File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0312, message 198


Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 10:02:13 -0600
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: Re: Gestell/Gewinnst - Truth as opinion


John recently enthused:



>
>
>Going Greek is a cool thing to do to. I respect the input and comments of
>all those who make an attempt to explicate the meaning of words long since
>invented. Afterall it was alleged by Socrates interlocutors in Protogoras
>who theorized on how the meanings of Greek words were invented, that words
>'represent' the thing in a logical, and phonetic way, the logic of the logos
>[What is Called Thinking, part 2].

Hello John,

No small thing this invention business.  One of the five canons of 
rhetoric.  What is it that's
"invented" in invention--when Parmenides invents a word that lasts in 
the way that it does, holding
in safekeeping etc. etc.?  What is invented/spoken/preserved is a way 
of thinking
about things that is there-present in the "logic of the logos" as you 
say, the way the
particular word works-- is said and may be listened to.  There's a 
relationship there
to be "picked up on."  Poetry, of course, depends on this pick-up for 
its "object-ivity,"
for the rightness of how the words are finally put.  Not only the 
inner sound, but even
the outer look of the letters.  In his last days, Heine could barely 
see, but it was not enough
for him to hear the words as went over and over them through the 
night.  He could only
truly assess them when he dictated them to his secretary the next 
morning and the secretary
could hold the words up close to what remained of Heine's one good eye.




>Anyone well trained in the biological
>sciences can easily refer to many Greek words, they can get a copy of
>Borrors dictionary, and work with that. Sophia is a word meaning wisdom, and
>wisdom cannot be learned but experienced. Thus the love of wisdom or the
>wisdom of love is a form of 'active concern' or care. Thinking is 'potted'
>here. What do we actually mean by the word love?
>
>Well the Greeks had at least 3 words for love arising from 2 broad terms for
>love: erotic and noetic forms. To know is to love. Love therefore is an act,
>a process, and it is also claimed that love is the only attribute we can
>know about God, not in an absolute sense, but as an act. Love thus is the
>supreme creative act, what is created thus is a product, service of this
>act. Knowing is not knowledge, it is an act, not an artefact, nor a given.

Though not "a given," by any means, it is in any particular case, given as a
relational possibility, no?



>Love therefore which is knowing -  in itself- is an intimate act resolving
>isolation from the beloved; love is an act reconciling potentially
>'inseparable' contraries, rather than a union of contradictories, because
>contradictories cannot be reconciled. This is the test. If contraries,
>similarities, and being singularities, can be reconciled and brought into
>union, arrive within a unity, then they are still distinct and they fufill
>their identities.


I don't think love ultimately resolves anything.  Rather it provides 
the groundless
ground for an impossible possibility.  (I can hear someone barfing in 
the background.
Just don't forget to flush.)  It gives life to a moment, but then, as 
Kenneth observed,
that moment comes  immediately under attack, and is probably given 
up, thereby becoming
a pretext for further adventures including philosophy.





>
>Aristotle added friendship in his virtue ethics as a form of love. He said
>that to love a friend means to act for that friend as if the friend is an
>end in themselves, forgetting that the love for that friend is anything else
>but an ultimate end, meaning that a true friend is prepared to put the
>friends life and interests first. Where friends meet is the enclosure, and
>not an exclosure.
>
>We cannot therefore be certain that physics comes before metaphysics then
>can we? In love we are enabled to act for the other, unconditionally. In the
>act of love, metaphysics overcomes all deliberations of the intellect
>through transmuting base isolated beings into a greater synthesis. In part,
>in love, we do not grasp what is, but know what is there. This may be why
>our most common expression for receiving is useful, or it is handy. (not to
>confuse the ontological difference between ready to hand and presence at
>hand. Since at hand is a phenomenally universal term for more than
>'utilization' and 'usu fructus'. Ultimately then in intimacy (being in time
>and it's 3 exstaces), versus isolation, we come to know what is there (and
>also potentially there as being-in-the-world). In part, also, we may agree
>that in love there are nothing but attractions, and a want of repulsions: a
>deficit and a surfeit.  So there may be some truth to the notion that love
>enables. Love enables movement, in the broadest sense possible, most
>definately in 'moods', 'sentiments' and 'states of mind'; care as an active
>expression of concern for being-in-the-world is to open up all possiblity
>for gathering in the broadest sense. Some Greek thinkers were convinced or
>persuaded that what is definately not good, is what they call 'stasis' or
>'stillness', and it is this image, with it's obvious biological analogies of
>death, that love is seen as an act. What is 'movement' and what is
>'stillness' is equivalent to what is life and what is death.

Gotta keep movin' !  Dylan speaks of "old men without teeth, stranded without
love."  Is that fear of death?

>
>For Plato, truth is being, and opinion is neither being nor non-being; truth
>is situated within being and non-being. Truth is rarely simple, and more
>likely <paradoxical> in terms of interpretation. Thus truth may be said to
>be an appropriation of the good in whole and in part, and definately not one
>nor the other, exclusively. Thus truth is what is both wholly, and
>partially, what is there layed out. Does it matter therefore what
>orientation is appropriate for designation of the truth? We can sign, or
>point to where the truth lies, as may be the case when what lies before, and
>is granted, is situated there in view, however different the perspective. Or
>we can acknowledge what is unanalyzable in thought, the core and the rind,
>of what is layed out.
>
>When I bring my presupposition to the fore, prior to thinking about what
>lays out before in it's reception, I am not able to 'perceive' in the
>ultimate sense of receiving what is there since it may not be ground out;
>like a lightening strike, if what is received is not grounded out, then it
>shorts out, and there is no alternation, but direction. I lose my way
>easily, but find it again only if the reception alternates.....To much
>steady current cannot induce the conductance of the power; it wants for a
>fuse. Heidegger relates that the conscience 'attests' to what is there, and
>in answer to the call of being's potentiality.
>
>Where the conscience is lacking it is said there is guilt (another term may
>be 'indebtedness' and 'responsibility' [footnote, page 280, BT].
>
>The current is alive, and a filament, a soul is enlivened in the process of
>this love: thancing, dancing, rejoicing, thinking in the umvelt.

Let's buggy!

Nicely done, John, thanks,

Allen


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