Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 00:48:36 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: Blue skies


On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Billy Budd wrote:

> If someone said, "Look up, the sky is blue", and you smiled in 
> agreement, and then later, when this same person was revealed to be an 
> old Nazi spy, would you look up suddenly to the sky in disbelief? 

The quick answer here is, yes, or with some skepticism. For example, is
therre an ozone hole in the sky?

> 
> Or is this debate an instance of 'interpretation', whereas the blueness 
> of sky is not contested, but interpretations of Hiedegger's texts are in 
> dispute and so it matters. One side saying Hiedegger's writings are, the 
> other that they are not, to be judged according to expediencies in the 
> 'realpolitik' of the Worlding Games.

Such examples are used over and over. The issue is not "blue skys" in the
main, but people, gas chambers, responsibility, violence, etc. If someone
said, "that's a factory over there", for example, or "that's not ashes,
that's snow, German snow, of a Volk with a world-historical vocation, a
nation that knows or shall learn, with proper guidance, how to keep
silent", and you found out they were burning bodies in that factory, what
would you believe, *even after you had smiled and felt the glory*?


> 
> For those few in every age who come solidly up against the wall of the 
> not yet revealed, and who know 'who' (or rather 'what') they are, 

My ass. The nazis knew *who* the Jews were, not "what" they were. They
just hated who they were and killed most of them.

> bearers of a new perspective with force strong enough to change all old 
> perceptions towards the higher, they are of necessity a bit paranoid. 
> Their feeling is one of knowing the fanciful nature of human mortality, 
> and unmorbidly feel that what they have seen is important enough to 
> future to feel uneasy that their relating of this vision might be 
> mortally cut short. Expediency and caution concerning activities in 'the 
> real world', the social, are seen by them as necessary to proactively 
> counter at times.

In nonviolence, this entails a *heightening* of nonviolence and care for
the precious. In philosophy it usually means: being the average guy, while
having unaverage thought. If *ethics* and *nonviiolence* is included from
the start, a certain carefulness and *holdin to the precious* has to take
place in any provional stages. You are forgiving Heidegger, as well one
might and perhaps can, but are missing entirely that the question of being
should, from the start, be, at the same time, tbhe question of
nonviolence.



> I think this particular feeling is also part of 
> Clinton's dilemma, as his faulty judgement resulting from personal 
> passion threatens the good he feels he uniquely has the power yet to 
> give to the Worlding games. He re-acted 'expediently' for what he 
> perceived as the higher good.

Clinton's dilemma is attributable largely to the degree of alienation from
nonviolence, and how politics of personal destruction and the forward
movement of the logics of judgment are *dehisciated* from the
authentically precious. You forgive Clinton by seeing him as being in
error for a decent casue. It's easier to focus on Clinton than on the
whole Senate that cares so little about a million people starving to death
in Iraq.


> 
> In terms of genre, isn't this the difference between those who think 
> Hiedegger or Clinton did what they themselves would have done in the 
> same situation, in order to survive the penalties meted by the regimes 
> of 'truth', over a matter they felt did not threaten this regime 
> personally (since, in Clinton's case at least, it is unlikely their 
> regimental daughters are more vulnerable to Clinton than to the boy down 
> the street), versus those who are 'convicted' that their regime of truth 
> is the only thing that stands between them and the barbaric?

Well, it's important to consider what Heidegger is talking about, and what
Clinton talks about. What Clinton did isn't as bad as what Heidegger
didn't do. The comparision isn't easy, in any event. Maybe there is some
truth to the analogy, but people are querying Heidegger's relation to the
worst single violence in the history of humankind, while peopel are
queryin Clinton's relation to oral sex on the sly. As it happens, Clinton
is in relation to a possible genoicide (which *still* doesn't seem to
register much at all). Pursuing the comparison is not going to be too
fruitful, of course.

In any event, the question is whether something with the kind of breadth
and categorical claim as Heidegger's thought has to be considered in
relation to that violence or megaviolence. The minimal, as far as I am
concerned, is that the original questioning of being must be rethought
according to the equiprimordiality of nonviolence and being, nonviolence
and truth. The concommitant posture must be that of a definite nonviolence
orietatin, *not* "acting normally and rolling with the punches of
political vioilence". It means: keeping a strong anti-war stance, pushing
for things like restorative justice and conflict resolution, holding to
some strong and prudent democratic principles of inclusion, holding
*actiely* against political opression, refusing to participate with
draconian measures, holding against death penalties of all kinds, holding
against abuses and torture, holding in favor of minimal human rights, etc.
I think this is the *proper* posture of the *philosopher*, whose
questioning and development of thought is informed, throughout, by these
issues of posture.

Being so "positional" seems quite the opposite of the kidn of "freedom of
questioning" that one associates with philosphy. I think that is a naive
error through and through. Ths error can, in fact, be teased out of, for
example, the situation of Heidegger's thought, its assumptions of
propriety, the way it progresses, etc.

TMB

> I realize these remarks are simplistic and flawed, but still a gram 
> inheres.
> 
> Billy 
> 



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