Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 05:27:31 -0400 (EDT) ----- Original Message ----- From: Nate Goralnik <rhizome85-AT-lovemail.com> To: <heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu> Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 4:57 PM Subject: destruction > Where does Heidegger most comprehensively treat "destruction"? Or is "destruction" kind of like "immanent critique"...something observed in his work, rather than explicitly stated by him? > Dear Nate Goralnik, I am very interested in "Destruktion" in Heidegger and want to review it myself. On pages 22-27 of SuZ (Stambaugh 20-24/M&R 42-49), Heidegger writes of Destruktion: We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of Being as our clue, we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being - the ways that have guided us ever since . . . We must . . . stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits; these in turn are given factually in the way the question is formulated at the time, and in the way the possible field for investigation is thus bounded off. On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself towards its past; its criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way at treating the history of ontology, whether it is headed toward doxography, towards intellectual history, or towards a history of problems . . . its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect. The destruction of the history of ontology is essentially bound up with the way the question of Being is formulated, and it is possible only within such a formulation. In the framework of our treatise, which aims at working out that question in principle, we carry out this destruction only with regard to stages of that history which are in principle decisive.In line with the positive tendencies of this destruction, we must in the first instance raise the question whether and to what extent the Interpretation of Being and the phenomenon of time have been brought together thematically in the course of the history of ontology, and whether the problematic of Temporality required for this has ever been worked out in principle or ever could have been. (M&R 44-45) Destruktion here is tied specifically to the "question of being" which destroys any "intellectual history" quite intentionally and literally because he wants to "arrive that those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being. This makes quite clear what he wants to do is phenomenologically discover the 'beginning' of experience as it just is, before "intellectual" interpretation. Therefore what he is destroying is the historical accumulations of intellectuality that have totally obscured those "primordial experiences." I think Jacques Derrida would say this is an impossible endeavor, that all you are going to find is just another 'intellectual interpretation.' Rather, I think what Heidegger is doing is not trying to discover a specific point of historical origin, but rather an imaginary thought experiment such as, "How did the Greeks seem to think if one destroys the lenses constructed by Plato and Aristotle through which we traditionally view the PreSocratic Greeks?" To a certain degree one can actually do this with qualifications. You can describe the thought of Aescylos simply within the context of the Oresteia or of Homer 'solely' within the context of the Iliad if you keep your system of references as purely as possible within the Oresteia and deal with Aescylos' words literally, not as metaphorical in any sense whatsoever. This can reduce Aescylos almost to unintelligibility sometimes as when Klytemnestra goes to the grave of Agamemnon and speaks of her love for the head of the household, i.e., love as duty instead of personal feeling which duty Klytemnestra owes to Agamemnon no matter what. You then get a peek of sorts at historical "primordial experience" but which remains meaningless unless in some fashion you can yourself experience this love as overriding duty as opposed to love as spontaneous personal emotion. Heidegger is dealing primarily with experience always as what concepts cover over,and this is why Destruktion is specifically a phenomenological procedure. "Destruktion" is specifically what the second half of BEING AND TIME was to be about, specifically in relation to Aristotle, Descartes and Kant in regards to "Temporality." He deals specifically with Kant's doctrine of schematism: Only when we have established the problematic of Temporality, can we succeed in casting light on the obscurity of his doctrine of schematism. But this will also show us why is one which had to remain closed off to him in its real dimensions and its central ontological function. Kant himself was aware that he was venturing into an area of obscurity: 'This schematism of our understanding as regards appearances and their mere form is an art hidden in the depths of the human soul, the true devices of which are hardly ever to be divined from Nature and laid uncovered before our eyes.' Here Kant shrinks back, as it were, in the face of something which must be brought to light as a theme and a principle if the expression "Being" is to have any demonstrable meaning. In the end, those very phenomena which will be exhibited under the heading of 'Temporality' in our analysis, are precisely those most covert judgments of the 'common reason' for which Kant says it is the 'business of philosophers' to provide an analytic. (ME&OR 45) What Kant shrinks back from and Heidegger will want to uncover is "the fundamental faculty of the imagination," not as an intellectual machine or structure of concepts but as "primordial experience," as Kant says,"an art hidden in the depths of the human soul." Heidegger goes into a great deal of detail in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics on the "violence" he does to Kant in order to get him to say explicitly what he really wanted to say but failed to do. Many people have thoroughly denounced this procedure of "violence" to get Kant to say what he literally did not say, but I think they miss the whole point of philosophy itself. It is neither a profession one earns one's daily bread by nor a narrow minded little intellectual game. Heidegger relates philosophy specifically to how one should live,why one should live, and who one is explicitly in the KANTBUCH takes up Kant's questions 1) What can I know? 2) What should I do? 3) What may I hope? and 4) What is man? Heidegger quotes Kant, "Basically we classify all these under Anthropology because the first three questions refer to the last." Heidegger says, "The innermost interest of human reason unites these three questions in itself.In it, an ability, a duty, and an allowing to hope stand in question" (section 38, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics). It is precisely here one sees both a primary characteristic of Destruktion and of Fundamental Ontology itself: The first three questions concerning immanent existence "right now!" are subsumed under the fourth which then ceases to be "Anthropology" because the question "What is man?" is permanently left opened and unanswered as it becomes "the question of being" which 1) is what being is, i.e., fundamental questioning, and 2) is based on experience, emotion, need, not upon concepts - which would be the only way a permanently unanswered question can endure in its unanswering! So Destruktion is a destroying all the intellectual concepts that interfere with and cover over what it is you fundamentally desire. Destruktion is primarily concerned with how and why and should you exist personally. It is not a process of abstraction but is the discovery of why philosophy is personally important, why the 'interests' and 'aims' of Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant only have importance in relation to "the question of being" of your personal, private existence. So Heidegger's program does have a distinct aim and goal whereas I think Derrida's Deconstruction is fundamentally missing that,though if someone can show otherwise I would appreciate it. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics is the most extensive place where he explicitly deals with Destruktion, but in Nietzsche, vol. 1, The Will to Power as Art he touches upon it on page 59 of Krell's translation where he states he wants to do without formal definition and concepts: Not as though we laid no value on strict and univocal concepts - on the contrary, we are searching for them. But a notion is not a concept, not in philosophy at any rate, if it is not founded and grounded in such a way as to allow what it is grasping to become its standard and the pathway of its interrogation, instead of camouflaging it under the net of a mere formula . . . To be cognizant, to know, is not mere familiarity with concepts. Rather, it is to grasp what the concept itself catches hold of. This is also a good description of "formal indication." Again, what Heidegger wants to destroy is "mere familiarity with concepts," and uses bodily comportment words like "grasp" and "catch." In talking about the Will to Power, Heidegger says: Although Nietzsche does not formulate it expressly this way, at bottom that is what he means . . . What is decisive is not production in the sense of manufacturing but taking up and transforming, making something other than . . ., other in an essential way. For that reason the need to destroy belongs essentially to creation. In destruction, the contrary, the ugly, and the evil are posited; they are of necessity proper to creation, i.e., will to power and thus to Being itself. To the essence of Being nullity belongs, not as a sheer vacuous nothingness, but as the empowering "no.' . . . Will is in itself simultaneously creative and destructive. Being master out beyond oneself is always also annihilation. (pg. 61, 63) So when Heidegger says "Destruktion", that is truly the specific word he intends and has no connotation like 'deconstruction' which is a polite mechanical taking apart in such a way it can be nicely put back together again. After "Destruktion,' only the process that can act is literal creation again, no putting back together of what was there before. I know Derrida is actually much closer to Heidegger than this, but the point is his 'followers' merely use "deconstruction" as a 'technique' whereas Heidegger's "Destruktion" is literally a life or death drama revolving around "To be or not to be": "Da-sein always understands itself in terms of its existence, in terms of its possibility to be itself or not to be itself" (Stambaugh 10/M&R 33/SuZ 12). ........................................................ iWon.com http://www.iwon.com why wouldn't you? ........................................................ --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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