Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 21:25:00 -0500
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: Re: The Problem of NOT Being Zarathustra



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>Hi Allen, you wrote:
>
>  > The problem is, when they go back to the city, and have to answer 
>to the city
>>  dwellers, by way of answering to themselves. That seems to take a certain
>>  "stoicism" (the pleasures of which I have a hard time teaching anyone under
>>  eighty):  What it means to say:  "O my friends, there is no friend!"
>
>Yes, and unlike Zarathustra's going down the mountain to the town's 
>market place, such students will not only find that the townspeople 
>have already longsince heard the news, but will wonder what the fuss 
>was the hell about anyway... But, does not getting-it imply some 
>understanding of not-getting-it, both in the sense of once (at 
>least) having been there (pre-getting-it), and in the sense that 
>getting-it involves a verwindung [spelling!], an overcoming of 
>not-getting-it, and furthermore -- on every occasion of 
>having-to-get-it (post-getting-it)? Isn't that why such lucky 
>students of yours have a way to answer to themselves? And this is 
>part of the double helix [  :-)   ] you have bestowed, n'est pas?
>
>utter regards
>
>michael

Michael,

It could be I'm too small in stature to bestow a double helix, but 
the part that always
seems to bulge and eventually fall out is the delicate, though 
weighty matter of the
"actual" embodied self, the self that can't quite be thought, even 
taught-- that is,
as you put it in another post, waiting to fall in love again, but 
right now, just a bit,
(I hesitate to use such language) somewhat afraid of being alone. 
One who came close
to putting the matter all together in language, for himself and the 
rest of us, was Augustine, in
the CONFESSIONS.  And then perhaps Nietzsche in Zarathustra.

But then, even aside from that work, there's the question of how to 
think, and how to live with
what Heraclitus called the hoi polloi(the terminal not-getting-it's), 
especially as lodged in the embodied self, a kind of
precipitate of thinking too hard, or maybe not enough.

I came across a Kantian joke on the matter from the end of "Conflict 
of the faculties":

"How's your illness my friend?" someone asks a doctor who is weary of 
providing his
patients with hopes of a speedy convalescence>  "How should it be? 
I'm dying of
improvement pure and simple."

Sounds downright Jewish.  I bet he got it from his friend, Mendelsohn 
(Little Mo, not Felix,
of course)

Best regards,

Allen

-- 
  Allen Scult					Dept. of Philosophy
HOMEPAGE: " Heidegger on Rhetoric and Hermeneutics":	Drake University
http://www.multimedia2.drake.edu/s/scult/scult.html	Des Moines, Iowa 50311
PHONE: 515 271 2869
FAX: 515 271 3826

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HTML VERSION:

Hi Allen, you wrote:

> The problem is, when they go back to the city, and have to answer to the city
> dwellers, by way of answering to themselves. That seems to take a certain
> "stoicism" (the pleasures of which I have a hard time teaching anyone under
> eighty):  What it means to say:  "O my friends, there is no friend!"

Yes, and unlike Zarathustra's going down the mountain to the town's market place, such students will not only find that the townspeople have already longsince heard the news, but will wonder what the fuss was the hell about anyway... But, does not getting-it imply some understanding of not-getting-it, both in the sense of once (at least) having been there (pre-getting-it), and in the sense that getting-it involves a verwindung [spelling!], an overcoming of not-getting-it, and furthermore -- on every occasion of having-to-get-it (post-getting-it)? Isn't that why such lucky students of yours have a way to answer to themselves? And this is part of the double helix [  :-)   ] you have bestowed, n'est pas?

utter regards

michael

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