File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9802, message 102


Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 12:39:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: Allen.scult-AT-drake.edu (Allen Scult)
Subject: Re: estimation and thinking


Michael Eldred writes
>
>To overestimate there has to be an estimation, and that includes an
>esteem. If,
>in your estimation, Fraentzki overestimates Heidegger's thinking, then, in
>Fraentzki's estimation, you would underestimate the importance of Heidegger's
>thinking. How does one estimate such a thing as thinking, or a philosophy, as
>you much prefer to say? Where do the criteria come from for such an estimation?
>
>For the estimation of Heidegger's philosophy, everything turns on the
>estimation
>of the question of being.

I can't remember exactly where, but Heidegger himself suggests that in
order to enact this "everything turning on the question of being," one must
necessarily over-estimate the degree to which the question shows itself in
a particular moment in a particular text.  Perhaps the only way we have
available to us to properly esteem the Seinsfrage is to over-estimate, that
is to re-dis-cover its occurance in a moment of a great thinker's thought
and thereby to join our own thinking to that moment.  Isn't Heidegger's
estimate of those moments in Aristotle he dwells on indeed an
over-estimation?  The way he reads the first sentence of the Metaphysics as
founding the history of ontology, for example, comes out as it does, almost
prophetically, only because Aristotle's words are seized upon and
interpreted in a way which can only be charactertized as an
over-estimation.

I'm tempted here to relate this notion which we might call "hermeneutical
over-estimation" (a somewhat care-less term I admit) to Nietzsche's will to
power as a very risky re-valuing, over-turning of the traditional way of
understanding things.  Might one way of making this move be to
over-estimate a text and thereby re-cover something of its orginal sense of
the question?

I'm thinking also here of the relationship of the classical prophets,
especially Jeremiah to the words of the Torah.  Jeremiah creates a moment
of prophecy out of interpretation when he over-estimates certain moments in
the Exodus account of the covenant.

Thanks,

Allen








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