Date: Mon, 19 Aug 96 18:04 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (M.Eldred_artefact)
Subject: RE: Oedipal and Parmenidal issues 



Cologne, 19 August 1996

To follow up a bit on patricide and Iain's Vorstoss, especially concerning the 
necessity of doing violence to the father in the passing of the generations, 
I've been wondering whether Oedipus' downfall lay in fact in NOT having done 
violence to the father. For he never 'killed' the father AS father, but a 
stranger blocking his way on the road. This absence of having it out with the 
father, the very lack of resistance was perhaps his downfall, leading him to re- 
and uncovering the father? If this is at all plausible, then the parallels to 
Plato's doing violence to father Parmenides do not hold up, for Plato's 
"violence" is a loving violence. (Just as Heidegger's violence against Husserl 
is a loving violence.) Taking the father seriously in having it out with him 
seems to be part of the downward compatible love between the generations in the 
West. 

I've been looking at GA19 'Sophistes' Marburger Vorlesung WS 1924/25 over the 
last couple of days. It is one of the longest volumes (633 pp.!) in the GA and 
an amazingly thorough-going, line-for-line interpretation not only of 
'Sophistes' but also of parts of the 'Nikomachean Ethics' and 'Metaphysics'. A 
beautiful way to learn philosophical Greek. 

In the central part of the lecture series and of 'Sophistes', the issue turns on 
whether non-being can even be said (_me on legein_). If one goes along with 
Parmenides, the Father, then "what is non-being is not, thus: there is no such 
thing as _pseudes logos_" (S.411) If non-being is not, then it cannot be said 
and thus there can be no such thing as a sophist. Plato is put before the choice 
of either being true to the tradition (Parmenides) or breaking with it in the 
attempt to return to "the issues themselves": "Sachforschung" (S.412). Plato of 
course decides for the latter alternative: to think through the issues himself 
in the "silent dialogue of the soul/psyche with itself". Violence must be done 
to the tradition/father: "_Ruecksichtslosigkeit gegen die Tradition ist 
Ehrfurcht vor der Vergangenheit_, - und sie ist echt nur in der Aneignung dieser 
- der Vergangenheit - aus der _Destruktion_ jener - der Tradition." (S.414) 
(Engl.: "_Ruthlessness against tradition is awe of the past_, and it is only 
genuine in the appropriation of the past resulting from the _destruction_ of the 
tradition.") 

But this only explains the genuine philosophical attitude toward earlier 
thinkers; it says nothing about the particular issues facing the thinker 
thinking today or Plato thinking two millenia ago. For Plato the issue is that 
the _me on_ must *be* in a certain sense if he is to be able to say anything 
against sophistry. But there are seemingly insuperable difficulties (_aporia_) 
in saying what is not (_me on legein_) which Plato has to find a way out of 
(_poros_). 

"Im Reden ueber das _me on_ macht man sich selbst staendig offenbar in der 
Unmoeglichkeit des eigenen Unternehmens. Sofern Sprechen-ueber immer ist 
Ansprechen von etwas und das Sprechen ueberhaupt die primaere Erschliessung- und 
Zugangsweise zu dem, was ist, bleibt das _me on_ fuer den _logos_ verschlossen." 
(S.424) 

Engl: "By speaking about the _me on_, one is continually made plainly aware that 
one's own enterprise is impossible. Insofar as speaking-about is always an 
addressing of something, and speaking in general is the prime way of 
encompassing and accessing what is, the _me on_ remains closed to the _logos_." 

The concept of the other (_heteron_) provides the clue to the way out of the 
aporia: 

"This concept of _heteron_ however is the concept from which Plato will proceed 
to revise the concept of _me_ of the _on_, the negation. Such a _prosgenesis_, 
coming-as-an-appendage, being-said-together of a being with another being 
obviously presents no difficulty; if I address the _ti_ [something] as _on_ 
[being] and simultaneously address the _ti_ as _hen_ [one], then that is 
completely comprehensible. But what is the situation regarding: '_me onti de to 
ton onton ara pote prosgignesthai phesomen dunaton einai; (a7 sg)' 'Will we say 
that it is possible to assign an _on_ to the _me on_' or to speak an _on_ 
together with the _me on_?" (S. 422) 

Does the way out lie in the possibility of speaking enclitically? 


_Chaire ek klines_, 
Michael
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