Date: Thu Nov  3 07:05:00 1994
From: Tom Blancato <tblancato-AT-envirolink.org>
Subject: Nietzsche/paganism


I've been encouraged by the recent note inviting others to write despite 
inadequate knowledge of D-G,  and which suggested that some free flow,  
perhaps a lot of it,  was fitting with D-G's "ethos",  even perhaps a 
prerequisite.  As my mail was down,  I couldn't respond to Erik's posting 
about my post re:  "Paganism",  elements,  "the heideggerian question",  etc.  
As far as the question concerning what is "the Heideggerian question",  I 
don't refer to a specific question (which would in any case be the question of 
Being,  I guess).  I refer to questioning,  perhaps the scrap or remnant or 
sliver of a question referred to by Derrida in Violence and Metaphysics,  the 
community of the question (something like "philosophy").  Vis a vis Heidegger, 
 an other Heidegger,  not so much secret or hidden,  but hidden because it is 
so close,  not even consigned to a footnote or parenthesis:  the Heidegger 
that displays the mis en scene of the "how" of thinking (not THE how),  the 
secondary Method to the primary substnace.  One can think of wood paths here.  
The point,  then,  was to raise the question about what this might be,  this 
questioning,  in light of thoughts of "forces",  elements,  etc. I stressed 
what the question might come up with (elemtarity,  no doubt),  as a possible 
route.  I don't know if this can play ably into D-G:  I display my ignorance:  
do "forces and elements" in a Nietzschean sense admit of the question as force?

But what really prompted the post was the thought of Paganism,  which I recall 
Heidegger pointing out as always already invoking the play and dominance of 
its other.  The question here would be to ask whether in some ways there was 
at play a naivete regarding the use of the word "pagan",  and a failure to 
grasp the space out of which the designation,  and the world it represents,  
arises.  The post hoped to associate the space of the question (which I 
metanymically and in a generous thinking of Heidegger called the "Heideggerian 
question") with the thinking which can remain alert to the essential way in 
which the world division pagan-other.


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Tom Blancato                    Not satisfied with the progress.
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