File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0110, message 44


Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 06:45:48 -0700
From: Kenneth Johnson <poochiegraig-AT-home.com>
Subject: Red Sails in the Sunset



Not what the holy man _is_ but what he _signifies_ in the eyes of those who
are not holy gives him his world-historical value. It was because one was
_wrong_ about him, because one _misinterpreted_ the states of the soul and
drew as sharp a line as possible between oneself and him, as if he were
something utterly incomparable and strangely superhuman--that he gained
that extraordinary power with which he could dominate the imagination of
whole peoples and ages. He did not know himelf; he understood the writing
of his moods, inclinations, and actions according to an art of
interprettion which was just as extravagant and artificial as the pneumatic
interpretation of the Bible. What was eccentric and sick in his nature,
with its fusion of spiritual poverty, faulty knowledge, spoilt health, and
overexcited nerves remained concealed from his own eyes and from the eyes
of those who looked at him. He was not an especially good person, even less
an especially wise person; but he _signified_ [i.e. sign-i-fied (like a
sandwich-board advertisement in-vested over his body)] something that
exceeded all human measure of goodness and wisdom. The faith in him
supported the faith in the divine and miraculous, in a religious meaning of
all existence, in an impending final day of judgment. In the evening
splendor of the world-end's sunset that illuminated the Christian peoples,
the shadowy figure of the holy man grew into something enormous--indeed, to
such a height that even in our time, which no longer believes in God, there
are still thinkers who believe in the holy man. (for example, Schopenhauer
[and apparently 90% of our wishywashy Heideggerians]).

HATH #143

-k




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