File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9807, message 66


Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 13:11:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Language and Thought



Very interesting. I used to believe this. I don't any more. But the way I
don't is not in the manner of turning my back on thought. Rather, I have
to say that there is another neglect as well: of nonviolence, and *that*
neglect in fact permeates philosphy as well, in many ways. Your example of
the mumblers and the "enforced taking" (an action potential is set up, all
action or inaction is then read off as this or that position,
automatically) is really something, by the way. And surely that is thought
provoking. Yet, what permeates Sluga's point, as you relay and resonates
with it, is cleary *nonviolence*. *As such.* This means: two things: 
thought and nonviolence, and certaionly more than those two. But
nonviolence has a special relationship to this threatening condition of
multiplicity. Nonviolence is what attends to precisely what is *hurt* when
any one thing specializes too much. In fact, it attends whether the cause
of violence is a hegemony, a forgetting, a unity or a multiplicity, which
also marks the limits of nonviolence. But we are *far* from even having to
consider the limits of nonviolence, since we are further still from
nonviolence. In any event, philosophy has continually recast ethics and
justice in terms of balance, and every time it does so, it takes
nonviolence out of its element, and take the element of nonviolnece out of
ethics and justice. Being and nonviolence are equiprimordial. From the
start. It is all to the good that the philosopher (if there could ever
actually be such at thing in so complete a fashion as implied by the word) 
should push the particular cause of *thought*. But what calls for thinking
and what is most thought-provoking to me is that thinkers have so
systematically tended to avoid the obvious datum of violence and the need
to stand in nonviolence, as such. Not in "justice". Not in "ethics", but
in nonviolence, which is more original than either. Indeed, I would say
that is the true scandal of "thought", and its limitations, limitations
which, like those of nonviolence, we may now be ready to consider in the
most thoughtful ways, rather than in the abusive ways of those who simply
wanted to boycott lectures, and, as is so often done, boycott thought
altogether. The disrespect and abandonment of philosophy remains, to the
core, a *violence*. The recognition of this, a nonviolence. If philoosphy
is returned to (wherever this takes place) simply bu placing nonviolence
as a handmaiden to thought, neither thought nor nonviolence are respected,
that is, treated with a true standing in nonviolence. But this means,
then, that from the start, Being and nonviolence are equiprimordial.

Tom




On Sat, 4 Jul 1998, jim wrote:

> To all:
> I haven't been up on this language issue at all. But, it sure seems to have
> excited everybody. And since everybody is contributing their views, I
> thought I would contribute my farthings.
> 
> I remember years ago when I was visting Berkeley: it was a time when
> the anti-nuclear power demonstrations were occuring on many
> university campuses. At Berkeley, many students had organized a
> boycott of lectures -- Lawrence Livermoore certainly was a target of
> contention. Well, I have my political sympathies just as anybody, but I
> really wanted to attend Hans Sluga's lectures on the later Wittgenstein. I
> faced a dilemma: should I boycott or should I go? It was a difficult issue
> for me then. After some diliberation, I decided that attending Sluga's
> lectures was the right thing to do. I am proud to say that I think I did the
> right thing.
> 
> When Sluga entered the classroom, there was a 'busy atmosphere' --
> murmured voices, etc. The reason being that to many students present
> this revealed Sluga's position on the problem of nuclear power. It did.
> But that position was nothing near the position that the mumblers had
> presumed.
> 
> It wasn't directly about Wittgenstein that we heard that day -- but
> certainly related, and related to all who participate in this list. Sluga
> began talking about the importance of philosophy. The neglect from
> which it suffers by society and government and "the everyday," in this
> day and age. He talked about how this neglect is in large part one of the
> reasons that people suffer. And in no ambiguous terms, he told us that
> now was a time in which all of us should turn to philosophy, and
> embrace her, because the problems of nuclear power, government-
> academia relationships, academia-industry relationship. etc, were all
> issues screaming for PHILOSOPHICAL thinking. By abandoning or
> boycotting philosophy now, that tested the stuff of which we were
> made!
> 
> And there is an issue here as well. It's not about nationalism or learning
> foreign languages etc. But at least one issue seems to be in question,
> among many others, of course, namely:
> do the identities of a Thought, a human thought, necessarily depend on
> the language in which that human expresses it?
> 
> Either position is as deep as the traditional question whether souls exist.
> 
> what is one doing when one is doing philosophy? it is a way of being
> human, i think. all of us, probably, have suffered various losses because
> of our committment to philosophy. like Sluga said, the issue at hand is
> one that screams out for philosophical thinking, not for its abandonment,
> in exchange for politics, or name-calling, what have you.
> 
> that abandoment displays a disrespect for philosophy of which she is
> not deserving. 
> jim
> 
> 
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