Responding to Michael Eldred, whose comments are unmarked. My responses
are preceded by a triple dash (---).
Timidly I raise my hand and ask: Is it so certain that the *question of
violence* which Tom Blancato has pushed into the foreground is an issue
for thinking, especially in this direct form? The question of violence
carries a high moral charge that allows it to push its way to the front as
an urgent question requiring obvious immediate attention. It's this very
obviousness that makes me uneasy. Don't we first have to ask whether the
*question of violence* exceeds what thinking can think?
--- In one post in these threads, I asked whether the question of
violence can ever really be a question. You are asking whether the
question can be asked, albeit for pious reasons: even thinking can not
broach this dangerous, charged question. My reasons may be just as pious;
by my tack is to say: one must ask the question *and more*. (Piety refers
to the phrase from H: "Questioning is the piety of thought." In the
question of (the question of) violence, we are also in the vicinity of
the *intellectual conscience*. But we are there, anyhow, according to
Nietzsche, even when the question has not been asked. But, then, this
matter of piety is, perhaps, Nietzsche's nonviolence; or it is his
devotion, a devotion I think remains alienated from its nonviolence. I
should go on, really: the opening of the question is itself something
other than the question, asking it, etc. This is a space of such an
opening, in so far as it occurs, and is, I think, more "at the space of
the fundaments", and, perhaps, and I think Heidegger would support this,
is more properly *thinking*. That is to say, perhaps we are thinking now.
And perhaps Heidegger is concerned with the opening space of this kind of
thinking. Just wanted to point that out.)
--- Perhaps these your reservations are all grist for the mill for the
*question of violence*; perhaps you are beginning to ask it. But the
question of *whether* the q of v exceeds what thinking can think has to be
answered, I think, as part of the path of the quest, rather than being
foreclosed from the start. But what, then, prima facie, should or could
give us to even ask the question? I maintain that "these thought provoking
times" are reason enough to give us to ask the question, though the simple
role of "conceince" in terms of thinking, even in Nietzsche, is already a
*situation* which can be addressed philosophically.) I will have to work
hard to persuade you about this, given that your remarks don't look
"timid" to me. Though it may remain timid concerning some of the
difficulties of asking the question of violence, when one gets into it,
into the "stuff" or "substance", into the matter or heart of the question.
That's ok by me. I'm timid. And maybe you're not.
--- But before that, I will wholeheartedly agree that there is a "charge"
associated with the q of v. But that *charge*, it seems to me, should
probably be considered in the *course* of the question, and I attribute
the problems associated with the question and, in particular, the
suspension of the moral and the *alienation* of/from the question, as is
found in Heidegger and elsewhere, part of the problem.
--- Seen in light of this *charge*, an "existentialism" (forgive me...)
which takes up the q of v might be something like a "hot existentialism".
But what is "hot" may in fact be even *more* deserving of thought.
There is also a sense in which putting this question in the foreground
with something like a gesture of moral righteousness causes me to ask: Is
this not a case of -- dare I say: virile -- impetuosity clamouring for
attention?
--- The situation of "moral righteousness" is indeed a problem and an
issue in the q of v. But just as much as a charge to the foreground is
unacceptable, so too. it seems to me, is its opposite, foreclosure,
unacceptable.
--- Your gesture here, a reduction (if it is a reduction) to "mere
impetuous clamouring" (which perhaps might be regarded as a particular
mode of "idle talk"--it is very hard for me not to see "clamouring" in
relation to "chatter" here) seems to aim to foreclose too much. I respect,
however, within a less truncated range, the criticism: "is this mere
attention-getting?" As well as the question of virility.
(I include Levinas' obsession with the Other under this impetuosity. It
doesn't seem to help.)
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?
--- Does one not detect an urgency in Nietzsche, for example? Or in
Heidegger? Should not your very concern about the *problem of urgency* be
a matter for a thought which, as I suggest here, occurs fully in
Nietzsche and, less self-admittedly, in Heidegger? And doesn't your
concern itself exhibit a certain urgency? And doesn't that urgency itself
bespeak of a fundamental nonviolence or apprehension of violence? And
where were you the night of April 17th at 6:30 PM??? (Sorry, I was
watching those old Perry Reruns on local public tv...:)
--- I'm not sure that I or anyone is asking that concerns serve as a
*yardstick* for what can become an issue. On the other hand, can urgent
human concerns ever not be a matter for thought, albeit, not *all*
thought? But, then, Heidegger himself gave *concerns* considerable
thought. And again, I assert that Heidegger himself is quite "hot" or
"charged" when he asks "What calls for thinking?" And in a great many
other ways. This *charge* drives Heidegger's texts in so many ways. This
moral element remains somewhat buried or aliented in his working, and must
therefore only allow strategic enterprises to be hidden in the progression
of his thought, vis a vis National Socialism, for example. And if you
include the Rectoral Address, that works in two ways. For that matter,
perhaps it is the absence of a language of nonviolence which forced
Heidegger to be so infuriatingly silent after the war. Perhaps the silence
of Heideggerian concscience is simply too inarticulate. (Indeed, since the
withholding structure of guilt-based conscience instantiates, in the
withholding of speech, a continually violent ground.) And the "failure" to
broach the question may account, in some ways, for some of the problems
specifically of the Rectoral Address. The a-moral clarification of will,
historical moment, self-choosing, etc., bought and paid for by the
well-known suspension of the moral necessary for the development of the
existential analytic, seems to have been something of a problem. In
Heidegger, as in Sartre, the a-moral clarification of Being is
*propaedutic* to the ethical. In Heidegger, things like "status
integritas" and, of course, conscience, are not freely possible *until*
the grounding metaphysics are clarified phenomenologically, while the
questions occuring at the end of _Being and Nothingness_ are to refer us
to "the ethical plane". It was for good reason that the baroque fruitions
and deeply violent institutions of stalemate of the moral as such was
suspended. But perhaps the question of violence has that *entire
condition* as part of its path.
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.
--- I don't know if it is good thinking to foreclose the question from the
start. And your judgement (this specific judgment you are making) isn't
well enough grounded for me. It needn't be in great detail, but it needs
to point to some better orient points and directions. In a way, it appears
to me that you are simply shying away from the question. Perhaps you are
*afraid* of it. Are you a sissy? ;) (I say this with evocative irony and
for many reasons which I think associate strongly with problems involved
in asking the question of violence, the matter of "virility" as this has
come up, etc. And I think virility does somehow seem to surface in the
vicinity of the question of (non)violence.)
--- So I have to say here that I think I simply disagree wholeheartedly. I
think it is the height of arrogance to launch upon thoughtful discourse
and *not* address suffering and violence! One may feel taken in by this
exclamation. Indeed, television commercials and programming take people in
precisely by using the power of violence to draw attention. Warnings
about excess violence in some programs are probably given as much to get
people to watch the programs as to protect the children and faint of
heart. *But this tendency and corruption is one of the primary concerns or
vigilances for nonviolence*. I am suggesting, as are you, in a way, that
*the quesiton makes certain demands of us*, and in fact, I am also
*affirming* some of your criticisms: that there is indeed a danger of
"charging", of "taking the foreground", etc. And the dangers are far more
numerous than the ones you have suggested. You are right that the mere
mention of Iraq (you have not said this explicitly) or shouting "starving
children!" at the top of one's lungs should not prompt prompt people
immediately to give someone the floor. And in any event, I'm not asking
for the floor but rather to sit at the table of the discussion of the
question of violence, in dialogue, where fitting, with those who would
like to pursue the thread.
--- Yet: what question survives or thrives on the ground of the onslought
of one-sided, and even ad hominem, criticism? Is this not a polemical
procedure? Is it not like saying that only if the question survives the
most severe onslaught or initiation can it be said to be worthy of
thought? Yet, "such judgment can be compared to the procedure of judging
the nature and powers of a fish by seeing how long it can survive on dry
land" (_Letter on Humanism_). So perhaps the thinking that can think the
question of nonviolence must be, from the start, to a certain extent,
nonviolent. But that's the hermeutic condition which Heidegger has
affirmed so thoroughy.
---I am saying, then, at the same time, that thinking does well to ask the
question of *polemos*. And by all means, let it be humiliated by the
magnitude of what is in question. When the question is not asked more
explicity, it persists, even in verbal form, while not in discourse, and
simply has *less* development. I think Heidegger does ask the question of
*polemos* "thematically-substantively", well...*not quite thematically*.
He does this this perhaps much more in his pedagogical moments, on the
side.
---Perhaps, for all of that, Heideggerian phenomenology is in the first
instance, in its grounds and procedures, in the positivity of the rallying
cry "To the things themselves!", a certain moment of nonviolence in
thinking. (I've called it adjudicated violence without explicit
thematization of violence. Or perhaps I should say, *without
Thematization*, with the capitalization. I'm suggesting that Nonviolence
belongs more on the order of the Existential Analytic, to use the language
of Being and Time. And perhaps nonviolence would be *very quick* to remove
its own capital letter. Phenomenology may be "respect itself", as I think
Derrida has said. I think this is the case, but I think it remains
alienated from this nonviolence as such.
--- But for *thought* to *address suffering*; what is this? Is it simply
to pass a cup around a seminar room table, collecting for pictures of
starving children? Is it a distortion of thought's *sache* to take on the
question of "starving children", "the beggar", etc.? I too, let me note,
have serious problems with both the capitalized Other of Levinas, and the
capitalized other of so many interventional programs attending to the
needs of the needy. I also have serious problems with the formulation
(articulation): "*the* beggar". But these questions, for some reason,
*give me to think*, rather than justifying a removal of the question of
violence from thinking. They give me to think, but do they sanction, as
you rightly demand, an embarkation upon the question of violence? To be
sure, the *question* of violence is not, in its thoughtful element, a
project of amelioration of suffering or violence. No, thought has its own
ways, its own groundings and limits. Heidegger I think helps us to see
these limits and ways. On the other hand, the question is not properly
asked unless one also feels the heat, just as an artist who has not really
lived has little to disclose in his or her art. When is it time for the
question to broach the heat, to stand in the heat of the possibility of
violence? I really think that one learns by doing in this respect.
Prudence is good, of course, but that can not mean the total separation
>from the situation of responsibility in the progress of the question.
But I am open to persuasion.
--- Hmmmmm.
On a more sobre note: it has to be asked whether the *question of
violence* can be made a "thematic-substantive issue" (Tom Blancato). From
within the thinking of being, the setting of a theme and the
substantiality of a sub-stance have to be closely questioned. Can there be
a _sub-stantial_ way of writing (about) violence? (Who sets the themes,
who calls the tune?) Isn't the substantive a problem?
--- Yes, the substantive is a problem. But for what thinker is a problem a
cause for the cessation of thought? The designation "thematic-substantive"
is meant in a *very minimal and provisional way*: taking on a theme, with
substance intending to mean *sache* or matter for thought. I should point
out that I did say, in a previous post in this thread, that it is an open
question to me whether the question of violence can ever be *just a
question*. Generally speaking, I think that the q of v does entail more.
It entails in particular a reckoning with and fundamental shift in the
regimes separating *thought* and *action*. Heidegger teaches this as well,
albeit obliquely, concerning the thinking of Being. One not only *thinks*
Being, but also one must oneself *Be*. One can not ask of violence without
being in proximity to it. And one can not be in proximity to violence with
out bearing some responsibility. Thinking of violence thus is in the
condition of responsibility. But this, then, means a kind of call to think
what we are doing, in light of the horizon of the possibilily of violence.
This is what Arendt, Heidegger's pupil, was saying and doing when she
exhorted that we "think what we are doing". The question of violence is
part of the question of doing. I think it is a *special* part of that
question in some ways, and I am nearly certain that Arendt's exhortation
was *charged* with the violence of her time. This is a prima facie good
reason to embark upon the question of violence, I think.
--- And to *think what we are doing*; this means to *do and to think at
the same time*. The ground of such an occurance is not *thinking* only,
but also action. So, I call this ground *thoughtaction*. I think that
thoughtaction is the proper ground for the question of violence. But the
*thought* of thoughtaction must pass through Heidegger if it is to do
justice to thought. And, possibly, I speculate, Heidegger must pass
through nonviolence if he is to do justice to the thought of Being. Which
is way at the other end from your position thus far! :)
To get to the point, and since Levinas has been named in connection with
the *question of violence*: It is questionable for me to talk about the
Other in the substantial way that Levinas does. Can the Other be
substantiated (in the multiple senses of this word)? Why does the Other
bear a capital letter?
--- I don't know. I think the Levinassian position bears the marks of a
general phenomenological grounding and orientation. The capitalization of
the other, as the Other, seems to affirm in particular the condition of
Otherness, of being with another, and being an Other for another, as a
kind of *primordial* point. You'll have to deal with capital letters in
Heidegger, too, if you want to do this, in my opinion. On some reflection,
I think Levinas's analyses are, in a certain way, fine. It is possible to
think the Other, the Otherness of the other, alterity, and to do so in
Levinas's langauge. It is revealing, it teaches. I can't dismiss it from
the start. His analysis seem rich enough.
--- What does "substantial" mean here? That which stands under? Underlies?
Or substance as "stuff"? The "stuff of the other, of otherness"? Is the
otherness of the other such that a conversion to the biotic(?)/schematic
form of "stuff" and "theme" simly always an injustice to the other? For
Kierkegaard, an entering into *generality* of the moral is always a kind
of deadening. Is silence to preserve the relation to other people? I doubt
that this is a good program. What damage is done to the Other in silence
is only greater than what is done in speech. For silence, in this sense, I
suspect, remains nothing other than a truncated speech.
--- The "Other" says: any other. Just as Heidegger says: *any and every
Dasein, which is in each case mine.* If you can't capitalize Other, than
you can't capitalize Dasein, I think. I find Levinassian or other modes of
phenomenological investigation of the Other interesting and fruitful. It
gives me to think, when I am with others, my friends, my dog, my parents,
etc. in *general* directions which such analyses have opened up, and which
I might not otherwise see. Just as Heideggerian thought of Dasien gives one
to become less absorbed in beings and rather to open to some general
directions and potentialities for Being. Levinas points out how language
*teaches*, and now, when I talk to others, I am more attentive to how, in
just talking, others teach me, and I teach others. These examples are
prima facie enough grounding for me to accept, to some degree, Levinas. I
respect your questions.
Regards,
Tom B.
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