Recently Tom Blancato wrote:
>It seems to me that the problem with Heidegger, in this context, is his
>failure to broach the question/problem of violence.
>
>Tom B.
Sorry Tom, I hate to do critique by citing over-sights, but Heidegger posed
questions concerning violence throughout. As an example in 'An Introduction
to Metaphysics' Heidegger reads Sophocles and finds in the Antigone the
word "deinotaton". Man is deinotaton: the strangest of the strange, the
terrible in the sense of overpowering power that can hold itself in check.
But also:
"... deinon means the powerful in the sense of one who uses power, who not
only disposes of power but is violent insofar as the use of power is the
basic trait not only of his action but also of his being-there (dasein).
Here we use the word violence in an essential sense extending beyond the
common usage of the word, as mere arbitrary brutality. In this common usage
violence is seen from the standpoint of a realm which draws its standards
>from conventional compromise and mutual aid, and which accordingly
disparages all violence as a disturbance of the peace."
Heidegger here is stressing Sophocles' thought that human-being is
essentially violent in the sense that animals are not, in the sense that
the human will not remain at home, at peace with the homely, departing from
the familiar, un-resting, reck-less (without reck - care-less). Precisely
customary notions of violence derive from this elemental thought of
violence. At other points in Heidegger's thought the very irruption of
Language is seen as violence - to tear the air with articulation, to
scratch the surface with the marks that become the very epitome of human
domination of the planet. Nietzsche's prison-house of language becomes also
a violent power-house: the power-house that imprisons through its very
possibility of power - power is con-fine-ment, limit. McLuhan plays with
the notion that the technological outering of our sense-lives in tools,
gadgets, language etc results in the amputation of those sensory realms
within us - they become numbed. Number numbs. The very existence of numbers
marks a trace of violence culminating in a mind-numbing multiplication of
hiroshimas. As Heidegger says: the greatest danger will arise precisely if
we do *not* engage in nuclear war. Violence is our ever-present danger,
like nihilism it is wedded to the very fact of being and remaining human.
peace brother
MP
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>It seems to me that the problem with Heidegger, in this context, is his
>failure to broach the question/problem of violence.
>
>Tom B.
Sorry Tom, I hate to do critique by citing over-sights, but Heidegger posed
questions concerning violence throughout. As an example in 'An Introduction
to Metaphysics' Heidegger reads Sophocles and finds in the Antigone the
word "deinotaton". Man is deinotaton: the strangest of the strange, the
terrible in the sense of overpowering power that can hold itself in check.
But also:
"... deinon means the powerful in the sense of one who uses power, who not
only disposes of power but is violent insofar as the use of power is the
basic trait not only of his action but also of his being-there (dasein).
Here we use the word violence in an essential sense extending beyond the
common usage of the word, as mere arbitrary brutality. In this common usage
violence is seen from the standpoint of a realm which draws its standards
>from conventional compromise and mutual aid, and which accordingly
disparages all violence as a disturbance of the peace."
Heidegger here is stressing Sophocles' thought that human-being is
essentially violent in the sense that animals are not, in the sense that
the human will not remain at home, at peace with the homely, departing from
the familiar, un-resting, reck-less (without reck - care-less). Precisely
customary notions of violence derive from this elemental thought of
violence. At other points in Heidegger's thought the very irruption of
Language is seen as violence - to tear the air with articulation, to
scratch the surface with the marks that become the very epitome of human
domination of the planet. Nietzsche's prison-house of language becomes also
a violent power-house: the power-house that imprisons through its very
possibility of power - power is con-fine-ment, limit. McLuhan plays with
the notion that the technological outering of our sense-lives in tools,
gadgets, language etc results in the amputation of those sensory realms
within us - they become numbed. Number numbs. The very existence of numbers
marks a trace of violence culminating in a mind-numbing multiplication of
hiroshimas. As Heidegger says: the greatest danger will arise precisely if
we do *not* engage in nuclear war. Violence is our ever-present danger,
like nihilism it is wedded to the very fact of being and remaining human.
peace brother
MP
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