Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 10:31:23 -0500
Subject: Re: Rhetoric


At 6:13 PM +0200 5/7/01, Rene de Bakker wrote:
>Allen,
>
>Have you any idea, when Heidegger's rhetoric will appear?


Hi Rene,

I hear next fall.  A colleague of mine is putting together an 
anthology of commentary to supposedly coincide with the publication 
of the text.


Allen:

>
>I agree.  Once he has "overcome" metaphysics through his "hermeneutics of
>facticity, " Heidegger now has a  new" metaphysical home position," in
>poetic conceits such as the thinker's discourse "longing to be at home
>everywhere at the same time." He feels he has earned this new home position
>( I really like that phrase) due to what he has accomplished in language
>It's not that his overcoming metaphysics is complete, but it has reached a
>new place.

Rene:

>That's a good link, metaph. home position - Novalis' saying.

I'm not surprised!


>  Indeed
>Heidegger has then
>reached a new place - but not itself a metaphysical position. That went
>'wrong' after BT, when,
>together with Scheler he wanted to start up a new metaphysics, with an
>ontic approach of
>Dasein, which would parallel Scheler's "The place of man in the kosmos". In
>Poeggeler's last
>book he gives a good historical overview. (Gadamer said about Poeggeler: he
>is a good
>historian)
>
>Overcoming metaphysics is a hard task, when we 'live' in the completion of
>it (Vollendung).
>This means, a.o., that in Hegel and Nietzsche, metaphysics pulls its last
>consequences.
>For Nietzsche truth and error are merely functions of life, and "being"
>only a shadow.   
>Heidegger drops very soon the notion of life. And one could ask: what right
>does Nietzsche
>have to use this word? Is it not, in its connectedness with "becoming" and
>"will", a last "evidence"  in the Cartesian sense, that is: still a home?
>Does it not say (presume) too much already, as if we know what that is,
>life, and that we are it? Whereas only this inconspicious  word "being"
>says nothing at all.
>Indeed, "being' is the least differential, in-different thing you can say
>of something.


It's interesting how in one's own being-on-the-way -to- thinking, one 
really does "live in the completion of metaphysics," and then one 
comes to read and understand Heidegger a bit, and one is told to 
abandon the words of metaphysics for a "truer" set of words.  Giving 
up "life" was probably one of the most difficult, at least for me. 
But as I reflect back, even though i wasn't quite sure what I was 
doing, obedience to the do's and don't's of phenomenology was a good 
idea.  Having recourse to "life" made things much too easy to say.


>
>When Heidegger in his formally-indicating hermeneutics reaches out for the
>not-occurrent
>Dasein, in order to be able to say what 'being' (Sinn des Seins) is, the
>result seems more negative that positive: there is no meaning left.
>Facticity (and Gelassenheit) can hardly be
>called a new home.
>Building a new home, or only preparing it, presupposes destruction up to
>the bottom, which
>the German says very well: zum Grunde gehen.  (Grundstimmung)


Well said.  I think learning to read, think and  speak Heidegger's 
formally-indicating hermeneutics is just the kind of disciplined 
practice one needs to hold the clearest seeing of philosophy in 
focus. It's especially useful as an antidote to the heady adolescent 
overstatement of metaphysics that is a necessary part of growing up( 
which can take the slow thinking romantics among us, unwilling to let 
go of old flames, well into middle age.)

After the destruction, you speak of, you're right-- there can be no 
rebuilding of home.  One becomes " a wandering Aramean" ( One has to 
be a wandering "something." Aramean suits me.) harboring the 
ludicrous but irresressable desire "to be at home everywhere at the 
same time."  Perhaps romanticism is a mood that serves to maintain 
desire, which by its very nature must remain unsatisfied.
>



>So in response to your question at the end of the post, i would say that
>rhetoric for Aristotle and Heidegger is NOT supplemental, but rather
>contains within the range of its dunamis the sum and substance Verstehen.
>
>Rene:
>If you replace Heidegger with Gadamer., I agree.


Well, in terms of recognizing the true place of rhetoric, perhaps 
Heidegger has been "replaced," by Gadamer, though for some reason, 
that makes me very uncomfortable to say.

Allen

-- 
Professor Allen Scult					Dept. of Philosophy
HOMEPAGE: " Heidegger on Rhetoric and Hermeneutics":		Drake 
University
http://www.multimedia2.drake.edu/s/scult/scult.html		Des 
Moines, Iowa 50311
PHONE: 515 271 2869
FAX: 515 271 3826


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