>
>But, neither is there anything unconventional. Isn't this
>philology or anthropology?...etymologies?
>...simply by naming language "the house of being", has he
>magically rendered it other than "ontical"?
>Isn't H equivocating ontological primordiality and the
>chronologically primitive?
>
Robert, I'm not sure I really understand what you are asking. I'll leave
the policing of the borders between philosophy and philology or
anthropology to those who believe in it (living in a state that passed Prop
187, the xenophobic insularity of the border patrol frightens me, to be
honest). Heidegger is, for the most part, quite clear that that can be no
rigorous distinction between ontic and ontological (that they 'infect' each
other of necessity). Even in B&T, where he tries the hardest to separate
them, he always maintains that our only access to the ontological is
through the ontic. This is his method of phenomeonogical attestation
(Bezeugung); e.g., to elucidate the ontological phenomena whereby human
beings constantly eradicate possibilities of themselves (by choosing to be
this rather than that), he passes of necessity through the ontic
understanding of guilt. To argue that human being is groundless, he
focuses on and interprets anxiety (ontic). His arguments, his 'ontological
analyses,' are convincing only insofar as he successfully roots those
(ontological) analyses in an persuasive interpretation of the (ontic)
phenomena with which we are already familiar. That being said, there are
moments when Heidegger connects metaphysics with language so closely that
he seems forced to conclude that to escape metaphysics we need an entirely
new language, a new way of speaking. But again, like destuktion in B&T,
the point is not to eradicate the familiar, but to clear away the ordinary
ways in which the familiar is understood in order to facilitate the
recovery of a deeper meaning. And yes, there is a clear connection between
chronological originarity and ontological fullness, because Heidegger's
history of Being tells the story of a fall, a falling away from a more
resonant and powerful experience of Being. According to his history of
Being, we are coming full circle: philosophy began in wonder--Pindar was
in awe in the face of the overwhelming power of Being. Such an experience
has become quite rare (Kant called it the sublime). In fact, in less than
3000 years we have gone from being overwhelmed by Being to 'grasping' it
out of existence; the irony is that our fear in the face of that which we
could not explain and control led us to such lengths of control that that
which in principle resists our conceptual totalizations (Being) no longer
shows up at all, except in exceptional moments to the poet.
>There's nothing exceptionable here:(to summarize):
>Ethos is comportment, or character (Ajax or Achilles);
>logos, speech/reason (Odysseus' dialectical skill);
>and mythos, worldview (the circumambient Gods/agencies,
>benign and malignant, which bear irresistably upon man's existence,
>Night and Day, winter/summer, birth/deaht, etc).
Here you've missed the point, and, perhaps illustrating our general
difficulty hearing the strange except as the familiar, you seem to have
domesticated an unheimlich analysis in order to grasp it. So let me try
again. How does being come into being? (Why is there being rather than
nothing, Heidegger asks.) How does being (first?) happen in time? How is
presence bestowed to the earth, how does it fold back upon itself in a
reflective act of naming? All naming speaks out of a 'mood' or aeffective
attunement. The original attunement of humanity to being is aidos, awe or
wonder (this is Heidegger's reading of Socrates' 'Philosophy begins in
wonder'). We are originally overwhelmed in the face of being, it is
'awesome' in the original sense of the word, it is too much for us. In
order to defend ourselves against the terror of being so overwhelmed, we
attempt to name being, to circumscribe it, give it limits, get it under
control, domesticate it. Thus even the first name, phusis, circumscribes
being, fences it in--and of necessity fails to contain the fullness of
Being. But how can the 'self-emerging blossoming' of beings be a
circumscription of being? Beings emerge into presence, they linger for a
while, and then pass away. What does that description of being fail to
understand? To answer _that_ question, Heidegger turns to mythos. Before
Being was thought and names as phusis, it was expressed in myth as the
genetive opposition of night and day. Heidegger interprets this as
follows. Before it was experienced and named as phusis, being was
understood as the concealing-unconcealing play of light and dark, and this
understanding (a-letheia) is that of which mythos speaks.
Just as mythos needs to be understood in terms of the first namings of
Being into being, so do ethos and logos. Ethos is comportment in the sense
of the courage (and madness and suicide) of Ajax only insofar as that
comportment is an embodied stand on being, i.e., insofar as Ajax's
comportment testifies to an embodied understanding of being, such that by
interpreting that stand, we may be able to unearth something of the Homeric
understanding of being: mortality demands the struggle for honor beneath
the gaze of the gods; life without that honor is not life, e.g. As with
B&T's phenomenological attestation, the only route to the ontological (the
understanding of being) is *through* the ontic (comportment). Ethos, as
how one comports oneself 'in the midst of beings,' is potentially
revelatory of the understanding of being. And Logos isn't Odysseus's
discursive dexterity, it is a name for the way beings are 'layed-out' in
the understanding of being holding sway in a given historical epoch. Logos
goes back to the 'fire' of Heraclitus at least, and describes the general
order of things; Aristotle defines human *exceptionality* by referring to
logos; humans are that part of the structure of the universe that is able
to make that order explicit. We are the part of the logos that can
articulate the logos.
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>But, neither is there anything unconventional. Isn't this
>philology or anthropology?...etymologies?
>...simply by naming language "the house of being", has he
>magically rendered it other than "ontical"?
>Isn't H equivocating ontological primordiality and the
>chronologically primitive?
>
Robert, I'm not sure I really understand what you are asking. I'll leave
the policing of the borders between philosophy and philology or
anthropology to those who believe in it (living in a state that passed Prop
187, the xenophobic insularity of the border patrol frightens me, to be
honest). Heidegger is, for the most part, quite clear that that can be no
rigorous distinction between ontic and ontological (that they 'infect' each
other of necessity). Even in B&T, where he tries the hardest to separate
them, he always maintains that our only access to the ontological is
through the ontic. This is his method of phenomeonogical attestation
(Bezeugung); e.g., to elucidate the ontological phenomena whereby human
beings constantly eradicate possibilities of themselves (by choosing to be
this rather than that), he passes of necessity through the ontic
understanding of guilt. To argue that human being is groundless, he
focuses on and interprets anxiety (ontic). His arguments, his 'ontological
analyses,' are convincing only insofar as he successfully roots those
(ontological) analyses in an persuasive interpretation of the (ontic)
phenomena with which we are already familiar. That being said, there are
moments when Heidegger connects metaphysics with language so closely that
he seems forced to conclude that to escape metaphysics we need an entirely
new language, a new way of speaking. But again, like destuktion in B&T,
the point is not to eradicate the familiar, but to clear away the ordinary
ways in which the familiar is understood in order to facilitate the
recovery of a deeper meaning. And yes, there is a clear connection between
chronological originarity and ontological fullness, because Heidegger's
history of Being tells the story of a fall, a falling away from a more
resonant and powerful experience of Being. According to his history of
Being, we are coming full circle: philosophy began in wonder--Pindar was
in awe in the face of the overwhelming power of Being. Such an experience
has become quite rare (Kant called it the sublime). In fact, in less than
3000 years we have gone from being overwhelmed by Being to 'grasping' it
out of existence; the irony is that our fear in the face of that which we
could not explain and control led us to such lengths of control that that
which in principle resists our conceptual totalizations (Being) no longer
shows up at all, except in exceptional moments to the poet.
>There's nothing exceptionable here:(to summarize):
>Ethos is comportment, or character (Ajax or Achilles);
>logos, speech/reason (Odysseus' dialectical skill);
>and mythos, worldview (the circumambient Gods/agencies,
>benign and malignant, which bear irresistably upon man's existence,
>Night and Day, winter/summer, birth/deaht, etc).
Here you've missed the point, and, perhaps illustrating our general
difficulty hearing the strange except as the familiar, you seem to have
domesticated an unheimlich analysis in order to grasp it. So let me try
again. How does being come into being? (Why is there being rather than
nothing, Heidegger asks.) How does being (first?) happen in time? How is
presence bestowed to the earth, how does it fold back upon itself in a
reflective act of naming? All naming speaks out of a 'mood' or aeffective
attunement. The original attunement of humanity to being is aidos, awe or
wonder (this is Heidegger's reading of Socrates' 'Philosophy begins in
wonder'). We are originally overwhelmed in the face of being, it is
'awesome' in the original sense of the word, it is too much for us. In
order to defend ourselves against the terror of being so overwhelmed, we
attempt to name being, to circumscribe it, give it limits, get it under
control, domesticate it. Thus even the first name, phusis, circumscribes
being, fences it in--and of necessity fails to contain the fullness of
Being. But how can the 'self-emerging blossoming' of beings be a
circumscription of being? Beings emerge into presence, they linger for a
while, and then pass away. What does that description of being fail to
understand? To answer _that_ question, Heidegger turns to mythos. Before
Being was thought and names as phusis, it was expressed in myth as the
genetive opposition of night and day. Heidegger interprets this as
follows. Before it was experienced and named as phusis, being was
understood as the concealing-unconcealing play of light and dark, and this
understanding (a-letheia) is that of which mythos speaks.
Just as mythos needs to be understood in terms of the first namings of
Being into being, so do ethos and logos. Ethos is comportment in the sense
of the courage (and madness and suicide) of Ajax only insofar as that
comportment is an embodied stand on being, i.e., insofar as Ajax's
comportment testifies to an embodied understanding of being, such that by
interpreting that stand, we may be able to unearth something of the Homeric
understanding of being: mortality demands the struggle for honor beneath
the gaze of the gods; life without that honor is not life, e.g. As with
B&T's phenomenological attestation, the only route to the ontological (the
understanding of being) is *through* the ontic (comportment). Ethos, as
how one comports oneself 'in the midst of beings,' is potentially
revelatory of the understanding of being. And Logos isn't Odysseus's
discursive dexterity, it is a name for the way beings are 'layed-out' in
the understanding of being holding sway in a given historical epoch. Logos
goes back to the 'fire' of Heraclitus at least, and describes the general
order of things; Aristotle defines human *exceptionality* by referring to
logos; humans are that part of the structure of the universe that is able
to make that order explicit. We are the part of the logos that can
articulate the logos.
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---