Date: Tue, 04 Nov 1997 20:48:17 +0000
From: Joseph Milne <alfar-AT-globalnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Technik


At 10:50 04/11/97 -0500, you wrote:
>On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Joseph Milne wrote:
>
>> 
>> Dear Panu,
>> 
>> We could attribute technology to hubris.  But equally we could attribute it
>> to man's fear and sense of powerlessness and an offort to overcome this.
>> Thus so many ordinary people put their hopes in technology and science in
>> the hope that all suffering may one day be overcome.  It is always worth
>> looking to see what is being evaded in any ideology or hope.  On the other
>> hand, fear and hubris may be two sides of one essential deeper thing.
>> 
>> With kind regards,
>> Joseph
>> 
>
>I think fear needs to be valued more highly. "Be afraid, be very
>afraid"... It's not enough to say that fear and hubris are two sides of
>the same coin, but they do indeed work together. If the coin is
>deconstructed, so to speak. it is not that one then arrives at a place
>before fear, but rathe fear is freed into its authentic and indispensible
>function and constitutive role. Clearly, the logics of "fearlessness"
>permeate any sitation of concerted military agression, for example. 
>
>TMB
>
>
Dear TMB,

Your point needs some explanation.  How do we get at the foundation or
"deconstruct" fear?  To be afraid seems to me very clearly related to how we
grasp the world and our way of being in it.  This is not to be confused with
"awe" or "wonder" which is the biblical sense of fear as in "fear of the Lord".

I would not regard fear as in any sense a virtue since it inhibits thought
and action and negates love.  In the Greek sense, fear is the deficiency of
courage, one of the cardinal virues.  So I really need to know how you are
regarding fear and where you see its foundations.

With kind regards,
Joseph



     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---