Michael Eldred writes:
=>Can urgent human concerns serve as the yardstick for what can become an issue
>for thinking? Is this not one of the most questionable things? I turn the
>question around: What are thinking's credentials for allowing itself to say
>anything at all about human suffering?
>
>My own feeling is that a so-called *question of violence* cannot be posed
>directly at all and that it borders on arrogance to want to say anything at
>all
>about bodily human suffering on the level of thoughtful discourse.
>
>But I am open to persuasion.
Leaving aside the indeed broad and complex issue of the question of
violence for now, I'd like to address the issue of 'bodiliness' in general
(because the question would then not only address bodily human suffering,
but also bodily human pleasure). Thinking is wary of addressing this
question, it seems; Heid. raises it tentatively in _Nietzsche_, where he
says, 'wir leben, indem wir leiben', which D.F. Krell translates as "we
live in that we body forth". In terms of existential analytic -- the
analytic of Dasein -- this question cannot be passed over lightly, since
one of the traditional definitions of 'man' is as the rational animal,
which subsequently develops into soul/body or mind/body binarisms. In Su.Z
this issue is skirted, though occasionally addressed in a negative manner
(to the extent of "Dasein is not mind that happens to be fastened to or
encased in a body"). Ultimately the significance of embodiment for
existential analytic remains underdeveloped as being beyond the scope of a
propadeutic to fundamental ontology.
But if thinking (as thinking of die Sache des Denkens) lacks 'credentials'
for elaborating upon the topic - the topos - of body, in its sufferings or
its pleasures, why is this not just attenuated Christian theology or
Cartesian egology? What is the import of the passage from "Brief ueber die
Humanismus" where Heid. avers the kinship of man and the divine, but
recoils in horror from the bodily kinship of man and beast? Why does
Heidegger hold his nose in the presence of Trakl's decomposing bodies
turning green and sweet in the meadow (thereby making Trakl's Schmerz into
a figure of Uebergang)? Why is bodily experience not at all open to the
revealing / concealing of Being? Heidegger's answer is fairly clear: bodily
experience is only Erlebnis, lived experience, somatic tingling severed
>from genuine Erfahrung (hence the attack on Rilke in the Parmenides
lecture, who assigns the Open to animals). But this sounds like such a
traditional, 'metaphysical' account of human being, one which Merleau-Ponty
(leaving Levinas out of this) was astute in countering.
Best regards,
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
=>Can urgent human concerns serve as the yardstick for what can become an issue
>for thinking? Is this not one of the most questionable things? I turn the
>question around: What are thinking's credentials for allowing itself to say
>anything at all about human suffering?
>
>My own feeling is that a so-called *question of violence* cannot be posed
>directly at all and that it borders on arrogance to want to say anything at
>all
>about bodily human suffering on the level of thoughtful discourse.
>
>But I am open to persuasion.
Leaving aside the indeed broad and complex issue of the question of
violence for now, I'd like to address the issue of 'bodiliness' in general
(because the question would then not only address bodily human suffering,
but also bodily human pleasure). Thinking is wary of addressing this
question, it seems; Heid. raises it tentatively in _Nietzsche_, where he
says, 'wir leben, indem wir leiben', which D.F. Krell translates as "we
live in that we body forth". In terms of existential analytic -- the
analytic of Dasein -- this question cannot be passed over lightly, since
one of the traditional definitions of 'man' is as the rational animal,
which subsequently develops into soul/body or mind/body binarisms. In Su.Z
this issue is skirted, though occasionally addressed in a negative manner
(to the extent of "Dasein is not mind that happens to be fastened to or
encased in a body"). Ultimately the significance of embodiment for
existential analytic remains underdeveloped as being beyond the scope of a
propadeutic to fundamental ontology.
But if thinking (as thinking of die Sache des Denkens) lacks 'credentials'
for elaborating upon the topic - the topos - of body, in its sufferings or
its pleasures, why is this not just attenuated Christian theology or
Cartesian egology? What is the import of the passage from "Brief ueber die
Humanismus" where Heid. avers the kinship of man and the divine, but
recoils in horror from the bodily kinship of man and beast? Why does
Heidegger hold his nose in the presence of Trakl's decomposing bodies
turning green and sweet in the meadow (thereby making Trakl's Schmerz into
a figure of Uebergang)? Why is bodily experience not at all open to the
revealing / concealing of Being? Heidegger's answer is fairly clear: bodily
experience is only Erlebnis, lived experience, somatic tingling severed
>from genuine Erfahrung (hence the attack on Rilke in the Parmenides
lecture, who assigns the Open to animals). But this sounds like such a
traditional, 'metaphysical' account of human being, one which Merleau-Ponty
(leaving Levinas out of this) was astute in countering.
Best regards,
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---