File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0104, message 11


Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 17:10:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: "P. Johnston" <smirglehoffeth-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: bibliographical trivia



--- Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl> wrote:
> hi Paul,
> 
> what do you mean with "the middle verb tense" ?

An active verb might mean something like "I walk."
A passive verb might mean something like "I am
walked."
A middle verb as in Greek and other ancient languages
might mean something like "I walk myself," "I myself
walked" -- or a host of other things with the general
sense that the activity in question is neither active
nor passive.  (In proto-Indo-European, for instance,
the middle verb is often used of activities of gods
through human intermediaries).

> and why do you think that "these can avoid both an
> activist and
> passive understanding of what it means to think" ?

Just because in the middle verb it's neither the
thinker or some mantic daimonion who's doing the
thinking in question -- a middle verb could express
how people get themselves into the characteristic
comportment for thinking and then find themselves
seized by thought.  Active verbs risk communicating
that thought is all of the thinker's doing.  Passive
verbs risk communicating the notion that there's got
to be some ghost out there who seizes and inspires
thinkers to allow them to think.  But thought as a
sort of gelassenheit is supposed to be neither one of
these, but an attitude of releasement that somehow
transcends willing.  The middle verb would do this
perfectly, and if I remember right there's some
Heideggerian quote or a commentary which expresses
this gramnmatical point.  I just can't find it!

A linguist friend of mine, sounding _just_ like
Heidegger, criticized Heideggerian releasement for
incapacity to keep people from thinking of fish as
sources for gelatinous compounds and other
economically-beneficial commodities (instead of
animals in a relationship with the earth, sky,
divinities, and humans) because "we have a
responsibility of how we are to think about things,
and if we abandon that responsibility through
passivity, we can just think of fish as commodities
for our good without bearing any guilt for it --
gelassenheit made me do it"  If I'd have used active
verbs, he would've thought I was describing a raving
technologist who would certainly have seized on fish
for their gelatinous compounds as instrumental means
to human health.  But of course Heidegger had neither
distortion in mind, but is being victimized by the
lack of a middle verb in modern European languages!

Paul

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