From: "Jud Evans" <Jud-AT-sunrise74.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu  ESSE
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 14:15:16 +0100


Jud wrote recently:

This will save a lot of time if you have the time and sufficient interest to
read it. Like most of my catawauling its main purpose is to undermine the
basic false Grundbegriffe of Heideggerianism - that of the concept of BEING

Michael:
Just one minor interruption: neither being nor "being" is a concept (as
Heidegger means it) one cannot grasp or 'have' it in the hand (mind) like a
thing or the image of a thing: "it" is not the name of any thing, does not
re-present any thing... you've continually put your [non] potatoes in the
wrong bag :-)

Jud:
I do not consider your remarks to be an interruption,  [you may be surprised
to hear]  nor do I disparage your comments as being of a minor nature. Your
writing is always a joy to read, [apart from its irritating hyphenation]
being so poetic and creative, and the fact that it doesn't actually say much
that adds to an understanding of Heidegger or what Heidegger was struggling
to say does not retract from my enjoyment.
The poetic and creative aspect of your writing [and of others on this list]
is perhaps the key to an understanding of why the transcendentalist nature
of Heideggerianism is so attractive to those of a creative spirit, for what
could be more natural for a poet or a composer of music such as you, than to
extend your creative impulses into the world of transcendentalist
philosophy, and be drawn to a way of looking at the world where human
feelings and somatatesthesises help descry its mystery rather than the more
logical or 'scientific'  explanations offered by the more analytically
orientated philosophies.  I would argue of course that it is possible to be
BOTH originitive and imaginative and [for want of a better word] 'spiritual'
and sensible of the true mechanisms of the language we use to communicate
the products of our 'unworldly' creativity - a language which influences our
oeuvre sometimes consciously but more often unconsciously which is the case
with the processant in the way it influences our perception of existence and
the modalities of our presence, and [because of its misunderstood nature]
confuses the fact that things are things, with the WAY that things are
things.


Michael:
Thanks for an interesting linguistic chronology concerning your most fearful
word,
"be[ing]":

Jud:
I don't believe that the word is fearful, for an understanding of its nature
dispels fear. It wasn't poor little BEs fault that its imbroglioic
misconstrual has wreaked so much damage upon Western philosophy.

Michael:
the sad fact is that Heidegger's (and Heideggerian) thinking concerns (and
only
concerns) being and not the linguistic entity that impossibly re-presents
"it"

Jud:
The last apology or fall-back position in debate is to claim that human
language is incapable of delineating an idea, and then to proceed to employ
that very language to defend the idea.  The word 'being' simply and
uncomplicatedly addresses the ongoing or continuous state of the subject
with which it is associated, as expressed in the words that usually [in
English] follow it as in:
"Herr Heidegger, you are being very difficult this morning."  If you wished
to attempt to describe Herr Heidegger's 'serial' being [i.e. his life] you
would have to sit at a type-writer from here to eternity constructing a
assemblage of sentences so complex and multitudinous that the task would be
impossible however long you sat through the dark velvet night of time
clicking away, for his contemporaneous existential modalities would be in
constant change - even to describe the trillion modalities of a single
eye-lash would be beyond the bounds of existential modalic description and
your typewriter would decompose beneath your fingers long before the
seething modalic chaos of bacteriological and molecular activity of its
keratinised surface was even betokened.

Michael:
(such an impossibility revolves around the twin poles of [1] being not
[being] a representable thing, and, [2] being [being] the possibility of
(re-) presentability in the first place): this is
the (extremely difficult and challenging) 'thing' to think and not the
linguistic
nomenclature and other sundry claptrap concerning the copula and its allies.

Jud:
As regards (1) Being is not a representable thing simply because it
represents nothing in itself, but is engaged in the representation of other
things  - namely the existential modality of the object [real or
reificational] with which it is associated.
In the case of: "One of Herr Heidegger's eyelashes is being preserved
between the pages of a signed copy of B&T." the being word exhibits the
[continuous] existential modality of one of Herr Heidegger's eyelashes,
which is is that of being preserved between the pages of a signed copy of
B&T."  In other words the task of 'being' is not to be represented - but to
represent or exhibit the state of the entity [Heidegger's eyelash] with
which it is sententionally consociated.

As regards (2) Representability, which is a presentation to the mind in the
form of an idea or image, is the very mechanism or function which IS
performs when it exhibits the particular existential modality of an entity
by way of the predicational information which it introduces, whether the
entity [partially] described is a real object or an extantal reificant or
metaphysical object. For the life of me I cannot see why you consider this
to be a difficult concept either to grasp or explain, or why you consider
the English language [or any language for that matter] incapable of
communicating this description?

Michael:
For Heidegger as well as Parmenides, being and thinking are indissolubly and
intimately
re-lated, be-long to one another?

Jud:
Being WHAT? and Thinking WHAT? are indissolubly and intimately
re-lated, be-long to one another?

Michael:
they long (desire, stretch towards) for each other:

Jud:
Words have no capacity for desiring or stretching towards anything.

Michael:
the being of thinking [being human] is in the thinking of being [human
being].

Jud:
There is no 'being of thinking.' There may well be the reverse - the
"Thinking of being..." but that only raises a question [due to the missing
predicate] of: "Thinking of being WHAT?" "He's thinking of being an
astronaut."


Michael:
Thinking discursively about a word (say, "being") can only be a
frustrating/revealing pathway to an other goal: to think being and not the
word "being";

Jud:
I agree with you that Heidegger's thinking of 'being' discursively in his
typically rambling, disorganised manner was his Achilles' heel. Had he not
fallen into the trap of employing this word he would be thought of as a
rather interesting [if passé] philosopher, who treated of Greek history and
its influence through the phenomenological compound eye of the psychological
and socio/religious sensibilities of modern man.

Michael:
 To remain caught up in the tangles and wrangles of historical and
comparative linguistics, however fascinating, is to remain deflected from
the thinking to be achieved.

Jud:
There are no tangles - no wrangles involved with the AITist [8-tist]
analysis of language. ALL world languages respond to the formulaic precepts
without exception and all can be subjected to the AITist criteria regarding
copuletic function, copula depletion [Russian, Arabic, Hebrew etc] or
so-called 'zero copula' languages [Austronesian etc.]

 Michael:
Essentially (sorry, Jud, but it is a useful word...),

 Jud:
No need to apologise Michael, I am not suggesting the ABOLITION of these
words only an UNDERSTANDING of them.

Michael:
Heideggerian thinking (if it is thinking at all) is not about anything (any
thing)

Jud:
I had to smile here - for the thought of all those books by Heidegger and
about Heidegger being all about nothing - is a beautiful image, though I
doubt if some members of this list who have written books upon the subject
would be overly pleased at the suggestion that their work was empty of
content or meaning.

Michael:
 -- thinking-about-some-thing(s) is more the concern of scientists and their
allies...

Jud:
Thinking about something whether one is transcendentally or scientifically
orientated is part and parcel of the human condition - it is what makes us
human and sets us apart from the animals.  I do rather think that you are
careering off in rather a wild tangent here Michael. Heidegger's works
ABOUND with thoughts about THINGS - dip into them again to remind yourself.

Michael:
Such thinking-about achieves its most brilliant and extreme form when it
seeks
to become (in its speech) what it speaks/thinks about, when it becomes the
perfect
mouthpiece of its chosen whatness, e.g., speech that is as 'natural' as the
nature of
which it speaks...

Jud:
'Thinking-about' doesn't seek anything at all, for it is the man or woman
who seeks or 'thinks about' ways of communicating his/her thoughts in the
most efficacious and crystal clear way possible for maximum conceptual
intercourse.
It is not some imaginary agent called 'thinking-about' which motivates your
unusual and colourful choice of language, but rather a blending of your
desire to represent your thoughts in a fresh, colourful and interesting
manner, coupled with your natural propensity for creative imagery,  [which
is mirrored in your music and poetry] I am also sorry to suggest that there
may also be a less benign dimension and that is either a reluctance or
inability to phrase your observations with more clarity in the English
language - a language which did not impede or handicap Shakespeare in the
execution of  his breathtaking representation of the most subtle and
penetrating observations of the human condition. Set against this backcloth,
I find your protestations that our language is inadequate for your
communicative needs to be highly questionable.

Michael:
when its sub-ject/topic, its sub-jected matter (beings/things) rules it
in its speech and thinking. In such a wonderful obsession, what enables and
brings-to-light the very possibility of sub-jecting and topicalising and
representing,
etc. (being/no-thing), is neglected, even scorned.

Jud:
Alas, for though the thinking of it and the writing of it may bring you [and
us too] joy and creative satisfaction, it is meaningful only as poetry or
verbal music or as pretty brush-strokes - interesting and stimulating verbal
scales and visual patterns which after the melody is over leave the hall in
the same uneasy stillness that obtained before the performance.

Michael:
The very advantage of scientific (etc.) thinking lies in its neglectfulness
and ignoring of that which rules its very possibility of neglecting and
ignoring (that to which it belongs and is subject...) in the name of
securing and grasping its matter (things, beings) as the matter to be
thought, and thus, moving on to more profitable aims (e.g., producing useful
knowledges). This is why (I think) we need Heideggerian thinking.

Jud:
In all this you are wrong for there are many scientists who as well as
having highly pragmatic minds where their discipline is concerned have a
deep sensitivity to things of the 'soul'  - of existence - of eternity etc.
Your opinion that such spiritual sensitivity is the preserve of
existentialism sounds to me a bit elitist  - but maybe it is the very
elitism of Heideggerianism that makes it so interesting to the questioning
mind?  How can anyone STILL think this way we ask ourselves?  What curious
mental mechanism restrains and shuts down the engine of intellectual growth
and curiosity and immobilizes it in a frozen sepia frame of pre-war German
angst?


Best wishes,

Jud.



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