The threads of this conversation are getting a little tangled, but what else can
one expect from a worldwide web? Today I'd like to take up only a few and spin
this yarn a little further.
I wrote:
"The very simplicity of the thinking of being is the hardest (lightest) thing
(not) to grasp. Thus it is useless in any institutional context."
Erik Champion responded:
"Zen is "revealed" by monks: are they institutionalised? Was the School of
Athens an institution? Can institutes by being how they are, reveal to us that
which they are not?"
Zen is not a tradition or practice of thinking and thus also not a thinking of
beyng. The School of Athens is a painting, or to be more hermeneutically
generous, was the beginnings of the metaphysical tradition, whose destiny it was
to think the beyng of beings (tò ón hei ón). This is not the thinking of beyng,
whose onset comes at the culminating completion of the metaphysical epoch, the
first beginning. The thinking of beyng in a certain sense turns away from beings
to translate beyng itself into language. Whereas metaphysical thought has the
structure of poiesis, of guiding forth the beyng of beings into the open and
placing it into the images (ideas) of the categories, this is not the care of
the thinking of beyng. Metaphysical thought was and is the presupposition to
opening up beings to the grasp of knowledge and thus in setting up beings in
line with human will. Penetrating the beyng of beings (knowledge) and setting
them up the way humankind wants is regarded as useful so that it comes as no
surprise that the sciences themselves are set up in institutions. The thinking
of beyng, on the other hand, does not serve humankind, and cannot be set up. It
is a step back from thinking that has humankind at the centre, which has reached
its culmination in the modern subject, who underlies everything that is.
Institutions may well be and sometimes are the sites of the thinking of beyng,
but institutions as institutions are by no means such sites.
Erik Champion writes further, quoting me once again:
"'Thus it is useless in any institutional context.'
Yet it appears there. And so did Heidegger, someone who wanted and became
Rector."
Where it was indeed useless.
And further:
"i was talking about intention as used in so-called Anglo-American writings on
philosophy of art."
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the context. I took intention in the
philosophical sense of a directedness of consciousness towards entities. So I
don't understand what you're getting at.
Shane Denson writes:
"I would like to hear whether anyone else sees/ does not see the similarities
between Heidegger and Taoism."
I have to pass on the combination Heidegger and Taoism, but on the similarities
between the thinking of beyng and Zen it has struck me that when Japanese
authors with a Zen background write in a Heideggerian context, I sense they are
coming from an entirely different tradition, despite tantalizing affinities. The
parasyntactic mode of the Japanese language contrasts with the discursive
traditions of Western language/thinking. As far as I know, there is no thinking
of the difference between beyng and beings, i.e. beings as such, in any Eastern
tradition.
As far as I know, Heidegger had much more contact with visitors from Japan than
>from China. He had a series of Japanese students in Freiburg. The Japanese, it
seems, were attracted to Heidegger by the fact that only with his thinking could
one begin to see what the Western tradition of thinking as a whole was and is -
by virtue of the step back.
Lois Shawver writes:
"My more casual reading of Heidegger's later philosophy suggests that poesis
creates Being through the creation of new metaphors (or metaphorical
applications) which makes a clearing in the darkness by showing us
similarities."
I take issue with saying that poiesis creates beyng. Beyng is not creatable at
all, because it would be then tied back to an entity as creator. The poiesis of
art may help create the beyng of beings by helping to decide AS what entities
(beings) will appear in the clearing of beyng's revealedness. But metaphor is
something that only exists in metaphysics, relying as it does on transferring
meaning from a sensible entity to an intelligible one, or a 'proper' meaning to
a 'wider' or metaphorical one. For the thinking of beyng there is no
metaphor, no proper 'root' meaning, but instead the answering of the call of
beyng from which meaning may be culled. The beyng of beings comes from beyng and
thus their meaning too. The meaning of beings does not come (or only comes
metaphysically) from transferring meanings from one entity to another. In the
thinking of beyng, there is, strangely, only one phenomenon: beyng (cf. the
beginning of Being and Time). All language is metaphorical, so all language
is also non-metaphorical. There is no point of reference to which a
'metaphorical' meaning could be referred back to.
Michael Pennamacoor wrote:
"In the same essay as the above quote, Heidegger goes on to suggest the
primordial priority of language in the thoughtful activity of enabling the
coming to presence of Being, hopefully adding to the recent (list-wise) interest
in the extra-ordinary attention paid by Heidegger to language, especially in the
'poem'."
For the task of thinking, there seems to be no question regarding the priority
of language. In my earlier eMail I have gone into more depth about the priority
of language with regard to the artwork. To correspond to beyng and belong to it
I would suggest that the primordial act is to listen to the stillness of its
opening and become attuned with it. Thinking comes from listening, not the other
way round.
Regarding beyng needing humankind, Heidegger's interpretation of Parmenides
turns on this.
Enough! Cheers!
Michael Eldred ° artefact text and translation \\\ /// '''''''
artefact@xxxxxxxxxxx °°° made by art °°° ( ~ L ~ ) [ ° U ° ]
http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ { <-> } *( \_/ )*
vox: (++49 221) 9520 333 fax: (++49 221) 9520 334 \___/ / \
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
one expect from a worldwide web? Today I'd like to take up only a few and spin
this yarn a little further.
I wrote:
"The very simplicity of the thinking of being is the hardest (lightest) thing
(not) to grasp. Thus it is useless in any institutional context."
Erik Champion responded:
"Zen is "revealed" by monks: are they institutionalised? Was the School of
Athens an institution? Can institutes by being how they are, reveal to us that
which they are not?"
Zen is not a tradition or practice of thinking and thus also not a thinking of
beyng. The School of Athens is a painting, or to be more hermeneutically
generous, was the beginnings of the metaphysical tradition, whose destiny it was
to think the beyng of beings (tò ón hei ón). This is not the thinking of beyng,
whose onset comes at the culminating completion of the metaphysical epoch, the
first beginning. The thinking of beyng in a certain sense turns away from beings
to translate beyng itself into language. Whereas metaphysical thought has the
structure of poiesis, of guiding forth the beyng of beings into the open and
placing it into the images (ideas) of the categories, this is not the care of
the thinking of beyng. Metaphysical thought was and is the presupposition to
opening up beings to the grasp of knowledge and thus in setting up beings in
line with human will. Penetrating the beyng of beings (knowledge) and setting
them up the way humankind wants is regarded as useful so that it comes as no
surprise that the sciences themselves are set up in institutions. The thinking
of beyng, on the other hand, does not serve humankind, and cannot be set up. It
is a step back from thinking that has humankind at the centre, which has reached
its culmination in the modern subject, who underlies everything that is.
Institutions may well be and sometimes are the sites of the thinking of beyng,
but institutions as institutions are by no means such sites.
Erik Champion writes further, quoting me once again:
"'Thus it is useless in any institutional context.'
Yet it appears there. And so did Heidegger, someone who wanted and became
Rector."
Where it was indeed useless.
And further:
"i was talking about intention as used in so-called Anglo-American writings on
philosophy of art."
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the context. I took intention in the
philosophical sense of a directedness of consciousness towards entities. So I
don't understand what you're getting at.
Shane Denson writes:
"I would like to hear whether anyone else sees/ does not see the similarities
between Heidegger and Taoism."
I have to pass on the combination Heidegger and Taoism, but on the similarities
between the thinking of beyng and Zen it has struck me that when Japanese
authors with a Zen background write in a Heideggerian context, I sense they are
coming from an entirely different tradition, despite tantalizing affinities. The
parasyntactic mode of the Japanese language contrasts with the discursive
traditions of Western language/thinking. As far as I know, there is no thinking
of the difference between beyng and beings, i.e. beings as such, in any Eastern
tradition.
As far as I know, Heidegger had much more contact with visitors from Japan than
>from China. He had a series of Japanese students in Freiburg. The Japanese, it
seems, were attracted to Heidegger by the fact that only with his thinking could
one begin to see what the Western tradition of thinking as a whole was and is -
by virtue of the step back.
Lois Shawver writes:
"My more casual reading of Heidegger's later philosophy suggests that poesis
creates Being through the creation of new metaphors (or metaphorical
applications) which makes a clearing in the darkness by showing us
similarities."
I take issue with saying that poiesis creates beyng. Beyng is not creatable at
all, because it would be then tied back to an entity as creator. The poiesis of
art may help create the beyng of beings by helping to decide AS what entities
(beings) will appear in the clearing of beyng's revealedness. But metaphor is
something that only exists in metaphysics, relying as it does on transferring
meaning from a sensible entity to an intelligible one, or a 'proper' meaning to
a 'wider' or metaphorical one. For the thinking of beyng there is no
metaphor, no proper 'root' meaning, but instead the answering of the call of
beyng from which meaning may be culled. The beyng of beings comes from beyng and
thus their meaning too. The meaning of beings does not come (or only comes
metaphysically) from transferring meanings from one entity to another. In the
thinking of beyng, there is, strangely, only one phenomenon: beyng (cf. the
beginning of Being and Time). All language is metaphorical, so all language
is also non-metaphorical. There is no point of reference to which a
'metaphorical' meaning could be referred back to.
Michael Pennamacoor wrote:
"In the same essay as the above quote, Heidegger goes on to suggest the
primordial priority of language in the thoughtful activity of enabling the
coming to presence of Being, hopefully adding to the recent (list-wise) interest
in the extra-ordinary attention paid by Heidegger to language, especially in the
'poem'."
For the task of thinking, there seems to be no question regarding the priority
of language. In my earlier eMail I have gone into more depth about the priority
of language with regard to the artwork. To correspond to beyng and belong to it
I would suggest that the primordial act is to listen to the stillness of its
opening and become attuned with it. Thinking comes from listening, not the other
way round.
Regarding beyng needing humankind, Heidegger's interpretation of Parmenides
turns on this.
Enough! Cheers!
Michael Eldred ° artefact text and translation \\\ /// '''''''
artefact@xxxxxxxxxxx °°° made by art °°° ( ~ L ~ ) [ ° U ° ]
http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ { <-> } *( \_/ )*
vox: (++49 221) 9520 333 fax: (++49 221) 9520 334 \___/ / \
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---