On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Paul Murphy wrote:
> Tom Blancato writes:
>
> >I think the question of violence *is* asked in Derrida, but I think in
> >some ways or often it remains in utility only, even in Derrida. But has the
> >question of violence been asked in later Heidegger? I don't think so, but
> >that's also a function of my scholarship, which is poor.
>
> My suggestion is that Heidegger does indeed ask the question of violence,
> and of nonviolence, throughout his work, especially in IM (which, by the
> way, is the English translation of EM -- *Einfuerung in die *Metaphysik),
> but also in the _Gelassenheit_ volume, translated as _Discourse on
> Thinking_. It is in the latter text that the violence perpetrated by
> technological thinking is countered by the formula "the will not to will",
> which is a function of 'letting-be' and 'releasement'. Heidegger takes
> great pains to distinguish this latter constellation of terms from quietism
> and pacifism, by calling into question the classical schema of activity and
> passivity -- letting-be is active or spontaneous receptivity (to use
> Kantian terms); 'letting' (lassen) is an activity, but one more attuned to
> the matter of thinking than mastery or domination (which coincides, I
> suggest, with Seinsvergessenheit).
To counter a violence is not yet to ask the question of violence. The
questioning of quietism (as a totalistic move) can be part of the question
concerning violence, but it remains an open question to me whether
Heidegger really asks the question in a free and independent
thematic-substantive space befitting the substance of the question. A
distinction is made between mastery and "letting", receptivity, etc. A
reversal: from activity to practicied passivity. But has the question of
violence been asked? Or has mastery simply become obtrusive, in the way?
I tend to ward the latter assessment, though I should read these works.
Um. Unless you'd like to sum them up...:)
>
> >And then we have the "ontological intervention" thing. I simply can't
> >accept "war" or "polemos" as a signifier which can be so easily and
> >freely ripped from its geopoligical origins (not that those are the
> >*only* origins). My general impression remains that he "uses" the
> >question of violence in order to get adjudicated violence (the violence
> >to metaphysics of Destruktion), but this remains parasitic on the
> >question "proper", a question which remains unasked. For I think that to
> >truly ask this question would require a kind of thread (and no doubt, a
> >rather transformative one) which would have to traverse Heidegger's
> >writing in a *thematic-substantive* way.
>
> Might I recommend here Derrida's essay in the _Commemorations_ volume,
> edited by John Sallis, titled "Philopolemology: Heidegger's Ear", the
> fourth installment in Derrida's "Geschlecht" series. This essay directly
> addresses the problematic of using 'polemos' as ontological vs. using
> 'polemos' as geopolitical, a strategy Derrida (as one can readily foresee,
> if one is familiar with JD) deconstructs, according to a law of
> supplementarity.
>
Thanks!
> Nor can we allow any simple and
> >easy distinction "early/later Heidegger", I suspect.
>
> There are distinctions to be drawn, I think, but I agree they are not easy.
> Michael Eldred has suggested approaching the early Heidegger from the
> perspective of moodedness, which opens the question of Stimmung /
> Bestimmung pursued throughout Heidegger's 'career'. The planning and
> reckoning of technological thinking subdues or subordinates the more
> primordial access to beings, and to the question of being, afforded by the
> attunement of mood. This topic is pursued through the Hoelderlin lectures
> and essays, the Parmenides lecture (see the discussion of 'Scheu' in the
> context of a reading of Pindar), and in the 1937 lecture, _Basic Questions
> of Philosophy_, where Gk thaumazein is discussed as wonder, Er-staunen,
> which is central in determining the status of the will in Heidegger's later
> thought. (Aside: I've always had difficulties with a sentence from the
> Befindlichkeit section of the In-sein chapter from SZ: "Dasein can, should,
> and must become master of its moods". I've forgotten the page number. What
> is the upshot of this claim? In what way is 'mastery' being asserted here?
> Isn't this a rather Stoic / Augustinean claim?)
But I think the whole question concerning technology crashes on the rocks
*because* it is given too violent a character, the character of *too
intentional* a violence. Being unable to distinguish between its
"biolence" and an authentic violence, Heidegger's thinking here posits a
kind of "evil" which is simply unable to keep up with the times. And the
"technology interpretation" for the Holocaust, for example, is by no
means adequate, I think.
So there is this tack of "mood/attunement". That seems the grounding
point. Alternative moods. Nonviolence is the opening of *alternativity
itself*, not the mere presence of alternative moods. But Heidegger
*opens* the question of *attunement*. Is this a functionalist-existential
schema? I'm not sure. I tend to think so.
As for the phrase you have problems with, I do too: Dasein must master its
moods. And: Where does a mood come from? "One doesn't *know*." I think
this is nonsense. Rather: the "mastery" of moods, the *real* mastery, lies
in the "artistic" fluency of disclosure, of dealing and entering *into*
the grounds of the mood, its history, individual circumstances, etc.: I'm
in a foul mood with my lover, it has been building, I don't just grab it
by the collar and slap my mood into shape. Nor is it very meaningful to
simply wear a letter on my "husband uniform" to let the burden of my
"guilt" (or my lover's) "do its work", thus signified and established. Nor
may I simple mime the behavior of "my hero". These are all crude template
operations of mastery, right out of the workshop which so powerfully set
the tone from the start in BT. Rather, I must patiently coax the truth out
of the present, understand what has been happening, what has been building
up over the last days, weeks, years. I must do so in various ways:
straightforwardly, "psychoanalytically", etc. Such a mastery is predicated
on the fluency of comportments of *disclosure* and *engagements of
amelioration and maintenance*. Such stuff is the true substance of
interventional nonviolence, reconciliation, conflict resolution, and
notably, restorative justice, as it is practiced in the state of
Vermont's nonviolent probation program and in some other hightly
innovative programs currently underway.
So here, I think, in this procedure of Heidegger's...I'm not sure what to
call it: procedure, schema, layout, in these terms, this theater, which
you call, questioningly, Augustinian/Stoic...I see this gesture of
mastery, a reductive gesture, a simplification for the sake of presence,
etc.
Regards,
Tom B.
>
> Cheers,
> Paul Murphy
>
>
>
>
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