Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 10:36:51 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Fritz Heidegger, carnival, Catholicism,&Self-discipline


Cologne 27-Jan-2001

"Gary C. Moore" <gospode-AT-yahoo.com> schrieb  Fri, 26 Jan 2001 03:18:23
-0800 (PST):

> Dear Doctor Michael Eldred <artefact-AT-t-online.de>
> Cologne
> >
> I have just started a crazy, or crazier than usual,
> line of thought in relation to Heidegger. It was
> stimulated by someone else in their discussion of
> Heidegger's thinking of the Greek meaning of TOPOS

Dear Gary Moore,

Thank you for your thought-provoking posting.
_Topos_ in Greek understanding (or Aristotle's thinking) is the place
where something (_ta physei onta_, natural beings) belongs.

>
> which, related on the one hand to Holderlin's
> homelessness and homecoming, is also related to
> Aristotle's sense of "familiarity" that he touches on
> seemingly in passing at the beginning of chapter 19 of
> the POSTERIOR ANALYTICS (99b15-19) but really seems to
> have immense importance in the EXISTENTIAL development
> of the universal directly from experience. This
> chapter was originally translated into English by Mure
> as a panegyric of scientific thinking, but Jonathan
> Barnes, trying to be as literal as possible to the
> Greek dispite all the awkwardness, gives a very, I
> think, existentialist portrayal of the birth in stages
> of the universal, of which ONLY in the LAST stage does
> it become an abstraction, out of warlike strife.
> Aristotle actually uses the image of one man in a rout
> during battle taking a stand and, BY HIS EXAMPLE,
> making others take a stand and set up a line of
> defense. You know the Greek. Would you comment on
> this.

To properly assess this, I'd have to look at the different renderings. I
have the Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle which is rather
out-moded and anxious to provide a 'readable' translation. The whole
Book II Chapter XIX is concerned specifically with how _epistaemae_
(knowledge) of the _protas archas_ (first principles or initial
governing starting points) is attained. The verb related to the word
_epistaemae_  is _epistamai_, from _epi_ and _histamai_ "to bring
oneself to stand", so it would be more appropriate to render
_epistaemae_ as "under-standing" (Ver-stehen in German, which has the
same, 'standing' stem).

The point of the illustration of a warrior coming to a stand against the
enemy in battle, and in so doing bringing the rest of the army to a
stand, has to do with how the sense impressions of perception
(_aisthaesis_), through memory (_mnaemae_), eventually give rise to the
_archae_ (governing starting point) for _technae_ and _epistaemae_ by a
process akin to accumulation. The individual perceptions are held and
brought to stand cumulatively in memory, which in turn allows the
_archae_ or principle to be seen. So understanding is a kind of 'coming
to a stand' of sense impressions in memory whereby the catholic or
general (_katholou_, lit. 'towards the whole') is recognized.

It is the task of _nous_ (reason, intuition, a direct, unmediated
looking-at without the articulating _logos_) to see the first principles
of understanding, i.e. to perform its first gathering of sense
impressions into a starting point by looking beyond the particular
instances towards the whole.

I don't see much existential import in Aristotle's admirably dry
presentation in Book II Chapter XIX of Anal. Post., apart from the
striving for _alaetheuein_, for uncovering and disclosing, for rescuing
from hiddenness, but, in another vein, I do recall Heidegger's
'existential' reformulation of the 'principle of non-contradiction':

Metaphysik, Gamma 3, 1005 b 29f "adynaton hama hypolambanein ton auton
einai ká me einai to auto" - "derselbe redende und verstehende Mensch
als er selbst steht in der Unkraft, kann es nicht vertragen und
zulassen, bezueglich ein und desselben Seienden zugleich vorwegzunehmen,
es sei und sei nicht". Heidegger _Aristoteles, Metaphysik Theta 1-3: Von
Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft_ GA Bd.33 S.65.

English: "The same speaking and understanding person as he himself is
beset by a lack of power and cannot admit and bear to assume with regard
to one and the same being at one and the same time that it is and is
not."

> The main point is that TOPOS as place is "at home in
> "familiar" surroundings as opposed to abstract,
> mathematical space that has become our 'cultural'
> paradeigm from Descartes and Galileo. My primary
> source then relates this directly to Michael
> Foucault's use of space in two different and
> thoroughly opposing senses: "supplice" as meaning the
> personal space of religious ritual, carnival, the
> market place, obscenity, sex, and public executions
> versus "dispositif" in the sense of military
> discipline and moral self-observation as the 'subject'
> that Foucault says is a modern invention. This in turn
> immediately relates in my mind to Mikhail Bakhtin's
> RABELAIS AND HIS WORLD where he discusses, and seems
> to believe in quite literally, "the carnival bonfire
> which renews the world". Bakhtin first states that in
> the ancient world the holy and prestigious lived hand
> in hand with the obscene and derogatory. From my own
> experience in studying Greek old comedy and the
> fragments of the satyr plays that ALWAYS went with the
> tragic trilogies at the Dionysia, this is perfectly
> true. Unfortunately, the only surviving satyr play,
> THE CYCLOPS by Euripides, seems to be completely
> atypical compared to the wild obscenities in the
> fragments of Aeschylus and Sophocles. But Euripides
> does seem to indicate a divide that can be seen in the
> relative decency of Aristophanes' PLUTUS and
> overwhelmingly in the 'domestic' comedies of Menander
> who seems incredibly trite now but in his age was
> considered the greatest of dramatists, outshinning
> even the three tragedians at times.
>
> Bakhtin says with the advent of Christianity, culture
> openly divided into two parts which, during carnival,
> both halves of society uninhibitedly indulged in folk
> culture licentiousness. Then in the 17th century
> Foucault says that a strange duality of prudishness
> and moral interference began to come about that in
> turn brought on an intensification of the very
> licentiousness the prude was supposedly opposed to.
>
> Now, to hurry, Martin Heidegger was a South German
> Catholic, but his religious life seems to have been
> constructed to a certain degree in opposition to
> Bismark's arbitrary and irresponsible KULTURKAMPF so
> that his view of religion and life in his early years
> was discipline and self-sacrifice, i.e. a very
> Prussian 'Catholic". But his younger brother Fritz,
> with whom Martin had a very close relationship all his
> life, is the epitome of the "carnival" personality. I
> must be short. I have noticed numerous passing
> comments in Martin Heidegger relating to the NECESSITY
> of the darker aspects of life not at all consistent
> with any bringing a 'noble' and 'pure' message to
> mankind. I assume you have read Muller's book on Fritz
> Heidegger. Would you care to have any comments on
> this?

This is yet another book I haven't read, unfortunately. It's well known
that Fritz was a 'lustiger Kerl', a jolly chap. In younger years (around
1909-1913), Martin held a number of talks at the meetings of the
Messkirch's Catholic Bachelors' Association (Gesellenverein) on various
topics of interest such as socialism and Nietzsche.

In Nov. 1909 Martin (aged 20) publishes an article in the local paper:

"Allerseelenstimmungen
von M. Heidegger

Allerseelentag…im Todesmonat. Grau und trueb und nass und kalt haengt es
in den breiten Strassen der Grossstadt. Das schwarze, verregnete
Pflaster schimmert gespenstisch vom Schein der Gaslampen in den blendend
hellen, raffiniert ausgestatteten Schaufenstern. Am Morgen ist’s und
noch dunkel.
 Eingehuellt gehen die Menschen, froestelnd und bleich. Freudlos,
neidlos, blasiert haengen die entfaerbte, abgelebten Blicke im
brauenden, beissenden Novembernebel.
 Allerseelenglocken laeuten – laeuten in den Trauermorgen. Die Menschen
der Grossstadt hoeren sie nicht. Sie hassen das Laeuten, sie wollen die
Lust, sie suchen die Sonne und wandeln in Nacht, in schwarzer,
quaelender Nacht. ... "

and so on.

English:
"All Souls' Moods

All Souls' Day ... in the month of death. Grey and murky and cold the
air hangs in the broad streets of the city. The black, rain-drenched
asphalt shimmers ghostly in the light of the gas lamps in the brightly
lit, sophisticatedly designed display windows. It's morning and still
dark.
Wrapped up, people go their way, shivering and pale. Without joy,
without envy, blase, the faded, deadened gazes stare into the gathering,
biting November fog.
All Souls' bells are ringing -- ringing in the morning of sadness. The
city people do not hear them. They hate the ringing, they want pleasure,
they seek out the sun and wander through the night, through black,
anguished night. ..."

Regards,
Michael Eldred
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