Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 12:39:10 -0500
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: RE: expansion


>-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
>Van: owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>[mailto:owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU]Namens allen scult
>Verzonden: woensdag 16 juni 2004 16:37
>Aan: heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>Onderwerp: RE: expansion
>
>
>>In part two of Peter Sloterdijk's "Spheres", Makrospherology
>>(globes), (3 big vols) is quoted a word of Cecil Rhodes:
>>"Expansion is everything."
>>In a note Sloterdijk tells that Spengler made of this adagium the
>>axiom of the civilizing epochs, and refers to Untergang des Abendlandes,
>>p. 51: "Expansion is a fatality, something demonic and monstrous, which
>>grabs ...  and consumes ... the late man of the world stadium."
>>
>>
>>in the original are many Heidegger words:
>>
>>"Expansion ist ein Verhaengnis, etwas Daemonisches und Ungeheures,
>>   das den spaeten Menschen des Weltstadiums packt ... und verbraucht
>>   ..."
>>
>>
>>   Except that behind the imperialism is not late civilatory pressure,
>>   but the expansion of completing subjectivity.
>>
>>   rdb
>>
>
>Well placed words, Rene.
>
>    Hi Allen, Sloterdijk's is an impressive work. It has already been
>    translated into Spanish, but not into English. WOuld be sthing for
>    Michael Eldred, almost 3000 pages European and world history, by an
>    intelligent and sensitive man.
>
>
>Subjectivity unquestioned desires completion, accomplished in
>world-limited space
>only by expansion into other already occupied subjectivities.
>
>   But i understand subjectivity as originally Western, and it is up to us
>   to bring its destruction, our guilt. I agree when you mean that before
>   grabbing everything, it is first occupied in thought. 
>
>Questioning, by its very nature, preserves incompleteness by refusing to be
>reduced to an answer.
>
>Might we say that subjectivities are "essentially" interchangeable?
>
>   I think so. But the problem remains: wherein and where-by are all
>   subjectivities what they are?


Extraordinary question, Rene (but also about the most ordinary of occurrences).
To paraphrase only slightly, thereby perhaps making the question a bit less
extraordinary,

Wherein and where-by are all subjectivities given as what they are?

Phrased this way the "wherein" and "where-by" more obviously come to be
located in language, or speech, to be more exact.  When one speaks, the central
ambiguity of subjectivity, of being a subject, is introduced in and 
through one's way
of saying what one says. One cannot speak without saying what one has 
to say this way or that.
Once spoken, what is usually considered the subjectivity of the
subject, is now  explicit, is given material, tangible form.  The cat 
is out of the bag!

Enter "rhetoric." Through the rhetorical possibilities available to 
say  one's saying this way or that
  one attempts to hide one's "subjectivity" by saying one's saying as 
if it were not just one's
way of saying, but the saying of what is.  This move requires 
conventions of proof,  method.
. .SCIENCE.  Philosophy, Heidegger claims, is unique amongst the 
human practices "invented" to
deal with this problem of subjectivity, in that it proves nothing, 
and is therefore useless to any
endeavor outside of itself because it says what it says with the full 
recognition that its saying is no
more than a basic movement of factical life.

But as as the basic movement of factical life that it is, the saying 
of philosophy insists on
continually throwing its own subjectivity into question, by way of 
moving towards its
essential interchangeability with all other subjectivities.  This 
questioning guarentees
incompleteness because of the impossibility of reaching this 
interchangability in and through
one's saying, even though it( the interchangeability of 
subjectivities) is "essential" to
the thinking/existential analytic of  Dasein.


>And if that is subjectity  - not only
>   encompassing the modern man-subject, but also medieval subject/substance
>   and Greek hypokeimenon, then we are dealing with Being and, if we leave
>   it out as a subjectivity in your sense, we would have missed everything.
>   Being is now only accessible as Gestell, that's what i think Heidegger
>   means, when, in the letter to the student, he writes that most only want
>   the thinging things and gods, but don't want to hear about Gestell.
>   Gestell, the Wesen of technique, is nothing technical. It is wherein
>   all (subjective) stellen, positioning, is gathered, and which does not
>   want to show itself. In order to lift (lichten) this hiding  - die
>   Lichtung des Sichverbergens  -  one must see the abyss of all ground,
>   sub-ject. See that Being IS ground AND abyss. The ambiguity essential.
>
>   but did i understand you correctly?
>

Of course I'm not sure.  But now I get to ask, whether my way of going about
your question understands you correctly.  I think I managed to keep the
ambiguity essential, but whether I did or didn't, there I must leave it, while
I go to lunch.

Best regards,

Allen


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