File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0305, message 100


Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 14:39:34 -0700
From: Kenneth Johnson <beeso-AT-pop.charter.net>
Subject: Re: Will to Weakness - the inferiority of spirit



anthonee rote:

>>see you at the bonny fire meboi,


>What would be your diagnosis of a Christian who, for a split second,
>glimpses their own weak-willed nature and admits it, but just a day later,
>and days afterwards, lapses back into their delusion?

first diagnostic thing pops to mind, or wheneer weak will is the subject,
this is the de.scription of a crifasi


>Now what would be your diagnosis of someone who, for a split second,
>glimpses their own limitations in knowledge and admits it, but afterwards
>acts as if they never said any such thing?

hmmmmm, a george gobel syndrome pops to mind, that it meboi??

>
>And finally, what would be your diagnosis of someone who wields On Truth and
>Lie like a lethal sword, but afterwards acts as if the first two thirds of
>it didn't exist because it specifically, all too specifically, aims right at
>science and concept? Which severely blunts your anti-Levinas sword?

uh, i'll try george again here

>More to help you out:
>
>==================>Nemo: In Totality and Infinity you speak at great lengths of the face. It is
>one of your frequent themes. What does this phenomenology of the face, that
>is, this analysis of what happens when I look at the Other face to face,
>consist in and what it is purpose?
>
>Levinas: I do not know if one can speak of a phenomenology of the face,
>since phenomenology describes what appears. So too, I wonder if one can
>speak of a look turned toward the face, FOR THE LOOK IS KNOWLEDGE,
>PERCEPTION [red alert, Kenneth].

ha ha ha ha, ho ho ohoh - "The Look" is knowledge, perception? how much
more drolling basic can you get than this unmystical totally unportenting
truism?

>I think rather that access to the face is
>STRAIGHTAWAY ethical.

"Ethics", or in simple jargon: "behave youselves guys n gals", sheeeshh,
what an unproblematic term that is to try to saddle Will to Power down with
-

 >You turn yourself toward the Other as toward an object
>when you see a nose, eyes, a forehead, a chin, and you can describe them.

totally mundane

>The best way of encountering the Other is not even to notice the color of
>his eyes!

me i think there gotta be, or otta be, other bodycolored parts to not
notice first

> When one observes the color of the eyes one is not in social
>relationship with the Other.

true, nor is the color of their cheeks neither meboi

>The relation with the face can surely be
>dominated by perception, BUT WHAT IS SPECIFICALLY THE FACE IS WHAT CANNOT BE
>REDUCED TO THAT [red alert, Kenneth].

ok, lets reduce it to the arm then, or the toes (wha' the fu**, is this guy
a philosopher??)


>Nemo: War stories tell us in fact that it is difficult to kill someone who
>looks straight at you.


not for me, i prefer it that way, rite between the eyes is my normal forte,
i've made a few exceptions tho and probly will again

(all this fuckin spirit of seriousness shit is depressing, solemn,
solemnity incarnate, and isn't that what will to power means by failure?)


>Levinas: The face is signification, and signification without context. I
>mean that the Other, in the rectitude of his face, is not a character within
>a context.

of course it's in a context, everything is in a context, there is nothing
whatever that is not in a context, a character is in a context etc. etc.

>Ordinarily one is a "character": a professor at the Sorbonne, a
>Supreme Court justice, son of so-and-so, everything that is in one's
>passport, the manner of dressing, of presenting oneself.

huh? pro.found??????

>And all
>signification in the usual sense of the term is relative to such a context:
>the meaning for something is in its relation to another thing. Here, to the
>contrary, the face is meaning all by itself.

not so, not so, she cried

>You are you.


"YOU" is precisely what you are NOT, you are not you, you are no.thing at
all, give it up, give it up -etc.

>In this sense one
>can say that the face is not "seen."


yes but in another sense, a 'truer' sense, the face is not even a face, it
is not a face to a face, but only to a conceptorizator etc.

>It is what CANNOT BECOME A CONTENT,
>WHICH YOUR THOUGHT WOULD EMBRACE [ok Kenneth?];


you'd have to uncan this one for me, at surface, taken at its face value,
this all seems pure bottled gobblydegook

>it is uncontainable, it
>leads you beyond.


or better, it leads you to think poetically, like o'neil's "beyond the
horizon" from which a truly magnificent feeling is engendered, or just as
one gets from listening to a deep kate wolf song, especially "Across the
Great Divide" - but it is, and remains, poetry, and no thing be sides  etc.

>It is in this that the signification of the face makes it
>escape from being, as a correlate of a knowing. Vision, to the contrary, is
>a search for adequation; it is what par excellence absorbs being. But the
>relation to the face is STRAIGHTAWAY ETHICAL. The face is what one cannot
>kill,


well this is all a matter of focus, on what body part of a person that was
killed flashes to one's mind on a random rembrance of him. face is of
course the most common but if it were a person who weighed 600 pounds or a
double amputee the most prominant body part would be the first image, etc.

but, the "ethical", that is only an interpretation, embraced by weakly
forms of will to power, there are much more future-promising things
awaiting us than these power hungry greed engined concepts, after all the
transcendentalists faces are gone into the ground


>or at least it is that whose meaning consists in saying: "though shalt
>not kill."

ah fuckem, said the lord, let the red sea bury em, they ain't christians


>Murder, it is true, is a banal fact: one can kill the Other; the
>ethical exigency is not an ontological necessity. The prohibition against
>killing does not render murder impossible, even if the authority of the
>prohibition is maintained in the bad conscience about the accomplished evil

GOOD GOD ANTHONY IT'S 2 EONS PAST TIME TO GET OUR SELVES THE FUCK "BEYOND
GOOD AND EVIL", BEYOND ALL THIS DARK AGE CAVE MAN APE PLANET SHIT

>- the malignancy of evil. It also appears in the Scriptures,


AND ALSO APPEARS IN THE CATHOLIC CANON, WHICH HAS LEVELED MORE LIVES THAN - -

THIS IS BEING EVIL IN THE NAME OF NOT BEING EVIL BUT RATHER BEING THE GOOD
THE TRUE AND THE (LAND (AND MIND) EXTORTING BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE)

your mind has been ex.torted, you are now evil mr anthony knievle

>to which the
>humanity of man is exposed inasmuch as it is engaged in the world.


HUMANITY, THE GROSS OF THE HUMAN, ENGAGED OR ANY OTHER WISE, IS THAT WHICH
MUST BE OVERCOME, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OVERCOME HIM????????????? NOT A
FUCKIN THING, JUST DRAG YOUR FEET ALL THE WAY TO SOME FORCED ARMAGEDDON

>But to
>speak truly, the appearance of being of these ethical peculiarities - the
>humanity of man - is a rupture of being. It is significant, even if being
>resumes and recovers itself.


IT IS TOTALLY INSIGNIFICENT, AND YOU CANNOT RUPTURE BEING, OR RESUME BEING,
NOR NEITHER CAN YOU THE BEING OF BEING, BEING IS THE RIGHTFUL PROPERTY OF
POPEYE, THE GREAT "I YAM WHAT I YAM"


>Nemo: The Other is face; but the Other, equally, speaks to me and I speak to
>him. Is not human discourse another way of breaking what you call totality?


ONLY IF YOU ARE TOTALLY SUPERFICIAL, PASSING YOUR ARTIFICIAL SELF WITH ITS
PRE.FACED FACE OFF AS PART OF TOTALITY WHEN THEY DON'T EVEN EXIST

>Levinas: Certainly. Face and discourse are tied. The face speaks.


(how utterly tiresome, and again AND AGAIN, there is no "face", there is no
body to have a face, "face" is an interpretation of some aspect of will to
power, but so is everything else

>It speaks,

(how utterly tiresome, there is no "speak")


>it is in this that it renders possible and begins all discourse.

[NO, it is only the larynx, the lungs, the lips, the uvula, the teeth, so
please face up to it, there is NO face]

> I have just
>refused the notion of vision to describe the authentic relationship with the
>Other; it is discourse and, more exactly, response or responsibility which
>is this authentic relationship. [note Kenneth, THAT is what he means by
>responsibility and its basis in the face: face = speaks = discourse >response = responsibility]


well since i've destroyed your pat equation above, what's left to say
ethically about ethics?

>
>Nemo: But since the ethical relationship is beyond knowledge,


too tired to even smile at this ethicalized crap

cept, you know, there is surely some term in rhetorics for this kind of
dialogic deciet, can't recall what it is at the moment but - -


> and, on the
>other hand, it is authentically assumed through discourse, it is thus that
>discourse itself is not something of the order of knowledge?


Knowledge?  these guys should visit the forest once in a while, you want to
look at knowledge, at knowing, it is there en grosse

words are the weakest kind of knowledge (tho not less deceitful) in their
life denying incarnations, than the more life affirming kinds, which are
stripped bare of any concept in the primevel forest, or at least for he who
has eyes to see

>
>Levinas: In discourse I have always distinguished in fact, between the
>saying and the said. That the saying must bear a said is a necessity of the
>same order as that which imposes a society with laws, institutions and
>social relations.

well, finally something cool, score 1 for Levinas here


>But the saying is the fact that before the face, I do not
>simply remain there contemplating it, I respond to it.


why pick on the face?????????????? what's wrong with responding to a finger?

>The saying is a way
>of greeting the Other,


so is giving that faceless face the finger, or the thumbs up, or the O k
sign, and which is not "given" to the "face" anyway but to the eyes, and
yes there are other missives sent to the ear, or for to lips, all of which
DO NOT EXIST anymore than some artificial compilation called "the face"
exists

>but to greet the Other is already to answer for him.


as for me, i answer for myself only, i'm not so presumptous as Levinas and
in his loss gendered disappointment with his life-as-i-want-it-to-be versus
life-as-it-is mystivity, he should read some epictitus

and it occurs here, that there is nothing surprising in anthony's love for
this proto superstishistically gendered anti-life-force reasoning, as one
member of those many faced herds who sprinkle chant blessed and now
trans.formed sacred salt heavily shaken around his house and car and office
to keep the demons from nipping him in his tempted-to-be-evil buds

>It is difficult to be silent in someones presence;


it ain't all that hard, i do it all the time, easy when one has a bit of
sense compared to the enormous mass of nonsense afloat in the biospheric
presence

>this difficulty has its
>ultimate foundation in this signification proper to the saying, whatever is
>the said. It is necessary to speak of something, of the rain and fine
>weather, no matter what, but to speak, to respond to him and already to
>answer for him.

chit chat, i suppose, could, if one were hungry to write something about
something and to sound deep doin it, sound deep, with such a phrase, say,
as: "and already to answer for him."  but no matter how deep you want chit
chat to be, it is still surface chit chat


>Nemo: In the face of the Other, you say there is an elevation, a height. The
>Other is higher than I am. What do you mean by that? [this part really
>contrasts with Nietzsche, Kenneth]


well you'd need to x.plain that, maybe in the physical sense someone is
higher than me but not in the sense implied above and more often quite the
contrary, you for example


>Levinas: The first word of the face is the Thou Shalt Not Kill. It is an
>order. There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master
>spoke to me.


forcing a banal reality to turn into a profundity?? i think not sir, not
for my taste

>However, at the same time, the face of the Other is destitute;
>it is the poor for whom I can do all and to whom I owe all. And me, whoever
>I may be, but as a first person, I am he who finds the resources to respond
>to the call.


this senti.mental "effeminancy" (don't shoot me mal) is unworthy of
anything that feels itself not as part of, but as all of, Will to Power and
nothing besides.


>[and now the obvious objection:]
>Nemo: One is tempted to say to you: yes, in certain cases. But in other
>cases, to the contrary, the encounter with the Other occurs in the mode of
>violence, hate, and disdain.


well now ain't that finally the unaffected trut, a bit of sunshine in the
reason tea

>Levinas: To be sure. But I think that whatever the motivation which explains
>this inversion, the analysis of the face such as I have just made, with the
>mastery of the Other and his poverty, with my submission and my wealth, IS
>PRIMARY. It is PRESUPPOSED in all human relationships. If it were not that,
>we would not even say, before an open door, After you sir! It is an
>original, After you sir! that I have tried to describe.


well i rarely "sir" anyone, seems too affected as seen here above, but i do
know how to be polite if someone else knows also and often even if they
don't, it all depends, nothin deep in all that

>You have spoken of
>the passion of hate. I feared a much graver objection: How is it that one
>can punish and repress? How is it that there is justice? I answer that it is
>the fact of the multiplicity of men and the presence of someone else next to
>the Other, which condition the laws and establish justice.


i understand the attempt by Levinas to "get to the bottom" of human
behaviors here, and arrive there in a way not arrived at by all the
attemptors so far, especially the social and behavioral scientists, but
this "in other words" treatise doesn't go any deeper than they go, just an
interesting exercise with rhetorical stylistics.


>If I am alone
>with the Other, I owe him everything;


maybe in kansas, or even texas and maybe arkansas, but over here, outside
the gates of eden, we don't accrue unnecessary debts that'a way.

and all the rest of the stuf below as all this is getting too repetively
tiresome, to me and any one who traveled this far down in to it also, so if
you still feel you have some cathoholically profound point it would be nice
if you condensed it into some edible form and i'll help you along a little
more with digesting it.

to the things themselves (oh my friend there is no thing),

Kenneth


>but there is someone else. Do I know
>what my neighbor is in relation to someone else? Do I know if someone else
>has an understanding with him or his victim? Who is my neighbor? It is
>consequently necessary to weigh, to think, to judge, in comparing the
>incomparable. The interpersonal relation I establish with the Other, I must
>also establish with other men; there is thus a necessity to moderate this
>privilege of the Other; from whence comes justice. Justice, exercised
>through institutions, which are inevitable, must always be held in check by
>the initial interpersonal relation.
>
>Nemo: The crucial experience is thus here in your metaphysics: that which
>permits escaping Heideggers ontology as an ontology of the Neutral, an
>ontology without morals. Is it starting from this ethical expereince that
>you construct an ethics? For it follows, ethics is made up of rules; it is
>necessary to establish these rules?
>
>Levinas: My task does not consist in constructing ethics; I only try to find
>its meaning. In fact I do not believe that all philosophy should be
>programmatic. It is Husserl above all who brought up the idea of a program
>of philosophy. One can without doubt construct an ethics in function of what
>I have just said, but this is not my own theme.
>
>Nemo: Can you specify in what this discovery of ethics in the face breaks
>with the philosophies of totality?
>
>Levinas: Absolute knowledge, such as it has been sought, promised or
>recommended by philosophy, is a thought of the Equal. Being is embraced in
>the truth. Even if the truth is considered as never definitive, there is a
>promise of a more complete and adequate truth. Without doubt, the finite
>being that we are cannot in the final account complete the task of
>knowledge; but in the limit where this task is accomplished, it consists in
>making the other become the Same [i.e., Equal]. On the other hand, the idea
>of the Infinite implies a thought of the Unequal. I start from the Cartesian
>idea of the Infinite, where the ideatum of this idea, that is, what this
>idea aims at, is finitely greater than the very act through which one thinks
>it. There is a disproportion between the act and that to which the act gives
>access. For Descartes, this is one of the proofs of Gods existence: thought
>cannot produce something which exceeds thought; this something had to be put
>into us. One must thus admit to an infinite god who has put the idea of the
>Infinite into us. But it is not the proof of Descartes sought that interests
>me here. I am thinking here of the astonishment at his disproportion [i.e.,
>inequality] between what he calls the objective reality and the formal
>reality of the idea of God, of the very paradox - so anti Greek - of an idea
>put into me, even though Socrates taught us that it is impossible to put an
>idea into a thought without it already having been found there.
>  Now, in the face such as I describe its approach, is produced the same
>exceeding [i.e., inequality] of the act by that to which it leads. In the
>access to the face there is certainly also an access to the idea of God. In
>Descartes the idea of the Infinite remains a theoretical idea, a
>contemplation, a knowledge. For my part, I think that the relation to the
>Infinite is not a knowledge, but a Desire. I have tried to describe the
>difference between Desire and need by the fact that Desire cannot be
>satisfied; that Desire in some way nourishes itself on its own hungers and
>is augmented by its satisfaction; that Desire is like a thought which thinks
>more than it thinks, or more than what it thinks. It is a paradoxial
>structure, without doubt, but one which is no more so than this presence of
>the infinite in a finite act.
>
>[So the basic outline of that long last part is this: knowledge = making the
>Other to be the Same = Equality, whereas Infinity = exceeding thought >disproportionate with finite. Levinas is saying that encountering with the
>Other is like the latter, not the former, since to make the Other into the
>Same (which is what knowledge essentially is) is really to destroy its
>character as Other in the first place.]
>
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