File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9803, message 101


Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 23:51:44 +0100
From: Henk van Tuijl <Henk.van.Tuijl-AT-net.HCC.nl>
Subject: Re: Questioning?


Michael Eldred wrote:
>>One could say with Safranski, Heidegger's biographer, that - in the end - the philosopher Heidegger is succeeded by the poet.
>[...] And what is it supposed to mean?

Safranski compares work of the later Heidegger with Queequeg's tatoes.
His heart's blood pounding against the sacred teachings. Only one thing
missing: rational understanding - since no living soul is able to
translate the signs.   

Michael:
>>[...] - as Derrida points out - that we don't know where metaphysics ends, i.e. if there is a "locus" outside metaphysics (for those who are not gods or half-gods).
>[...] What is Metaphysics (itself)? This question arises for the first time in Heidegger's thinking. It's not the answer to the question that is important in the first place, but the question. The locus outside metaphysics is the question of being.

When Tezuka describes his side of the story of his meeting with
Heidegger, he tells his readers how - at a certain moment during their
conversation - they both defined metaphysics by means of a description
of Platonic Ideas: mediated through the senses but operational on two
levels of reality - at least in in Western thought - and more on one
level in Eastern thought. Seen in this light, "inside" metaphysics is
being inside the tradition starting with Plato's levels of reality.
"Outside" metaphysics would be standing in a totally different
tradition, i.e. another kind of metaphysics (e.g. Queequeg's tatoes), or
becoming a poet (e.g. like Rilke in his _Duineser Elegien_).  

Michael:
>>Heidegger himself talks about the "end of philosophy and the task of thinking". His description of this task ends in questioning ... endless questioning ... It is almost as pathological as Descartes's doubt and deserves Arendt's and Jaspers's scorn: it lacks direction.
>[...] The granting of being is unpredictable and not at the behest of humankind. In lacking direction, thinking cannot be steered for human ends. It is non-cybernetic, and does not admit of human thinkers as _kybernators_, governors.

In his introduction to _Sein und Zeit_ Heidegger gives a detailed
description of how he'll ask the question of Being and why he'll ask it
in the way he does. One of his criteria is that one should already have
some kind of understanding of the answer one expects to receive. In the
last paragraph of _Sein und Zeit_ he only ask questions - and there is
no reason to believe that he has any kind of understanding of the
answers. On the contrary, already in 1925 he knew that he could not
answer the main questions in _Sein und Zeit_, as he confessed in an
interview with Krell. Heidegger is here clearly in a position "outside"
metaphysics and "outside" traditional philosophy. Even in the midst 20's
he seems to have more affinity with Celan's:

"Es stand auch geschrieben, dass."
Roughly: "It was also written, that."

And we, his readers, couldn't and cannot wait to ask:
Wo? [...]"
Roughly: Where? [...]"

Mulhall's view on Heidegger's _Sein und Zeit_ might be correct after
all: _Sein und Zeit_ might be seen as a kind of poetry - like the
quotation from Celan's poem, like Queequeg's tatoes. 

Michael:
>>It is unacceptable that the true philosopher should be the man with the endless, senseless questionnaire. Nor is Rorty's picture of Heidegger as a modern Sophist - destructor of traditions, relativist - an acceptable one. BEFORE metaphysics is not open as an option.
>[...] What if the 'true' 'state' of affairs is that worlds take shape and dissolve on the endlessly shifting sands of the question-able granting of being? Isn't the openness of the question as to who we are and what the world is also our freedom (as terrifying as it may be)?

If the existence of DAsein might be seen as infinitely finite, there is
an indication of a possibility of a whole new kind of logic. However,
there is no reason to suppose that this new logic brings necessarily
with it an endless and senseless questioning. The rules laid down by
Heidegger in his introduction to _Sein and Zeit_ might still apply.
Besides, many don't need a new logic as an excuse for endless and
senseless questioning - as Aristoteles already pointed out in his
Metaphysics.       

Michael:
>>Therefore, if metaphysics is the achievement of philosophy, shouldn't philosophy change metaphysics from the INSIDE?
>Or in moving in and out of metaphysics? This option is only open to thinking that is no longer metaphysical.

A philosopher-poet or poet-philosopher? Ok! 

Michael:
>>The difficulty with this question is the fact that it corresponds - in a certain way - with Steven's motto: "The more mistrust, the more philosophy." It implies a mistrust in the achievements of all paraphilosophical" thinking - like Heidegger's (and the thinking of all the others Rorty praises as being "edifying").
>Rorty takes the easy way out. [...] This is a (cheap) gesture repeated by all  kinds of free, unfettered intellects. But do his translations of "Heideggerese" into his "own" words do justice to the thinking he is trying to portray?

Schulz-Seitz's has written a remarkable article on Heidegger's exegesis
of Hoelderlin with the title "Bevestigter Gesang" She praises
Heidegger's ability to - as it were - join in with Hoelderlin's song
when the latter touches the essence of Being. Therefore, what Heidegger
says about Hoelderlin cannot be repeated but only appreciated.
Heidegger's orthodoxy is not a scientific orthodoxy. He is like a Rilke
in whom the earth would like to originate invisibly and a Hoelderlin who
is engulfed by visions of his origin. The only difference is, that the
young Heidegger joins in - and that the old Heidegger is like Queequeg,
carving his tatoes on his coffin, hoping that somewhere someone
unexpectedly understands the truth that he has carried on him all his
life.

Kindest regards,
Henk



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