File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0312, message 254


From: "John Foster" <borealis-AT-mercuryspeed.com>
Subject: Re: Gestell/Gewinnst - Truth as opinion
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 11:10:53 -0800


Malcolm R writes:
> > No, don't bother, I have always and will always assume that as a
> > fundamental truth of any philosophical discourse. So I take it 'truth
> > as opinion' now finally enters into our 'Auseinandersetzung' with
> > Heidegger?


Michael Eldred writes:
> No. Opinion (Meinung) is not capable of truth. Plato is the first to show
why
> this is so.

It depends on what type of truth we're discussing here. A professional
opinion must have the capacity to approximate the truth. A doctor who is not
capable of a expressing a professional opinion could be subject to a
'malpractice' law suit, or disciplined by a professional body for breach of
ethics.

Truth is 'rarely simple' and it is thouse truths which are not simple which
make truth 'problematic', and truth finding methods 'onerous' and
'difficult'.

The Platonic exposition relates that opinions contain a varying degree of
truth, opinions are situated on a continuum between 'non-being' and 'being'
meaning opinion 'varies' as to it's validity. Of course it is only humans
which are capable of 'lying', but other animals can deceive. We human
animals can both conceal, deceive and tell the truth. So we as a species,
are special, in the sense, we have other means in which to 'decieve' others
by, besides gestures [Rapparport].

There are ontological or phenomenological factors which influence 'truth
telling' and 'saying' in that some phenomenon consist of a temporal and
spatial 'complex' which is 'continuous' and 'enveloping'. It is therefore
difficult - and in some cases may be impossible -  to determine the full and
extant nature of the phenomenon. It is with large scale temporal and spatial
phenomenon, including social and natural varieties, that what is difficult
to 'say' about their truth is only one aspect of the truth. Which is to say,
that one feature regarding the truth is it's 'efficient cause'. Taking in
this sense, then we do not as humankind have the capacity to the 'tell' or
'say' the truth about the efficient causes of particular weather phenomenon
such as a hurricane.

So in one respect it is true to say that the truth cannot be told, nor said,
but in other more basic ways, where efficient causes are not pertinent, the
finding of truth, and qualified opinion and interpretation is a capacity of
the investigators, especially where there is consensus.

chao

John Foster






>
> > Curiously enough I'm finding this current debate rather
> > helpful in working through the notion of the will to will truth,
> > although we are veering off to a more fundamental concern, that of our
> > situatedness within the metaphysics of subjectness, while I'm only just
> > preparing some notes on the will to power as justice. There's a ways to
> > go yet, but perhaps it's an indication of the depth of our
> > confrontation (where all the depths are shallow of course) that my
> > debate here with you is coming down to a fundamental difference in how
> > we approach Heidegger's notion of originary truth and his
> > interpretations of it. So I'll just outline some possible alternative
> > interpretations that we might return to at the end of Heidegger's
> > Nietzsche:
> >
> > > If Heidegger's thinking has achieved anything at all, it has been to
> > > think
> > > subjectivist metaphysics from a locus (Ort) outside metaphysics.
> >
> > Or ... the locus is thought in a strangely silent demonstrative way
> > from within the metaphysics of the will to will that remains the
> > totally correct form of our modern reality. The locus is one's own
> > existence in this world, a historical world of human understanding that
> > has already been historically constituted in terms of the will to will
> > and its Gestell. I think it is a fundamental mistake to think that
> > Heidegger's philosophy offers another way of interpretive thinking that
> > is not itself a form of will to will. The step back however, not
> > accomplished in textual interpretation but in the silence of
> > Gelassenheit, is something else, it's this phenomenologically
> > meditative silence that I would call Heidegger's fundamental notion of
> > 'thinking'.
> >
> > >  ALL of Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche is performed from this
> > > extra-metaphysical locus.
> >
> > Or ... Heidegger is thinking through Nietzsche's will to power to the
> > threshold of the openness of being in the will to not will. His actual
> > interpretation of Nietzsche is however still a textual interpretation,
> > like his Greek appropriation, reading it doesn't itself open up this
> > 'extra-metaphysical locus' in some sort of dialectical becoming of the
> > truth. You have to put the books down in order to actually 'think' this
> > locus which you already are yourself.
>
> No, the books just have to make a connection with my everyday experience
of
> the world.
>
> > > Makes one wonder who's the "wilful subject" around here, and
> > > whether you have at all understood what Heidegger means by an
> > > "Ortsverlegung"
> > > (displacement of locus) in his late seminars.
> >
> > The displacement doesn't replace the will to will with something else
> > as if we can simply discard metaphysics as we would an opinion, rather,
> > it brings the will to the open threshold within which it is as will.
> > That's the catch 22 of the ec-stasis of the will to not will. Of course
> > it is obviously a conclusion of my thesis that I am myself a subject of
> > the will to will, most especially here in this philosophical forum
> > within which I am willfully representing what I know of my own
> > interpretation of Heidegger's philosophy. If anything philosophical
> > writing is an explicit form of the will to know the truth, and this
> > will to know would seem to me to be the simplest prerequisite for
> > reading Heidegger's philosophy in the first place. But I assume you
> > have no will to know anything about the _arche_, that you have already
> > entered into the pure not willing of the incipient Greek beginning? You
> > seem rather willful to me though, even resentful of any other opinion
> > that seems to challenge your own self-justifications for being certain
> > of your truth.
>
> I don't care what opinions you hold, since an opinion can never be
> philosophically challenging, enlightening or whatever.
> You seem to confuse will with will to will.
>
> >
> > > I've already agreed with you several times that any textual
> > > interpretation
> > > has to use the touchstone of one's own everyday understanding of
> > > quotidian
> > > phenomena, but that doesn't make it wilful, subjective opinion. Just
> > > the
> > > opposite in truth: the indication of, the pointing to shared everyday
> > > phenomena allows the views of phenomena and there
adequate-or-otherwise
> > > grasping in ontological thought to be SHARED.
> >
> > The form this sharing takes is precisely interpretation for which all
> > 'ontological thought' is one's own responsibility for thinking and
> > adequately expressing. If I think your interpretation of Heidegger's
> > notion of place or locus is inadequate then it is unlikely we are going
> > to share much here except our disagreement.
>
> Then show up the inadequacy.
>
> > > Your continued use of terms like "univocal" is just cheap polemics on
a
> > > meta-level that refuses to enter into the altercation over the
concrete
> > > interpretation of the Greek texts on which Heidegger spent so many
> > > years of philosophical effort.
> >
> > I told you, I'm into the Nietzsche interpretation at the moment.
>
> That's okay, but the Nietzsche interpretation spills out over the sides,
> right back to the Greeks. That's why you find Heidegger discussing Plato,
> Protagoras, Aristotle, et al in his book entitled _Nietzsche_. Protagoras
is
> compared with Descartes, etc.
>
> > Your 'univocalism' consists in asserting that all other modes of the
> > Destruktion can only be fundamentally understood and interpreted in
> > terms of the Greek interpretation, which is only one way amongst a
> > multiplicity of possible interpretations as far as I'm concerned.
> > Perhaps you could provide an interpretation of this very
> > 'psychologistic' debate in your Greek terms in order for us to possibly
> > come to some agreement.
>
> There's no point in such an attempt at translation, since the Greek
backdrop
> is lacking on your side.
>
> Any "multiplicity of possible interpretations" of Gestell will narrow down
of
> its own accord to an adequate, comprehensive interpretation that takes
> account of the various aspects of Heidegger's philosophy. Any philosophy
has
> a multifaceted unity, not a pluralist multiplicity. Thus the "will to
will"
> has an essential connection with human being conceived "als der Vor- und
> Herstellende" ('Wozu Dichter? HW:270/289) which in turn has an essential
> connection with the phenomenological explication of _technae_ in Plato and
> Aristotle, which in turn has an essential connection with Heidegger's
thesis
> that for the Greeks "Sein ist Herstellen". As Tom Sheehan pointed out in
the
> translation seminar at the 22nd Heidegger Symposium in Denton, Texas, a
year
> ago, when we translate Heidegger into English, we are translating not from
> the German but from the Greek.
>
> >
> > > It doesn't say "only for oneself", does it? And for Heidegger's
> > > thinking,
> > > existing in the openness of _alaetheia_ is always already SHARED, not
> > > subjective 'opinion'.
> >
> > I think you're confused here. The openness is that of one's own
> > existence in this world we share, when it comes to interpreting this
> > existential 'sharing' we share interpretations of that openness that is
> > always in each case one's own. There is what is talked about and
> > represented as such in discourse, and there is what the talk is about,
> > one's own open relation to existence. Or are you saying that openness
> > is a function of Mitsein?
>
> No.
>
> > I'd rather say that Mitsein is a structure of
> > presencing and that openness is the possibility of this presencing. The
> > ownmost experience of this sharing is not a 'subjective opinion', it's
> > one's own life, yet when you come to this forum and interpret it in
> > whatever words suit you that interpretation is fundamentally your own
> > opinion on the matter at hand. But since we 'share' this originary
> > openness already perhaps we can just dispense with talking about it and
> > mystically merge into one another's world sharing, can I become Michael
> > Eldred for a day beyond this text? Let's stop writing and see... nope.
>
> Such caricaturing only reflects on yourself.
>
> > > all I've been doing here in this thread is trying to
> > > point out how you can _convince yourself_ of important aspects in
> > > trying to
> > > understand what Heidegger thinks under the concept of Gestell.
> >
> > No, you have actually stated that 1) you can access a state of being
> > that is not subject to the will to will 2) that the basis of
> > Heidegger's entire philosophy is the possibility of a new form of
> > thinking that replaces this will to will and 3) that the _only_ way to
> > access this new form of thought is to read his Greek interpretations
> > and rethink the ancient Greek understanding of being better than they
> > understood it themselves.
> >
> > These assumptions seem to form the basis of the possibility of
> > convincing yourself that there is something like an actual Greek arche
> > to be disclosed, that this represents a new beginning for an entirely
> > new way of thinking beyond the will to will and that therefore we must
> > all read the Greeks in order to understand what Heidegger's on about as
> > that is the only possible way to access his philosophy. Unfortunately I
> > fundamentally disagree with you on all 3 counts.
>
> You may disagree, but out of ignorance, since you don't know the Greeks.
You
> may or may not choose to fill in that gap in coming years, and I, at
least,
> am sure that your perspective will change if you do. But, in any case, the
> truth or otherwise of Heidegger's overcoming of metaphysics does not
depend
> on you or me.
>
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Malcolm
> >
> >
>
> I roughly agree with the three points above as corollaries to how one is
to
> gain an understanding of Heidegger's concept of Gestell.
>
> 1) The "state of being" you refer to is the belonging of human being to
being
> that Heidegger thinks under the title "Ereignis". Ereignis is only
thinkable
> in and as the step back from metaphysical thinking, both subjectivist and
> subjecticist.
>
> 2) SuZ already inaugurates a new kind of thinking outside subjectivist
> metaphysics. The openness of the truth of being is unthought and
unthinkable
> from within subjectivist metaphysics, including its culmination in the
will
> to will. It is unthinkable within metaphysics at all, since metaphysics
> thinks only the beingness of beings.
>
> 3) Without following up on how Heidegger comes to a kind of thinking that
> thinks the open Gegnet which remains unthought in metaphysics through his
> Auseinandersetzung with the Greeks, all partial interpretations of
segments
> of his thinking, say, on Nietzsche or Kant, remain disoriented.
>
> I do not have to make any particular effort to defend these points, since
> it's not my philosophy that is at issue here and I'm not saying anything
new.
> I think that the traces of Heidegger's thinking we have in what has
already
> been published in the Gesamtausgabe are more than enough to dispose of
your
> thesis.
>
> Here's part of what Heidegger wrote to H.W. Petzet on 16 April 1963 with
> reference to his lecture, Hoelderlins Hymne 'Wie wenn am Feiertage...',
> delivered several times in the period 1939-1941 and first published in
1941:
>
> "...from 'Sein und Zeit' on, it is a matter of the Seinsfrage in the sense
of
> an OVERCOMING of metaphysics. ... Kommerell does not see the proper
situation
> at all... Therefore he does not understand the section in my lecture on
> _physis_. He does not gain access to the dimension in which my thinking
was
> moving already five years before the lecture and in which it still moves.
He
> cannot know the 'premisses'. In the meantime during the course of the
years
> it has become more and more apparent to me that it remains impossible to
make
> oneself understood within the domain of ideas of today's opinions
> (Vorstellungsbereich des heutigen Meinens)." (_Ausgewaehlte Briefe Martin
> Heideggers an Heinrich Wiegand Petzet_ Jahresgabe der Martin Heidegger
> Gesellschaft 2003; emphasis in the original).
>
> One could claim that Heidegger is here misrepresenting his own thinking --
> but check it out for yourself. Or one could launch at attack on
Heidegger's
> thinking to show that, despite its proclamations, it is still captive to
> metaphysical thinking.
>
> Good luck,
> Michael
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