Re: Heidegger's use of the word "polis"

>
> the unapologized to babette babich finds much interesting in the
> theme Iain addresses, would however wish for a better treatment.
>
> The claim that the effort is serious (Iain's self-description)
> notwithstanding -- but hey, this is just one viewpoint. the
> technology of the game here does tend to reward a great
> deal of selfabsorption. i for one find it more tolerable
> when it is a bit briefer ....but please, please carry on.
>
> I was a speed reader in college anyway ...
>
> NB: for those who might wonder what a better treatment
> would look like, let me just suggest that the problem
> begins with the framing, indeed the asking of the question
>
> And there are too few of these metaphysical guys interested
> in thinking through the question.
> Disclaimer! i.e., as it seems to me,
> (and you all just scrolled through an infinity of
> things as they are on Iain's blue guitar...)
> Babette
>
Thanks to Babette Babich for twice giving us permission to talk
about Heidegger on a Heidegger list.

To address a few of your insinuations:

That I (overconfidently) think I'm a poet because I believe in the
possibility of a community forming based in part on people like
ourselves coming together to discuss issues that concern them: if
that were true, that i thought myself a poet, which I don't, would
that be such a terrible thing? Fortunately, since I think community
is generally a good thing, one doesn't have to think they are a poet
in order to think they may be contributing to the formation of a
community. (I don't think being deliberately hurtful because you
don't like the way another person speaks, acts, or looks--when that
person is not hurting anyone else by speaking, acting, or looking
that way--is a particularly useful contribution to any community
anywhere.) Babich's comments presuppose that working toward the
beginning of a community (I said 'response is the beginning of
responsibility, co-respondence is the beginning of community; she
wrote back, glad to hear that you think yourself a poet.. confidence
is a great thing...) is the sole province of the poet. Despite
Heidegger's attempts to rethink the German community based on the
poetry of Hoelderlin, he did not share her views. Hediegger thought
of the thinker as an intermediary of poet and humanity (much as the
poet was an intermediary between gods and humanity); the poet risks
losing humanity in the attempt to reenvision what is--the thinker's
task is to *read* the poet, to think their way into the
understanding embodied in the poem or poetic naming, and to thereby
"disseminate" (as Derrrida has it) that other way of understanding
ourselves and our place "in" the world. Those who work towayd
community are those who try and think through a new way of
understanding Being--to think through the poets--rather than the
poets themselves. Perhaps here and now, our atempt to think through
the thinker thinking through the poet (or "poetic teaching of
Parmenides" as Heid often writes) is neither irrelevant nor wholly
inappropriate as an act of community, an act of reflexive historical
dialogue.

Besides this overconfidence, Babich alleges (above) that I (and
unnamed others) are metaphysicians exploiting the propensity toward
"selfabsorption" of this technological medium. How ironic, given
that she then suggests that she knows what a "better treatment might
look like", and, further irony, that this treatment involves the
"framing" of the question! Such a concern with framing sounds much
closer to technological metaphysics to me, but if really she does
have a better treatment of the issues we've recently been discussing
(issues which have not been much discussed here or elsewhere, to my
knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong) I would certainly rather
here about that than continued sarcasm and innuendo.

And my blue guitar? If I were a poet, I suppose I might have some
clue as to what that is supposed to mean...

Iain


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Folow-ups
  • Re: Heidegger's use of the word "polis"
    • From: James McFarland
  • Replies
    Re: Heidegger's use of the word "polis", Babette Babich
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