Robert Scheetz wrote:
> Paul Murphy,
>
> I hope you'll indulge me a few naive quibbles.
>
>"...instituting (stiften) opens up a primordial relationship to Being,..."
>
>Setting aside metaphors about clearings in the woods, etc.,
>that formalizing should afford access to the pre-formed, is a difficult
>proposition, no? ...form = chaos??? difficult to transcend a proneness to
>see dialectic, not identity? And the concept of chaos ("primordiality")
>itself, is it not pure metaphysical myth. It seems we are dealing in
>paradoxical metaphorical linguistic constructs of cosmic purport...
>or, in a word, "myth".
>
>
>"...poetry institutes,"
>
>That's Shelley's (i.e. Romanticism's) famous boast...
>upon which the Bonapartes of this existence perrennially
>put the definitive bloody kibosh.
>
I hope some of the generous and thoughtful posts from the past few days
have helped answer (or at least address) some of your far-from-naive
quibbles. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'form=chaos'; the question
of chaos is, however, an interesting one; Heid. interpretively translates
the Greek word 'chaos' as 'the yawning-open' (I forget the textual source,
sorry; I think it might be one of the Hoelderlin volumes). 'Primordiality'
(Urspruenglichkeit) refers not to a single, stable ground, static,
immutable and inconcussible -- a reading of SZ on the issue of what is
'gleichurspruenglich' or 'equiprimordial' to Dasein might show Heidegger's
continual opposition to the onto-theological placement or definition of the
origin as the One universal ground. If the primordial is chaos, i.e., the
yawning or gaping open giving rise to that which emerges differentially --
i.e, as differential manifestation, concealed/unconcealed or
sheltered/disclosed, an emergence whose contours are essentially defined
through conflict (Polemos is the father of all...) -- then the charges of
metaphor and myth needs some futher elaboration and substantiation. For
Heid., the most erroneous 'myth' of metaphysics is that the rational ego
irrefragably grounds itself on universal principles of logic, securing its
dominion over beings as a whole. ((Incidentally, Michael Eldred's
translation of polemos as strife is one of several translations suggested
by Heid.: 1933-35, Kampf; 1935-36: Streit (cf. Ursprung des Kunstwerks,
strife of world and earth, Urstreit der Wahrheit); 1936ff.:
Auseinandersetzung, sometimes hyphenated as Aus-einander-setzung)).
As for the boast of Romanticism; Heid. obstinately abstained from
confronting non-Greco-German poetry. The term of 'Stiftung' is in fact
derived from Hoelderlin's poem 'Andenken', whose last several lines run:
"Es nehmet aber / Und gibt Gedaechtnis die See, / Und die Lieb' auch heftet
fleissig die Augen, / Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter" ("But it is
the sea that gives memory, and takes it away, and love also zealously fixes
our eyes, but what is lasting the poets provide" -- Michael Hamburger prose
translation). The last verse, "but what remains, the poet founds",
certainly resonates with certain Romantic tropes. Nonetheless the issue for
Heidegger (and bear in mind I'm attempting to speak here in Heidegger's
voice) is bleiben, remaining, lasting, perduring, over and beyond given
historical configurations and factical political structures, beyond the
tidal ebb and flow of the sea and beyond the fixities and obsessions of
love (cue Levinas...). The poet then is the unacknowledged legislator, the
forger of the uncreated conscience, precisely in having glimpsed-in-advance
or in having been claimed by the yawning origin.
Make sense?
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
> Paul Murphy,
>
> I hope you'll indulge me a few naive quibbles.
>
>"...instituting (stiften) opens up a primordial relationship to Being,..."
>
>Setting aside metaphors about clearings in the woods, etc.,
>that formalizing should afford access to the pre-formed, is a difficult
>proposition, no? ...form = chaos??? difficult to transcend a proneness to
>see dialectic, not identity? And the concept of chaos ("primordiality")
>itself, is it not pure metaphysical myth. It seems we are dealing in
>paradoxical metaphorical linguistic constructs of cosmic purport...
>or, in a word, "myth".
>
>
>"...poetry institutes,"
>
>That's Shelley's (i.e. Romanticism's) famous boast...
>upon which the Bonapartes of this existence perrennially
>put the definitive bloody kibosh.
>
I hope some of the generous and thoughtful posts from the past few days
have helped answer (or at least address) some of your far-from-naive
quibbles. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'form=chaos'; the question
of chaos is, however, an interesting one; Heid. interpretively translates
the Greek word 'chaos' as 'the yawning-open' (I forget the textual source,
sorry; I think it might be one of the Hoelderlin volumes). 'Primordiality'
(Urspruenglichkeit) refers not to a single, stable ground, static,
immutable and inconcussible -- a reading of SZ on the issue of what is
'gleichurspruenglich' or 'equiprimordial' to Dasein might show Heidegger's
continual opposition to the onto-theological placement or definition of the
origin as the One universal ground. If the primordial is chaos, i.e., the
yawning or gaping open giving rise to that which emerges differentially --
i.e, as differential manifestation, concealed/unconcealed or
sheltered/disclosed, an emergence whose contours are essentially defined
through conflict (Polemos is the father of all...) -- then the charges of
metaphor and myth needs some futher elaboration and substantiation. For
Heid., the most erroneous 'myth' of metaphysics is that the rational ego
irrefragably grounds itself on universal principles of logic, securing its
dominion over beings as a whole. ((Incidentally, Michael Eldred's
translation of polemos as strife is one of several translations suggested
by Heid.: 1933-35, Kampf; 1935-36: Streit (cf. Ursprung des Kunstwerks,
strife of world and earth, Urstreit der Wahrheit); 1936ff.:
Auseinandersetzung, sometimes hyphenated as Aus-einander-setzung)).
As for the boast of Romanticism; Heid. obstinately abstained from
confronting non-Greco-German poetry. The term of 'Stiftung' is in fact
derived from Hoelderlin's poem 'Andenken', whose last several lines run:
"Es nehmet aber / Und gibt Gedaechtnis die See, / Und die Lieb' auch heftet
fleissig die Augen, / Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter" ("But it is
the sea that gives memory, and takes it away, and love also zealously fixes
our eyes, but what is lasting the poets provide" -- Michael Hamburger prose
translation). The last verse, "but what remains, the poet founds",
certainly resonates with certain Romantic tropes. Nonetheless the issue for
Heidegger (and bear in mind I'm attempting to speak here in Heidegger's
voice) is bleiben, remaining, lasting, perduring, over and beyond given
historical configurations and factical political structures, beyond the
tidal ebb and flow of the sea and beyond the fixities and obsessions of
love (cue Levinas...). The poet then is the unacknowledged legislator, the
forger of the uncreated conscience, precisely in having glimpsed-in-advance
or in having been claimed by the yawning origin.
Make sense?
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
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