From: "Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro" <capurro-AT-hbi-stuttgart.de>
Subject: Re: Heidegger in Germany
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 23:55:30 +0100


Daniel,


>How do you read this kind of violence from 'Introduction to Metaphysics'?
Is it acceptable violence?>

H. is interpreting _ta deina_ and _to deinotaton_ which he translates _das
Unheimlichste_ (the most eery kind of thing/being). This is, in a first
step,  the way Sophokles (not H.!) understands man.

According to H. _deinon_ has two meanings:
1) something that takes possession of us (as fear or a shyness),
2) the powerful (_das Gewaltige_)._Das Gewaltige_ (_deinon_) means not only
to use power but to be-powerful (_gewalt-taetig_). H. uses the word
_Gewalt-taetigkeit_ (as he explains) in this second sense (in the first
sense of _using power_ it means roughness and despotism and is therefore
something against the provision of everydayness)

Being in its totality (_das Seiende im Ganzen_: this is H. formula for
metaphysics' view of reality as something that can be grasped _as_ a
totality) is of the kind of _deinon_ in sense 1). Man ist _deinon_ as far as
he deals with this but also in sense 2). H. explains that in this second
sense man collects that what is (_das Waltende_).
There is are some puns here:  _Ge-walt_ (power) and _Walten_ (existing),
_Ueber-waeltigend_ (overwhelming) and _Ver-waltung_ (administration).

Medard Boss explained this to me once in the following way: ek-sistence
means keeping (together in the _Mit-sein_) the openness open and, at the
same time, getting _things_ out of concealment into openness, which is for
instance what we do when we do science, e.g. an astronomer who tries to
_see_ into the concealed past/future of the cosmos etc. But, of course,
concealment itself is more powerful (sense 1) than all our efforts. This is
exactly what H. says  (p.123): the knower (_der Wissende_) takes beings out
of Being but (!) he can never get power over the _Ueberwaltigende_.
Constantly something (un-said, un-thought, un-happened, un-seen) breaks
through (or down), our being-powerful (sense 2) crashes with Being. (H.
explain this with regard to _techne_ as _Gewalt-taetigkeit des Wissens_, p.
126 with reference to Parmenides: _noein_ and _einai_ or of _techne_ against
_dike_ or of _deloun_ (keeping the openness open) of the _logos_
We are _collector_ (der Sammler) i.e. we collect what is (das Waltende,
physis) and manage (Verwaltung) this. This is always r i s k y (_Wagnis_
_tólma_). Because of this being-risky we come to the very bad (_Schlimmen_)
as well as to the good (_Edlen_). Language is at the same time opening of
being and dispersion (Zerstreuung). To be human means to _manage_
(_verwalten_, p. 133) the openness against concealment

And: our being-poweful (sense 2) fails at o n e thing: death. (p. 121),
there is no way out here. Dasein is the happening itself of _deinon_ in the
sense of _Un-heimlichkeit_ (eeryness). This is, according to H., what
Sophokles says in the second verse.
We are _heimisch_ at home, and the _un-heimlich_ is something that takes us
out of this. Result: we are in both ways (whereas other beings, are only
_heimisch_, or, more precisely, although H. does no says this, there is a
progression, or there are _many things that are deina_ _polla ta deina_)

All this is the Greek (Sophoklean) experience of human existence and,
according to H., the beginning (a begin) of the essencing of man. But this
begin was concealed and at the end we got the definition _zoon logon echon_
a being with reason, instead of a physis/logos to which man belongs (logos
anhropon echon).

H. is constantly (!) saying that human life is tragic in the sense that it
fails or breaks or smashes (_zerbrechen_) with regard to the being-power of
Being (_denn als Dasein muss es in aller Gewalt-tat am sein doch
zerbrechen). "This looks like pessimism" writes H.(p.135) "but it would be
wrong to speak like this about Greek existence". Life is not a business
(Geschaeft). For us (!) says H. is this therefore (!) very strange.
Non-being (Nicht-dasein) is the highest victory over Being, we are
constantly in a defeat situation (Not der Niederlage), Being is constantly
taking power over us (here there is again a pun: _ver-gewaltigt_ is the word
we use for rape/violate (in sexual sense), H. writes: _woertlich genommen_
i.e. Being is using us for his appearence

The real human power over Being is the end of the story, the power of
thinking as _ratio_
At the beginning we are overwhelmed by _something_ we cannot master.
H. thinking is a re-call of this non-mastering, i.e. a re-call of our
relation to what is overwhelming.
There was (for him) probably something politically dis-rupting and opening
in the NS-movement, but this was, as you know, a shortcircuit. The sentence
(1935) about this takes its (his) distance from what _today is supposed to
be the philosophy of National Socialism_.

But all this can of course be misunderstood in the sense of a _philosophy of
violence_ where the essence of Being is violence (but in this case the pun
of _Gewalt_ _Ueberwaltigend_ etc. and H. historical view of the essencing of
man were misunderstood). As this is _language_ it is possible to be seen
like this...

sorry for the long mail
Rafael




'It is this breaking out and breaking up, capturing and subjugating that
opens up the essent as sea, as earth, as animal.  It happens only insofar
as the powers of language, of understanding, of temperament, and o
fbuilding are themselves mastered (bewaeltigt) in violence.   The violence
of poetic speech, of thinking projection, of building configuration, of the
action that creates states is not a function of faculties that man has, but
ataming and ordering of powers by virtue of which the essent opens up as
such when man  moves into it.   This disclosure o fthe essent is the power
that man must master in order to become himself amid the deinon here in the
second strophe must not be misinterpreted as invention or as a mere faculty
or attribute of man.

'Oly if we understand that the use of power in language, in understanding,
in forming and building helps to create (i.e. always, to bright forth) the
violent act (Gewaltat) of laying out paths into the environing power of the
essent.'  (Mannheim's translation, Yale, (1974) [1959] p. 157)

What is it that Mannheim is translating as violence?   I can't give any
German references.  I only have the English copy.   It is the discussion of
the choral ode in Sophocles's 'Antigone'.

And then the violence of interpretation in 'Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics'

'It is true that in order to wrest from the actual words that which these
words "intend to say," every interpretation must necessarily resort to
violence.   This violence, however, should not be confused with an action
that is wholly arbitrary.   The interpretation must be animated and guided
by the power of an illuminative idea.   Only through the power of this idea
can an interpretation risk that which is always audacious, namely,
entrusting itself to the secret e/lan of a work, in order by this e/lan to
get through to the unsaid and to attempt to find an expression for it.
The directive idea itself is confirmed by its own power of illumination.'
(translation, James Churchill, Indiana, p. 207 (1972) [1962]

Daniel






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