File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0311, message 231


Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:23:11 -0600
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: Re:  What is Realism in Iraq?


>on 17/11/03 3:45 pm, HealantHenry-AT-aol.com at HealantHenry-AT-aol.com wrote:
>
>>
>>  In a message dated 11/17/03 10:13:29 AM, BobAuler-AT-aol.com writes:
>>
>>>  yes, but take a culture totally alien to democracy...like chicago...and
>>>  you end up with the kennedy election, bribery as a basic building block,
>>>  and only needing to learn to spell the word daly to describe government.
>>>  from the state where governors go to prison.
>>>
>>>  bob
>>
>>  isn't chicago a hybrid of
>>  democracy and warlordism?
>>  that might be the new big thing!
>
>etc [along with many other posts on this thread]
>
>All genuinely amusing, but only the throwing of unphilosophical smart bombs
>at each other. When do we get down (deeder and down, [Quo]) to
>(philosophical) business [MnM]?
>
>Can this I-rack situation be thought rather than just opined?
>

Hello Michael,

A telling set of images!  Smart bombs can't think because they're too 
focused on simply hitting a target (which focus, of course, doesn't 
always get them there).  That's all they "know."  That's all they're 
built to know.  The fact that they're run by computer is no small 
part of it, of course.

Thinking discourse ( discourse that thinks for itself), on the other 
hand , sets its own target, according to Aristotle (Nic.Eth).  And 
philosophical discourse specializes in thinking for itself in 
precisely this way.  It knows how to focus on discourse in the very 
process of its construction, such that the discourse constitutes a 
way of thinking-- a way of thinking which, at the right moment, 
philosophy brings to the front.  At that moment, philosophy moves 
closer to becoming itself (though, of course, still being "on the 
way").

I was thinking about this Friday night, as the Los Angeles String 
Quartet played Mozart for me.  I watched them looking at one another 
even as they looked at Mozart's notes (of which there are "too 
many"), and wondered, once again, how do they make music? How did he 
make music? How do they make the music that he made?  How is the 
making of music made (not with smart bombs focused on just hitting 
the target, but with the thinking musical soul, thinking for itself 
[though not entirely])?  And then I thought, of course, of the making 
of philosophy, of philosophizing?  How is the making of philosophy 
made--constituted?  Each, of course, is incomparable in its own way, 
but each, in its own way, must also deal with the problem of form in 
the context of being-with others.

Best regards,

Allen



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