Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 05:30:29 +0800
Subject: Re: _empeiria_
From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch-AT-central.murdoch.edu.au>



On Friday, April 4, 2003, at 11:37  PM, Michael Eldred wrote:

> Cologne 04-Apr-2003
> I personally put
> the weight on regarding Heidegger as one of the most brilliant 
> translators of
> Aristotle and thus an historical re-opener of Aristotle's thinking. 
> When
> translating Heidegger's thinking into English, one is translating not 
> so much
> from the German but from the Greek.

Yes, I understand his greek translations in a phenomenological way, and 
I get the same wonderful sense of the 'question of being' from his 
Parmenides as much as from his existential phenomenology. Which I guess 
makes sense cos I read everything of his, from the early to late 
periods, from the perspective of Being and Time and Husserl's 
phenomenology of time. But like I always say, that's just my own 
personal bias. It doesn't stop me appreciating his interpretation of 
ancient thought, quite the opposite, I think it opens out the question 
of being in a beautiful or sublimely dynamic sense. But who is the 
author here? Aristotle, Heidegger, Husserl... me? Or all of those 
original thinkers wrapped up together in my own understanding of what 
it is they're pointing towards? Which would be the 'question of being', 
in some sense or other.

That's how I understand philosophy anyways, there is a tradition of 
written thought that we can argue about together as to the correctness 
of translations or interpretations, and then there is what the 
philosophy is talking about or formally indicating towards. 
Hermeneutics and scholarship on the one hand and thinking on the other. 
For me 'thinking', or descriptive analysis, discernment, questioning or 
whatever you might name it is a personal path, and in a very mundane 
sense. As Nietzsche plainly stated 'these are my thoughts', this is my 
interpretation, my truth, and how could it be otherwise? All we have is 
'one's own' being amongst beings. So I also appreciate your own 
interpretation of these things, in my own way and without contradiction 
cos I think what's in question here is 'being'.

That's how I interpret Heidegger's 'ownmost' approach - it's not a 
matter of arguing for or against one interpretation over another until 
we come up with some sort of axiomatic philosophical language and 
authoritative interpretation, but rather of asking the question about 
being for oneself. Being is after all said in many ways.

>> This has happened since 1986 when Howard got into power and
>> basically assimilated the far right wing ideology of Hanson's racist
>> 'One Nation' party and all of its disaffected voters.

oops... I guess it feels like 17 years but Howard's Liberals came to 
power in 1996 not 86. Makes me shudder to think what an extra 10 years 
of neo-conservative rule would do to this country.

> On the Iraq issue I have been impressed by Blair's committed political
> performance. He's not just Bush's "poodle". The struggle against 
> Islamist
> terrorism and its supply lines in host countries requires resolve. And 
> maybe
> democracy is not so completely antithetical to Middle East countries.

Yes, Blair is an intelligent man in a very politically vulnerable 
position. I assume he's thinking in historically strategic terms like 
all astute British PM's before him, and I mean that in a genuine sense. 
Howard on the other hand has just placed Australia in a very 
strategically vulnerable position and doesn't seem to have any exit 
plan whatever apart from total subservience... I guess there's always 
hope. I agree that terrorism needs to be dealt with, and that 
democratic regimes are generally better and safer than non-democratic 
tyranny, but I'm not sure that democratic tyranny is the best way to go 
about dealing with it. The unilateral use of power by the US has now 
become an international fact, it's currently striking the centre of the 
Arab world with an overwhelming amount of force. If this eventually 
resolves itself for the good of all concerned, which is humanity, then 
fine. But there's a long way to go before Syria falls along with Yemen 
and the Ayatollah Khamenai of Iran. If the Saudi royals are toppled by 
fundamentalists then you can add Saudi Arabia to the list. Add to this 
mess the possibility that US greed for oil will destabilise any genuine 
Arab democracies then one can quickly become rather pessimistic. One of 
the motivations for extremism has been the carving up and exploitation 
of the oil rich Arab nations by western colonial powers dating back to 
at least WW1.

But there's always hope and I guess we can only wait and see cos 
nothing's going to stop it before the next US election.

> There is no subject called "economics" in schools, and attempts to 
> introduce
> it have met with strong opposition for decades. Reforms to the 
> education
> system made in Australia during the sixties are still, half a century 
> later,
> political hot potatoes in Germany.

The university system here has suffered through several radical reforms 
since the late 80's and intensifying the moment the Liberals came to 
power. Everything is now based on productivity and the phased 
re-introduction of 'user pays' student fee systems coupled with an 
overall decrease in government funding. Small class sizes for 
traditional humanities subjects like philosophy, languages, classical 
studies and the like mean less funds allocated which translates into 
either staff reductions or the dissolution of whole departments. The 
only way to combat this under the present system is to get student 
numbers up which generally means attracting people from the burgeoning 
business and commerce faculties that receive a lot of funding, as well 
as attracting private and corporate sponsorship. Everything here is 
'economics', and it is based squarely on the US system. The only 
problem is that unlike the gigantic US corporate system, Australian 
corporations have not stepped in to fill the funding gap and the 
universities are being ground down under the weight of increased class 
sizes, constant funding problems and an explosion in administrative 
salaries and corporate bureaucracy. Basic research is difficult under 
these circumstances and this has led to a deterioration in research 
departments across the board from the natural and social sciences, 
education and the humanities to the degree that for the first time not 
one Australian university last year was in the top category of world's 
best practice. The 'clever country' is being seriously dumbed down and 
many academics and corporate people see it as a genuine national crisis 
but this coming budget and its education policy is going to accelerate 
the 'reforms' even further. After all we have a global war on terrorism 
to pay for which means increased 'defence' spending not to mention 
funds for the rebuilding of Iraq. One of the more hilarious statements 
by Howard recently was an admission that the war will cost at least $1 
billion aus dollars and that he's allocated a mere $10 million for the 
rebuilding of Iraq. I'm not sure if that included the 100 000 tonnes of 
wheat that we're sending as immediate aid to be paid for later whenever 
the new Iraqi regime is installed.

It seems machination is everywhere.

> The left-wing of the SPD is always wingeing about the "Abbau" of the
> Sozialstaat" and proposing, like the unions, that the way out of the
> decade-long economic malaise in Germany is to put purchasing power into
> people's pockets, not to restrict unemployment and welfare benefits, 
> cut back
> job protection and loosen up the labour market.

The labour movement here is centre right 'new labour', apparently Blair 
was influenced by Australian Labor's policies and ideology when it was 
in power from 83-96. The left here basically took over the conservative 
approach to economic management and introduced all the precedents for 
Howard's way while forcing him even further towards the right. 
Unfortunately after 7 years in opposition the ALP has fallen apart cos 
it's hard to distinguish it from the Liberal conservatives in so many 
policy areas and it plays the same political game with the reactionary 
mainstream conservative vote. There's no leftist ideology anymore, 
apart from the increasingly popular minority Greens party.

> What Germany needs is more self-reliance, less bureaucracy, less 
> Sozialstaat,
> less fear of change and less social conservatism, more encouragement of
> entrepreneurship, more courage to open up to a changing play of world.

I think there's definitely room for a balance between socialist ideals 
of equity and entreprenurial self-reliance. If you end up with a system 
that includes entrenched poverty where poor people die in the streets 
then I think you've gone too far. It's called the 'social safety net' 
here and was introduced by Labor but it's a precarious balancing act in 
a world driven by corporatism. I think we all need more intelligently 
honest compassion without the welfare handout mentality and as a 
balance to corporate ruthlessness. That goes for any national society 
as much as for human society in general, otherwise poverty and 
oppression just engender more suffering and its extremism. That's one 
way we could handle the current terrorist threat, and hopefully Iraqi 
oil money will finally benefit the Iraqi peoples although I guess only 
after Bush's oil buddies have carved out their share. Let's hope it's 
equitable for all parties, Kurds included.

Your characterisation of the German Geist is interesting, sounds like a 
historical Katzenjammer. I don't know what an Australian equivalent 
would be nowadays, apart from a generally uncomfortable confusion 
papered over by ridiculously jingoistic and fading ideals like 
'mateship', a 'fair go' and all that guff. It's always been a 
selectively egalitarian society but everything is changing towards a US 
model. I'm for utilitarianism, so as far as I'm concerned multicultural 
'Americanisation' is not necessarily a bad thing so long as its 
genuinely for the good of all.

Cheers,

Malcolm



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