Tom Blancato (but not-placato) recently in response to Michael
El(the-not)Dred(ful):
>Heidegger actively encounters the
>question of violence, in a kind of momentary good form, when he prepares
>his own way to go against the thinking of western metaphysics.
[snip]
>Along the way, there must be some violence. A certain virility
>of thought well articulated vis a vis violence generally in _Introduction
>to Metaphysics_.
Given the recent posts attempting to think (I hope care-fully) the
meaning(s) of Verwindung which is the relation of Heidegger's thought to
that of the metaphysical tradition and its current epoch of the
Frame/Enframing and the petrified standing-reserve of the essence of modern
technology, it is indeed strange that one should have to return once again
to the notion that Heidegger's thinking prepared a way to "go against the
thinking of western metaphysics". A part from this, is "violence" a
going-against (in a textual con text here)? And is this violent
going-against displayed in "a certain virility"? I can not accept (yet)
that going-against is necessarily or even anyway -- violence. More than
this, I have never read the works under the name of 'Heidegger' as
displaying a going-against-thinking (of...), despite the virile-sounding
translations of the three-ish modes of thinking-metaphysics as Destruktion,
Ueberwindung and Verwindung (as destruction, overcoming, and twisting-free
(?)). In the text 'An Introduction to Metaphysics' Heidegger shines an
extraordinary and searching light upon the metaphysical tradition,
displaying both what is the Same (Heraclitus and Parmenides as the Same)
and what is set-apart: which is where polemos enters the discussion.
Michael Eldred helps us out:
>I prefer to translate Heraclitus' polemos as strife. This provides a way of
>avoiding the set-up, double-bind choice between being violent or non-violent.
Heidegger informs us that polemos (usually trans-lated as war) is struggle,
setting-apart "... the conflict of the conflicting, that sets the essential
and the nonessential, the high and the low, in their limits and makes them
manifest." (Introduction... p114) Such strife is a playful setting apart of
that which is setting-apart as it sets. It would seem that without such
strife, such polemos, the struggle, the contest would be won once and for
all, and the world would col-lapse, would fall into nothingness. The
'world' as a game of hiding and showing, of hide and seek, of nearing and
withdrawing, of this-ing and that-ing: this is polemos.
In a word, polemos (in the Heraclitean sense) is what manifests beings as
beings in their rifting with others and them selves. In Fragment 51,
Heraclitus can be heard saying that: how, being brought apart, it is
brought together with itself. This 'it' is the only 'it' that can be:
Being. Being is a-part in that it is with it self. As an example, man (in
its whatness) shows itself in the setting-apart of men and gods (Fragment
53 translated by Kirk&Raven: "Polemos is the father of all and king of all,
and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others
free." This is not violence but the silent a-parting and parting of Being.
This finds an echo in the Heideggerian suggestion by way of Sophocles that
the human is the most strange (to deinotaton), the e-stranged, the
un-canny, the not-at-home, the a-part-ed one. Man as deinon must wrest
Being from unconcealment because Being tends to hide it self (Fragment 123
"Being inclines intrinsically to self-concealment" translated by
Heidegger). This (violent?) wresting occurs, eventuates as the instituting
in 'art' (techne). The violence of techne occurs in a confrontation with
dike (justice?) as physis (the always emerging emergency, the 'order of
things' that cohere in their kinship, the utterly 'overpowering'): this is
man as historical-being. The sense of violence here is not that of
destruction or smashing things up. It is rather an intrusion (?),
excursion, quest, questing into the already overpowering (physis) to light
up the other-wise concealed/forgotten in order to set a-part that which is
already setting and setting apart. Path-making, path-treading, the human is
human. In 'art', in 'thinking', in instituting, in grounding, the human is
humanising.
Michael Eldred again:
>To be in thinking means that your whole existence is involved. Thinking is a
>bodily activity.
Yes. Exactly. Thinking is nearness is nearing to Being; not (merely or any
way) the cerebral parading of opinion or display of empty cleverness --
although these are the temptations, always present and im-possible to
remove, the distraction of thinking. The body as that which can be tempted
by the pleasures of distraction... is necessarily in-volved with this
nearing to Being. It is the con-text. It is strife.
Must go eat.
MP
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
El(the-not)Dred(ful):
>Heidegger actively encounters the
>question of violence, in a kind of momentary good form, when he prepares
>his own way to go against the thinking of western metaphysics.
[snip]
>Along the way, there must be some violence. A certain virility
>of thought well articulated vis a vis violence generally in _Introduction
>to Metaphysics_.
Given the recent posts attempting to think (I hope care-fully) the
meaning(s) of Verwindung which is the relation of Heidegger's thought to
that of the metaphysical tradition and its current epoch of the
Frame/Enframing and the petrified standing-reserve of the essence of modern
technology, it is indeed strange that one should have to return once again
to the notion that Heidegger's thinking prepared a way to "go against the
thinking of western metaphysics". A part from this, is "violence" a
going-against (in a textual con text here)? And is this violent
going-against displayed in "a certain virility"? I can not accept (yet)
that going-against is necessarily or even anyway -- violence. More than
this, I have never read the works under the name of 'Heidegger' as
displaying a going-against-thinking (of...), despite the virile-sounding
translations of the three-ish modes of thinking-metaphysics as Destruktion,
Ueberwindung and Verwindung (as destruction, overcoming, and twisting-free
(?)). In the text 'An Introduction to Metaphysics' Heidegger shines an
extraordinary and searching light upon the metaphysical tradition,
displaying both what is the Same (Heraclitus and Parmenides as the Same)
and what is set-apart: which is where polemos enters the discussion.
Michael Eldred helps us out:
>I prefer to translate Heraclitus' polemos as strife. This provides a way of
>avoiding the set-up, double-bind choice between being violent or non-violent.
Heidegger informs us that polemos (usually trans-lated as war) is struggle,
setting-apart "... the conflict of the conflicting, that sets the essential
and the nonessential, the high and the low, in their limits and makes them
manifest." (Introduction... p114) Such strife is a playful setting apart of
that which is setting-apart as it sets. It would seem that without such
strife, such polemos, the struggle, the contest would be won once and for
all, and the world would col-lapse, would fall into nothingness. The
'world' as a game of hiding and showing, of hide and seek, of nearing and
withdrawing, of this-ing and that-ing: this is polemos.
In a word, polemos (in the Heraclitean sense) is what manifests beings as
beings in their rifting with others and them selves. In Fragment 51,
Heraclitus can be heard saying that: how, being brought apart, it is
brought together with itself. This 'it' is the only 'it' that can be:
Being. Being is a-part in that it is with it self. As an example, man (in
its whatness) shows itself in the setting-apart of men and gods (Fragment
53 translated by Kirk&Raven: "Polemos is the father of all and king of all,
and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others
free." This is not violence but the silent a-parting and parting of Being.
This finds an echo in the Heideggerian suggestion by way of Sophocles that
the human is the most strange (to deinotaton), the e-stranged, the
un-canny, the not-at-home, the a-part-ed one. Man as deinon must wrest
Being from unconcealment because Being tends to hide it self (Fragment 123
"Being inclines intrinsically to self-concealment" translated by
Heidegger). This (violent?) wresting occurs, eventuates as the instituting
in 'art' (techne). The violence of techne occurs in a confrontation with
dike (justice?) as physis (the always emerging emergency, the 'order of
things' that cohere in their kinship, the utterly 'overpowering'): this is
man as historical-being. The sense of violence here is not that of
destruction or smashing things up. It is rather an intrusion (?),
excursion, quest, questing into the already overpowering (physis) to light
up the other-wise concealed/forgotten in order to set a-part that which is
already setting and setting apart. Path-making, path-treading, the human is
human. In 'art', in 'thinking', in instituting, in grounding, the human is
humanising.
Michael Eldred again:
>To be in thinking means that your whole existence is involved. Thinking is a
>bodily activity.
Yes. Exactly. Thinking is nearness is nearing to Being; not (merely or any
way) the cerebral parading of opinion or display of empty cleverness --
although these are the temptations, always present and im-possible to
remove, the distraction of thinking. The body as that which can be tempted
by the pleasures of distraction... is necessarily in-volved with this
nearing to Being. It is the con-text. It is strife.
Must go eat.
MP
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---