Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 06:04:26 +0800
Subject: Re: Anthony Crifasi's justification for war
From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch-AT-central.murdoch.edu.au>



On Sunday, March 23, 2003, at 04:26  AM, Anthony Crifasi wrote:

> but all the reasons you gave me for WHY my justifications don't "have 
> anything directly to do with how super power states use their power" 
> were addressed by me, and these answers in turn were not addressed by 
> you in your last reply to me

Sorry, I can't find anywhere that you have addressed the notion of 
machination that I addressed to you and that Heidegger sets out in his 
critique of Nazism and the problem concerning technology. Your belief 
that anything that happens on the world stage has anything to do with 
justice is simply superfluous to the rule of will to power as 
machination. This is a Heidegger list so it's unfortunate that:

> I'm not interested in your arguments against my reasons for my beliefs

cos they're Heideggerean arguments. As I said, you're free to believe 
in the righteousness of your own beliefs. You believe the war is 
'justified' and claim that the individuals at the White House feel as 
you do... that's all well and good Anthony.

However, if you're at all interested in Heidegger's writings in 
relation to the world historical truth of being, which means in 
relation to what is happening now in this world of ours, you might like 
to have a read of his Nietzsche volumes. Very interesting stuff, but 
from the perspective of the problem concerning technology your notion 
of justice is something of an anachronism. It holds no weight in the 
calculation of power because power is its own justification.

A court can rule on a matter of justice within its jurisdiction, an 
international court can even indict, convict and sentence to death the 
failed rulers of vanquished states. A super power however is 
accountable only to its constituency, and while your belief that men of 
righteous honour and good christian ideals have control of the destiny 
of the US and therefore of this world is rather quaint, what if no one 
is actually in control of anything except the execution of an amoral 
will to order that already sets up and historically constitutes the 
current world order since at least the second world war?

To get you started here's a few quotes from Heidegger's Nietzsche 
volumes 3 and 4 of the anglo translation:

"in a metaphysical sense, every power has its own right and can only 
come to be in the wrong through impotence. But it belongs to the 
metaphysical tactics of every power that it cannot regard any act of an 
opposing power from the latter's power perspective, but rather subjects 
the opposing activity to the standard of a universal human morality - 
which has value only as propaganda, however" (IV, p. 145).

"Truth becomes rightness, in the sense of a commanding absorption by 
the one who commands into the compulsion of self-surpassment. All 
correctness is merely a rehearsal of and an opportunity for such 
surpassing; every fixation merely a foothold for dissolving all things 
in Becoming, hence a purchase for willing the permanentizing of 'chaos' 
... Truth is 'rightness', that is to say, supreme will to power. Only 
an unconditioned dominion over the earth by human beings will be right 
for such 'rightness'. Instituting planetary dominion, however, will 
itself be but the consequence of an unconditioned anthropomorphism" 
(III, pp. 173-174).

Machination as "that Being which has released itself into sheer 
accessibility through calculation, into the disposability of the beings 
appropriate to it by way of unconditioned planning and arranging...[as] 
the prepotence of all unquestioning self-assurance and certitude in 
securing" (III, p. 175).

"The meaninglessness in which the metaphysical articulation of 
modernity is consummated becomes something we can know as the essential 
fulfilment of this age only when it is apprehended together with the 
transformation of man to subiectum and the determination of beings as 
the represented and produced character of the objective" (III, p. 179).

"meaninglessness now attains power, defining in unconditional terms the 
horizon of modernity and enacting its fulfilment... Everywhere and 
always machination, cloaking itself in the semblance of a measured 
ordering and controlling, confronts us with beings as the sole 
hierarchy and causes us to forget Being" (III, p. 181).

"The extremity of subjectivity is reached when a particular illusion 
becomes entrenched - the illusion that all the 'subjects' have 
disappeared for the sake of some transcendent cause that they all now 
serve" (III, p. 180).

Regards,

Malcolm



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