Subject: Re: Heidegger in Germany
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:56:06 -0500




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> From: aglynn-AT-idirect.com
> To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re:  Heidegger in Germany
> Date: Wednesday, January 27, 1999 9:35 PM
> 
> In <Pine.BSI.4.02.9901271954340.15506-100000-AT-frogger.lm.com>, on 01/27/99

>    at 08, TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com> said:
> 
> 
> I'm interested in how you think non-violence, as in the West non-violence
> has mostly been thought through the concept of 'peace', which ultimately
> doesn't seem a properly non-violent mode (of what? of existence? of
being?
> - you see the beginning of the problem).  

Well putting it simply, the concept of peace as such is founded on a naive
positivity. People *hate* the negativity of nonviolence, and usually
complain about its being a "negation of a negative", to boot. It's just a
bit naive. It is, indeed, part in parcel with just how it is that
nonviolence, as such, gets covered over. 

I am somewhat suspicious also of
> attempts to appropriate other thinking (Indian, aboriginal, Chinese, etc)
> into a western context, as in many cases I find that I disbelieve the
ease
> with which thoughts inspired by complex and fascinating traditions can be
> "incorporated" into that context.  And it does do well to remember that
> the author of "Zen and the Art of Archery" became a committed Nazi ...

Well, I keep the business of incorpration secondary. For some, like Gandhi
(to whom reference pretty much has to be made in any serious discussion of
nonviolence), it was all very "new age" at the time, as well as being, of
course, bound up in the "ahimsa" tradiditon of Jainism and some other
aspects of Hinduism, I suppose. It was also very bound up in Tolstoy's
radical Christianity, and odd experiments in diatetics. Such is life.
Generally, the only strong in corporations I make in my own thinking is in
dialogue with people like Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, Foucault, etc.
That's rather Western, I guess. Gandhi is there, too. Don't know what to
say about that vis a vis your worries here. 

There was no particular opening of nonviolence as such in Pirsig's book, as
far as I can see.
> 
> Looking forward to your future posts ...

I post about this a lot, sporadically. I post a bit, there are some
interested folk, some who dialogue in favor of this thinking, some who
don't, some who respond responsibly, others who clearly don't. I might post
some more, I might not. I'm rather depressed. My personal living conditions
are less than ideal.

TMB


> 
> Andrew Glynn  
> 
> 
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