Subject: RE: Will de Power and the Burning Bush
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:48:37 +0200
From: "Bakker, R.B.M. de" <R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl>


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[mailto:owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU]Namens
GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Verzonden: woensdag 23 juni 2004 21:35
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Onderwerp: 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:
   To be precise, Jud: in these objects THEMSELVES? Or in the belief in them, 
   in their myth, their "logic"?
   

RENE:
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 new:
  But it is filled with words, Jud. Not with baseball bats. Which has just 
  nothing to do with this latest metaphysical (re)finding of yours: '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

Rene new:
  I agree that it is not human. Then we call it their pecularity, function, 
  or even: their essence. It's the most basic unnaive realism, and denying 
  it, misplaced human superiorism.
   

 - 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 new:
  I agree that how they contain what is undeniably in them, is mysterious.
  But 'cat' means something else than 'dog'. Independent of the speaker.
  What's going on in those words? that's the question. And not merely Austin's:
  what can WE do with words? 
 

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

  you mean: Roscelinus. Abaelard is on my side: the universal 'dictum'
  is not a particular thing, but Abaelard keeps on saying that it is also not 
  nothing, even in the sense that the particular is, without a universal, as 
  to itself unsayable (individuum est ineffabile). 
  And now Heidegger says: but in that case the individual IS not really. 
  (stressing the 'is', because it has disappeared already, and escapes 
  every time when it is asked for.

 — 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.

Rene new:
   And "Mr. Smith bombed Iraq" meaningful and true? THAT's ridiculous.
   You have to be quicker: the common or universal of general notions
   no longer means reality, i agree. But then you come back with
   your world (!) of individual things, while forgetting that they
   have become meaningless. Itself a result of the falling astray
   of the universal (the object of metaphysics). Before attacking
   metaphysics, it's advisable to ask what it is (a little book by 
   Martin Heidegger gives a nice introduction). But because your own
   ontology needs the assault on metaphysics in order to get going, 
   you're standing in the way of what you should do first.
   Well, in fact not you, not "Jud bombs metaphysics", but "Science-
   inspirated common-sense bombs metaphysics". You see the inevitable:
   the poser of the question, whether the good or the bad question, is
   himself posed into the question, no matter what he has to say.
   A question, that, of itself, is TELLING.
   

rene:
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.

Rene new:
   sorry Jud, it's not that i don't like you, but that is the Jud that is 
   dissolving in what is happening now, in this 'world'.

Being in the world is a philosophical nonsense — a leftover from olden  times 
when mankind was no so well educated.

Rene new:
   that reminds me of a picture of the earth ball along a highroad: "They
   thought it was flat". A flat lie, but everybody nods. What about that 
   very round royal orb that went through the entire middle ages? 
   But history is an easy victim, endlessly remakable. But they are not 
   only lies, they stink too.


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, 

Rene new:
   Again with the help of signs and words, which themselves are PART of the
   game, and not a meta-game. A meta-game is just a meta-lie. 
   We don't get away from being-in. All the talk about does not free one from
   being-in. How to say the being-in?, that's the question. 

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,

Rene new:
   but: that's a definition of a philosopher...


 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 — 

Rene new:
   ..says the superior man of the city?
   this is what is really disgusting.  
   Was Tolstoy an ignorant peasant too? And Fichte. Jesus? 
   Why would the social abilities of the city make one wiser? What's superior
   about those abilities, when one looks around one? 

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:
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.

   But THAT is wholly beside the point. The Iraqi that is now bombed and humiliated
   had nothing to do with 9/11. That *should* be clear to all those city people, 
   would be their sole democratic duty, but they read: "They thought it was flat", 
   and then they are ... just gone. 

   What you write, is the really worrying consequence of a confused thinking. 
   Lack of logic lastly results in lack of morals. That's what we saw in Anthony too.
   And i'm just going on showing off, that i don't need to excuse any injustice.
   Because i don't need to accuse another party. And that's because i don't need 
   excuses for myself. 
   

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.

  even to say this, truth must be something to you. What makes a man 
  truthful or a liar? 
 
Rene:
The 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.

Rene new:
  The PITS, in order to be able to say this, should be able to go out
  of themselves - which they can't on account of the ties of the lies,
  as explained  - maybe poorly -  here by me, a philosopher.
    

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.

   I see my warnings were very relevant. Talking like you do, there's no way out.
   Auto-checkmate. At bottom, you talk like the world-forgetting peasant living
   in a crime-transcendental village in a country, where lying is the favourite
   sport.
    

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 new:
   But that's what you and everybody IS doing. They're getting away with it,
   and everything just goes on. That's our democratic excusing way of ... 
   not-doing.
    

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.

   It's one lie, covering the other. Meanwhile the dissolving happens before 
   one's eyes. But look then, lueg!


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.

   NOW you see it??  Heidegger spoke of the German-Jewish destinal 
   connection. The night of the crystals, where are the eyes to see?
   Destiny is going to be an important word.
 

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.

   No!!! They would not be there without that faith!!! It preserved them instead
   of a home country. And also herein the Germans similar...  And their
   'successors': the homeless Americans. 


I want to dissolve MYTHS - particularly RELIGIOUS and political myths -  

   We're witnessing dissolved myths. They're merely power paroles.
   
German and Jewish "specialness"  are both dangerous and stupid  myths.

   They've been labeled and thrown out everywhere, first in Britain,
   12th century.

Germans and Jews are on the whole hardworking intelligent people — but that  
does NOT make them special or different to the rest of us.

   But that should lead to the origin of myth. Also Groenbech is clear:
   this modern man, that feels so superior, is a laugh compared to the
   Arab, Jewish and Germanic peasants. And their myths far more real
   than our lies.   



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:
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.

   But there is no reality behind the images. That's...metaphysics.
   Who is the real Alexander behind the Alexander myth, that took shape 
   in the following centuries? He did not even know himself. Went into
   the desert to find an answer..
   And we would know?
 

 
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!

  I am confident that once we'll toast and drink the Lafite, Jud!
  cheers in advance

  rene

  



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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