Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 17:44:33 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy - Gestell/Gewinnst


Cologne 11-Dec-2003

Henry Sholar schrieb  Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:37:24 -0500:

> > Henry,
> > I wouldn't say that the ontological origin of whoness is Gegenstaendlichkeit
> > (Kant),
> > but Staendigkeit (standingness). That leads away from a narrow focus on
> > sexuality to
> > a perspective on how 'manly' human being erects itself out in the open. The
> > sexual
> > connotations remain, however, sexual prowess signifying more than just a stiff
> > erectile member.
> HS:
> This impresses me as keenly related to the 'animal'. But it also impresses
> me as keenly sexual. (more below ((which itself is somewhat sexual)))
>
> But how do you get to a position of "isolate Dasein" erect in his field of
> endeavors, unfazed by the whole 'social democratic ickiness' of the shared
> cultural practices always already (world-like) previously around him?  Are
> his developing skills and honed cultural practices those activities that
> raise him up? Despite what appears to be a meager Mitsein program, H does
> stress the pre-established worldliness of it all, and a French Foreign
> Legion access to authenticity. So what makes it stand up?
>
> Is your emphasis on a throbbing "mine mine mine" issue?

No, I don't have egoism in mind, and there is no intention at all to construct
something like an "isolated Dasein" stripped of world. The phallic standing as who
is thought as a standing-in-the-world. Phallic 'who' comes to stand at first and for
the most part in his occupation, i.e. in practical engagement with taking care of
life's business. This 'who'-standing in an occupation is the seed crystal of the
reputation _as_ who that is echoed around the worldspace of shared Dasein.

>
> Rather than, "how am I going to deal with this?" demeanor? I ask because not
> only is there the blatant ego-ness in Gewer, obviously, phalluses and
> standing out and all that, but also because it appears fundamentally that
> capitalism lies in a metaphysics of ego.

Egoism is definitely one existential possibility, but one can just as well come to
stand as 'who' in an altruistic light.

As for capitalism, I agree that it is based essentially on the pursuit of
self-interest, but not all self-interest is egoistic. There is also the
self-interest of a group, of a sector of the economy, of a nation, etc.
Self-interest is subjectivistic, not egoistic.

> >ME:
> > With this understanding of phallus as standing, there is an opportunity for
> > making a
> > link with the metaphysical understanding of being as standing presence. When I
> > set
> > out in pursuit of the question of 'male being' in 1985, it took ages to find
> > any
> > lead. The psychological and psychoanalytic literature turned out to be
> > useless.
>
> In 1985, "male being" was at a pinnacle of deviance under the new feminine
> paradigm of the psychological. As father of two daughters, I celebrated this
> practice, contributed to it, and was appreciative of Heidegger's
> contribution of a ungendered Dasein. On a much nearer level, I grew up with
> two girls, seeing the world through their eyes.

I grew up in a family with four sisters, my mother and a grandmother. My father was
often on trips and mostly away from home during the working week. So I am intimately
familiar with the female element.

>
> So I see this rather as an opportunity to link a metaphysical understanding
> of being as "standing presence" to the metaphysical machination suggested as
> phallo-onto-theo-logica. From the ontic to the ontological justification of
> miss-o-gynists, the presence of the absence of the feminine.
>
> It appears to me that the task ('task'?) of thinking here at the end of
> philosophy must approach appropriately the mystery of the presence of the
> absence of the feminine in western metaphysics.

How is the feminine to be unfolded? All saying is saying something about something
(Plato's discovery: _legein ti kata tinos_). _As_ what is the phenomenon of the
feminine to be addressed? I have done a lot of thinking and writing on this, mostly
in German. A phenomenology of "scarce presence" is one attempt.

> But I get no takers for any of these explorations, rather there is this
> convinced necessity that we got in this house through the back door (the
> Greeks) and in order to break outta here, by looking for a front door or
> cutting a hole in the wall, pre-supposes a detailed and near-numinous
> examination of the back door frame.

If you are proposing an approach to the question of the feminine in terms of "the
phallo-onto-theo-logical" and "the presence of the absence of the feminine in
western metaphysics", then are you not already, at least implicitly, trying to gain
access through a re-appropriation of the Greeks? One indication: the very composite
"phallo-onto-theo-logical" is composed exclusively of Greek elements. So we're
already caught in what has been.

> >ME:
> > Plato thinks _eros_ as a striving for what one lacks, i.e. desire in the
> > broadest
> > sense. Thus there can be also the philosophical eros. Striving for gain is
> > also erotic in the broad sense.
> HS:
> It is interesting, if despairingly so, that one gets only eros and/or
> thanatos on the plains of psychology. But indeed the case can be made that
> Heidegger only makes the same offers (mostly death and a little
> circumspective concern for stuff?)
>
> But I would suggest that attunement is the thing, or, in the immortal words:
> "he not bust being born is busy dying." And, indeed that eros proffers life
> through love, through an attuned animal nature that erects its world
> respectfully/authentically in attunement with the earth. Nothing "romantic
> savage" involved here. Nothing more "romantic savage" than our
> advertisements already proclaim among our current plethora of lifestyles
> under the sway of Gestell.
>
> But, I suppose, we'll need some ancient Greek glimmer of a hint of divine
> feminine before such views are rootable in truth, and given directive,
> rather than my shoddy opines.

I think attunement/Gestimmtheit/Befindlichkeit is one key to an alternative, a risky
alternative indeed. SuZ has done a lot to rehabilitate attunedness in philosophical
thinking with the bifurcation of world-opening into Verstehen and Befindlichkeit,
and Befindlichkeit could well be ascribed to what we call the feminine. Such a
bifurcated casting of world-opening is a recasting of the Aristotelean (and
Platonic) of the _psychae_ as composed of two parts:
_dy' einai merae taes psychaes, to te logon echon kai to alogon;_ (Eth. Nic. VI i
1139a5)
"There are two parts of the soul, the part that has the _logos_ and the part that
lacks the _logos_."

This was then translated into the Roman world experience as the rational and
irrational parts of the human soul.

Dasein is open to world both in gathering the presencing of world in understanding
and in resonating with the quivering of being as a whole. This latter is already a
positive interpretation of that aspect of human being (Dasein) that does not gather
into a stand of understanding.

Thinking cannot do without the gathering element of _logos_ but, in twisting free of
metaphysical thinking, it can indeed shift the traditional relationship between the
_logos_-having and the _logos_-lacking parts of human being's relation to being. To
my mind, that is one of the strongest aspects of SuZ. The traditional relationship
between the _logos_-having and the _logos_-lacking parts of  the _psychae_ was one
of control, Herrschaft. Desire had to be bridled by _sophrosyne_, by a 'rescuing of
understanding'. Inkling had no dignity.


> >> HS:
> >> Co-mingling:  if the understanding of Being is a background or holistic
> >> network of cultural practices, isn't there an organic connection betw das
> >> Man and Gestell?
> >ME:
> > I don't see that at the moment. Any offers?
> HS:
> What is authenticity if not mere recognition of the setup and its sway and
> the implications of it in Dasein's possibilities as the cultural roles one
> can take?  Within that understanding comes a person's access to self-measure
> (appropriate Gestell term for the time...) and capacity for world-building.
> If we assess this as protrusion, then it might be protrusion as fishing
> pole...what appears nearest, what is attracted to my "bait?"
>
> While das Man is the proficient, efficient activity of the sway of Gestell,
> and the Daseining (Mach-ination) that falls in with that: following the
> rules, acquiring the 'stuff', performing the cultural roles that move with
> and alongside the growing nihilism. And resistance within Gestell is also
> das Man as it usually resists one area of the frame from a position of
> having forgotten another area of the frame which just such resistance
> actually supports. (So there is that, as a kind of ontic description of my
> agreement with you that philosophy is not "task-oriented" in that way.)
>
> And this is what Turbulence/resistance and empty protest are about:
> Turbulence is mostly just inefficiencies in the growth of Gestell caused by
> resisting social engaging: organizing against Gestell (even as the
> organizing itself opens another area of Gestell). Empty protest is the
> nothingness of Dasein which is at bottom, interpretation all the way up and
> down. It is the recognition that Gestell creeps onward, Dasein is nothing,
> and resistance is 'futile'.

Well said! If empty protest remains caught in op-posing, would it not be an
alternative to grasp at straws and look for hesitant signs and tender shoots of
something 'other'? Can we not find in the everyday new ways of looking at what seems
all-too-Gestell-like, at what seems all too self-evidently to be what it is? The big
problem with most so-called critics of the set-up or the 'system' is that they
haven't a clue about the difference between the ontological and the ontic. So
everything becomes a matter of 'rejecting' the ontic state of the world. But world
is only given in its being, i.e. ontologically. So nothing at all 'is' irremediably
what it seems to _be_ so self-evidently. A being is what it is only within the
openness of being, and therefore can suddenly present a different face.

If you take your slogan that Dasein is interpretation all the way down seriously,
then you will probably agree with what I have just said.

> >ME:
> > Yes, indeed. The promise of foreknowing does lure us in the attempt to erect
> > ourselves in a stand. Those who present themselves as foreknowers enjoy a
> > peculiar kudos.
> > Perhaps there's a link here to das Man: the insecurity of human living goes
> > hand in
> > hand with the anxious, timid conformity of keeping to the straight and narrow
> > in the
> > attempt to find security. The import of human being being cast as _deina_
> > (terrible,
> > uncanny Sophocles) is that, as human beings in the open relation with being,
> > we are ourselves fathomless, groundless.
> HS:
> "Foreknowing" whether authentic or bogus, certainly is the flavor of the
> epoch. Assertion grows. Suation's the thing. I keep getting back to
> language. If the language of scientific accuracy is red, all of language
> begins to show pink tinge.
>
> And the timid, anxious, unthought cling of das Man completely misses the
> risk that is undisclosed in Gestell security, undisclosed but evident as
> absent.
>
> >ME:
> > Isn't the fascination with and the vicarious satisfaction of horror films,
> > thrillers, etc. a kind of tame Ersatz and cover-up for our own abysmalness?
> HS:
> yes, and it's a deep manifestation. Contemplation on horror films is a rich
> study of concrete demonstrations of the uncanny that jut up out of Angst:
> class fears, red scare, adolescent ripening, racism, and so on. I am
> interested in the motifs current in US horror films, the "slasher" motif
> (crude, "realistic" violence and slaughter) and the unhappy or at least
> ambivalent ending motif. Horror now leaves us with the horror and the
> horrible, instead of solving, defeating, or ending it, as was done in the
> past, is done in most other American films... the de rigueur "happy ending."
> Ambivalence has set in:  it can be cute and witty like "Sixth Sense" or
> simply depressing and unnerving like "Fallen." The "unendingness" is growing
> as its appearance in horror films shows.
>
> >ME:
> > I think it is extremely hard to get any grasp in thinking, i.e. any
> > comperhension,
> > of 'feminine' and 'masculine' without being thrown back onto vague notions of
> > 'feminine' as what is 'typically' attributable to women and 'masculine' as
> > what is
> > 'typically' attributable to men. But then one ends up only with a typology
> > composed
> > of generalizations that is 'empirically tested' and found wanting. Or even
> > worse,
> > one ends up in stereotypes and cliches.  Besides that, we understand what a
> > manly
> > woman is and a womanly man, so obviously, manliness is not simply 'what
> > pertains to
> > a man' and womanliness is not simply 'what pertains to a woman'. To ask a
> > question
> > of essence, we must look away from, i.e. abstract from, 'men' and 'women'
> > (which
> > psychology and gender studies, for instance, are totally incapable of doing --
> > they are ontically stuck to their subjects of investigation).
> HS:
> Vague notions are important, I think, in trying to read across the cultural
> hiddenness of the feminine.  sexualizing the question provides some subtle
> and agreeably vague insights: your comments above focus on the extreme
> hardness needed for "grasp" in thinking, and the necessity of comprehension
> in this thinking lest one be "thrown back" on to vague notions (soft, fuzzy
> notions) which lie rather still as a mere typology. One wants a little
> movement in what one lies back on...

I agree with you on the positive power of inkling. It is only through being open to
one's inklings that one can get onto a path of thinking that, in the end, achieves
some sort of gathering. If philosophy is our endeavour, then fuzzy notions have to
gain more precise contour in conceptual thinking. That is the work (_ergon_) of
thinking. Outside the strenuousness of philosophy, one could be content with
meditation, etc.

> But alongside that primal scene, there is this dictation to "look away from"
> gender essence?

No, not at all. One has to look away from gender in its ontic givenness to see its
essence.

> One could suggest that the technique of looking away from,
> of ab-stracting as ontological mode, is itself always already being stuck in
> an essential trait of gender.

One could reject any ontological enterprise at all, but then what are you left with?
No, I think that abstract thinking has to be saved as one of the most precious
belongings of human being. Without abstract thinking, it would be completely
impossible to see a structure such as Gestell, for instance.

In my recent post to Anthony, I sketched a 'parable of Superman':

We all know that Superman has X-ray vision that can see through walls, etc.
What only a rare few know is that the philosopher has epagogic vision that can
see past things in their concrete, ontic facticity to gain a view of the
abstract outlines of a world-casting in the light of presence.


> >ME:
> > If phallic, 'manly' being is to be understood as a coming to stand in the
> > openness
> > of being in a showing-off of who one is, then 'feminine' being would be cast
> > as its
> > complement in various directions and dimensions. Instead of the
> > under_standing_ of
> > being, for instance, we would then have something like a resonance with being:
> > Gestimmtheit, attunedness. The 'feminine' as Muse-like, musical.
> HS:
> The man gets to 'come' to a stand IN THE OPENNESS of being, while the woman
> complements this in various directions and dimensions, attaining something
> like musical attunement. A resonance in the feminine, WITH being. I suppose
> I'm a bit more womanly...if given these aspects and their prospects.
>
> >ME:
> > See below on this. Philosophy will not be put to use.
> HS:
> It depends on how you use "use." For example, the "task" of thinking.

The German word is "Aufgabe", which has the curious ambivalence of signifying also a
"giving up", a "surrender".

> >ME:
> > I dunno. Is there any way of saying whether the increasing globalization and
> > intermeshing of the capitalist economy over the last thirty years has 'on the
> > whole'
> > improved the lot of millions of people? On that score, I have the impression
> > that
> > east Asia, on the whole, is a success story. The economic power relations have
> > at
> > least -- relatively speaking -- been redressed vastly to the advantage of
> > these countries.
> HS:
> "on the whole" is an interesting level of forecasting...

Well, it wasn't forecasting but a retrospective look back over the last thirty,
forty years.

>
> >ME: To talk of the whole shebang being "calculated according to the
> > needs of
> > those who set-up the 'opportunities'" seems to me to attribute an omnipotence
> > where
> > it is not warranted. World capitalist competition is a genuine power play, not
> > merely a dictate of the rules of play on the part of powerful players
> > (exception:
> > monopoly markets).
> HS:
> Rather than submit to the choice of being totally wrong or asserting a
> necessity of empirical Empirical evidence of  "monopoly," and "omnipotence,"
> I would say that the Gestell grows, intensifies.
>
> >ME: To me it is astounding to watch how China has emerged out
> > of
> > nowhere to become an important economic power within just a few, short years.
> > For
> > the first time in history, large numbers of Chinese are becoming tourists,
> > visiting
> > other countries and generally enjoying a level of prosperity hitherto
> > completely
> > unknown. I know, I know -- this, too, can be interpreted as the growing
> > encroachment
> > of the Gestell and the Gewinnst. Living well and living in misery are the
> > Same.
> >
> > I think I am too misanthropic to feel pity for all the misery in the world,
> > although
> > I am sometimes shocked by it. But I do not equate poverty with misery.
> >
> > Iraq is still an undecided mess. All one can say with certainty is that Saddam
> > ran
> > the country into the ground. My feeling is that it's only the women of the
> > Middle
> > East who will eventually save their countries from their hot-headed menfolk.
> > Every
> > girl who can go to school and get an education is a small victory over the
> > wilful benightedness of Islamist resentment.
> >
> > Zimbabwe is a total mess and worsening day by day. There, the dictator,
> > Mugabe,
> > really does have a quasi-omnipotent status for the time being. Domestically,
> > at
> > least, Mugabe has a stranglehold on power. Compare that with powerful
> > corporations
> > that have to compete in a global economy and have to present themselves on the
> > stage
> > of world opinion -- at that locus there are still an interplay of powers and
> > rules
> > of play.
> >
> > Enough of this ontic to-ing and fro-ing and assessing of our world mess.
> HS:
> Yep, enough. We might begin merely to continue our biases with regard to
> the 'legitimacy' of the "interplay of powers and rules of play."
>
> >ME:
> > Just one negative to start with: there will not be "a great unified will of
> > the
> > entire planet to solve this issue". If it is to be resolved at all, it will be
> > through hard struggle. One aspect of this struggle is capitalist competition.
> HS:
> On a trivial level that is all there is. But I only meant it as a throwaway
> line, meta-metaphysics.
>
> > Within
> > the world-opening of the Gewinnst, the big auto-makers are already pouring
> > serious
> > money into the development of the fuel cell. The price per kilowatt is falling
> > and
> > will eventually reach commercial viability. The technology for generating
> > power from
> > renewable sources is improving and may contribute up to ten per cent of energy
> > demand within twenty years. So don't underestimate the potentials held open by
> > Gewinnst coupled with Gestell.
> HS:
> How could one underestimate Gestell? And to risk another fem-read: the
> "holding open" of the Earth by Gewinnst and Gestell has incredible
> potential, and what is challenged forth will no doubt be reward for someone.

We all belong to Gewinnst and Gestell, even those few in rich western countries who
renounce the use of cars and electricity. Some would like to rigorously refuse the
"rewards" of Gewinnst-like and Gestell-like thinking, but escaping the hold that
this kind of thinking has on us is a completely different matter.

> >ME:
> > That said, the issue of a change in thinking is not at all on the historical
> > horizon yet. I'm not trying to broadcast cheery optimism here.
> >
> > I come back to Heidegger's insight: the danger confronting humankind
> > historically is quite independent of the misery or otherwise on the planet.
> HS:
> If Heidegger said "quite independent" he is wrong.

Heidegger is intent on re-posing the question of human being in its belonging to
being. That is an abstract questioning. Whether any good will come of it for
humankind is a different issue, especially since the sense of 'what is good for
humankind' is itself redefinable.

> >ME: Maybe the European idea
> > of social democratic, secured happiness will spread across the globe (what a
> > nightmare!). The danger is that we as human beings conceive of ourselves more
> > and
> > more solely within the parameters staked out by Gestell and Gewinnst. Human
> > being
> > itself comes to be thought technologically. We are losing the capacity to
> > reopen the
> > question, Who are we as human beings? Our historical origins are slipping away
> > into
> > oblivion. But reopening that question of human being cannot be made 'useful'
> > in the
> > way you suggest in relieving human misery. The question can only be asked for
> > its
> > own sake, for it is our human essence to ask who we are, and this is an
> > ultimate
> > question, an _eschaton_. We are the questioning beings. Questioning is our
> > fathomlessness. We cannot know in advance where this questioning will lead.
> HS:
> The idea grows both as Gestell grows, and as resistance to Gestell, that
> human misery IS the origin of our history, and the way to question it, for
> our own sakes, is to push it into oblivion as much as possible.

This seems to me to be a specifically Christian thought.

> >ME:
> > This way of thinking takes the measure for the good life in a material
> > standard of
> > living. One can indeed argue along those lines (as we have been doing),
> > whether the
> > rich are just getting richer and the poor are just getting poorer, or not.
> >
> > That measure itself has to be put into question if we are not to be held under
> > its sway.
> HS:
> The question put forth in Marx comes closest to putting the measure into
> question.  That is, the failure of Marx to find solutions in realigning the
> measure points not to forgetting the question altogether, nor his
> interpretation of it, but to gratefully move on in thinking beyond Marx's
> limitations.

Agreed.

> >ME:
> > Isn't such opposition then held captive within the mode of thinking we call
> > Gestell?
> HS:
> Yep.
>
> > ME: Don't we have to step back to see a genuine alternative?
> HS:
> The step back for you is a realignment of ancient Greek texts. The step back
> for me is "empty protest" until I can come up with something better.

Well, I hope that the step back cannot be reduced to merely realigning some ancient
Greek texts. The Greek beginning is slowly but surely slipping away as something
that calls for thinking, for rethinking. It degrades into a merely scholarly
enterprise easily mocked by those who are more 'realistic'. But in slipping away,
that does not mean in the least that the hold which the Greek beginning has over us
is slipping. Even the philosophers are becoming more and more ignorant of Greek
philosophy where the questioning takes place in such a simple setting that there is
still a hope of reintroducing fluidity, thus opening the possibility of recasting.

The last recasting we know about in the West was the seventeenth century, when
thinkers who still knew their Greek engaged in contributing to opening a new age in
which today we continue to live. How are we to twist free of this historical cast of
world without reopening the questions that they asked in philosophical thinking?

Listen to our foremost Western scientists (including social scientists) talk. They
no longer have the least inkling of the philosophical categories within which they
think. The concept of 'causality' (_aitios_, _archae_) has degraded into a
self-evident category of thought within which all questions are posed and solved.
The modifications made to the concept of causality over the past hundred years
(indeterminacy, complex causality, chaos theory, probability theory, feedback
causality in cybernetics, etc.) do not change that one iota.

The word 'energy' has long since totally lost its momentous
philosophical-ontological import and has degraded into something merely ontic.
Nobody knows anymore anything about the Auseinandersetzung in which Aristotle
struggled to think his neologism, _energeia_. Today, one comfortably shrugs one's
shoulders and remarks condescendingly, "That's just the history of ideas. We have
more important issues facing the world today."

> >ME:
> > _Archae_ is one of the building-block concepts of Greek philosophy. It crops
> > up
> > everywhere in Greek philosophical texts. Aristotle provides a manifold of
> > definitions of _archae_ in the very first chapter of Book Delta of the
> > Metaphysics.
> > Like being, _archae_, too, is "said in many ways" (_pollachos legetai_).
> > _Archae_
> > can be simply a beginning, where something starts. It can also be a source as
> > in a
> > source of power, political or otherwise. The _archos_ is a magistrate wielding
> > power, for instance. But the most important uses of the concept come into play
> > in
> > trying to think through the phenomenon of movement (_kinaesis_) and that of
> > power/force/potential (_dynamis_).
> >
> > To have (_echein_ -- another concept defined in Book Delta) power means to be
> > a
> > starting-point (_archae_) governing change (_metabolae_) in something else.
> > The
> > paradigm here is _technae_ as the know-how of how to bring forth
> > (her-stellen).
> >
> > To be a physical being (_physei on_), on the other hand, is to have a
> > starting-point
> > (_archae_) within oneself governing one's own movement (_kinaesis_). This
> > movement
> > can be of four types: locomotion (_kinaesis kata topon_), change of state
> > (_alloiosis_), growth and decay (_auxaesis kai phthisis_) and progeneration
> > (_genesis_). Living physical beings have all four _archai_ and are
> > _empsychon_, i.e.
> > they have a soul or psyche. Other physical bodies, like a stone, only have the
> > first
> > and are _apsychon_, i.e. without a soul.
> >
> > With regard specifically to human being, Aristotle casts the human
> > principle/starting-point of movement to be the _psychae_ under the guidance of
> > its
> > _logos_-part. As human beings we have a principle or starting-point (_archae_)
> > within ourselves that initiates, governs and guides our movements of living
> > (_bios_,
> > not merely _zaen_) under the fore-sight of _logos_ which has always already
> > gathered
> > beings as such into the defined stand of understanding.
> >
> > Our movements of living are free only because we have within ourselves a
> > starting-point (_archae_) governing our movements of living under the guidance
> > of
> > our insight into the world, i.e. our understanding of being. Our striving
> > (_orexis_,
> > appetite, will), too, is under the guidance of our understanding of being. As
> > having
> > such an _archae_ of insight into being, human being can be said to be
> > 'self-governing' and its movements of life are free.
> >
> > Each living human being has an inherent _archae_. Human society is therefore
> > polyarchic. How do these many _archai_ associate? How can such a polyarchic
> > society
> > be governed? From where does the need for government arise in such polyarchic
> > association? How is a social power relation such as rule/willingness to serve
> > (Herrschaft/Dienstbereitschaft -- Heidegger GA36/37:215) possible among free
> > _archai_?
> >
> > If the way the world opens up in an understanding of being (which is always a
> > shared, historical understanding of beings as a whole and as such) changes,
> > our way
> > of living changes too. The struggle to bring an other historical casting of
> > being
> > out into the open is the task of thinking, paired with artistic creation,
> > whose
> > works also cast an other world-opening. Both are acts of human freedom
> > proceeding
> > from rare individual _archai_ who are attuned to the granting of being.
> >
> > This is all very rough and extremely condensed, but you get the gist?
> HS:
> I'm stuck on only having one archae... I mentioned somewhere before, I am
> not sure that the Self happens as a unit, a singularity. And that would
> tangle up the logos of what follows, but I do follow that the shared,
> historical understanding of being happens, somehow, even if our little
> archaes are poly- or, in my supposition, poly-poly-archic.  I do follow the
> gadamer-heidegger accent on thinking-art working as paradigmatic, but I'm
> sometimes doubtful that these activities are not but subsequent practices,
> stuck representing.

That suggests an interpretation of the "Aufgabe des Denkens" as a "Giving-up of
Thinking". If I were an artist, I would continue unperturbed working on my work of
art (music, drama, novel, dance, painting, whatever). Since I am a thinker, I
continue working on my work of thinking. I am rather indifferent to all the rest. "I
couldn't care less" puts it in the language of existential Sorge (care). One has to
decide what one is here to do and do it.

You'll have to spell out a bit more what you mean by a polyarchic self. (A human
being, of course, is ontically polyarchic. The vegetative _archae_ that moves the
body is not incorporated in the self.
> >> HS:
> >> Yes, and some of the goings wrong take time to discover, or disclose
> >> themselves. And the gigantic essence of what is calculated for exchange
> >> today makes that potentially devastating.  WalMart may be an example of
> >> that.
> >ME:
> > By the uncontrollability of money I am not thinking merely of the possibility
> > of
> > fraud. Ontologically there is no deep question there because fraud _as_ fraud
> > is
> > crime, and crime is always already cast as an ontological possibility of
> > understanding, and crime is provided for by law.
> HS:
> Let's just say crime and law distribute this attribute of money. And I was
> not referring to that either.  Ontologically:  the changes in the
> understanding of being in Gestell, which grows primarily by foreknowledge,
> still cannot foreknow all the repercussions.
>
> >ME:
> > What I mean is rather that money is ontologically uncontrollable because it is
> > a
> > reified social relation based on many _archai_. Money as an abstract,
> > quantifiable,
> > reified medium simplifies social relations and enables an abstract-universal
> > social
> > connection (the markets). This ontological abstractness and simplicity of
> > money is
> > the condition of possibility for the easy emergence of global markets. But
> > although
> > markets have a simple structure, they are nevertheless unfathomable and
> > therefore
> > hard to control, even and especially when they work according to
> > state-sanctioned
> > (and WTO) rules.
> HS:
> And it interests me how we see concepts like "control" under the sway of
> Gestell, and the desire for control.

With the phrase "desire for control" we can land very quickly back with the Greeks
where this was first thought very simply: the distinction between _logon echon_ and
_alogon_ and the need for bridling. But I don't want to push this any further.

> >ME:
> > Platonic Eros is nimble, the son of Poros and Penia. From his mother, Penia,
> > he has his poverty; from his father, Poros, he has the inventiveness to find a
> >way forward (_poros_ = 'way forward', 'ford' across a river). Sometime's he's
> >up, sometimes he's down. Sounds a bit like a capitalist market economy.
> HS:
> If you say so, Michael, somehow I don't think the "wheels" on Wall Street
> think of "poverty" as the mother of the exchange...

What do I care what Wall Street thinks? I am more interested in thinking the
familiar phenomena that Wall Street, etc. thinks, but in a DIFFERENT way. That
requires the long detour through abstraction. Most of the effort of abstract
thinking is spent on FREEING ourselves from the binds the tradition has left us in.
This task of thinking is not at all visible from everyday life, and the philosopher
remains necessarily an oddity. Like Allen and Nietzsche, I, too, see the need for
wearing a "second mask" ("zweite Maske").

>
> Thanks for continuing down the path,
> and broadening it for thinking,
> henry

Thank you, Henry,
Michael
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