From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:35:11 EDT Subject: Re: Will de Power and the Burning Bush In a message dated 23/06/2004 15:18:25 GMT Standard Time, R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl writes: Jud, I know there's not much likeness between you and Anthony, so the same thought mechanisms i think i detect in you both, and in a lot others, incl. myself, too, are only more surprising. Jud: Anthony lives on the blue-cheese side of the moon and I abide on the rocky other and never the twain shall meet. One thing we DO have in common [I think] is that we both think logically and reason in an 'organised' sort of way. However his reasoning is Jesuitical, which means he is free to drag in that which is illogical as a redoubt of last resort [a fallback position] when his logical mode proves ineffective. No such retreat into illogicality is available to me — and there is no need of one — for my position is grounded in touchy-feely OBJECTS. RENE NEW: Because [speech] is like glossa or lingua bound to a speaker and his tongue, i prefer in case of words to speak of their power of saying, or of telling. Jud: Words - language have no power of saying anything whatsoever. Only the speaker can communicate the way his brain is thinking about certain subjects to others [using the sound-symbols of words] can say or tell anything. The baseball bat doesn't play with the ball — the baseball player does — using the bat as a tool or instrument for the purpose. The keyboard and the words I choose are not composing my e-mail I AM. Rene: Evidently it is on words and their ability to mean or denote sting, that any speaker relies. Or do you think it is the tongue and its phonem-forming activity that creates meaning? Jud: Not for one moment. Words have no ABILITY - Only humans have the ability to distinguish the meaning of signs — oral and written. Words, traffic lights, airport terminal arrival boards — the books on the shelves of your library have no 'abilities' at all. They have no idea of the meaning of the significations and messages that they contain and convey. Rene: The bizarre of that has been shown by Abaelard to Roscelinus and his 'universale est vox', the universal is mere voice. Jud: Abelard was correct — to universalise is to produce meaningless chatter. 'America' didn't bomb Iraq certain Americans [a minority of the population] who clean their teeth, eat food every day and go to the John and strain did the bombing. To say that 'America bombed Iraq' is ontologically ridiculous. Jud: If you want to reduce meaning to physics, you've not done enough. You also have to show the other way: how from physics you go to semantics. It is not enough to ridicule Heidegger's 'solution' (Bedeutsamkeit as belonging to the world of being-in-the-world, the only world we know of) Jud: There is no ME 'Being in the world' — there is only ME - the physical, tangible ME which can be touched, heard, smelt, seen. Being in the world is a philosophical nonsense — a leftover from olden times when mankind was no so well educated. There is nothing strange that a physical thinking human entity should wish to analyse and try to define the meanings of the communicative signs with which he communicates to other human holisms, whether those signs are finger-signs, gesticulations, words, pictures, coloured flags, or by flashing the study lights on and off like Heidegger did. Heidegger was incapable of grasping the simple things of life that most people take for granted, and therefore was FORCED to retreat into the ontological fantasy of the so-called 'ontological difference' in order to stop going completely mad. As Eliot said — "some people cannot stand much reality" — and Heidegger was one of them. I know it annoys you to hear me say it — but Heidegger was just an ignorant peasant — brilliant at the seeding and planting of the endosperms of an already rotting philosophical crop, and coaxing and convincing the naive with a mixture a demagoguery and rhetoric. But at ground [Grundbegriffe] level he lacked the basic common-sense and understanding of the world and the words with which we describe that world. Woe to the man who lacks the intelligence to understand the word 'IS.' Jud: [earlier] and that lies are engaged in some quest to find a suitable mouthpiece to be used to broadcast them. I fail to see how Rene: It just becomes inevitable to speak of this 'speaking of language,' as soon as the subject that claims language, turns out to be a lie. Jud: In the bar room yes, [ordinary talk] but not on a philosophy list whilst talking [or being interpreted] ontologically] Jud: [earlier] A person DOES NOT claim language — a person SPEAKS words, the compendium of which, if a person is speaking Dutch, we call the Dutch Language, and if he is speaking English we call the English Language. It is not the WORDS that lie or the LANGUAGE that lies — it is the LIAR who speaks those words of the Dutch or English language who is lying. When you say: "... as long as the subjects keep on believing in themselves," I presume you mean by the collective noun "subjects" — the speakers of the lies [or the truths?] What do you mean by 'believing in themselves' do you mean: (1) Believing that they speak the truth? (2) Believing in themselves as worthwhile and decent people? (3) Believing that they exist? (4} By "subject" you refer to the subject of the sentence? RENE NEW: a combination of (1) and (4): a subject has to believe in what he says, whether truth or lie. (if not, he won't live long) Jud: You have just put your finger on the importance of semantics for mankind. Because the Islamists believe: "America bombed Iraq/Afghanistan' they want to kill every American they catch — yet the American they catch might have been violently AGAINST the Bushite madness. Rene: When truth and lie become indiscernable, it has to believe harder. Jud: Truth and lies do NOT EXIST - only truth tellers or liars exist. One man's truth is another man's lie. Rene: he objects of its beliefs appear as subjects in its propositions. Of these objects he is informed via the media. Iraq is sthing it has heard of through television. He hears his leader say: Iraq is ready to throw a bomb on you, my subjects. Now the subject is threatened by the subject of the sentence (Iraq), spoken by the subject-leader. And it can only maintain itself amidst the fear of itself and of all the other subjects, by accepting the proposition of the leader. Jud: PITS [people in the street] may reason this way — but responsible philosophers should not. We should [in our small way] point out to people that no such thing as 'Iraq' or 'USA' exists — that they have been terribly conned. It's not "Iraq' that is ready or not ready to throw a bomb — it is the transcendentalist loony Saddam Hussein and his goons — the one that kneels on a mat looking south west three times a day is the ENTITY [who shits and farts] will order or not order the bombs to be dropped or not dropped Iraq - USA are just IDEAS which don't exist. It is the land, desert, cities, skyscrapers and Bush and Saddam that exist. Religion doesn't exist — just the religious. Patriotism doesn't exist — only the patriotic. Torture doesn't exist — only the torturers and their superiors. Rene|: Would you now say: the subject does the lying? I'd say he is merely an instrument used in the lying process. And that really there are no subjects anymore, for the same reason as that there are no more objects for real subjects, but only subjectivity, to stamp those former subjects. Jud: It is awfully easy to get confused about these things, and although you are very intelligent and I respect you and you are 'well-meaning,' you are nevertheless mistaken. If I [knowingly] tell a lie - I am a liar. If I go to the pub and if my wife asks me where I have been and I say to the library I am a liar. It is not the words that are lying — it is I [me] If somebody says: 'Jud went to the pub and told Clare he had been to the library," the subject [Jud] is a liar. If what you say is correct and the subject [Jud] is only an "instrument' for the lie — on whose or what's behalf is he instrumentally lying? Human lies are not based on the model of a lingual ectoplasm that issues forth from the innocent mouth of the medium, nor are the owners of the brewery telling lies through my lips in order to maintain their sales of beer. If on the other hand I am taken in by Tony Blair's lies, and repeat them believing them to be true — am I also a liar? YES, but MORE - I am BOTH a LIAR and a FOOL. Rene: If you don't accept this subjectivity for being abstract and non-existent, and analyze it away, you take away the last ground under the feet of the subjects, from whence on they're nothing anymore, and that means totally made mobile: ants. On the other hand that would even be more than Heideggerians refusing to go into subjectivity, and turning them into ghosts. I'm afraid that your being-existent merely means dissolving. This dissolving is very real. Jud: I don't dissolve abstractions and nonexistencies - I CANNOT - because what does not exist cannot be dissolved or resolved. I analyse all the meaningless cognitive vegetation away — cut the tangled bushes and at the same time cut the crap. Nominalists could NEVER be ants like Heidegger's helmeted hordes — because nominalists just laugh at the childish notions of Fatherland and the Chosen Volk. It has just struck me that for the Jews to claim that they are the Chosen People is just as arrogant and stupid a claim as Hitler and Heidegger's believe in the special role of the German people as chosen by 'destiny' as the major players on the world stage. There ARE NO Chosen German People - there are just breathing living German men and women, there ARE NO Chosen Jewish People - there are just breathing living Jewish men and women. I want to dissolve MYTHS - particularly RELIGIOUS and political myths - German and Jewish "specialness" are both dangerous and stupid myths. Germans and Jews are on the whole hardworking intelligent people — but that does NOT make them special or different to the rest of us. Jud: I completely agree with you here Rene, but there is a form of political and social criticism called satire, irony, parody, pasquinade, ridicule, etc., which I personally favour? In the great tradition of English satire one can often be more effective as a critic of some hypocrisy or political outrage than one can achieve in a measured logical but ultimately boring piece about the torture and killing and ... Every nation has a satirical magazine — even the dour Russians with their Crocodile - it is a well known European method of political and social criticism. Rene: Thanks yes, i had almost forgotten. Satire and irony seem to have had their best times too. Because, like all questionworthy, all satire-worthy has disappeared too? True satire seems to presuppose the same lightness as the true and serious self-questioning, that belongs to Dasein. A sort of floating. Jud: Satire, irony, parody, pasquinade, ridicule, etc., represents a true and serious self-questioning — a self-questioning of one's preconceptions and one's belief and trust in the lies of others. It is FAR MORE powerful and effective as a weapon than the fruitless discussions that go one here concerning what is ontic and what is ontological. That is the reason they have cartoonists in the newspapers every day and not Heideggerians talking about the Rhine Dam. ;-) Die ros' ist ohn Warum; Sie bluhet, weil sie bluhet, Sie acht nicht ihrer selbst, Fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet. The Rose is without "why"; She blows because she bloweth. She asks no passer-by to heed her as he goeth. RENE NEW: Jud, quoting Silesius and the Feldweg, is more miraculous to me than all bikers together. Being-in-the-world-but-more-like-a-groundless-grounded-rose- than-like-an-eradicated-worried-old-wo..human is a possibility. It just depends: does it appeal? are there still ears to hear the possible, and not merely exclusively physical ears to registrate (the lies)? Jud: I am attracted by the poetic — by the sweet nectarine [slightly mouldering] bouquet of lost causes. For me I enjoy Feldweg as a prose-poem — a fine bit of writing by Heidegger. I enjoy Heidegger like I enjoy the old, yellow, jerky, scratched films taken before the First World War. Queen Victoria in her horsedrawn landau, the family of the Czar dancing around oblivious of their fate to come, Hitler with his dog in the last days, Heidegger dreaming his way down the Feldweg his head full of the snows of yesteryear and the fresh young limbs of his lover. The cranked handle of times camera spasmodically turns and the old strutting images haunt us with the sadness of what once was, and what we will one day be a part of — the past. AND THEN I WAKE UP and see Victoria, the Czar, Hitler, Heidegger for what they REALLY were. Nevertheless a stroll down the Fantasy Feldweg is OK now and again — we suspend the faculties and the critical judgement for a Feldwegian frolic. We all need and enjoy a poetical break now and again — as long as we don't DARE pass it off as 'Philosophy.' Cheers, You missed out on the 1787 Chateau Lafite too! Jud Nullius in Verba _http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_ (http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm) JUD EVANS - XVANS XPERIENTIALISM --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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