Subject: Re: Heidegger in Germany
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 13:01:29 -0800


"...something else is apprenhended, as something else, but: it is above not
all accessible as entity (uberhaupt nicht als Seiendes zuganglich). (pp.
291-92). 

----------
I think that the comments below are very important. There is a problem with
interpretation of works by Heidegger. I have read many over the years
since reading first B&T and  been impressed in many ways by the
insights for instance in_The Question of Technology_ and the treatment of
the parasyntactic sentences of Parmenides in_What is Called Thinking_.
Heideggers philosophizing is different from say Cassirer's in such degree
as to lead to a view [my own] that Heidegger was not happy with the events
concerning his identity [whether national or inner life]. His student
Hannah Arendt was the great messenger for me about the banality of evil in
her_Eichmman in Jerusalem_ and I have read this book two times, wherein she
chronologues the utter devastation of the human soul placed before the
altar of nationalism and the hatred of a preferred group of despised
non-christian and ancient peoples. Watching and listening to Emile
Fachenheim, a Canadian philosopher, Jewish, plead with the listener on how
to solve the ancient sin in European historical relations was very moving.
Still the people that were nearly wiped off the earth by wars, pogroms and
the
holocaust are asking for acceptance and respect. One may ask why do they
need acceptance and respect? Should it not be the converse? Scandics,
Lutherans certainly helped the despised and the damned, the Italians too.  

If Heidegger did one thing in this century, he did it very well. To say
that his efforts to do what was well, his life work, his
bringing to the fore the wellness of the soul (and the sickness), in the
face of depravity brought on by the absence of a dialogue with the
ancients, by a reappraisal of the souls authenticity, the soul's search
through being soliticious is a special Germanic trait. Certainly the
benefits of his thinking were vast: the_Systematic Theology_ by Paul
Tillich, and within this theology are allusions, direct borrowings of key
concepts, thinking methods that Heidegger made or re-evaluated [i think he
calls them existens], especially the idea, notion, emotion of Care, care as
authentic
existence. If we could imagine a world without Care - in the 20th century -
we would have to remove the legacy of thinking belonging to Heidegger. 

Heidegger called philosophy not the love of wisdom, but the wisdom of love.
But for many of us non-philosophers when there are arguements about what
Heidegger meant by Dasein, rather than any english or french equivalent, it
is not really an issue. I really will never really know what is
meant by this term. To me it is "being there" or "authentic existence" but
it still lacks anything motivating my thinking.  I need images, inspiration
and enchantment to motivate thinking and caring. I read Kozinski's_Being
There_ and that was depraving so the image that comes to mind is not well
with me for "being there" or Dasein if it means the same. The same seems to
happen with "thrown" replacing what could be  de-thrown, thrown into time.
The first sense of my singularity and solitude was being solicitous for
myself, taking stock of my toes and touching the ends of my fingers when I
was three. And looking up at the sky and imaging how large and wonderful it
was. I was alone on the grass on a warm day, and I don't imagine being
"thrown" there. I remember someone put me there; there was light and
warmth.

Heidegger does make some claims about Dasein that are based on negative
assertions. The structure of the world is such that it is not animal.
Dasein as temporal being in the world for Heidegger is not about Newtonian
time, absolute time, but world time, human time bracketted by thinking,
reflection, gestating, wandering, and other specifically human activity
traits. Is Heidegger unconsciously asking his listeners to be more human?
Of course he his. What appears to me to be his concern for the soul, is
foremost, to steward the development of this appreciation for the soul's
progress toward authenticity, toward integration of ecosystem and
social process and make them one's own, to understand & appreciate the
metaphor within the processes of nature and communities, to be soliticous
of and for each
other, to recognize privations in Dasein.

I think it is a great mistake to criticize Heidegger on the basis of his
membership in the NS solely. My reading on this is that for Heidegger this
must have been an source of shame. Derrida, writes in_Of Spirit: Heidegger
and the Question_that the concept Dasein is an appropriative term, a world
making term. He says that the perception of a lizard on a  rock cannot or
should not be seen as a rock and lizard that are seperate, where the rock
is an entity apart, but
as a synusae, or a world event for human perception. Dasein is therefore a
source of privation due to thinking through an entity as entity, world
making says through the disclosure and strikes out the sentencing of the
rock as entity apart. If there was the acting through of a soliticous
concern for the world, of consequential
de-entiation [embracing], of facticity [elements of the real], then the
status and meaning of the world would not end in privations alone. 

Derrida's interpretation of spirit in Heidegger says that "the animal is
poor in
spirit, it has spirit but does not have spirit and this not having is a
mode of its being-able-to-have spirit." But it is our perception that this
is so. The synusae or continuum of being: rock, lizard, shrub, sun, is a
continuum. The answer that Heidegger gives to enti-ation, like nation, is
that this residual remains. To espouse and disclose the human is to include
the human. To reference the world: for the meek and the poor in spirit
shall inherit the earth. More is to be said about this later. 

"the fact remains that the very negativity, the residue of which can be
read in this discourse on privation, cannot avoid a certain anthropocentric
or even humanist teleology....the determination of the humanity of man on
the basis of Dasein can no doubt modify, displace, shift - but not
destroy." Derrida, p.52-53

Which is highly relevant concerning the Question of Technology. Heidegger
maintains that hydro dams change the status of the landscape. Both
medicinal animal and botanical products are destroyed by flooding. We might
agreee with Heidegger that the consequence is ethical in the sense of the
promise not being kept within ourselves to be solicitous. For instance,

"...something else is apprenhended, as something else, but: it is above not
all accessible as entity (uberhaupt nicht als Seiendes zuganglich). (pp.
291-92). 

Therefore Heidegger is asking that we be solicitous toward those that are
poor in spirit so that they, in evolving, obtain spirit. But don't destroy
them in the process of forgetting, or turning one's back to them. 

Chao

john 






> Michael Eldred wrote:
> 
> 
> >H.'s entanglement with NS is used as an excuse to obstruct
> >any serious consideration of H.'s philosophical question.
> 
> I think this is spot on. One thing I've noticed is that the importance of
> Heidegger in the thought of some thinkers in whom it might not be
> immediately obvious (i.e. Foucault or Lefebvre, rather than, say, Derrida
or
> Sartre) is often only noted by those who think they can damn by
association.
> 
> Whilst H's association with NS needs to be thought, so too does the
purpose
> to which it is put by commentators. William Spanos' Heidegger and
Criticism
> has a really interesting final chapter on the complex relations between
> Heidegger and Nazism, America(n critics) and Vietnam.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Stuart
> 
> 
> 
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