From: "Allen Scult" <tristamigistus-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: epilogue or prologue (was: Heidegger Schemes - Hitler'sPlans)
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 22:24:29 -0600






>From: michaelP <michael-AT-sandwich-de-sign.co.uk>
>Reply-To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: epilogue or prologue (was: Heidegger Schemes  - Hitler'sPlans)
>Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 17:30:17 +0000
>
>allen scult wrote recently concerning the relationship between the man and
>the man's works:
>
> > The way  the artist/writer/philosopher inscribes himself in his work is
> > between the artist and the work.  It becomes the business of the 
>reader/viewer
> > etc., it seems to me, only when the artist-philosopher(henceforth called 
>just
> > "philosopher, for ease of handling) leaves explicit images of his 
>particular
> > embodiment (as he views it) in the work, as in "self portraits" 
>(Picasso, Van
> > Gogh, Nietzsche, Augustine, Montaigne, Kierkegaard etc.  In such cases,
> > figuring  the "look" (or looks)Nietzsche, for example,  gives to himself 
>in
> > the work becomes a part of (an inseparable, intregral part of. . .) 
>thinking
> > the work itself.  In the case of Nietzsche and Kiekegaard, for example, 
>the
> > writer seems to present himself in a number of different guises which 
>give
> > much added pleasure and meaning to the reader's work of re-assembling a 
>full
> > figure cut-out version of the writer. There are a number of book length
> > efforts to do this with K and N, most notably, I think , Alexander 
>Nehemas,
> > NIETZSCHE: LIFE AS LITERATURE, and Roger Poole, KIERKEGAARD: THE 
>INDIRECT
> > COMMUNICATION.
> >
> > Mention has recently been made by Rene and others of Safranski's hustle 
>in
> > this regard.  It doesn't even read as a good story, because the the 
>thing that
> > makes the man's life worth living and recounting is missing.  If the 
>destining
> > passion of Heidegger's thinking lent itself to any sort of biographical 
>story,
> > Heidegger himself would have to have found a way to tell it ( as 
>Nietzsche
> > did).  But the only "look" we find portrayed in Heidegger's serious work 
>is a
> > fleeting glimpse of his mind as it tries to keep up with language.  
>Nobody was
> > better at drawing pictures of the mind in motion.  Focusing on the 
>little body
> > is a distraction for small minds.
>
>Allen (ponitificating)
>
>An initial short answer [paid work pending...] to your strangely surprising
>response, Allen: I was not really thinking of a philosophically
>well-informed biography, rather, in this case, a way to discover a way that
>is intimate with both history (as depicted, roughly by historiography,
>concrete events, etc) and being-historical thinking (Heidegger's thinking).
>Even more roughly, I do not think it need be totally idle curiosity to find
>important those 'events' in Heidegger's life, viz, the liaisoning with the
>important Jewish thinker, Arendt; the liaison with the National Socialists
>(and the subsequent distancings); and the post-war 'silence' vis-a-vis the
>Holocaust... important in that such 'events' and 'turns' might be of the
>nature of 'correspondences' with being-historical thinking... I'm sure I'm
>getting mixed up here, but surely (?) the body is not all that gets caught
>up in 'history'. And does not 'history' include its very thinking in some
>non-idealistique way?
>
>Back to 'work', with regards
>
>michaelPontificating too

Michael,

If I were just pontificating,I probably could have gotten it clearer. 
Problem
is I was trying, at the same time, to shoot a jibe at Jud's "historical"
reduction of Heidegger's thinking to what he stupidly got up and did one 
morning in 1933.
Then as long as he was up and doing,and feeling good about it for the 
moment, he "thought"
maybe he could justify it and so continue to do it, and to think at the same 
time.  He
would out-play Plato's well thought refusal to "get involved,"in the Seventh 
Letter.  (Every-
one thinks they can out-play Plato!)

Anyway, what he did and what he thought about it
was neither  historical, nor thought-ful. And what he and Hannah
did together was yet another failed attempt to out-do Plato,this
time the Plato of the Phaedrus-- to blend mind and body into
a sublime moment of love. Well, maybe it worked. But even
in the love letters, the love itself, their particular love,
was never thought as a movement of factical life,from the inside
out.

What we're left with in Heidcegger,I don't think is disembodied
thought, but the body being thought is not his; and the world
historical time he thinks is likewise not his (even thought Dasein
is in every case one's own.)

Well,that 's  still  pontifical, and I'm probably still
misunderstanding you, but night-work calls.

Regards,

Allen




>


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