Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 15:32:58 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: deinotaton and impotence


On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro wrote:

> Tom,
>
> you are talking about _actors_ of violence/non-violence. I think this is
> strictly a _human_ affair. Violence and nonviolence are a _human_ phenomenon
> (by the way: if you use: war/non-war, then the question is about the
> difference between non-war and _peace_. Why do you not use the word _peace_
> ?)

I don't use "human" here at all, except in reference to Heidegger's
treatment of humanism. You introduce it and unleash its categorical
problematics. I am not talking about *actors*, but "thoughtactors" (even
whey they, we, do not think). Violence and nonviolence are never simply
*phenomena*, but rather place limits on phenomenality, although they can
be taken *as* phenomena as well, with limitations. I don't use the word
peace because it fails to graps a certain essential element of
nonviolence, which I think is irreducible. Nonviolence is the work of
creating peace, while peace is the goal, in a certain way. Fixating on a
goal is not necessarily the best way to acheive it. Nonviolence is, in
part, the deconstruction or problematization precisely of the relation of
means and ends.

> H. is talking about the relation between Being and Da-sein, which is not an
> (anthropomorphic) relation to be thought in the _categories_ of
> violence/non-violence (this is precisely what Lévinas intends to do).

I don't see that Da-sein is in fact not to be thought of in terms of
violence and nonviolence, along with being. The gesture you take here
appears to exploit the distinction concerning categories that Heidegger
makes concerning the category of "human", which, again, I am not doing.
That Heidegger himself is given to talk in the category, not of "human",
but of "Man" is another matter I won't go into here. I don't see violence
and nonviolence as centered in individuated actors, but as a fundamental
gravity of being.


> The relation of Being and Da-sein is called, according to the Greek
> (Sophoclean) experience: _to deinon_, I translate: the Overwhelming.

I don't know where I am with this.

>
> The problem of violence concerning two (or more) ek-sisting beings (=human
> beings) concerns the _Sorge_ (_cura_, care) with its forms of _Besorgen_ and
> _Fuersorge_ and their _negative_ aspects. So an extreme form of _negation_
> between ek-sisting beings is the negation of their Ek-sistence, i.e.
> considering them as _things_ (or _Zeug_, instruments, see also: I. Kant).
> >From this point of view is non-violence just a very primitive form of
> _Fuersorge_ (I am not saying that this is your position, I am just trying to
> _use_ your categories in a Heideggerian context).

Nonviolence _sorge_ becoming itself in the historical emergence of its
violence, by addressing its negativity and capacity to harm. The taking as
things makes sense, of course. But the event of nonviolence as such, as
accomlishemnt, takes place when the capacity to do this is taken up as:
Dasein's capacity to fall away from itself and its continual call to stand
up in its own gravity of the possibiltiy of violence, which it may either
*take up* or leave unaddressed or in the background, foregrounded by
strictly positive conceptions of care, projection, desire, etc. When it
remains in the background, we see the emergence of ethics, which tries
to formulate itself in strictly postive terms, leading to a conception of
"right action", dominated by the notion of "correct action". In "ethics",
Dasein is "fallen", in a sense different from that of Heidegger. In the
eschewing of ethics as "solution", Dasein adapts to that fallenness. In
thematic and substnative nonviolence as nonviolent thoughtaction, Dasein
begins to authentically stand in its gravity rather than denying it and
basiing its worldings on that denial.

>
> This has _nothing_ to do with your _egoic_ interpretation, as precisely the
> _Fuersorge_ is essentially (!) non-egoic. This could (!) co-respond to the
> tradition of "ahmisa" you are talking about.

My depiction of mooded dasien as "egoic" is problematic, I realize. It
does refer to certain common critiques of Heidegger, I think. But I would
say that just as Dasein is essentially non-egoic (ostensibly), so is
*nonviolence*. Nonviolence is a counter to the overwhelming, however, in
that it is something that must be taken up by Dasein in a certain way, and
something for which Dasein has proven itself to be always *underwhelmed*.
That is its condition of responsibility. We are, indeed, underwhelmed by,
for example, the violence that has taken place in Iraq by the sanctions,
killing 1.5 million people, while we remain enthralled by bombs, indisting
or demanding that what be understood as violent fit a rather narrow
criterion, while shoving aside the phenomenal facts of the case, the
truth, etc. This appears to parallel the general status concerning
nonviolence and how it is not thought, and I indict Dasein precisely for
this, in particular its status-quo tendencies, which would appear to link
up with thought of the overwhelming (it Just Is, nothing can be done about
it, etc.)

In my thinking, ontology is *limited*. Our capacity, even, to think the
"overwhelming" is limited. Where we say "it is the overwhelming", we are
in each case capable of being wrong and capable of violence, and the
notion of "the overwhelming" can be an excuse for violence. Nonviolence is
not necessarily "egoic" at all, and certainly doesn't amount to a return
to simply egoism and "political action". In terms of categories of living
creatures, nonviolence is pervasive, and can lead, of course, to extreme
stances (of vegetarianism, for example) which I'm not getting into here.
All such "worldly" correlates would appear never to rise to the
"ontological" level, but if Dasein is being in the world, then I'm not
sure about that at all. But I would say: Dasein is: being in the world
standing in the gravity of violence as becoming the nonviolence it is.
This reInterpretation of Dasein in turn entails critique and some
departure from what has been taken to be overwhelmingly, and
unquestioningly, the case and what Is for Dasein, its being called to
itself, etc.



>
> >The centration in Heidegger seems to be egoic: "using power, roughness,
> despotism" is a characterizatin on the side of the actor and not of the
> recipient. How this pertains to the translation issue I don't know. >

I stand by this depiction. I'm not sure how your criticism works, but it
smaks, frankly, of a certain mystifying that may be overreaching a bit.
I'm genuinely wary of the move you're making here. Even if we avoid
thinking of "ego" here, we can see a double sided thing that Heidegger
standson one side: on the side of a certain power, and not emphasizing,
precisely, the *rupture* side of things, on the side of the *user* (if not
the actor) and not of the *used*. While Heidegger's thinking enables a
greater deconstruction of reification, to be sure, it still has a general
tendency that is marked by a failure to reckon with nonviolence as such,
on the side *of the other* and pertaining to the other vis a vis,
specifically, the violability of the other.

How lowly, even "dirty" will we find nonviolence to be, how "without
ontological purchase"? And is that really so? And with what overwhelming
confidence does Dasein assert itself in its ontological development? What
hubris? What logics are operating? How? On what grounds? How much does the
notion of the Overwhelming forestall questions? Have I gotten your sense
of "overwhelming" wrong? Heidegger's?

TMB



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