From: "Aristotelos" <Gulio-AT-sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: Lichtung
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 14:48:32 -0800



> Hi Gulio,
>
> Yeh, he's going on like that. Once, before this list, I met a man with a
> very active little dog, digging in the ground. He loves moles, the man
> said. Already then my sympathy went to the moles.
>
> >I'm not sure what this metaphor thread is up to. I think I understand a
> >"representation"; or how poetry can be philosophical so that by >analogy
> (?) a sail boat on the seas can be 'intentional aims' for >example. If we
> look at the primordial meaning we also have something >like a
> transcendental vehicle,
> >an ecstatic transport so to speak, a shaking digression, a swerve?
>
> >Isn't the Lichtung associated with a lighting flash?
>
> He calls it a Blitz, like Herakleitos' keraunos. A flash in the dark.
> But more than one time he warns, that Lichtung is not from 'licht',
> light (as in daylight), but from 'leicht', light as opposed to heavy.
> Accordingly 'lichten' is not 'bringing light' or something like that,
> but weighing. Das Anker lichten, weighing anchor.  And beings,
> including us, are 'gelichtet', weighed.
>
> Lichtung makes possible, makes room for, light. It is the free space,
> where light CAN enter, but where also darkness can reign.
>

Interesting, didn't see the polyvalence before. I'll come back to this but
I'm thinking about a moment of invention not sure if it's related at this
contour in Heidegger's thoughts. Serendipity is a word that comes to mind.
It was coined for the English language by Horace Walpole in 1754 and
describes an invention (ah... I really mean discovery) that happens
unintentionally as when Columbus discovers the New World while seeking the
Orient. Maybe I'm out of relation, digressing towards an unrelated space but
I wonder if serendipity comes to one with an openness to the surprising
(meaning overtaken from above) irregular edge of a phenomena. It seems to me
that in speaking of a Blitz, infinite speed, one is also getting at chaos
without naming it. I mean a name would already be a slowing down of a Blitz,
a protective measure would then be taken. There it is, so more diversity is
more stability, more ability to respond to a surprising digression or
movement;-- more the ability to hearken to the enigmatic 'aspect' of a
phenomenal appearance. Or better is the ability to get out of an aporetic or
difficult situation, welcome a serendipitous event.


With regards to transcendence, I don't think it's wise to put it aside to
quickly for an interpretation of Dasein as immanence? In Basic Problems of
Phenomenology (GA 24) Heidegger writes that, summarizing his lecture to this
point, "The constitution of the Dasein's existence as being-in-the-world
emerged as a peculiar transposition of the subject which makes up the
phenomena which we shall more particularly define as Dasein's transcendence"
(pg H247-248). And then he makes the connection to Leibniz saying that in
his monadology he has this "peculiar transposition" or transcendence in mind
without fixing it as such. He says that a monad more or less 'reflects' the
world depending on its degree of wakefulness of its representation. A monad
can represent the world as a whole because it is a microcosm of the
macrocosm. You say below that "Dasein is Lichtung", well. according to GA24
and GA26, Dasein is also clearly transcendence in the sense of a peculiar
transposition where Dasein is reflected out of the things themselves. I'm
saying that in this regard we also may see an innovative moment, instituting
force...

In being an epigone of the Meister one falls on unforeseen circumstances, is
cast out to go on with less protective barriers and measures; learning how
to go on... like Apollo, an instituting force creating the future weights.
We should unlearn the fear of the unprecedented beginning which amounts to
learning to handle extreme tension so that it doesn't blow up in your face.
And that to me is enthusiasm, yes, but also the coolness of an irregular
stone, a bizarre notion. This is the difficulty that some avoid when merely
thinking of the negative aspects of enthusiasm and rhetoric, not to mention
rhythm and harmonic sympathy; as if a situation that gets a bit out of
control is not also cool. The agon between the old and the new whose beyond
is an event is like that between the communicative and the evocative. The
easily understood always fears the difficulty of tortous acts and thoughts
and are the real sophists in the worst sense of the term always wanting to
secure a signal over the noise of bad weather.



Gulio


> When Heidegger opposes metaphor, he only means the worn-out
> metaphor of nowadays, the remnant of metaphysics and poetry.
>
> Therefore, wenn one engages with "Lichtung", it is better to avoid
> the metaphorical practice. We all (still) know what a clearing in a wood
> is. We know what it is like to walk in the wood, with its darker and
lighter
> spots. Then we perceive a bigger light. Approaching, we see light beams
> striking downwards behind the still separating trees. Everybody KNOWS what
> is there: the open. It is open or free for light AND for darkness. The
> clearing is, also at night.
> The Lichtung of thinking, Heidegger's word Lichtung, is not a
transcendence
> of this wood-clearance. Seiendes, 'what is', has already been weighed. We
> can only try to see, to sense it. Or we can watch television, but the
> television too is already 'weighed'. ( tv-Gestell, wood-earth)
>
> -BT: Dasein is the Lichtung.
>
> -In GA26 is introduced: radical onticity:
>  P. 199: " ... There is only Being [es gibt Sein nur], when Dasein
> understands Being. In other words [sic!]: the possibility, that there is
> Being in understanding, presupposes the factical existence of Dasein, and
> this again the factical extantness [Vorhandensein] of nature. [Being can
> only be understood...], when a possible totality of beings (Seiendem) is
> already there [da ist]"   [[Da: where?]]
>
> -Late H: Lichtung gewaehrt/concedes Dasein
>
>
> > Is this a question
> >of a Eureka! kind of experience? You know like when Wittengstein tries to
> >'understand' the nature of 'knowing' something like a formula, or a piece
> of >music.
> >At some point you just know how to go on...
>
> >Paul Valery wrote an essay called  Eureka which tries to get at this
moment.
>
> Cannot find it. Can give a reference?
> (Valery wrote in 1919 of Europe as an Asian supplement.)
>
> >I think the ancient idea of kosmos is probably close to Heidegger's world
> >and freedom.
>
> To Heidegger the kosmos 'is' still. It stays, but not for us. It is
totally
> indifferent with regard to us. (Here is a chance to read metaphysics
> not metaphysically: kosmos - throwedness) In the sense of: indifferent
> whether we engage in it or not. It only makes a (decisive) difference to
us.
> GA26, with its metaphysics of 'being as a whole', is an excellent starting
> point. Dasein itself comes under the general question of Being. Dasein is
> something, that is (Seiendes), that is: ourselves. And there are beings,
> which are not us. They also are without Dasein.
>
> P. 16: "To the stone appertains that, on the basis of which I say: it is
> extant [vorhanden], also when I don't look at it, when I myself am not."
>
> (note though that also is said, that extantNESS, VorhandenSEIN, itself
> is not extant, vorhanden. Where does it hide then? Anybody? Has Michael
> Eldred an idea?)
>
> epigonal regards,
>
> Rene
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ----------------
>
> A totally (although ...) unrelated ps, I'm reading Leibniz now.
> Will probably come back to it some day.
>
> Leibniz holds, against Descartes, that also animals (and plants)
> are monads, that is unities of drive and representation.
> Descartes saw them only as objects, that is in their extension.
>
> But Leibniz, like Spinoza and others, couldn't live with two substances.
> Spinoza says: res cogitans and res extensa are the (only known to us)
> attributes of an infinite substance. And this had its influence in the
> beginnings of absolute idealism.
> Meanwhile Leibniz' solution  is a royal road, that goes back to
Aristoteles
> and the scholastics, and points forward to Hegel and Nietzsche (all
reality
> is perceiving and perspective. Also a stone: one-dimensional).
>
> (Leibniz, Bach, Linnaeus: unity and diversity. the more diverse unity,
> the stronger unity. Compare Plotinus, Cusanus)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------
> drs. Ren de Bakker
> Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
> Afdeling Catalogisering
> tel. 020-5252309
>
>
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