Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 17:42:14 +0100
From: Rene de Bakker <rene.de.bakker-AT-uba.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: The Leaf Episode


Hello again Jud,

I was rather busy, but now I've read the rich leaf episode in 
GA51 (SS* 1941). Thanks for bringing it.

I cannot help feeling a growing sympathy for the 'subject' Jud behind
all his enunciations, which would be his predicates, according to Leibniz.
Alas, he is nothing more, as is his nice young lady, than 'first matter', 
and they live according to the natural laws, the prison of spatial and 
temporal coordinates. But there can't (yet?) be total identification.
Heidegger, as I remember the passage in the Seminars of Zollikon,
wrote, that, would we really believe that time is the uniform succession of
now-
moments, we would have to kill ourselves, because this is unbearable,
nobody can live like that. But even in order to kill oneself, another time
is needed,
which binds the now-moment to a redeeming then. 
You can put a man tied to the edge of an abyss, even then he will want to
live. 
Raskolnikov thinks this, lying on his bed.  Of the same writer Dostoevsky is 
"Memories from the underground", which I recommend especially to you. 
The memories belong to an unmeaning and unpleasant personage, who lives
in the corner of a room. But by living according to the natural laws, man
turns
himself into somehting far worse ... a plate of a barrel organ. In your case 
probably something like the singin' detective, but this is serious stuff. 

I stressed, earlier on, the metaphysical origin of science. Even if this is
denied,
it is affirmed. Hegel says, that contradiction is the true mark of truth.
If one looks at the forerunners of science like Aristoteles, Cusanus,
Leibniz, it
is evident that their way of thinking is absolutely different from the one
that is
associated with scientific practice nowadays. Thoughts that have founded
science, like prote ousia, cause, subject/object, verification etc., now
are or
have been eliminated from science. If one says: rightly so, how does one
explain this detour, without getting entangled in Hegelian dialectics, like
Comte
and his religious and positivist eras. (at least he still knew, this was
Hegelian)  

So not only do I refuse to take you as a material hypokeimenon, I cannot do
it.
Because I, always already, have taken you for something else, someone else.
Not out of a (humanistic) motive, but simply because I can write to you,
and not
to a leaf of a tree. The electronic microscope   - Juenger once 'predicted'
it -
doesn't care a fig about this leaf here, as Newton didn't care a fig about
that one
apple. Anything moves into the direction of a near heavy mass. 
Now, suppose, your ideal is unitary science, you can even believe it is an
humanistic ideal. But necessarily then you don't care a fig about this
human here
or that human there. If you've seen one, you've seen them all. The strange
thing is:
man not only wants to be the subject of science, he also wants to be its
object.
It gives him a feeling of safety. Even in the ballistic projectile, called
airplane.

The 'fault' doesn't lie in the human sciences, it lies in the believed-in
idea of science. 
That which is viewed through an electronic microscope  -- you won't believe
it, 
but the book I take in my hand now, is called: "High voltage electron
microscopy",
so I can check immediately: yes I see -- hasn't got anything to do with the
specific 
thing looked at. What you see through it, NEVER will you see it with your
own eyes. 

(Please note, I don't say, we should abolish dentists) 

-------------------------------------

The leaf must come later. But I'll give you my conclusion first:

In short: your criticism holds against most Heideggerians, but not against
Heidegger.
You are not able, meaning: not in the position, to see the richness, hidden
in the
self-evident. But you see the self-evident. And it is better, also
according to Heidegger,
to see and defend the self-evident, than only to see richness, without the
self-evident. The refusal of philosophy is much more 'philosophical', than
the 
'original' palaver with its notions, which is merely despicable. (Heidegger in
"Nietzsche")

Rene

 





SS: Sommer Semester




-----------------------------------
drs. René de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering 
tel. 020-5252309              


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