Michael D. Pennamacoor writes:
>Why do the
>notions of 'strife-n-struggle' and 'wresting' necessarily bring forth
>images of violence? Or domination. I can conceive wresting from
>unconcealment as quiet and unobtrusive an accomplishment as a gardener
>building a path in a garden through watching the way that things path
>(verbal: tread their ways); such path-making reveals the concealed ways of
>things.
'Wrest' translates 'herausreissen', to tear out (of concealment), tear up
(from the ground), rip out (by the roots); if not entirely coterminous with
violent domination and subjugation, it certainly carries the sense of
will-ful behavior. The gardener you describe doesn't simply impose his will
on manifestation, but rather lets physis come forth as such, tends to it
(like the shepherd to his flock), allowing it to come to presence, or in
the language of the Intro to SZ, lets it show itself as it is in itself.
The position of will here vis-a-vis presencing -- and its possible relation
to violence -- would require considerable and close analysis of the texts I
mentioned in my prior post, esp. the passages of _Einfuehrung_ dealing with
man's "Gewalt-taetigkeit" as definitive of his uncanniness (man being to
deinotaton, following Sophocles), which comes into essential conflict with
the "ueberwaeltigende Gewalt" of Being (thought by the Greeks essentially
as physis). And which also (cf. Rektoratsrede) is exposed, nay destined in
advance to ruin or disaster. Heid's language in the early 1930's is
suffused with the rhetoric of violent power-struggle (Macht and Gewalt crop
up ad nauseam), awaiting de-construction in the Nietzsche lectures
(will-to-power as will-to-will as Machenschaft).
Short of such analysis (for now), I offer for discussion the passage on
wresting from SZ (McQ/R translation, my copy of the original is at the
library):
"Truth (uncoveredness) is something that must always first be wrested from
entities. Entities get torn out of their concealedness. The factical
uncoveredness of anything is always, as it were, a kind of theft" (SZ 222 /
BT 265). This Raub performed by Dasein, where is its source, whence does it
come? Is this the kinship of human Wissen and Promethean subterfuge
intimated in the Rektoratsrede? A subterfuge which is defiant,
insurrectionary, insurgent? Or is this the Herausforderung, the
challenging, constitutive of the mode of revealing proper to modern
Technik, which challenges entities to make themselves available and
disposible as standing-reserve?
Cheers,
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>Why do the
>notions of 'strife-n-struggle' and 'wresting' necessarily bring forth
>images of violence? Or domination. I can conceive wresting from
>unconcealment as quiet and unobtrusive an accomplishment as a gardener
>building a path in a garden through watching the way that things path
>(verbal: tread their ways); such path-making reveals the concealed ways of
>things.
'Wrest' translates 'herausreissen', to tear out (of concealment), tear up
(from the ground), rip out (by the roots); if not entirely coterminous with
violent domination and subjugation, it certainly carries the sense of
will-ful behavior. The gardener you describe doesn't simply impose his will
on manifestation, but rather lets physis come forth as such, tends to it
(like the shepherd to his flock), allowing it to come to presence, or in
the language of the Intro to SZ, lets it show itself as it is in itself.
The position of will here vis-a-vis presencing -- and its possible relation
to violence -- would require considerable and close analysis of the texts I
mentioned in my prior post, esp. the passages of _Einfuehrung_ dealing with
man's "Gewalt-taetigkeit" as definitive of his uncanniness (man being to
deinotaton, following Sophocles), which comes into essential conflict with
the "ueberwaeltigende Gewalt" of Being (thought by the Greeks essentially
as physis). And which also (cf. Rektoratsrede) is exposed, nay destined in
advance to ruin or disaster. Heid's language in the early 1930's is
suffused with the rhetoric of violent power-struggle (Macht and Gewalt crop
up ad nauseam), awaiting de-construction in the Nietzsche lectures
(will-to-power as will-to-will as Machenschaft).
Short of such analysis (for now), I offer for discussion the passage on
wresting from SZ (McQ/R translation, my copy of the original is at the
library):
"Truth (uncoveredness) is something that must always first be wrested from
entities. Entities get torn out of their concealedness. The factical
uncoveredness of anything is always, as it were, a kind of theft" (SZ 222 /
BT 265). This Raub performed by Dasein, where is its source, whence does it
come? Is this the kinship of human Wissen and Promethean subterfuge
intimated in the Rektoratsrede? A subterfuge which is defiant,
insurrectionary, insurgent? Or is this the Herausforderung, the
challenging, constitutive of the mode of revealing proper to modern
Technik, which challenges entities to make themselves available and
disposible as standing-reserve?
Cheers,
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
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