Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 12:22:51 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Heidegger in Germany



I don't know about this. It makes some interesting sense. My feeling is
that the path Heidegger calls Dasein to is a primrose one, in part, but
only in part. He's getting something terribly right and something terribly
wrong. He leads into a condition in which simply picking up a cup of
coffee can be a profoundly philosophical act, and shows how philosophy
takes its departure not by putting the coffee cup down, but but by
thinking while one picks it up. But, again, the first "object" is the
other's shoulder, on which one my rest one's hand. Once this is realized,
it turns a certain solid ground on which Heidegger's thinking is based to
an irreducible volatility and incurs new responsibilities from the start.
I might be missing your point. It's not clear to me what your point is.
Partly you seem to be suggesting a philsophical-centric MO to Heidegger's
researches. That is very problematic, but possibly in a way true, even to
the point of Heidegger's wanting to ignite or simply recognize something
philosophical in what is ordinarily taken to be "non-philosophical"
Dasein. But that to which Heidegger leads, "Being", remains too
ontocentric (and centrocentric, regardless of a *shift* of centration).
Yes, the "ethical claim" begins and ends, is quite finished off,
systematized, put in a kind of loop, in the fleshing out of conscience,
and is, in my opinion, hopelessly one-sided. But when this problem is
"solved", this leads into something which either transforms what we take
philosophy to be, or else to something which is better called something
else. Not *thinking*, but something else, like "nonviolent thoughtaction",
"ahimsa satyagraha", etc. The "nonviolence" comes in when the ethical is
opened up. The gestures of releasing *thought* from "correctness", a
certain right conduct, etc., all has a parallel in the ethical in the
following way: ethics is still thought according to "rules for right
conduct", even in, for example, a recent book on Heidegger with a chapter
on Heidegger and ethics (I think it's called _The Other Heidegger_ by Fred
Dalamyr or something), and the Heidegger solution, quite a "final" one, is
a reactive one, so common, which entails staying mum about prescription
for action. This is a remarkably thoughtless approach, and it is
all-pervasive, currently, at least in most areas of "thinking" and
philosophy.

Thinking is charged with more than avoidance of error. It is charged with
a certain quest for "truth". The truth concerning ethics is nonviolence.
Thinking can address the error of ethics (which is always also ethical
*thinking*) by carrying out the very same kind of amelioration against
"correctness" that Heidegger carries out concerning thought/philosophy.
Indeed, this shows up precisely how and where Heidegger's limitation lies,
in that Heidegger's "conscience" in a certain way is too strictly a
philosophical one. The matter of nonviolence inheres in the very grounds
of Heidegger's own *explicit* ethics, those concerning *thinking*, where
he is fully able to *prescribe*, without thereby drawing up *rules* or
falling into a secondary, limping mode of mastery and correction. He,
thus, amply demonstrates the very feasibility of carrying out such
non-regimenting prescription *outside of* what is called philosophy and
what is called thinking. But this outside itself is also "philosophy". To
step forth onto *that* path entails a philosophy that thinks itself out of
itself, that puts itself under erasure, that breaks its boundaries and
finds itself, as having already been (not meant in whatever sense
Heidegger uses this phrase concerning Dasein), from the start, grounded
elsewise than the "original" philosophical moments. It is this radical
gesture that puts limits on *thought*, and on *being*, on being-centered
thought, etc. A "second" thinking, which is not second at all, emerges, in
which truth and nonviolence are understood to be equiprimordial, but this
takes place not in the *reactive* rebellions *within thinking* (witness
Nietzsche's problematization of truth), but as something freer and more
original, less polemical, etc.

Yet just as "thought" is limited, it is also released and charged with
*more*, with a greater burden and possibility. Thought and action are not
a simple dyad and are not independent. Thinking itself thinks this
hybridity, and action undertakes this thinking, this thinking acts, not
simply "insofar as it thinks" but insofar as one thinks and acts, and
thinks what one is doing. But that thinking finds itself in a condition
that is not freedom, but mooded and sensate. Yet, even this highly
Heideggerian conception falls short of the insurmountable issue here.
Thinking is always already *charged* with "ethics" from the start. One of
its tasks is to guard against the ethical falling way from being what it
is, just as Heidegger charges thinking with a certain Ur-humanism: that of
understanding that to be human is to be in danger of falling into the
"inhuman". Yet part of how the human falls in this way is that it loses
contact with the essence of nonviolence as the ground of ethics. Heidegger
loses his way in this regard and his relation to the inhuman, which,
predictably enough, actually serves as a metanym for a hidden *violence*,
is problematic as a result, and must be compared with other approaches,
like that of Gandhi, and understood according to minimal matters of
criterion, Heidegger's historical situation, and so forth. This does not
amount, however, simply to an "historical" account of "the man" as against
"his philosophy", a conundrum that is repeatedly invoked either to
preserve Heidegger or attack his thinking. The human falls away from
itself in part because it fails to understand that "inhuman" tends to
mean: violent. That is to say, the condition of nonviolence is mistakenly
cast in *ontological terms*, held up to the light of the desideratum that
things "be authentically what they *are*". This shows up the limitations
of Heidegger's onto-centrism, while posing some profound questions and
problems.

To "become what one is", as human, as Dasien, etc., is, in part, to
*become that standing in nonviolence that exceeds every "is"*. Dasein *is*
both "being" and "nonviolence". Nonviolence "is", but in the manner that
is, in a certain way, irreducible to *being*. Nonviolence can not be
*derived* from "being". Nonviolence irreducibly juts through being as
vulnerability and empathy, heart, pain, care, responsibility, etc. A
Gordian knot? Just as thinking thinks the difference and identity of both
being and nonviolence, thought and action, nonviolence is called by
thinking to think this difference/identity. In ahimsa satyagraha, or
nonviolent thoughtaction as I provisionally put it, for obvious sake of
resonances, nonviolence bows to thinking, and thinking bows to
nonviolence. They are each *indebted*, own thancs to one another. And
neither is possible without the other. The failure of this mutual
recognition is possible on either "side". While thinking is *capable* of
understanding this hybridity, it has no inherent charge to do so, while
the failure to do so (and this history of "ethical" thought appears to
constitute just such a failure) emerges as an importance from the
standpoint of a *violence* for a being that maintains itself in
nonviolence. Yet the nonviolence that does not *think* can be reduced to
sheer emotionalism, reactionism, and, indeed, violence, thereby falling
away from itself, becoming what it is not.

Ultimately, what is called thinking and philosophy is put into question.
Well, that's not so new, is it?  Does one identify oneself (where one
needs to do so) as a *philosopher* or as a *satyagrahi*? Should
"philosophy", when understood along these lines, be understood as taking
on a new meaning? *Can* "philosophy" ever mean "nonviolent thoughtaction"?
And, conversely, *can it ever not mean this*? Is the philosophy that falls
away from its ethical essence as nonviolence, like Heidegger's conception
of the "inhuman", simply "unphilosophy"? The business of entermination
remains secondary, and as always in such matters, Heidegger is highly
instructive. Better to keep one's sails trimmed to the wind, I guess.
Myself, I'm inclined to say that people *are* philosophical concerns. That
a kiss, a hug, or even a fermata in a piece of music, is a fully
philosophical thing. Seriously. As a musician, I am given to tell students
"what should you do during a fermata in this Haydn sonata? Philosophize!"
I'm *quite* serious. To me, a kiss, putting one's hand on someone's
shoulder in affection or warming gesture of support or contact, *is*
philosophy. The implications of this, provided it's "correct", are of
course enormous and difficult. 

There are no "simply factual" concerns. This conception of the "factual"
goes hand in hand with the original division between "being" and
"thinking", a hopelessly crude division. The _factum_ is a little bit of
"pure being", but there is no "pure being". There are no "pure facts".
There is no factum that does not invoke and entail, however peripherally,
thought, and no factum, or indeed, _factum brutum_, that does not bear
within itself the _gravitas_ (if I put it in Latin it sounds much more
serious!) of nonviolence. There is no nonviolence that does not limit
thought, no thought that is not beholden to nonviolence, no nonviolence
that does not restrict *being* while exceeding *being* and every "fact".
Dasein can never "become what it is", since to "be what it is" is to
exceed being. Here one must take a cue from Derrida, but, again, from
Gandhi as well. I have to say that because "around here" "taking a cue
from someone" often means appointing them as "leader" and falling into a
situation of textual and scholarly responsibility that entails endless
adherence and "defense of the leader" against differentiation, perceived
attack, etc. (i.e., "so you're a Derridian", "so you're a Heideggerian",
"so you're a Gandhian", etc.)

TMB


On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Allen Scult wrote:

> I think Heidegger con-fuses the discussion by not distinguishing
> between the philosophical concerns of Dasein, which in other places I
> think he "truncates" ( appropriately, I think) as "philosophical
> Dasein," and any other possible concerns of Dasein including "people,"
> , or perhaps especially people.  I think it is very tempting to read
> Heideggerian words like "conscience" and " care" as the beginning (
> and often the ending) of an ethical claim of some sort.  In "What is
> Philosophy" Heidegger ( more to the point, I think) speaks of a the
> task of philosophical discourse to "bemood" ( attune) the auditor (
> which I read here as would-be students, co-responders, to the classic
> discourses of philosophy, including Heidegger's) and through
> philosophy to the Voice of Being.  Philosophical discourse itself can
> only find us ( be found) in our situated bemoodedness, and because of
> the difficulies here, Heidegger not only speaks of the task of
> philosophy to attune, but the task of would-be-philosophers to "go out
> meet philosophy on the path." ( I don't have the text with me, so I'm
> not able to quote more exactly, but, here and above, I think I am
> transmitting the bemooded tune on H's language)..  My point is that
> Heidegger means ( or should mean) to be talking about the way of
> discourses which in and of themsleves consitute philosophical Dasein
> as " a basic movement of factical life"( an expression he uses in the
> early twenties about philosophy before he began blowing things out of
> proportion in Being and Time)  and which co-responds to the voice of
> Being.
> 
> I also think that Heidegger creates a similar confusion about the
> relationship of philosophy to history.  Again ( and here he is more to
> the point in " The Concept of Time than in B&T) the history "in
> question" here is the history of the (recorded) thinking-=speaking of
> philsophical Dasein.  It is that con nection that he speaks of
> authenticity, conscience etc., and does so eloquently in a way which
> calls philsophical Dasein to itself.
> 
> By the way, I also found your post about the bombing very convivial to
> my own feelings on the matter.  In this case, there is no REASON to
> kill innocent civilians for the sake of some elusive strategic
> advantage over Sadam who is clearly nuts.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Allen
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 

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