Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 19:41:12 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Heidegger's helping


On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, Rafael Capurro, Professor wrote:

> Dear TMB,
> 
> thank you for your comments, particularly with regard to Quakers etc. 
> I understand now better (thanks to your words!) your somehow 
> 'violent' comments to my posting on silence. I was 'just' trying to 
> think aloud about a difficult matter. Probably our misunderstandings 
> are based on my ignorance about the specific (ontic) situation in 
> which you place the phenomenon of silence. 

I don't really place it in a single specific "ontic" situation, though I
should stress that the distinction between ontic and ontological remains
problematic for me, if doable at times.


We should better take the 
> ontic/ontological distinction when discussing further about this.
> Otherwise it would be like on the one hand talking about, say, 
> logics, while on the other hand someone is talking about all kinds of 
> linguistic mess around us...

I understand. Yet, "ontic" examples do have relevance, as you show below.

> Only a being capable of 'logos' can understand silence 'as' silence. 
> Do you agree? 

Sure.

In order to hear what the other is saying you have to 
> be - silent. 

Frankly, I'm not sure about this. I would rather say that one has to be
*listening*; though in fact, one can build a path in listening in words,
which then enable an understanding. In some sense or other, silence is at
play there, though it doesn't hit off so well. Silence/speech, I would
continue to maintain, is too crude for the phenomena in question.


Silence in this sense (!) is a highly 'active' behavior 
> and it is by no one way a 'non-disclosure', on the contrary! 
> Verbosity can be much more 'non-disclosuring', don't you think so?

*Either* can be. The essence of non-disclosure and non-comprehension is
whatever it is.


> I think Hitler was completely unable to be silent... 

Oh, no, this is a serious mistake.

His extremely 
> loud verbosity (have you heard one of his 'speeches'?) is intolerable

Just a point: when you say "is intolerable" it sounds funny. I know this
is a language problem (I'm sorry I don't speak your language.) Better to
say "was intolerable". But I understand what you mean. Yet the *speech* as
such is itself already a special case. I've made reference to such
speeches. In fact, I have to stop again and say that when talking of
Hitler, it isn't quite right simply to say "have you heard his speeches",
as if one were speaking of an ordinary political actor. But anyhow, yes, I
understand what you are pointing to. And in fact, I draw a definite
parallel between that kind of shouting and other extremes of silence. Yet
the "non-presence" of an extreme silence is problematic. And at the same
time, *Hitler held back*: he did not say, in 1933, for example, "I really
am secretly planning to build gas chambers". A definite strategic silence,
a *keeping silent* was without question at work in the Nazi program. We
will find, I suggest, the general categories of *speech and silence*
inadequate for addressing these issues.


 Our Western Socratic tradition is a tradition of 'logos'. You 
> remember the place in the 'Philebos' (and the comments by Derrida on 
> it) about the soul as a book (a writer and a painter within us) and 
> the question about the soul talking silently (!) to itself (which is 
> 'doxa') until (!) it expresses its thinking through 'logos'. There is 
> a movement of criticism on the side of philosophy with regard to the 
> mystic silence (this tension is particularly clear in the 'Symposion' 
> with regard to 'the conservatives'). There is an interesting book (in 
> German) written by Kaette Trettin: Die Logik und das Schweigen, where 
> she shows the (in your terminology) 'violent' omission of silence in 
> Western Logic. 

This is all food for thought.

I was thinking on this book as I wrote my posting...
> So both silence and speech can be violent to each other.

And more generally: can be violent, or can be grounded in what is violent,
in service of what is violent, and not simply violent to each other, as if
the two were to be arranged in a polemical opposition. Generally speaking,
my point about a certain *essence* issue, grasping an *essence*, what is
*essentially violent*, etc., has not at all been recognized in these
postings.


> With regard to Heidegger: I think his thinking on the relationship 
> betwenn language (Rede) and silence in 'Being and Time' (there are 
> some few passages on it) is quite different from his later writings 
> on this. There is an interesting word used by the late Heidegger, 
> which is not used in everyday German, it is 'Erschweigen', the 
> preposition 'Er' means usually: making something more intensively (I 
> need help from Michael Eldred now! my English is very poor...), and 
> is different, for instance, from 'Verschweigen' (that means: keeping 
> something for yourself that you should have said) and it is different 
> from 'just' 'schweigen' (not talking). 

I can appreciate this. There are really so *many* things that can lead to
this, far beyond simply "speaking and silence". 

So 'erschweigen' takes place 
> in a dialogue, such as the one between Heidegger and the japanese, 
> where both talk to each other 'on' something without making an 
> 'object' of it. 

Yes, the dialogue there is good, I think.

In this dialogue Heidegger makes a difference between 
> talking 'about' (ueber) and talking from (von). Language, not being 
> an object, can only be approached if we talk 'from' it. 

I like these logics a lot. And they lead beyond language in certain ways,
into the ways of the things from which one speaks. When I get a sense for
this, I tend to want to see language freed up. Throughout, I think hitting
on the catetories of "speech and silence", "talking and not talking",
etc., are really very secondary moves which are not grasping essentials.

Thanks for your thoughtful and informative reply,

TMB

This is a 
> distintion you can find in Wittgenstein in his famous dictum:
> Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.
> in this case he was talking from (!) it, but he was being silent 
> instead of talking 'over' it.
> Cheers
> Rafael
> 



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