Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:36:32 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: deinotaton and impotence


On Tue, 22 Dec 1998, Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro wrote:

> Tom,
> 
> 
> >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. >
> 
> this is not convincing (for me). You are talking about people or
> "thoughtactors" and the way they interact/interthink, create peace through
> non-violence etc. H. is talking about Being and Da-sein as well as about
> Da-sein and Da-sein (and Dasein and things etc.)

Well it depends on what is taken for *thought* and *action* here. Here you
take nonviolence as an activity of *creation*, which I don't, or do, but
only in part. It is also a gravity of being. The distinction shows up
precisely how, for example, Gandhian nonviolence, which has been
characterized as operting on an "existential level", tends to get
transposed over into purely political pragmatics, missing most of it along
the way. I'm thinking nonviolnece on the level of being, as the gravity of
being. Now, to talk about *people*, isn't this what is so radically
missing in Heidegger's work? I see the move here: a certain elevation of
Being to a transcendental status, but by means, it appears to me, of a
fixation on the preliminary fixation on "things" in a certain way, as
anchor and starting point. People are too absent in Heidegger's thinking,
and too absent in his concerns. This juncture, between *people* and
"being", according to a thinking that so rigorously distinguishes itself
from every possible "category" (of the political, of anthropos, etc.) is
highly problematic, in my thinking. 

> >The taking as things makes sense, of course. But the event of nonviolence
> as such, asaccomlishemnt, 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
> >trictly positive conceptions of care, projection, desire, etc. When it
> remains in the background, we see the emergence of ethics, which tries o
> formulate itself in strictly postive terms, leading to a conception of right
> action",>
> 
> But this is precisely what H. is doing with regard to ethics. I think in
> this point you and H. are very similar. The conception of care is not
> _strictly positive_. In your case there is a basic tension between violence
> and non-violence.

Or: nonviolence and *being*?

> But I still think this should be terminologically distinguished from
> the dimensions which affect Dasein _as_ Dasein. Thinking the
> _Overwhelming_ (and, as you rightly say, _Underwhelming_) as _someone_
> (=god), makes it possible for metaphysics to identify both aspects
> (Being/Dasein, Dasein/Dasein, although god is not of the same kind of
> existence, it is _summum esse_ cf. the problem of analogia).
> 

I'm not thinking "the" overwhelming (there are many) as a person. I don't
know if we can say "dasein" for both what Heidegger refers to as "Dasein"
and for "things". But, at the same time, *there are people*, and the
progression of Heidegger's thought is founded on their elimination or
severe trunction, in various ways, from preliminary and founding
investigations. It looks like you're trying to situate me in metaphysics.
But I am working the difficult relation of, say, Heidegger to the
Holocaust, or working, if you like, the *ontological status* of the actual
child tossed in a fire. This status rends ontology. 


> 
> 
> 
> >My depiction of mooded dasien as "egoic" is problematic, I realize. It
> does refer to certain common critiques of Heidegger, I think.<
> 
> Yes, indeed.
> 

But there is a side of things I think I am hitting off right. Note my
point that, while Heidegger isn't saying "actor" per se, he is saying
*user*, and describing things from that definite vantage point, rather
from the vantage point of the *used*, and in particular, from the
standpoint of the *rupture* that occurs in the using. This area of rupture
is the site of irreducible violence, and the concomitant nonviolence it
entails, for those with the eyes to see this, which is too easily "gotten
over" too much, too fully, and too easily in Heidegger's thinking, 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*.<
> 
> I would suggest to trans-late your nonviolonce into Heideggerian (Meister
> Eckart) _Gelassenheit_. I think you could take more from here.
> _Underwhelmed_ is an interesting concept as it suggests the loss of firm
> ground. Thank you for this.
> 

What is the basic translation of _Gelassenheit_? Can't anything be done in
English on this account (a string of words rather than one?): But I will
still hold strongly that this has the danger of truncating out *violence
as rupture, tearing, ripping, pain, killing*, in a failure obvious sense.
> 
> 
> >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, >
> 
> In this case you (!) are talking about _people_...

Yes. It's problematic, isn't it? Yes I am talking about *people*, but to
talk about people is to talk about "something" which *always* obtains a
certain ontological status, through and through. Of course, the word
"person" or "people" is worthy of consideration, perhaps in distinction
from what is meant by "human". I *keep the word person*, and I am decided
about that for the time being. I do not, definitely do not, put "human" on
the same order as *person*, and heed, well I think, Heidegger's cautions
about the whole anthropological line. "Person" does not amount to "human",
though it is, of course, problematic. Heidegger elevates *Being* in a
certain way, pulling it up, as it were, out of its lowly place as
insignificat concept. I think he pulls it, and Dasein, up *too high*. As
(and if) it "goes down", but not "all the way back down", the concept of
the *person* goes up a bit, though perhaps each informs the other. Even
so, even if we don't think "person" all that much, if we go back into
"Dasein", I hold that we have to work it out, in its preliminary data,
much, much better. This does entail rethinking the preliminary
investigations of SuZ, for example, which can be shown to be profoundly
truncated, but, as I have suggested, this truncation appears to obtain
throughout Heidegger's work, as indicated by the kind of examples he tends
to fixate upon, and in particular, the things he leaves out. 

The move to "being" is precipitous. The concept of "the person" should be
retained, and Being, if developed as Heidegger does it, must entail a
richer recognition of the nature of "being" in the world (well, "being" is
going under erasure, for me, but perhaps for different reasons, in part,
than thoseof Heidegger) which does not appear to be hit off well enough.
As I said before, the "world" of Dasein is not, in fact, as Heidegger
describes it. Its first moments are not of the nature of a workshop, nor
reducible to the ontology of fear, terror and anxiety, which can not be
assumed to transpose into all other states of mind, but includes
"shoulders", friends, beating hearts, carressing hands, etc., all of which
likewise are continuously in the gravity of their violability and
vulnerability through and through, and must be read off not only in terms
of the power of the violator, but the *rupture* of the violation, which I
don't think "overwhelming" hits off adequately at all. When these are
factored into preliminary thinking, it changes things significantly. Since
Heidegger is *ontocentric* in his investigations, he leads into a reading
of -- well, here I can no longer say "Dasein" -- that is decidedly "being"
centered. I guess here I would have to start to say something like:
nonviolent Dasein, though I am wary of that.

The emphasis on "the" Overwhelming appears, indeed, to capture and
conserve the very problem I am pointing to. "Overwhelming" smacks of the
conservation of *authorized violence within a trajectory, movement,
amassing, etc., that has failed, from the start, to open nonviolence, as
such and specificially*. With a certain overwhelming hubris, and
overhwlming is the very essence of hubris, I guess, the thinking
of "the" Overwhelming, Beings "overwhelming" "us", Dasein, people, the
"self", the "self" of Dasein (there is a self in Dasein, in a way),
"being" is *allowed* to assert itself, and all that can be wrong with our
thinking concerning it can be chalked up to the "Overwhelming". We are
overwhelmed by Being, and anything that happens in that is simply part of
its authorized or even essential, inexorable violence of overwhelming. 

This is not to say that there is not overwhelming, of course. The issue is
our relation to (and of course. "overwhelming" can not be understood in
simple terms of relation) overwhelming, and, if you like, Death, etc. I do
not think for one second that this does not pertain, as well, and in every
case, to actual cases of people dying. I will call them people for want of
a better word. I will not drop the word -- or the child, woman or man
burnt in a fire, in a bomb shelter, starved to death, in the Kamps, or
indicated in the "destinal" writings of, say, a Hitler, reeking so fully
with the hubris, precisely, of a definite sense of "overwhelming", so
easily or fully. Ther is no simple *position* here, but rather, a
trembling and a heighting of all sensibilities, of attention, thought,
awareness, of work, action, etc., and the matter of preliminary postures,
methods and strategies is heightened, leading, as I said before, into some
preliminaries concerning the "posture of the 'philosopher'". 

To observe these desiderata, one is repeatedly thrown into the "down"
categories of the ontological perspective or understanding. Here, for
example, you recast me as "falling into metaphysics" in some simple way.
Or, likewise, I might be seen variously as "guilty" or, if you like,
simply "not being here", unattested, etc. That is the violence to which I
submit, as a satyagrahi. It's not something I either really want to do or,
in fact, have the strength for. But I have seen the violence of Dasein,
and I am resisting it. I apologize for my announcement, which usually
spells precipitousness. But, again: indeed, I am resisting, *precisely*:
the violence of a Dasein that is strangely blind -- to the core -- to
violence "worldly" violences rendered *all to dismissable*, which has
failed to grasp what is entailed by nonviolence, and whose "record" amply
testifies to a strange blindness regarding violences, even as it brings
itself into its fruition on the basis of a certain (usual) retention or
even exploitation of nonviolence, without adequate admission of this or
adquate preliminary philosophical (proper) treatment (suspension of
"ethics" in the name of authenticity).

And yet, ultimately, it remains to be asked whether, in a certain way, I
do not, in fact, "meet the requirements of Dasein", i.e., if I am not
authentically freeing myself from the They, am authentically Being Towards
Death, have a conscience, etc. It is philosphy that can give us to
understand these things in their essence. What *essentially* counts along
these lines? What counts as *action*? What counts as stepping out of the
"they", and why? What *counts* as *violence*? Why is the thinking of
Dasein so prone to a bizarre blindess concerning so much violence, even as
it assures itself that it somehow as "covered all the bases"? What counts
as the event of violence? What what is the event of nonviolence?  Why
isn't Gandhi's nonviolence seen for the event it is, and why is it
continually recast out of its more "existential" terms into the lowly
realm of "political strategy and tactic"? Why aren't the "existential"
themes of his volumnuous writings and body of action not of interest to
philosphers in the main? Just for example. I'm sorry, but I sense a
fixation and mechanization at work, and I'm "here", in part, to resist it.


> 
> 
> >In my thinking, ontology is *limited*. Our capacity, even, to think the
> "overwhelming" is limited.>
> 
> This is precisely what H. is saying all the time, against metaphysics.

Yes: as in the *against* of a *polemos* that fails to grasp the
preliminarys of nonviolence. And, no, it is not what he is saying, if you
grasp what *Heidegger* means by ontology, fundamental ontology. Again, I
think you are sort of deploying his attack on metaphysics, transposing it
here, and working to reformulate what I'm saying according to the moves
and categories Heidegger either works or counters/deconstructs, again,
regarding metaphysics.


> 
> 
> > 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.<
> 
> Please take a look at _Gelassenheit_

I'll try.

TMB



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