From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 07:54:04 EDT
Subject: Questioning the Questioner


In a message dated 18/06/2004 19:08:08 GMT Standard Time, 
_allen.scult-AT-drake.edu_ (mailto:allen.scult-AT-drake.edu)  writes:
 
 
Allen writes:
The following is submitted in a condition even more raw than usual:
 
Jud:
A person should steer clear of those sort of clubs.  The  older one gets the 
longer the weals take to heal, and one could end up  as the only one on the 
beach with his shirt on.  ;-)
 
Allen:
I'm reading Cavell on Wittgenstein and thinking about how community,  
especially philosophical community-or more especially THIS community-- is  
constituted to the extent that we can speak WITH one another at all. By speaking  with 
one another, I mean that some of us presume that Heidegger speaks for us,  at 
least insofar as we presume he is not merely projecting his own way of being  
conscious onto ours. He presumed a similar presumption which I presume enabled  
him to speak for himself as a Dasein in the way that he does. Jud: The 
hopeless  unquestioning cases Allen refers to - the ones that presume that Heidegger 
 speaks for them are thankfully not the majority on this list. There are many 
 that question Heidegger and use his notions in their own modified version as 
a  way of understanding their own lives. The best example of a pragmatic,  
constructive, questioning phenomemologist on this list is in my opinion Malclom, 
 as his last message confirms. He has a great deal of commonsense.
 
Jud:
As to whether the conjunction of Heidegger's presumptions and Allen's  
illations is an example of a felicitous confluence of two independently  formed and 
arrived at Weltanschauungen based upon the acceptance of similar  
circumstantial evidence thus concluding in analogous coincidental  conclusions, or an 
example of Heidegger successfully exerting his malign  influence on and 
overwhelming Allen's discriminatory faculties - I think  the latter.
Once the neologic and obfuscatory argot of Heideggerianism is accepted and  
utilised in philosophical discussion the victim is lost and can  virtually be 
written off as having a mind of his own. With certain notable  exceptions, what 
emerges from the conceptual chrysalis is a fully  fledged Heidegger-clone 
mindlessly mouthing metaphysical meaninglessness.  The result? Continual attempts 
to discover additional aspects of the world that  can be successfully written 
about in order to cut the conceptual cloth to  new clothes, and there seems 
to be a never-ending search for new 'angles,' where  Heidegger's material can 
be made relevant to some new gimmicky  interpretation of the world.
 
It is more likely that Allen, like most people, chanced upon and was  simply 
taken in by Heidegger's clever obnubilated and mythologic rhetoric.  Some 
people are more attracted to an ascendant or dominant other, and  subjugate their 
critical faculties in order to feel more secure in the bosom of  a perceived 
certainty. If, once the decision is made to throw in one's passive  lot with a 
dominant other or paramount leader, others [perhaps staff members or  
students] in their peer group do the same, it reinforces and  provides confirmation 
that the choice of idol is the rightful one. It would  be a great mistake to 
believe that Heidegger was not projecting his own way of  being conscious as a 
cognitive exemplar, and was unconcerned as to whether or  not his ideas would 
influence others and be taken up by them, his whole style  [even his questioning 
is a hectoring] is declamatory, and Basic Concepts is  sheer demagoguery in 
the style of the 'thinking man's thug — not to mention the  disgusting Rectoral 
Nazi diatribe.
 
Allen:
 What gives Heidegger the "right" to speak of Dasein as he does-as if  it's 
any more than a projection? More importantly, why do I trust him, give him  the 
right, to "speak for me" at least most of the time. . . and Jud  doesn't?
 
 Jud: 
Once one throws in one's lot with what amounts to no more than a  
philosophical cult with 'Being' situated in place of God, giving the right to  speak on 
one's behalf is natural and unquestioning.
 
Although most people think of cults as being religious, they can also be  
found in political, athletic, philosophical, racial or psychotherapeutic arenas.  
Compare these classical cult criteria with their attitudes of the committed  
Heideggerians on this list
 
(1) The acceptance of a charismatic leader [most often male] as being  
dominant. Like Heidegger, many cult leaders truly are charismatic people, and  are 
able to influence people to believe them.
(2) The use of an esoteric  vocabulary of neologisms particular to the cult.
(3) The continual use of  fear. "The end is nigh - Only God can help us now." 
(4) Evasive and  obfuscatory tactics when questioned by people outside of the 
 group.
(5) Refuseniks who reject the doctrine are said to be not capable  of 
understanding rather than being percipient rejectionists.
(6)  Opponents are seen as being evil [faggots] because they do not accept 
the  doctrines.
(7) Opposing views are denigrated as false and 'untrustworthy.'  Allen:
 
Allen:
This is almost a "primal" matter of philosophy, one which Cavell suggests,  
at another level, preoccupies Wittgenstein when he argues for the impossibility 
 of a "private language." In Cavell's words: "What is the presumption which 
asks  us to look to ourselves to find whether we share another's secret 
consciousness?  What gives one the right?"
 
Jud: 
No '"right" is required. It is a natural part of human behaviour to  evaluate 
the ideas of others and take up a position of agreement or  disagreement. 
There is no childishly conceived "secret consciousness" — a person  either 
reveals what he or she thinks — or does not. We may make guesses as to  what is left 
unsaid based upon the way they behave in relation to other things,  and we do 
this in order to understand the other as part of our social  interaction and 
ultimately in relation to our survival as individuals.  'Philosophy' doesn't 
exist as such — it is simply the way that humans act — for  thinking is an 
action. Committed [unquestioning] Heideggerian cultists act in  similar ways to 
Heidegger, i. e., they copy the cognitive actions of the person  who is for him 
the dominant [philosophical] male. That is not to say that they  also copy 
all of  his social or political actions, and run around  everywhere Seig Heiling 
anything that moves and proclaiming His God Hitler as  the font of all wisdom.
 
Allen: 
He goes on to say this line of questioning is wrong for philosophy, because  
philosophy "ought to point away from the self not towards it." (20) But in 
this  very pointing away, the question is preserved, for it is saying that the  
philosophy of which it is a part is not mere projection. I may explain other  
philosophizing as one kind of projection or another ( as Jud does Heidegger's)  
but not my own, nor those that speak for me. The presumption of those  
philosophies, by the very fact that it is Heidegger's presumption, mine, and  
perhaps yours, remains an open question--no, the open question-- which is at the  
core of said philosophies.
 
Jud: 
Personally I find it difficult to imagine how it would be possible to  
totally point away from 'the self' not towards it, or to comment on the  world from 
any other standpoint other than their own neuronal  activity.  The ground of 
any feeling, thinking or cognitive pointing is the  embrained body or human 
holism [which is continually confused with the notion of  'self.']  Even when we 
attempt to put our selves 'into the mind of another  person,'  it is our OWN 
version of what WE think is going on in  the 'mind' of the other. Most people 
address a subject as seen from their own  perspective, even when that subject 
is their favourite subject —  themselves.  Heidegger attempts [unsuccessfully] 
to universalise the  'self' with his creation of Dasein as a robot-like human 
cog in a revitalised  and idealised right-wing Germany based upon the Greek 
slave-based society he so  admired. 
 
Some people, of which the unthinking type Heideggerian is a prime  example, 
have a 'need' to 'belong' — to share a common presumption or  belief system 
with an extended  'family of fellow thinkers', to construct a  'togetherness' 
which is perhaps missing in other areas of their lives - I do  not. 
 
 
Best regards,
 
Jud.
 
 
 
 
Nullius in Verba

_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_ 
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm) 
JUD  EVANS - XVANS XPERIENTIALISM



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