File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0308, message 52


From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 16:55:05 EDT
Subject: Re: Not Even a Leaf


In a message dated 19/08/2003 16:09:26 GMT Daylight Time, 
R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl writes:


> Subj:RE: Not Even a Leaf
> Date:19/08/2003 16:09:26 GMT Daylight Time
> From:    R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl (Bakker, R.B.M. de)
> Sender:    owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU">heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU</A>
> To:    heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> 
> 
> 
> 
> rene: this might be all more or less true, or funny, but does not touch 
> the principal problem, what metaphysics is and why a creator God, that is
> originally believed in or not, enters it. Western metaphysics is unique
> in this respect, it cannot be compared with theological traditions elsewhere.
> They have at most holy wars, but we have conquered (the know-how to conquer
> the machines to conquer) the world. The Mongols of the East retreated at 
> last,
> the Mongols of the West are there to stay, wherever they appear.
> 
> 
Jud:
Heidegger talks of  the 'inception' as being for him the 'Greek' inception, 
but philosophy predated the Greeks by thousands of years
We only think of the Greeks being the first because what they thought was to 
a large extent written down [though much has been lost.] Mankind has always 
looked for explanations as to its origins, and during these attempts to make 
sense of the shifting fogs of  existential explanation, religion feels threatened 
and moves in on the act and deposits its nits of nescience into the tomentum 
or filamentous hairlike growth on the leaves and buds of the tree of knowledge.
Thinkers who's philosphy contradicted, or was considered unhelpful to the 
religious establisment, were stifled or physically  eliminated


> Rene: 
> the reference to "What is metaphysics" is highly worthy-of-questioning) As 
> the ground of everything that is, even as the principle of ground, this god, 
> for 
> whom one cannot dance or kneel down
> (H in I&D), reigns more absolutely than ever. The more so when reduced to 
> nothing (killed). 
> 
> Jud: 
> For me I already get the big picture, and most things and their relations 
> are 
> known to my satisfaction, or knowable in more detail and challengeable if 
> desired. 'Metaphysics' holds no attraction for minds like mine.
> 
> 
> rene: again, that's not the point. The point, as i see it, is that the 
> computer
> over against me is something so strange, that we have to go to the ground of
> metaphysics to see clearer. As long as we consider ourselves the actors, 
> subjects,
> of science and technology, a fecund insight into what they are, whereto they 
> 

Jud:
I experience no similar concerns such as yours, though that is not to say 
that I do not understand them, and indeed may well have thought in a similar way 
when younger.  To me the computer, the motor car, the book, the slug, the 
snake, my own hands as I type are all fashioned from basically the same material, 
which has come together in different existential conglomerations.  The 
computer keyboard as I look down on it in this instant is no stranger 
phenomenologically than my fingers that dance about its keys. Now I don't need 'metaphysics' 
to tell me this. Metaphysics can tell me nothing anyway, for 'metaphysics 
doesn't exist to tell anybody anything.  Metaphysicians exist in one of their many 
existential modes of being human.
A lot depends on what questions are asked regarding keys and fingers.  We 
already KNOW practically all there is to know about the physical, cellular, 
electrochemical, quantum nature of the plastic keys and the organic 'plastic' of 
the human fingers, and the way in which they interact in space and time, and the 
codification's of letter and language that supply the symbols on the lettered 
keys and the symbolic interaction within the embodied brain that uses these 
symbols and lettered keys as I am doing to reach out to you.  Who taught us all 
about the nature of plastic, the workings of the computer, to facilitate this 
wonderful communication, the flow of blood reoxygenating the tapping fingers 
to stop your hands breaking out in bright red pustules then turning black and 
rotting away, and the myelin-coated nerves that carry the instructions down 
the arms to the hands from the CNS?  Why the scientists of course. 

 Metaphysicians? Try going to a metaphysician with an aching tooth or if your 
computer breaks down, or if your hands turn black, or if the myelinic coating 
degrades and the nerves start shorting-out with the concomitant signs of 
multiple sclerosis. They only lead us where we are willing to be lead.  If we 
disagree we can stop them, but not by complaining about the scientists but by 
acting politically and clearing out the rat's nests of politicians who are 
befouling our societies. That which you [justifiably] rail against is a POLITICAL  
problem not a PHILOSOPHICAL one. 

Rene:

> So while you have the illusion of being superior to 'metaphysics', you're 
> embracing
> 


Jud:
If you were as old as me when most of us didn't even have vacuum cleaners you 
would appreciate them more.
If you don't like your vacuum cleaner then the answer is quite simple - throw 
it in a skip or donate it to the Salvation Army.
While you are at it take you TV and your hot water plumbing system and your 
beloved cameras and your electric toothbrush - drive over there
in your car and leave everything there including the car or [being a 
Dutchman] probably your bike too. The fact that lots of Dutch people very sensibly use 
bikes was not a slur BTW - I use a bike myself for short journeys and as I 
pedal along in the sunshine I bless the scientists and technologists and 
mechanics and manufactures who invented the bike and put them into production.
In spite of what Heidegger thought the ancient Greeks would have GIVEN THEIR 
HIGH TEETH  for cars and aeroplanes and televisions and electric toothbrushes
and Plato and Aristotle would have been first in the queue to purchase a word 
processor and computer to bang off e-mails to their fellow philosophers in 
Egypt and India, etc.

Rene:
While satirizing the Uebermensch, they're
> all around while you do your shopping. You would have existents everywhere 
> to point
> to, but would have in reality no idea of what and how it is that you point 
> 

I do not see my fellow strollers in the shopping mall  as  Uebermenschen, but 
rather as ordinary folk like me on the lookout for a good deal.
What do you mean here Rene - that the window-shoppers of Wolverhampton all 
persons with great powers and abilities - demigods?
The only power that they have is their purchasing power as far as I can see, 
and it is to that power that the market responds competitively.
Do you mean by 'existents' the products [articles]  to be seen in the shops, 
or the crowds that surround me whilst I shop>

> 
> Jud: Talking about the 'uncovering' of the slug.
> 
> 
> rene: i had something similar with a brown adder on a sand path recently,
> the first snake i met frontally. Some days before, i had quoted the snake 
> hidden
> in I&D. Well, i'm not composing associative sentimentalities, but all in all 
> i now
> believe things and animals and plants and the people in our lives have 
> sthing to
> say to us. In fact, everything happening tells something, but one has to 
> find out
> 

Jud:
I agree and emphasis with what you mean rather than what you say [the way you 
put it]
I don't think they actually 'say' anything at all [though humans say a lot of 
course.  The way it works is that we see something and it initiated certain 
mental processes and our embodied brain may alter its assessment of certain 
aspects of reality. These alterations are usually for the benefit of US rather 
than the animal,  and any acts of kindness are prompted by our desire to 
assuage our own discombobulated mind regarding or peaceful equanimity or concern 
for our environment of which the animal and vegetable kingdom play a critical 
role.

Rene:
> Hoelderlin speaks of "the divine language, the changing and becoming", the 
> "Goettersprache, das Wechseln und das Werden". Nota bene: the divine is in
> the becoming, and not beyond or behind it!.
> 
> Jud:
> I too love Hoelderlin and have his works [in German]  Yet I cannot see the 
> reason for an arbitrary dichotomy between the divine
> as a changing and a becoming, for things [us] are in a state of perpetual 
> change and becoming from the moment we are conceived to the time that our 
> bodies turn to dust [or ash.] Please speak more on this theme Rene - do you 
> 

Rene:
> But not willing to listen is very human. And the rule is that one is blamed
> for what one sees, if one tells. Zarathustra: hide your gold, they'll slit 
> 

Jud:
I admire your confidence in yourself and in what you believe - but what you 
have just said 
or implied, Allen has just castigated me [gently] in another post for me 
believing so strongly that I am right?
It is as if me being Zarathustra, he too wishes to slit my stomach open - but 
not to look for fools-gold, but rather to see the glistening
entrails coil upon the ground like a steaming pile of nominalist giblets.  ;-)

> 
> 

followed up with:
We already know HOW. Is it simply naive to suppose there is a reason 
> in the first place?
> 
> 

No, it's a must. Could you get asleep in the evening, when tomorrow morning
> would have no causal relation to today? Contra Jeremiah, one does not have 
> to be 
> a Heideggerian, one better be not, if that only leads to the principle of 
> ground,
> 

Jud:
I have no problem stitching together the ragged fabric of my days and making 
sense of the weave and weft, I meant more the presence of anything at all.
In other words I am asking the same question that heidegger asked:  "Why is 
there something rather than nothing?"
Now I have my own answer as you know - but one likes to have some 
confirmation - to discuss the question of whether it is a genuine question at all?

Jud cuts out  the Prof. Jeremiah piece and other stuff.
> 
> 
> rene:
> You already have an answer before the question has been asked properly.
> Nothing is as it seems, most of all the nothing. That's why there is
> questioning. One asks for something. That what is asked for must be
> 


Jud:
This is along the lines of what Anselm was saying - the fact that a thing is 
talked about makes it a thing that can be talked about.
If I made up a word [the name of a fictitious thing] and told you lies or 
imaginings about it, we would be talking about it -it would become a topic of 
conversation like God or nothing, but that wouldn't mean that it actually 
existed. You would probably go on talking about it to others even if I confessed I 
made it up.
If Abraham had come down the mountain, given his account of meeting God up 
there, watched with satisfaction the reformed Israelites praying instead of 
feasting and then dropped the bombshell: "Hey guys" I made it all up - April 
Fool!" they would still have continued to believe in God because they NEEDED to 
believe in something with the certainty and commonsense that only a monotheistic 
Godhead could deliver.

Rene:
But that's only posing the question, the beginning of questioning. In
> 


Jud:
You are right here, often the basic question asked unlocks doors to other 
questions.

Rene:
You merely say: i am the boss, i do the questioning, and i decide what is 
sense
> and nonsense. But esp. that 'i' is most questionable. And not because it can
> be subjected to the human activity of questioning. Soon it won't be there 
> 


Jud
True.  But as well as being an AITist and a nominalist I am also an 
experientialist, and experientialists 
conduct themselves in line with what they have learned from their own 
experience of observing over a long period.
I am in fact in that sense more existentialist than the existentialists for I 
have my own strong opinions - I am my own man - I am authentic to myself,
and most importantly of all have reached my opinions trough thinking things 
out for myself FIRST and THEN reading what other 
thinkers have thunk about these things in the past and what conclusions they 
arrived at. Not having gone to University until the age of forty allowed me to 
do this and not being an academic meant that I studied philosophy [and lots 
of other things] in my spare time for the sheer LOVE of it.

> Rene: 
> As to my theology: i've begun to read Wilhelm Groenbech's great work on the 
> Germanics. Like Otto on the Greeks, he is determined to go for experience, 
> not 
> for superfluous proving. 
> 
> Jud:
> It is through experience that we are able to prove or disprove.
> 
> Rene:
> More basically, it is experience (paideia), that tells where to go after 
> reasons, and where they are out of place.
> 
> Jud: 
> Reasons, explanations, grounds, rationalities for me are never out of place
> 
> 
> rene:
> Why?! Because 'you' say so? All positivists are like that: they forbid and 
> pay back with what looks like good sense, but is utterly arbitrary. 
> Metaphysics is news from nowhere, but a framework makes sense. To Carnap, 
> yes.
> 


Jud: I did say 'for me' Rene.  I'm not a positivist anyway. I certainly don't 
forbid anybody reading or believing anything they like.
I may [like you] attempt to change, dissuade, alter the opinions of others 
and point out the pros and cons of people like H or anybody else.
But I never mention positivism or Carnapism or any other ism other than my 
own home-grown AITism and nominalism which for me is not an ism but simple
the most intelligent way to interface with reality.

> 
> Jud: cuts out Danish and other stuff about Groenbech.
> 
> rene:
> Groenbech starts with revenge, needed for piece. Piece as a 'social' 
> phenomenon:
> first there is the family (Sippe), not the individual. Relatives give 
> strength, and
> strength they had. (they went as far as the Black Sea). Their fearlessness 
> must
> have a ground, a reason, not? 
> 
> Jud:
> Suggestions.  The usual ones? Land hunger?  Pressures from invaders from the 
> east?
> expanding population? The social mores of raiding parties, booty, livestock, 
> 


Rene:

But maybe not a familiar (to us) one.
> Recently, in the middle of our conversation 'god is dead for kids," my son 
> (18)
> 

Jud:
I am sure it must make you feel good [in a way proud too] when your boy comes 
home to Dad.
I too had good family news today [last night to be precise] I'll clip this 
from a private letter to MichaelP to save my fingers:

'Thanks for your kind note. Sorry for the slight delay - but I have been 
celebrating, for  last night/this morning my wife gave me the wonderful news that 
we are having another baby. I just hope against hope that all goes well this 
time, [as you will remember we lost our last baby 'Andreus' in the delivery 
room.]
Clare is now 42, so in view of her age and the history involved she/we/the 
doctors will have to be extra careful.

On the A-Train heading for the buffers of being-oblivion yes - but going out 
with a bang! 
 

J
> ud:
> I've got the whole of the Ring on video too
> 
> 
Boulez/Chereau? That would be great. 

Jud:
Sadly no, Levine and the met [DVD]
The production is a wearisome one - the direction is uninventive and in quite 
a few cases leave one clearly underwhelmed. The singing is also average, but 
none of this can be blamed on Wagner of course.  > 
> 
> so I get plenty of chest-beating and 
> sword brandishing as it is. However the other stuff sounds very interesting 
> and juicy.
> 
> 
> Jud: 
> Future? My future, or the future of Heideggerianism? ;-) My future is 
> rapidly 
> running out, [I'm 68] and it won't be all that long before my  atheistic 
> A-Train hits 
> the big buffers of non-being .  As I twiddle my thumbs and await the 
> boat-train 
> which will ferry me across the River  Styx Heidegger acts as an avatar for 
> me,  (the manifestation in human form of all that is un-philosophical, 
> antihuman 
> and humourless - he is an icon that if clicked opens up an old page of 
> sepia-coloured memories of thirties unreason made needlessly bitter for 
> millions by 
> him and his buffoonish brothers in 
> Berchestgarten brown.
> 
>   
Rene:
You make a lot out of him, or out of your antipathy. He's not so much.
> Lately, i was in the Elzas. Very bitter history, like the other former 
> German regions.
>   I saw Heidegger twice, so the ground, the humus, is the same as a bit more 
> 


Jud:
Please tell me [us] more about seeing Heidegger.  Like many 
anti-Heideggerians he has caste a malign spell over me and fascinates me greatly. maybe he put 
a drug in my Black Forest tart?

>    

> Jud: grinding his teeth

> When I see his photograph with its dead-eyes I react to it automatically, as 

> if in a computer-game, or firing at a drogue on an army pop-up target 

> firing-range, I can't resist taking a pop at him. I am an emotional Celt you 
> see — 

> not the cold-blooded bourgeois Englishman you imagine. For me being 

> anti-Heidegger is being authentic.

> 

>   

Very well (or bad), the least i try is to convert you. I have to get rid of 
him,
> too.  But he is like Grime's hedgehog, it doesn't matter where you turn, 
> he's already
>   there. He is the most generous of all, has the most to give, but turns his
>   face away. You call that inhuman. But he cannot give what is one's own. 
> And we 
>   call human those that pretend to give us that. While they can only take it 
> away, thus.
>   ("we want your best") 
>   
>   Jud:
> I like it when you are in your friendly thoughtful and forgiving Dutchman 
> mood, it explains why the Dutch are the Englishman's favourite nation.
> 
> 
regards

Jud.

<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A>


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