Tom,
You are correct that my square quotes around 'violence' (in the early
Heideggerian/Gadamerian sense and NOT the later Heideggerian/Derridean
sense, a distinction about which you are strangely silent, given that you
go to great lengths to say that the attempt to make such distinctions is
important, necessary, etc.) indicate a certain skepticism. But you fail to
note that I was clear about *why* I was skeptical. If you will forgive the
self-reference, I wrote:
> 1. The early-Heidegger/Gadamerian sense: readings are violent
>insofar as they refuse (implicitly or explicitly) to respect the
>self-conception of the author. But, as Gadamer credits Heidegger with
>having taught him, every interpretation is violent in this sense, for if
>the interpretation did not suppose that it had discovered some meaning in
>the text which the author had missed, then it would not be an
>*interpretation,* but only (the acolyte's dream of) a pure exegesis (which,
>were it possible, would be superfluous!).
Do you object to this? Who among us doesn't accept some such
'violence--inextricable from the analyst's stance--as necessary? The
scare-quotes thus mark this kind of violence off from what I take to be
violence proper, which I presume would always be objectionable. For me all
violence is not equally objectionable--and to act as if it is only weakens
the critique against it by overly diluting the term. Even the Buddhists
recognize that life lives on life, and that while we should try not to step
on the bugs, we can't help killing the microbes...
Someone--it may have been JD--once relayed an anecdote to me that
had something to do Gadamer as a student smashing a bug that was crawling
on S&Z, and it leaving a bloody splotch right on a (to me fairly
objectionable) passage about the 'perishing' of animals (or something like
that--anyone remember the details?)
I also don't think Heidegger's thinking of Heraclitean polemos as
the Urspruenglicher Kampf necessarily begets or reproduces further
violence, as you put it, since I don't think Heidegger's assertion of a
kind of 'ontological agonistic' *is* inherently violent in the
objectionable sense. We would have to look at the details of his account
[see IM 61-63/EM 47-49], but I'd argue that the opposite conclusion would
be closer to the truth, since, though the particular ontopolitical
intervention I discussed last time apparently failed to effect any real
change, it was intended in part *as a critique of* a very violent (in the
most objectionable sense) hegemony consolidating their power within the
Nazi movement, to barely mention the fact that Heidegger does
'violence'--in the non-objectionable sense--to the ordinary understandoing
of _polemos_ (i.e., Streit not Krieg) as he attempts to recover its
ontological meaning.
Iain
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
"Und wer gut verfolgt, lernt leicht f o l g e n: --ist er doch
einmal--hinterher!"
"And whoever persecutes well, learns readily how _to follow_: for he is
used to going after somebody else!"
--Nietzsche, "The Ugliest [haesslichste] Man" [i.e., the
Socrates-in-Nietzsche], _Zarathustra_ IV.7.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
You are correct that my square quotes around 'violence' (in the early
Heideggerian/Gadamerian sense and NOT the later Heideggerian/Derridean
sense, a distinction about which you are strangely silent, given that you
go to great lengths to say that the attempt to make such distinctions is
important, necessary, etc.) indicate a certain skepticism. But you fail to
note that I was clear about *why* I was skeptical. If you will forgive the
self-reference, I wrote:
> 1. The early-Heidegger/Gadamerian sense: readings are violent
>insofar as they refuse (implicitly or explicitly) to respect the
>self-conception of the author. But, as Gadamer credits Heidegger with
>having taught him, every interpretation is violent in this sense, for if
>the interpretation did not suppose that it had discovered some meaning in
>the text which the author had missed, then it would not be an
>*interpretation,* but only (the acolyte's dream of) a pure exegesis (which,
>were it possible, would be superfluous!).
Do you object to this? Who among us doesn't accept some such
'violence--inextricable from the analyst's stance--as necessary? The
scare-quotes thus mark this kind of violence off from what I take to be
violence proper, which I presume would always be objectionable. For me all
violence is not equally objectionable--and to act as if it is only weakens
the critique against it by overly diluting the term. Even the Buddhists
recognize that life lives on life, and that while we should try not to step
on the bugs, we can't help killing the microbes...
Someone--it may have been JD--once relayed an anecdote to me that
had something to do Gadamer as a student smashing a bug that was crawling
on S&Z, and it leaving a bloody splotch right on a (to me fairly
objectionable) passage about the 'perishing' of animals (or something like
that--anyone remember the details?)
I also don't think Heidegger's thinking of Heraclitean polemos as
the Urspruenglicher Kampf necessarily begets or reproduces further
violence, as you put it, since I don't think Heidegger's assertion of a
kind of 'ontological agonistic' *is* inherently violent in the
objectionable sense. We would have to look at the details of his account
[see IM 61-63/EM 47-49], but I'd argue that the opposite conclusion would
be closer to the truth, since, though the particular ontopolitical
intervention I discussed last time apparently failed to effect any real
change, it was intended in part *as a critique of* a very violent (in the
most objectionable sense) hegemony consolidating their power within the
Nazi movement, to barely mention the fact that Heidegger does
'violence'--in the non-objectionable sense--to the ordinary understandoing
of _polemos_ (i.e., Streit not Krieg) as he attempts to recover its
ontological meaning.
Iain
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
"Und wer gut verfolgt, lernt leicht f o l g e n: --ist er doch
einmal--hinterher!"
"And whoever persecutes well, learns readily how _to follow_: for he is
used to going after somebody else!"
--Nietzsche, "The Ugliest [haesslichste] Man" [i.e., the
Socrates-in-Nietzsche], _Zarathustra_ IV.7.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---