Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 15:53:12 -0500
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: Re: heimlich


>allen wrote recently:
>
>>  We were even taught to read Rashi first and then go back to the 
>>biblical verse
>>  to see where his question was "coming from," or more precisely, what the
>>  question was
>
>Allen, this has stuck, and, whilst reading a piece in TheGuardian today,
>about the writer/politico/broadcaster/philosopher, Bryan Magee, I came
>across a notion that crossed paths with something you once iterated on this
>list: that philosophers were (essentially) homesick and were always already
>finding their ways back (in thinking, in language). Given Magee's notion
>that philosophy should not provide comfort and reassurance (like religion
>and therapy and {nowadays} support/councelling) to the questions that pop up
>(I also wonder about this business of the popping-up of philosophical
>questions; another one: from whence?), I wondered about this homecoming of
>philosophy, that perhaps (and I am asking this of you) for philosophy to be
>itself and not a branch of the therapeutic tree, it must necessarily fail to
>come home, that it must needs be offer itself as the most nomadic, keeping
>the love of home in tact through the tension of never getting there, forever
>exiled; thus the eros (of Plato and thus everything else) that animates this
>useless concern with being, and the fire that never quite forms a hearth
>around itself even though it never seems to go out (absent minders?).

Absolutely, Michael.  The mood I think is what used to be called "melancholic,"
  an artfully constructed, softly sad longing for something that may 
have almost been, but
then again never was, and so can be "remembered" in words which have 
nothing to answer
to, except the possibility of an experience in language.

There's en essay by George Steiner somewhere, "Homeland as Text," 
where I think he gets this
right.  Of course it bears close connections to Being Jewish, but 
that's only because I'm Jewish
and have a romantic attachment to places that are texts.  When I was 
in Israel, my favorite place
was the Qumran caves ( where the Essenes retreated  and where the 
Dead Sea Scrolls were found).
Most of the rest of the country I felt unhappy in, especially because 
of the rampant militarism, evident
everywhere, but not of course in the Judaean Desert late on a Friday 
afternoon.  So now I can long for that
moment in that place, and all it resembles. . . evokes, one might 
say.  That's what appeals in Hoelderlin, flavored of course, with a 
lot of Heidegger.  I think, as you say,  this longing, which of 
course, knows it will never be requited,
"animates this useless concern with being."  It's all a matter of 
keeping your mood straight.  Good music helps.  Been listening to 
Velvet Underground again.  What a time it was . . .

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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