Subject: Re: Heidegger in Germany
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 00:17:02 -0800


Bob and others, these are Martin Heidegger's statements, with one comment
by Derrida on Heideggers statement re Geist. What do you think? Is the same
Geist of Hegel's Geist? 

"To the extent that the essence of spirit resides in conflagration (in
Entflammen), it breaks the path (bricht er Bahn), makes its clearing and
sets it on the road. As flame, spirit is the tempest (Strum) which "storms
the sky" ("den Himmel sturmt") and gives itself over to "ousting God ("Gott
erjagt"). Spirit pursues (jagt) the soul on the way (in das
Unterwegs)....(Unterwegs zur Sprache, p60 [170-80])"

"The fact that the formation (Ausbildung) of western grammar should be due
to Greek reflection (Besinnung) on the Greek language gives this process
all its significance. For this language is, along with German (neben der
deutschen) (from the point of view of the possibilities of thinking), both
the most powerful of all, and the most spiritual (geistigste). P.43 [57])."

"I am thinking of the special relationship, inside the German language,
with the language of the Greeks and their thoughts. It is something which
the French are always confirming for me today. When they begin to think,
they speak German: they say definitely that they would not manage it in
their own language." Heidegger, In: Der Speigel

"Yes, inflamed....not only because of what a reference to flame can
illuminate of the terrifying moment which is deploying its spectors around
this theater, but because twenty years later, exactly twenty years,
Heidegger will say of Geist, without which it is impossible to not think
Evil, that in the first place it is neither pnuema nor spiritus, thus
allowing us to conclude that Geist is no more heard in the Greece of the
philosophers than in the Greece of the Gospels, to say nothing of Roman
Deafness: Geist is flame. And this could, apparently, be said, and thus
thought, only in German."  by J. Derrida. 1991. Of Spirit: and Heidegger
and The Question. Univ. Chicago Press. 

"But evil is not to be reduced to sin and cannot be grasped under the
heading of sin alone. To the extent that our interpretation is attached to
the real fundamental metaphysical question, the question of Being, it is
not in the shape of sin that we question evil, but it is in the optic of
the essence and truth of Being that we seek to situate it. And by that very
fact it also appears, in mediate fashion, that the ethical horizon does not
suffice to conceive of evil and that, much more than this, ethics and
morality only aim, on the contrary, to legislate with a view to fixing the
attitude to be adopted faced with evil, in the sense of the victory to be
won against it, of the rejection or the diminishing of evil." (Shelling, p.
175 [p.146]). 

Hmmh!

----------
> From: bob scheetz <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com>
> To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: Heidegger in Germany
> Date: Sunday, January 24, 1999 10:27 PM
> 
> Henk writes:
> >I do not think that writing about Heidegger is easy, in Germany or
> >elsewhere on the continent. The demonstration asked is not just a ritual
> >one. Fascistoid ideology should be met head on. And that is a tall
> >order. For two reasons. German culture is an integral part of
> >continental culture. The two cannot be separated. Fascism has usurped
> >this culture - and it is still unclear (read Sluga's excellent account)
> >if there are enough defences in continental culture against fascism. 
> >This may be different for trans-atlantics or those at the other side of
> >the Canal who always lived and will remain living in splendid isolation.
> 
> in re the narrow heid-controversy 
> spose you're right;
> but come to fascism,
> we're in the belly of the living beast,
> most intimate with the darkness at his heart.
> 
> and, in re resistence, from this vantage,
> the courtesy euro's extend 
> toward such as mitterand, milosovic,...
> (while here, there's yet some fervor to
> expose and expunge the loathesome
> fascist jackals of capital)
> seems to leave little to hope for from the continent.
> 
> 
> bob
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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