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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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