Hey! Something I posted yesterday apparently went over the list again
this morning. Sorry, if anybody got doubled. I had some trouble with
postings yesterday and have been in contact with a list manager, who I
guess reposted it.
I've been enjoying my private correspondences with listmembers about the
Babich flame-wars, mostly because the ethics of virtual communities work
into some interests of mine about Shakespeare. In the early theater,
watching a play was a form of self-exposition, as is apparently also
lurking on electronic lists. Once, in 1632 the Earl of
Essex and Lord Thurles, both 21, got into a contention at Blackfriars over
stools on the stage on which they were sitting and drew their swords and
began thrashing away for real at each other -- this, with two stage actors
having a stage duel at the same time. Who knows what the folks had
really come to see.
Laurence Paul Hemming raises the very interesting issue of consensus in
Heidegger, but not before permitting himself a commentary on the endless
drivel that has dominated the list, of which he is a critic but not a
participant. I think its clear to everybody that this distinction no
longer plays. The people who came in late to critizise this flame are
now indistinguishable from it -- as is witnessed by the recent exchanges
between Suzanne and Michael Antonucci. There might be a way into talking
about consensus here, Laurence, if you'll let me run with the ball a little.
The thing about flames is it turns us all into flamers. There has been a
great body of literature and philosophy written about this kind of thing,
and about the doubling effect of insult and rage, so I won't go into it
here. The many exchanges on this list accusing the other of "doing
exactly what you're criticizing" proove my point well enough. Talk seems
to have this weird prerequisite: to talk with Babich you must in many
respects share the language she uses, one becomes Babich. Surely,
everybody can see right away how a complaint re drivel is not only going
to provoke more of the same, but is itself drivel.
So, now, doesn't the ready-to-hand have to be, by definition, "ready" for
all hands? I wonder whether it makes sense to elevate Heidegger in this
context as an opponent of consensus. There is a debate about whether
authenticity in Heidegger throws Dasein back onto itself or whether it is
impossible without praxis and the polis. But, I don't think Heidegger
would ever argue that what begins in Kant as transcendence can't
"transcend" unless it does so for everybody. It's everybody's hammer --
that's why its the poet who can utter the words that found the state;
that's why it has to be a painting of the peasant's shoes and not the
shoes themselves. Have I got this right?
Also re consensus, I'd like to propose we try to say something here about
the amazing ego of Heidegger himself and the important differences (re
consensus) in the iconoclast of the Davos Conference and the man who wore
his Nazi party pin all through the Rome conference. Wouldn't it be the
case that Heidegger the iconoclast was so because of his more or less
relentless interrogation of the ways in which each of us knows we share a
world that can be shared -- this, he does both within the Categories, as
in the Kant book, and without them, as in his read of Aristotle's
Metaphysics Theta. Yes?
These are just some ideas I'm trying to work through. I hope they make
sense.
Michael
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