Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 16:04:37 -0700 From: nologos-AT-primenet.com (Sam Vagenas) Subject: Re: Interpretation vs. Life Nathan writes: >As for whether Foucault's disciplines/ethics, Derrida's speech/writing, >Heidegger's Being/being, etc., are "binary distinctions which by way of >negative theology can be taken as foundations" -- I'm not sure I agree with >this, although I'd like to know more about why you think this in the first >place. Derrida's arche-writing or differerAnce, for example, precisely >functions as a hinge to deconstruct the speech/writing and identity/difference >distinctions. It is neither a combination of those two terms in the >binary (dialectical or otherwise) nor is it subsumable into either one of them. >And it is in no way a foundation because differAnce paradoxically cannot be >'called into being' prior to what it is supposed to 'ground'. Whatever Nietzsche means by "life-affirmation," we cannot deny that lurking behind this notion is the backdrop of slave morality. Whatever the elusive (positive) correlates of Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida mean, they are in tension with a negative horizon: Heidegger's attacks on the refication of Being and metaphysics, Derrida's assaults on phonocentrism and logocentrism, and Foucault's endless diatribe against disciplinary technologies and biopower evince a negative theology of a sort. An exteriority is sought in response to a sense of degradation. All of these thinkers (as post-whatever) are trying to walk a critical tight rope, but on both sides of that rope there is metaphorically a similar tension as between Nietzsche's interpretation and life. A tension I view as heathy and ultimately inescapable, unless of course we are to say nothing. It has been said that many philosophical authors such as Dostoevsky, Hesse, Mann, and Camus prefer fiction to systematic philosophy because they as authors are a conflict of interpretations. Only through the heterogeneity gained through different characters can the authors depict the play of forces which is in their soul. You know the saying: "You have to have a little chaos in your heart to give birth to a dancing star." --- from list nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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