There is another way to interpret Heidegger's insistence on the
importance of 'myth.' In _Parmenides_ (1943), Heidegger notes that
the Greeks had three words for 'word.' If 'language is the house of
being,' such that language constitutes intelligibility, these words
for word become very important. The three words are ethos, logos,
and mythos. One way to understand these three words for word would
look back to B&T, where ethos would be 'understanding' (the
understanding we embody, verstanden, and only make explicit from out
of that embodied understanding in 'interpretation,' auslegung),
logos would be 'telling,' and mythos would be befindlichkeit,
aeffectivity. But if we avoid reading the themes of B&T into the
middle work, a better way to understand ethos, logos and mythos
would be as follows. The word is originally the name, the naming of
a thing into its being (thus nomos is both name and law, and Yahweh,
(presence?) gives Adam (earth, adamah) power over or care for beings
when He give him the right to name them (perhaps, presence gives to
earth the capacity to name things into being, to put a name on them
as they first appear in the presence, delimiting and circumscribing
them in an original and thus very powerful way). So Heidegger is
concerned to understand the first names given to Being (aletheia,
phusis, logos...) in order to understand the 'comportmental
attunement' or embodied understandng of being which such names
reveal. If that, admittedly very quick sketch is right, then:
these first names or namings might be described in their various
aspects by the words for word (and here the reference to B&T becomes
relevant as Heidegger tests the categories of B&T within the new
historicity-informed post-Turn thining): Ethos would be something like the
understanding of being embodied in our comportment (the sense
Heidegger tries to explain at some length in the "letter on Humanism
"), logos would indicate (in the legein of the logos) the way
intelligibility lays itself out for human beings, and mythos would
be the name for the very first namings of being, as these nammings
show up in the work of Hesiod, Pindar, etc. " And as undrestanding
is always first revealed in aeffective attunement (Befindlichkeit in
B&T), so ethos and logos are rooted in a 'more primordial' mode of
attunment which mythos ("properly/authentically" understood,
Heidegger adds, i.e., not reduced to 'mythology') names. The
clearest example would be the Greek Cosmological understanding of
the genesis of being (being's coming into being in time) through the
chaos or void (Nox) which produces darkness, nightm light and day.
Heidegger wants to argue that this earliest naming reveals, in the
agonistic but essential coming together of light and darkness, night
and day, an understanding of the concealing-revealing at work in
A-letheia. Even phusis then, as the 'self-emerging blossoming' of
being, is a more restricted or more circumscribed naming of being
than that named by the earliest Greek mythos as night and day.
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
importance of 'myth.' In _Parmenides_ (1943), Heidegger notes that
the Greeks had three words for 'word.' If 'language is the house of
being,' such that language constitutes intelligibility, these words
for word become very important. The three words are ethos, logos,
and mythos. One way to understand these three words for word would
look back to B&T, where ethos would be 'understanding' (the
understanding we embody, verstanden, and only make explicit from out
of that embodied understanding in 'interpretation,' auslegung),
logos would be 'telling,' and mythos would be befindlichkeit,
aeffectivity. But if we avoid reading the themes of B&T into the
middle work, a better way to understand ethos, logos and mythos
would be as follows. The word is originally the name, the naming of
a thing into its being (thus nomos is both name and law, and Yahweh,
(presence?) gives Adam (earth, adamah) power over or care for beings
when He give him the right to name them (perhaps, presence gives to
earth the capacity to name things into being, to put a name on them
as they first appear in the presence, delimiting and circumscribing
them in an original and thus very powerful way). So Heidegger is
concerned to understand the first names given to Being (aletheia,
phusis, logos...) in order to understand the 'comportmental
attunement' or embodied understandng of being which such names
reveal. If that, admittedly very quick sketch is right, then:
these first names or namings might be described in their various
aspects by the words for word (and here the reference to B&T becomes
relevant as Heidegger tests the categories of B&T within the new
historicity-informed post-Turn thining): Ethos would be something like the
understanding of being embodied in our comportment (the sense
Heidegger tries to explain at some length in the "letter on Humanism
"), logos would indicate (in the legein of the logos) the way
intelligibility lays itself out for human beings, and mythos would
be the name for the very first namings of being, as these nammings
show up in the work of Hesiod, Pindar, etc. " And as undrestanding
is always first revealed in aeffective attunement (Befindlichkeit in
B&T), so ethos and logos are rooted in a 'more primordial' mode of
attunment which mythos ("properly/authentically" understood,
Heidegger adds, i.e., not reduced to 'mythology') names. The
clearest example would be the Greek Cosmological understanding of
the genesis of being (being's coming into being in time) through the
chaos or void (Nox) which produces darkness, nightm light and day.
Heidegger wants to argue that this earliest naming reveals, in the
agonistic but essential coming together of light and darkness, night
and day, an understanding of the concealing-revealing at work in
A-letheia. Even phusis then, as the 'self-emerging blossoming' of
being, is a more restricted or more circumscribed naming of being
than that named by the earliest Greek mythos as night and day.
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---