>the conflict of the  opposites is a gathering, rooted in togetherness 
>it  is a logos" (pg. 131)

These items relate to first causes. In Timaeus [47e] is mentioned necessity. 

"...harmony, which has motions akin to the revolutions of our souls, is not
regarded by the intelligentent votary of the Muses as given by them with a
view to irrational pleasure, which is deemed to be the purpose of it in our
day, but as a means to correct any discord which may have arisen in the
courses of the soul, and to be our ally in bringing harmony and agreement
with herself; and rythmn too was given for same reason, on account of the
irregular and graceless ways which prevail among mankind generally, and to
help us against them." 

The apparent irregularity [ryhtmn and harmony] is the basis of music. If
there were no irregularity then there would be only a single pitch or tone
in all sound. Dissonance is apparent disharmony, but it is more than the
opposites moving back and forth. Opposites in nature do not really exist.
The snows of winter can fall in the mountains in summer, the rain in winter,
at least here in BC. The dialectical play of opposites exist only in
abstract thought, and in nature there are no pure substances which are
purely other. 
>
>logos does not signify a word, meaning, or doctrine. It is a relating
>tension of the one to the other where knowing in this sense is the
>sharpening tension of  a gathering collectedness which in the old books
>is refered  to by the expression, "forgetting  of the self" or
>recollection.  A more simple word for  this practice is *meditation*.
>Anyone who 'thinks' this way knows that, that which it does, it's
>quality,  is  to increase the power  of concentration, the ability  to
>focus and not get dispersed this way and that way going from next, to
>next, to next without stoping, without permanence, without immutability. 

In the hebraic view we are the 'words of god'. Mere words are not the logos;
however the logos are words. Cicero or Seneca spoke about the "Signature of
All Things". The 'oths' are rainbows or lamps of the heavens that light the
night. They are also what lights up existence via a sort of dynamic force in
creation. Every created thing is the word of god. 

>
>David, you point out the absurdity in frank's logic but in observing
>the exchanges, it seems it was he who made things more complex and more
>tensive by forcing a  back and forth play between the active and the
>passive while you are expressing a lopsided, unharmonious tilt in your
>manner of thinking out of tune with  the middle way,  bad karma.
>
>Ariosto

I think the 'middle' way is a device to get us to listen to the truth. 

john 


   

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