Date:         Sun, 07 Jan 96 12:28:53 EDT
From: Beth Wilson <WILSONB-AT-NPVM.NEWPALTZ.EDU>
Subject:      sublime


In response to Bill's last post dealing with the Holocaust, Heidegger, etc.--
I drew a very different reading of what L has to say about Heidegger's
project.

Bill said:
>So there is perhaps a matter of something Heidegger 'could not say' (even
>though he should have!) within the limits of a philisophy of Being. (I do
>think, however, that the one line he did prnounce o the subject can not be
>too easily dismissed.

I got from Lyotard that Heidegger's big shortcoming was the very fact that
his philosophy so foregrounded the business of the "Forgetfulness of Being"
that we are all _necessarily_ bound up in, that to maintain an "unproductive"
silence (if I can use that adjective) was hias ultimate sin.  It's not
really H's fault if there are some things that it is impossilbe to say, rather
that's the way it is for all of us, all the time, hence the business about
having to talk about what we can't talk about.  It _is_ H's fault that he
chose to turn away from the question, however -- especially since it was
his philosophy that precisely opened up the whole question in the first
place!

In response to Lois Shawver's qustion, the sublime seems to me to veritably
hover over (under, around, through) almost all of Lyotard's writings. As an
art historian, some of my favorite applications in L are found in his
interpretations of the work of Barnett Newman, two fo which essays are included
 in the Lyotard Reader edited by Andrew Benjamin.

Beth Wilson
SUNY New Paltz