Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 05:13:24 +0000
Subject: Re: Gestell/Gewinnst - Truth as opinion
From: michaelP <michael-AT-sandwich-de-sign.co.uk>


on 5/12/03 9:26 pm, Malcolm Riddoch at m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au wrote:
 
> On Saturday, December 6, 2003, at 04:43  AM, michaelP wrote:
> 
>> Malcom, why not a new beginning of the first beginning rather than a
>> dissolution: are we so afraid of the first beginning that we need to
>> banish
>> it into the mists and mysts of time or worse, banish to the disneyland
>> of
>> 'the past' thus dissing it with condescension? Verwindung! Give me
>> verwindung!
> 
> Hasn't it already been banished/dissolved by time? Or should we begin
> all over again and end up with Gestell circa 4250 CE? Why repeat a
> process that has got us to where we already are, and how on earth do
> you guarantee that your modern enlightened appropriation of ancient
> Greek texts is anything other than a repetition of the same?
> 
> Strange all this Greek romanticism, I still don't see this in Heidegger
> though as for him the Greeks initiated the forgetting of being, they're
> part of the whole problem that has to be thought through, and the
> problem is us.
> 
> Is it night where you are?

Malcom, last things first :-) It was night here when you wrote from down
there, but now it is approaching dawn here as I write (cocks getting ready
to crow that ridiculous crowing, faint hazy light near the horizon...); yes,
the greeks part of the problem, but problem (and solution) is a modern
word-world, and appropriating the greek beginnings in such a sodium-vapour
light might not be appropriate and at least throws up more questions as to
how to think the first beginnings, which of necessity leads us to think (as
has been started by Michael E recently) the archai; thinking in this
nearness/remoteness be-comes a form of archaeology (it's all in the way you
dig and carefully sift and discriminate this from that appearance in the
dig; I think, for my sins, that Heidegger is a great digger); an inception
of a new beginning by thinking through the first beginnings is not at all a
romantic enterprise, certainly not necessarily, especially as I do not mean
to suggest a simple unearthing in this dig or a simple celebration of the
finds as revealed by the modern torch or flashlight, rather and more
precisely, a viewing of the first AS the first in the series in which our
beginning is the next, which is surely NOT a simple repetition but a
reviewing that opens up what could not have been open at the time of the
first beginning (e.g., that it WAS the first); in this way the entire way
and the be-wayings of the ways are lit up as the ways they are and bring us
forward to catch/be-hold a view upon what might be-come; under-standing
one's ground, standing upon one's ground and beginning, is the only (good)
way to stand up properly now, otherwise we float, buffeted and bumped by any
thing and every thing that passes close and remain in danger of drowning in
our own expertise and arrogance. "But that's just me! What's my name!?"
[approx. EmineM]

re...

mP



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