Subject: RE: Levinas
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 17:46:32 +0200
From: "Bakker, R.B.M. de" <R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl>




-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Malcolm Riddoch [mailto:m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au]
Verzonden: maandag 14 april 2003 17:20
Aan: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Onderwerp: Re: Levinas


> Sorry Malcolm, you don't deserve to be so close to the butchers. I 
> agree with going on practicing democracy - there's no alternative - , 
> although the values that it is based on, have become dishonest, to say 
> the least. But without this conscience, one immediately ranks under 
> the ideologists.
> --
>
> regards rene

I'm not sure the values of democracy are inherently dishonest, I think 
as with all ideas they are open to interpretation, but their 
implementation in actual political systems certainly tends towards 
concealment rather than openness, although everything is as always 
relative. These ideals are one way of implementing and constraining 
power, and no matter what we might think of the current US push for 
dominance and its use of deadly force it is still constrained in a way 
that the third reich would never have been if its push for super power 
status had been successful. Yet still we have a colossus prepared to 
back itself as a global enforcer, unfortunately it seems to be more of 
a Judge Dredd than a Gary Cooper...

As for groundlessness, I think the enlightenment already has a history 
and it's (Heidegger's) Nietzsche's. Power is apparently groundless, or 
rather it constantly grounds itself so it needs no grounds like god or 
human rights apart from their usefulness as propaganda. That's why I 
prefer democracy since power is tied to its constituency and a 
disruptive almost Celtic leadership cycle. Hitler was also somewhat 
constrained by his volk, but he didn't have to worry about elections.

Malcolm,

I don't see a choice. Everything IS wtp, that's what Heidegger writes.
Therefore in order to understand modern technology, Nietzsche must be
understood.
Wtp (reality) most certainly needs grounds. Evaluating (schaetzen),
incl. all kind of grounds, is nothing but willing.

 



Nowadays it seems everyone, in the westernised nations at least, 
accepts that politics is a lie, where the amorality of machination is 
obvious even to teenagers in high school, but I still think the poor 
old fading god of common decency is alive even if he's now an atheist 
and somewhat confused. Everything becomes bankrupt in the face of 
machination, and it's easy to fall into a perverse relativism in 
regards to moral choices and truth, but nonetheless I still think 
there's a ground for the principle of good and evil. It's just one you 
have to disclose for yourself and bear witness to.


 That's my idea, Malcolm. We just *know* what is good and what is not.
 (Another sort of 'inner silence' maybe) But it's the Levinas' that spoil
 it, and reintroduce an Enlightenment that is great in itself, because
 they spun the thread further, but cannot help anymore now, and insofar
 they persuade that they can, keep away from the real problems. 
 But that is the overall problem of the leaving out of nihilism.
 Insofar the accent still is clearly on the early Heidegger, there
 is a risk, that those who are important for the genesis of BT,
 the main being Aristoteles and Kant, are reintroduced in the fight
 against nihilism. I don't want, and cannot forbid it, but to me
 Heidegger is very clear, that such efforts must remain illusive, as he
 experienced himself. Metaphysics cannot be overcome from the inside, and
 this entails that it cannot be overcome. Overcoming is itself metaphysical. 

I think Levinas is 
important in this regard.

 Is he not after an overcoming of metaphysics by ethics? If yes, then
 this ethics cannot be Kantian. And that demands a thorough knowledge
 of Kant and of metaphysics. Then, Levinas would be important, yes. 


There was a small boy on a bed in an Iraqi hospital a few days ago, 
quite possibly dead now, with both arms blown off at the shoulders 
after a coalition missile apparently struck his home. My nation helped 
do this evil to him, and I'll call it evil cos torment and suffering 
caused by war are simply evil by definition and in principle. It's like 
that little girl Anne Frank taken from her home and dying in the 
squalor of an enormous industrial extermination complex. One innocent 
death amongst millions and one unavoidably 'accidental' mutilation is 
all it takes to de-legitimize any talk of the good or justice in a war 
as far as I'm concerned. Some might try to 'justify' it on the grounds 
of political necessity and collateral damage, or more honestly just 
forget about justice and morality altogether in favour of the amorality 
of will to power as a means to a hopefully good end. But it's still 
evil.

rene:
I sympathize with what you write, and individual "cases" are just not
transcendable. At the same time, the little boy with no arms, by
appearing on tv, has been mobilized, etc. What evil is in that
machination? I've no answers, just that, without CNN & co we would 
not talk about it. Even worse machinations with Anne Frank here. 

regards,

Rene




     


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