Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 18:58:24 +0800
Subject: Re: Gestell/Gewinnst - Truth as opinion
From: Malcolm Riddoch <m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au>



On Thursday, December 4, 2003, at 05:20  AM, Michael Eldred wrote:

> Cologne 03-Dec-2003
> At least I have read Heidegger on Husserl and Heidegger on Nietzsche, 
> and
> much Husserl and much Nietzsche.

Yes, it does pay to read widely. I've also read widely, we all read 
widely... I assume that we are all widely read readers. There is much 
to be said for book knowledge and I would assume you are also widely 
read. If you read enough stuff you'll know enough to start interpreting 
it for yourself, you might even attain a degree of self-certainty in 
your own truths and be bold enough to assert your opinion on matters to 
do with truth. Be advised though that we all do this and it is 
fundamentally a matter of debate as to whose opinion is more valuable 
than the others, a pointless debate really, cos we still necessarily 
end up where we started, with our own opinion. For my part I think 
opinion is a derivative public mode of assertive truth founded on one's 
own existence, which is absolutely not an ancient Greek existence. But 
we can read their texts, and translations/interpretations of their 
texts, and interpret these texts on the basis of our own understanding 
of what is 'true'.

> It's simply Aristotle: _pollachos legetai to on_.

Well actually I said "being is said in many ways" not "Do you own 
thing" nor "pollachos legetai to on". It's your opinion that 'without 
knowing where this citation comes from, and what it means in the 
specific contexts in which it is said, it degrades into a slogan'. I 
agree, and the context for you is your own interpretation of 
Heidegger's Greek meaning of 'being', my own context is the 
phenomenology of being. Who's to say one is 'more fundamental' than the 
other and how on earth could you demonstrate this? And what would be 
the point apart from pushing your own interpretive opinion?

> Over two millennia ago, the sophists, too, disputed that there could 
> be any
> such thing as truth. Plato and Aristotle struggled mightily with them. 
> That
> is not just of historical, scholarly interest, but says something 
> about the
> question of being and the truth of being to us today as well.

Absolutely, who would argue otherwise? Not me certainly, I'd just 
dispute the claim that concentrating on the Greeks is a necessary 
condition for understanding the question of being, sufficient perhaps 
but not necessary. It would of course depend on your interpretation of 
that reading and how that reading is understood in relation to 
Heidegger's fundamental notion of truth as disclosure which isn't about 
Greek words but about disclosing one's own existence for oneself, a 
disclosure that isn't effected in a logical proposition nor in an 
opinionated debate. For you the formal indications of Heidegger's Greek 
interpretation point you towards his fundamental notion of originary 
truth that is not merely a reiteration of some text nor a logical 
proposition but a bearing witness to and from your own existence. These 
formal indications can be said in many ways, they are not magically 
held in the Greek text but in your own appropriative interpretation.

> What you propose is an indifference of many opinions. That is 
> incapable of
> truth, which only comes to light, if at all, in altercation.

That's your opinion then? I'm not sure what you mean by hitting a nerve 
nor can you hurt me but I don't know what you mean by 'truth' here 
apart from your asserted opinion of which you are apparently 
self-certain. For me there's the alteraction of debatable opinion of 
which yours is as debatable as any other, this opinion might be based 
on book knowledge, on the mastery of an idiom, and then there is the 
other notion of truth, that of phenomenological disclosure. The texts 
are merely a guide to this other non-assertive mode of 
self-demonstrative truth, of one's own being-true, one's own phenomenal 
existence. As soon as you put this into words and enter this 
philosophical debate you enter into the representation of this ownmost 
'sensuous' and embodied truth as opinion, always in this case your own, 
and always debatable. The positing of your proposition above is its own 
proof of this.

> You may have long ago decided to make do with a truncated Heidegger, 
> but the
> question remains whether a truncated Heidegger without his seminal
> Auseinandersetzung with the Greeks (for which he is famous and about 
> which
> much has been written), especially Aristotle, will yield an adequate
> understanding of Gestell as it is thought in Heidegger's thinking.

That still begs the question - what is Gestell? Your proposition is 
nothing other than your opinion on the matter, and in order to prove it 
you'd have to actually interpret Gestell which no doubt you'd do from 
the perspective of your starting proposition that you have to interpret 
it in terms of Heidegger's Greek... your own truncated Heidegger. Do 
you actually think about these simple procedural textual problems at 
all Michael? Do you think you actually have access to an 'untruncated' 
Heidegger? I think that would mean you actually are Heidegger himself 
but he's dead and all we have are our own truncations of his philosophy 
and our own notions of what this philosophy was about. Yet that's the 
fundamental question here, not whether you specialise in the Greek or 
the phenomenological descriptions of the matter at hand, but the 
question these texts all point towards, the matter itself which is to 
be thought and which only you can do for yourself.

I'm not even arguing that his Greek interpretation isn't an important 
facet of Heidegger's thinking, just that the term 'Gestell' is an open 
question, it's what is questionable about the forgetting of the origin 
of being, and your assertion that this forgetting can only be uncovered 
if we follow your Greek leads is just your own baseless opinion. 
Other's have a different focus to you, and in the end we are all 
talking about the same thing - but that 'thing' is not Greek 
experience. There is no 'Greek experience', there is only your own 
interpretation of what you understand as 'Greek experience'. There is 
no truth in the Greek texts, or even Heidegger's texts, there is only 
your own experience of the truth in these texts, your own understanding 
of the texts, and your representation of those truths in this 
philosophical forum of debate. All you have is your own self-certain 
opinions about how 'things' appear to yourself, with no recourse to 
anything other than your own authority, your own reading and experience 
and the witness you bear to that.

Welcome to modernity Michael, you are your own truth both as baseless 
opinion and more fundamentally as a testament to your own existence. 
Apart from this one simple debate about the apparent authority of your 
own particular 'truth' I do generally agree with your interpretations 
of Heidegger's Greeks.

> In other
> words, without reading Aristotle and Heidegger's phenomenological
> interpretations of Aristotle in the twenties at least, you won't 
> understand
> the import of the term Gestell. That's the point of truth as opposed 
> to mere
> opinion (cf. Plato's Timaeus): truth is strifeful, difference of 
> opinion is
> mere arbitrary bickering.

So it's your opinion that without reading Aristotle and Heidegger's 
phenomenological interpretations of Aristotle in the twenties at least, 
no one can understand the import of how you personally interpret the 
term 'Gestell', and that this opinion of yours is 'strifeful truth' 
rather than merely your own arbitrary opinion. Well good for you 
Michael, in my opinion however I'd say a knowledge of Heidegger's 
Aristotle would certainly be one way of approaching the problem of 
interpreting the term 'Gestell', but since nothing is absolutely 
decided as to what this term actually means your 'strifeful' opinion is 
rather baseless and what we need is to open the debate up to more 
questions, more interpretive strategies, different ways of approaching 
the problem at hand that restate it in different terms rather than just 
narrowing it down to your opinion of your own reading of Aristotle.

You are merely one voice, like me, and I don't think our opinionated 
babbling is simply an arbitrary bickering because what we are debating 
is something fundamental to how we conduct ourselves towards one 
another in truthful debate, we're 'strifefully' debating here the 
concept of truth at work in our philosophical discourse. It's my 
opinion that your opinion is nothing other than a representation of 
your own subjective self-certainty in what you know to be your own 
truth that you constantly represent via these email texts, and 
strangely enough this self-certain basis in willful representation has 
something to do with the modern subjectivity of the will to will. So in 
a roundabout way we are actually already talking about Gestell through 
our arbitrary bickering, in this altercation about truth we are 
demonstrating something of the modern truth of Gestell, at least from 
the perspective of Heidegger's Nietzsche. You are of course completely 
free to interpret this in terms of your Greek interpretation, and I 
would welcome that interpretation as the more we open this problem up 
to debate the more I get to rethink it in my own terms, which is why 
I'm here in the first place.

> The appreciation of Stellen also has a lot to do with
> Heidgger's interpretation of being, metaphysically understood, as 
> "staendige
> Anwesenheit", standing presence That's not merely a matter of Michael
> Eldred's opinion but of indicating how Heidegger's thinking opens. 
> Ignore it
> at your own peril.

Obviously, but of course that 'appreciation of Stellen' is always in 
each case already informed by one's own interpretive appropriation of 
Heidegger's notions of 'standing reserve', presencing, being, 
temporality and openness. So what is Michael Eldred's opinion on the 
relation of the term 'Stellen' to Heidgger's interpretation of being? 
Beyond all this ludicrous to and fro I am actually interested in your 
opinion on these matters.

Regards,

Malcolm











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