Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 08:42:10 -0500
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: RE: grave thots on a great hack


>Rene clarifying recently,
>
>    Bob,
>    You're absolutely right in not throwing away subjectivity before acquiring
>    something else. So i hadn't forgotten your mail with Kant: there's no point
>    in returning to a new kind of dogmatic metaphysics - sure.
>    After BT, Heidegger keeps on coming back to Kant and subjectivity  --
>    compare for instance Jud's 'world': the same objective monster as the Being
>    of so many Heideggerians, while to Kant world is differentiated: on the one
>    hand the theoretical realm of a causality, that rules everything 
>and everyone,
>    on the other a practical world of people.
>    But Heidegger was taking subjectivity more serious than anyone, 
>so he DIDN'T
>    let it go by 'overcoming' it. That's what the Heideggerians do, who are
>    simply bourgeois subjectivists in a very late phase. There is indeed
>    nothing gained by replacing 'subject' by 'Dasein'. Rather 
>everything is lost,
>    when Da-sein is substantiated. The hyphen is not a trick, it points exactly
>    to the how of its being understood (if that is English): without *being* it
>    oneself, it's all less than nothing. And because also this is not enough he
>    writes: Da-seyn, to discern it from a metaphysically understood Da-sein.
>    One could name this heightened subjectivity, but with the warning that
>    subjectivity is here not to be understood from that one and same eternity.
>   
>    (like with Hoelderlin's or Trakl's bread and wine, which in their cases is
>     not just another variation of the Christian theme. Or Beethoven's missa
>     solemnis, Berlioz' requiem)
>
>   But it's nothing dreamlike. In fact   - in a normal situation i would never
>   say this - in my subjective life, it has proven quite effective. Without
>   holding a mirror in front of the dictatorship of inter-omni-subjectivity and
>   its representations, i would never have gotten my self again, nor 
>would those
>   who are with me.

Would you characterize this holding -a- mirror -in -front- of 
"philosophizing," at least of
a sort?  Heidegger points out again and again that factical life 
experience "manifests an indifference
with regard to its manner of experiencing."  "Subjectivity"  as we 
experience it is especially persistent in  its self-sufficiency and 
reckless indifference to any questioning as to its "how."  As you 
suggest,
it is so totally absorbed in its Da, its surrounding world, that the 
how of its being-there-in-that-way
must remain utterly indifferent to it.

So how does philosophy begin ?(if in fact it is philosophy you were 
talking about) The fact that you would never talk this way--say 
this--in a normal situation is a generous admission of the 
discrepancy that makes philosophy possible.  But then you quite 
credibly say that somehow a mirror gets held up in front of, and you 
get yourself again.  The holding up of the mirror, then, would seem 
to be a consequence,
I almost want to say  effect of, what Heidegger calls  the "the 
turning around which leads to philosophy."
But philosophy itself continues on in its own "useless" direction to 
a place where there are no mirrors.

But perhaps I am twisting  your metpahors here.
So here I'll stop for the moment.

Best regards,

Allen








>  Again, normally i would never say this, but i don't see any
>   alternative left than showing the living proofs. And the others show their
>   proofs, and they're unmistakably utgaardian: the decomposition of the only
>   reality left: the bodysubject. The discrepancy of the words/images used for
>   justification, and the rottenness that presents itself, get more and more
>   frightening. But that at the same time points to where a solution, or the
>   beginning of it, might lie: that the lies, not only Iraq, but the whole god-
>   and earthforlorn mess that is intensifying, rob away our last 
>humanity, make it
>   ugly and endlessly usable. If one has nothing left to resist this 
>ultimate form
>   of subjectivism, which is a sort of evil beyond good and evil, if 
>one has lost
>   any possibility to be (the) Da, one is lost. But that is not what the
>   intellectual chatterers want to hear -but look when and how they run away,
>   there's a lesson in it- and now is the time to say it a bit more 
>clearly than
>   Heidegger himself could afford. So i'm afraid we meet on the crossroads of
>   Verelendung. The *Verelendung* however is the eternity!, and 
>humans only used
>   for IT! (also Bush's and Kerry's)
>   But what if there's no one left to expose them TO? As Heidegger 
>often writes:
>   where are the ears to hear? The ears and the hearing (hoeren) 
>might be missing,
>   but what never can be left out wholly, insofar the current type of 
>man is still
>   human, is the suspicion that there's something missing, that they 
>still belong
>   to... (ge-hoeren)  And that those who are said to be less 
>civilized, are in fact
>   superior, and the only way to fight that is to destroy them, waste them.
>   Turn them into dwarfs and ants, in order to crush them, like was 
>done 60 years
>   ago to the Jews. I like Erdogan, the Turkish leader. Very calm and 
>dignified,
>   he states clearly the impossible and suicidal tactics of Israel.
>
>   As to Malthus and eternity: first the oil seemed to outclass nuclear energy,
>   the switch of which, as you once wrote, was simply turned off. But 
>now it will
>   come back again, so that Heidegger is right any way. That is not 
>coincidental:
>   first there is (meaninglessness, then:) will to will, energy for the sake of
>   energy, and only then coal, oil, or nuclear energy. It is essential not to
>   interpret this as essentialism. It is the essential end of essentialism.
>   Another kind of essence therefore. Just like another kind of 
>(inter)subjectivity,
>   no longer one that can be constituted, as Husserl still tried.
>
>   rene
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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