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> --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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