On Wed, 24 Jul 1996, Christopher Rickey wrote:
>
> Or perhaps not. This is precisely the point I make.
>
> However, two caveats:
>
> Decision: Heidegger says on several occasions that the Ereignis is not
> within the power of humans to bring about. Is a decision an effect of
> the human will? Is decision (I assume you mean Entscheidung) the same or
> different from decision/resolution (Entschlossenheit)?
>
> Strife: Much of the resistance to the violent overtones of Heidegger's
> interpretation of Heraclitus' polemos, which is read, particularly in the
> early 1930's in terms of Kampf, which offends our peace-loving liberal
> sentiments.
>
> There appear to be several levels of strife in Heidegger. One is the
> strife of between humans and being, the wrestling with being so that it
> clears the site for the AS. This takes place, depending on the text one
> uses, in the work of art of a poet or in the Auseinandersetzung between a
> philosopher and his/her tradition. In fact, given the exemplary position
> Heidegger grants Hoelderlin, it is possible to say they are identical.
> This appears to be nothing other than the fixing of identity and
> difference, including one's self-identity, because all identity
> presupposes a difference from something. Heidegger describes it as a
> battle because nothing is fixed by "nature" or for all eternity, and
> because all decisions result from dialogue, conversation or discussions.
> I'm not certain if this necessarily implies political violence; indeed,
> there is a growing body of democratic literature which expressly praises
> the agonal nature of genuine democracy.
I think it probably does necessarily *imply* (though it does not
initiate) political violence.
The sense of "wresting" in the face of the unfixed and the free has to do,
I think, with a response to multiplicity. In fact, any number of
comportmenbts are possible in freedom. Wresting denotes a certain mode of
dealing, but slower growth (as Michael P. has pointed out), cultivating,
ploughing ("slow of step..."), nurturing, etc., are all copossible with
this space. I think the focusing on "wresting" as such comes from a
restricted comportmental base, from which springs, as well, Heidegger's
development of "guilt", which is always post-responsibility or in
responsibility in a certain way in BT. This bears on what I say below
regarding the Other and justice. Really, in a certain way, nonviolence
has to "grasp itself fatefully" here. In the Heraclitean view of strife,
which probably means War as the Truth of Being, as though it underlaies
all other comportments, I think war, in due war-like fashion, is simply
taking on the role of a master organizing principle. War *makes* war,
violence begets violence, in the sense that it propagates its own myth of
its own origin. But the origin of war is probably much more out of
natality and ethos (as dwelling). Heidegger is constantly making this
point, in a way. Yet he remainds blind to the question of nonviolence.
Even *justice* remains blind to the question of violence, and hence it
continually circles around itself in the fallen justice of vengeance.
(Opening the question of nonviolence can show how this is so.) Perhaps
this blindness relates to a certain blindness concerning *style*, which is
a kind of key-word with regards to multiplicity: the multiplicity of
disclosing includes wresting, but also: coaxing, enticing, seducing,
unfolding, enlightening, developing, etc. These things are there in
Heidegger, but not so thematically-substantively as "wresting/strife".
When Heidegger says (or asks) "What is most thought-provoking in these
thought-provoking times is that we are not yet thinking", for example,
there stays beneath consiousness (heheh) in Heidegger its moral
comportment. It is staged in the form of provokation (prelude to agon).
It knows that "these times are thought provoking", and this, we can
assume, refers to the violence of those times. Violence, in the mode
intentional hurting, and destruction, in the mode of technology. But this
"violence moment" is not opened. This "violence moment" occurs throughout
Nietzsche, yet the *question of violence is forgotten*, if, in fact, it
ever really occurred.
The *question concerning violence* is not a description. "Questioning
leads in a way through language which is extrordinary". Merely describing
something is quite ordinary. This question remains enclosed, or often is
mechanized to empower a text, movement, institution, political stance
(such as liberal-pacifism, which I am in fact not pushing here). The
self-grasping of nonviolence is the becoming-substantive of the thought of
justice, the face of the other, the relation to the other, etc. Heidegger
does not make this move.
Does, then, the mere presence of signified comportments restrictive, in
some ways, to strife in "thought" and "interpretation" constitute a
presence of violence in Heidegger? The question of nonviolence itself
reveals as one of it's minimal aspects that the essence of violence is
not restricted to physical tearing or rupture, but also substantive
tearing, truncation, restriction, forcing, etc. A trunction of
comportments *can* be one such violence. It can be a destructive
oversight, as well. (I.e., destructive but not violence). Heidegger
clarifies this "essentiality", he just doesn't hear the call (and
deafening it is!) to ask the question of the *essence of nonviolence*. In
the end, or the beginning, we would probably also have to ask, as Levinas
does, whether the question of violence can be framed in terms of essence
of Being, and we may also have to ask whether the question of violence is
or can ever really be a *question* or a *question only*.
>
> The other level, taken from what you said, is the wrestling nature of
> revolutions in the political realm. In his explication of Plato's Parable
> of the Cave, Heidegger follows Plato in saying that the philosopher (later
> artist) tears those chained from the wall and drags them to the surface.
> Is this doing violence? Even if it means, as it probably does here, to
> break up their everyday habits of thinking and opining? Is persuasion
> violent?
It *can* be very violent, and it can be nonviolent. In some sense,
persuasion has a certain connotation from within itself of nonviolence.
"Satyagraha" (Gandhian nonviolence), for example, has been said to be
best translated as "truth-persuastion", rather than "truth-force". But we
can easily envision many inflections for the phrase "We will persuade you..."
But in any event, there is a difference between asking *what counts as
violent* as you do here, and asking *what is violence* in a fundamental
way. In opening the face of the Other, Levinas institutes the Other as a
kind of primordial "esixtentiale". Heidegger tends to *assume this*
rather than entering along the path of the *question of violence*. Hence
there is passing references (gleaned for support) to Heraclitus, the
various senses of strife, wresting, etc. But the very condition of the
possibility of violence is not opened up and taken within Dasein's
understanding of itself.
The question "what is violence" leads along a certain way that has
certain minimal things about it. I'm not putting this very well.
Let me reapproach something you wrote:
> This appears to be nothing other than the fixing of identity and
> difference, including one's self-identity, because all identity
> presupposes a difference from something. Heidegger describes it as a
> battle because nothing is fixed by "nature" or for all eternity, and
> because all decisions result from dialogue, conversation or discussions.
> I'm not certain if this necessarily implies political violence; indeed,
> there is a growing body of democratic literature which expressly praises
> the agonal nature of genuine democracy.
This can, and should, be reconsidered. Many things are fixed by nature.
Battle wants to say "nothing" in certain ways to free itself for being.
Battle wrests itself out of its resting place (Michael P. is probably
smiling right now...) The "because" is given as an excuse: "Well, since
nothing is fixed by nature, we can go to war", or, *must* go to war. This
embattlement is all over the place in Heidegger. Is it a violence? Is the
"agonal nature" of democracy violence? I would say it is alienated
nonviolence in these forms. Deomcratic cultures, in so far as they are
democratic, can be quite violent. Look at the US. The *democracy* of the
democratic, which is the relation to the other, is viewed in light of
its being a *system* to make things *work*, rather than a fundamental
condition of the relation to the other in nonviolence. Hence, it has a
*moment* of nonviolence in it, but nonviolence does not yet obtain
disalienated independent thematic substantivity. And in any event, do we
speak of The Agonal Nature of democracy, or the agonal aspects of
democracy? The former characterization is very bad democracy, I think,
while the latter is predicated in am embracing of multiplicities of
comportments in democracy.
Heidegger doesn't get this, I think. Not that he's going on about
democracy.
Tom B.
>
> Chris
>
>
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