Date: Tue, 6 Aug 96 00:11 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (M.Eldred_artefact)
Subject: Verhaltenheit/violence/Seinsdenken


Cologne, 5 August 1996

In response to Tom Blancato's interpretation of composure (Verhaltenheit) I'd 
like to make a brief comment. 

I agree with the possibility of inherent violence in one possible understanding 
of composure. It made me think again whether my translation was appropriate, so 
I queried Astrid Nettling about it this evening. I wanted to avoid the 
dictionary translation of Verhaltenheit as "restrainedness" because this seems 
to me too close to "repressed", "bottled up". Astrid and I did get a little 
closer to Verhaltenheit via Zurueckhaltung and Reserviertheit. As behaviour, 
Verhaltenheit is reservedness, holding-oneself-back, but this not necessarily in 
a negative sense of being constrained or repressed, but in the sense of being 
reluctant to put oneself in the centre, of looking first to see what the others 
are doing before revealing oneself or bringing oneself into the foreground. 
Verhaltenheit is a word very much tied to being together with others. So my 
translation as composure (Gefasstheit) seems on retrospect somewhat off the 
mark. Verhaltenheit can have the meaning of allowing others their space, 
allowing others to be who they are. What does this imply for the passage I 
quoted:

"It [Verhaltenheit] is the style [cf.  Nietzsche!] of originary thinking
only because it has to become the style of future human being, of human
being grounded in Da- Sein, i.e. pervades this founding moodedly and bears
it.  Reservedness/restrainedness - as style - the selfcertainty of the founding 
provision of measure and of Dasein's withstanding fury."  (GA65:33 Section 13)
 
German: "Sie ist der Stil des anfaenglichen Denkens nur deshalb, weil sie
der Stil des kuenftigen Menschseins, des im Da-Sein gegruendeten, werden
muss, d.h.  diese Gruendung durchstimmt und traegt.  Verhaltenheit - als
Stil - die Selbstgewissheit der gruendenden Massgebung und der
Grimmbestaendnis des Daseins." 

The restrainedness/reservedness relates to the "self-certainty of the founding 
provision of a measure". The measure provided for and by human being as dasein 
is belonging to beyng. This provision is done quietly, without putting oneself 
into the foreground, without pushing forward to centre stage. In this quiet, 
reserved preparation of a belonging to beyng, dasein has to withstand the fury 
of human beings standing on centre stage and of the oblivion to beyng rampant in 
Western civilization.

So there is a selfcertainty of belonging to being that does not have to blow a 
trumpet and which has its own reserved style. This quiet selfcertainty of 
belonging to beyng has somehow gone beyond the moral outrage at the violence 
human beings do to each other since, it is no longer beings, or human beings in 
particular who can be in the centre. 

Tom Blancato also wrote, among other things: 
  
"--- And perhaps I am not [trying to see the phenomenon of violence 
phenomenologically]: I am trying to see it *thoughtfully* and in
light of the *thought of Being*. I am suggesting, in part, that it is an
underlying violence and alienation from Da-Sein's emergence *as
nonviolence* that motivates Heidegger's shift from *phenomenology* to
*thinking*, even "the other thinking", and poetic dwelling. But a *mere
reinstantiation* of polemos, of the rift between earth and world, a
dwelling in the fourfold which does not *open up the vast history of
violence* is, to be frank concerning Heidegger, sheer ignorance and
blindness."

There are certainly shifts in Heidegger's thinking through the fifty years from 
1920 on, but in my view he remains, especially in the craft of his thinking, a 
phenomenologist [his 'use' of Hoelderlin may be an exception, but here I am 
thinking of his interpretation of philosophical texts, which are the mainstay of 
his thinking and are all phenomenological hermeneutics]. The positive drafts of 
a longing to beyng in the fourfold, which owe a lot to Hoelderlin, may not be 
phenomenolgical, but they are also to my 'mind' among the most questionable 
aspects in Heidegger. 

Heidegger is concerned with preparing a belonging of human being to beyng. The 
accusation that he is ignorant of the history of violence comes only from you 
making the question or phenomenon of violence the central concern. Interpreting 
a shift into Heidegger on the basis of an ostensible emergence of Dasein as 
nonviolence is an effect of your central concern/question. You have yet to show 
a connection between the question of being and the question of violence if you 
claim to see the latter "in the light of the thought of being". Where is the 
engagement with the thought of being? Where is the engagement with the 
understanding of being in Western civilization as "staendige Anwesung"? Where do 
you show up a connection between violence and this understanding of being? It 
almost seems to me that English is not given to the thinking of beyng because it 
is not given to being used as the working medium of thinking itself. (This is an 
experience I have had now for many years, to the point where I today habitually 
think in German and translate into English as required - and an unusual English 
it often is too! Perhaps English is too glib [easy, not offering resistance] for 
the thinking of beyng.)

To accuse Heidegger of an ignorance of the history of violence is to presuppose 
that this question is central to (Western) philosophy (there is no philosophy 
other than _Western_ philsophy). Heidegger sees metaphysical thinking as the 
founding force par excellence in Western history and sets out to get a view of 
what this thinking is in its essence and essencing in order to open up other 
historical possibilities, another history of belonging to beyng. Whether the 
world would become less or non-violent thereby is another question. All we can 
say is that the thinking of beyng and a belonging to beyng involve a step back 
(in a four-step, as outlined in previous posts). Any movement towards 
nonviolence has to be seen in these steps back, if anywhere at all. I do not see 
any engagement on your part trying to show such interconnections. 

That's all I have time for at the moment,
Regards, 
Michael 
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