Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 14:11:29 +0200
Subject: Re: leap of faith
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 31 May 1998

Robert T. Guevara schrieb:
> Dr. Eldred writes:
> >>	[...]
> >>     Now,
> >>	If we wanted to leap from 
> >>	The ground of everything,
> >>	Where on Earth would we be?
>
>
> i said earlier:
> >we would be where we are.
> >
> >the leap comes as we complete our metaphysical questioning.  if only for a
> >moment.  as we come to an end -- perhaps informed by our personal history
> >but not given by it.
> >[...]
>
>
> i don't have the actual post here on this machine but someone stated that
> this sounded like a leap of faith. (was it steve c?  and did he mention
> Kierkegaard?  pls say more about this steve.) 
>
>
> rafael writes:
> [...]
> >All this remains terribly speculative if we
> >do not conceive it in the sense of a _formale Anzeige_ i.e. as a start for
> >living without fundament, open (among others) to _some-thing_ we have being
> >calling (in both sense of the word) got.

The _formale Anzeige_ (formal pointing) can only point in the direction of the 
leap that has to be taken. It is not the leap itself. 


> in _What Calls for Thinking?_ H says:
> ------------------------------------------------
> "[...] we are attempting to learn thinking.  The way is long.  We dare take
> only a few steps.  If all goes well, they will take us to the foothills of
> thought.  But they will take us to places which we must explore to reach
> the point where only the leap will help further.  The leap alone takes us
> into the neighborhood where thinking resides. [...]"
>
> "[...] the leap takes us abruptly to where everything is different [...]"
>
> "[...] To keep clear of prejudice, we must be ready and willing to listen.
> Such readiness allows us to surmount the boundaries in which all customary
> views are confined, and to reach a more open terrain. [...]
>
> "[...] If he is to become a true cabinetmaker, he makes himself answer and
> respond above all to the different kinds of wood and to the shapes
> slumbering within wood--to wood as it enters into the man's dwelling with
> all the hidden riches of its nature.  In fact, this relatedness to wood is
> what maintains the whole craft.  Without that relatedness, the craft will
> never be anything but empty busywork. [...]"
>
> "[...] We are trying to learn thinking.  Perhaps thinking, too, is just
> something like building a cabinet. [...]"
>
> "[...] only when man speaks, does he think--not the other way around, as
> metaphysics still believes.  Every motion of the hand in every one of its
> works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the
> hand bears itself in that element. [...]"
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> the thread on Being and God is mostly filled with speculation about
> "equating" Being and God.  .. or substituting God for Being .. or not
> equating Being and God .. or some sequenced formula ..
>
> ... all calculative thinking it seems to me.

Yes, ‘logical’ operations here are entirely inadequate. We need to gain access 
to an experience of godliness (or its absence as such) to get close to these 
questions. 

> perhaps Being expressed in being is "known" only as the cabinet maker
> "knows" wood or _is_ *related* to wood.
>
> it seems to me that praxis is the only kind of question that IS the
> question of the meaning of Being.

Praxis here must not be thought in opposition to theoria, but as embodied 
knowing. Thinking is not the action of _nous_ which expresses itself in language 
which in turn can be written down, but rather, thinking is a unity of language 
passing through us in our bodily existing, such as the moving hand, the 
pedalling foot, peeling potatoes or snoozing on a divan, etc. 

Words themselves eventuate truth and, if we listen attentively to them, they 
sometímes reveal surprising new angles -- all at once. Then we say that we’ve 
had a Gedankenblitz, a ‘bright idea’. In truth we have to thank language once 
again for calling beings into the open in a slightly different way, just as the 
cabinet-maker is thankful for the possibilities that a particular piece of 
timber offers. 

So not a “leap of faith” (which is a based on a believing-in another being which 
accepts and trusts that this other being sees and knows more than we do -- faith 
has to be blind in this sense) but a leap to somewhere else where everything 
looks slightly different. 

Kind regards,
Michael
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