File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0106, message 84


Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 10:19:43 -0500
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: Re: The misunderstanding statement 2


Michael, Henk, Blanken' Gulio, Rene, Paul et. al.,

A flood of wonderful Sayings, just as I'm about to leave for 
Madeliene Island! So no time now for  an adequate, serious response. 
But in a less than an adequately serious  mode ( I'm not sure how 
much less), I must note how each post seemed to wind up with 
something like a rhetorically capacious, philosophically full- bodied 
aphorism, proving, that "ultimately" it's all for the Saying; 
rhetoric as philosophical arete, seeing ( teorein) what can be said 
on the matter, and how close the saying can come to the shimmering 
phenomenal shape of the thing itself.

When we think thanks, isn't it for the saying? Where a certain 
pleasure indicates the clearing we have reached?  Plato's Socrates 
condemns rhetoric, but then not only shows what he can do with it ( 
sometimes with his very condemnation of it as the theme!), but also 
his appreciation of how much pleasure it can give.  In the Phaedrus, 
the pleasure goes so deep as to link up with poetic madness to "make" 
love.

Of course,, rhetorical capaciousness excercised alone reduces the 
philosophical possibility in such pleasure to mere flattery-- yuppy 
cuisine!  What distinguishes the philosopher is that he can recognize 
the real thing and then can deepen the pleasure by accounting for 
it-- precisely  what Plato says in the Gorgias rhetoric alone cannot 
do.  For when it does, it becomes philosophy!

Thanks again for your sayings.

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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