I wrote:
"--- The "hue" (again, could be a "hotness"): Heidegger wishes for real
opponents in thinking, and not simply dialogists. In Heidegger, there is a
latent sense of nonviolence in "opponentiality", standing opposed to one
another, etc. (I forget where this occurs; perhaps _Thinker as Poet_.) Of
course, Nietzsche calls for something *like* "strife", too, unabashedly,
but never the less with style. Heidegger, thus, is calling for the hue of
the moral in thinking to *authenticate* itself, to vitalize thought.
Recalling the heat."
"Thinking's cause would be more auspicious..." Yet the discussion with "a
Japanese" (why this strange nationalistic codification/categorization?)
marks a sense of "saying" which transcends "dialogue" without setting up
camps. The dream of polemos: opponentiality (as if such opponentiality
could or sould be sustained long enough for there to be "opponents" as
such, thought as person-wholes, rather than opponential moments or strata)
sets up camps, falls into ranks, vitalizes. A
world-organizing/dasein-organizing/mitsein-organizing principle, tendency,
possibility. I'll refrain from calling this "phallic" for the moment.
Thinking's cause would be more auspicious, but would thinking be? Thinking
is to realize and authenticate its underlying truth of being as war. But
opponentiality, as understood or suggested here, is not "war" as such. Or
is it? Nonviolence faces this *arrangement* and unfolds how what is other
than it is also, and perhaps more, vital.
Why? Not simply in order to be other or "disagree for the sake of
disagreeing", which is how nonviolence is taken, consistently, in the
scene of polemos, for nonviolence is *constantly* disagreeing with
polemos, with the agreement of polemos. Yet, if the discussion with the
"Japanese" is nonviolent, and it is, to a certain extent, *without
thematico-substantiviation*, its late, late emergence may be due to that
lack, and in spite of its violent tendencies.
Questions are asked, sentences from one "interlocutor"/"dialogist"
are completed by the other, variously, opponentiality surfaces and
submerges or disappears now and again. If "we" can at least agree about
silence and the "chatter" to which the talk about silence leads.
Ostensibly, silence is the key, and an understanding of the disclosive
power of language as *saying*.
But here the "mere dialogists" are not "mere" at all, and dia-logos is
not "chatter". Or else Heidegger finds a member of his "camp". The "mere"
is of a piece with the denigration of "idle chatter" and the
pre-(ontological, philosophical, reflective, phenomenological).
The accomplishment of the dialogue is founded on the maintenance in the
truth that Dasein always exceeds every specific characterization, "camp",
etc. It is a standing in nonviolence that, in a seeking, has found itself,
if precariously and temporarily, even in spite of itself. Nonviolence
knows of this excess. The political projections of nonviolence invariably
seek to transcend left-right, not in a bland homogenaiety ("mere
dialogists"), but in something altogether different from this. Aneconomic.
And before economic: an-. A-. Non-.
The dream of this transcendental mutuality is seen from the point of view
of polemos as "mere", "bland", a "middle ground". The schema of the
"middle" presumes the sides, the pre- and the post-. But then
"nonviolence" issues from a ground which itself is not in the first
instance concerned with violence as such. Hence, it doesn't *transcend*
violence, which would be meta-violence, the moral correlate to
metaphysics. Rather, it deconstructs violence. Nonviolence, often
courageously, sees its way through violence but is an issuance from
another space and waxes and wanes *as nonviolence* in its "dance" with
violence. But we can not allow ourselves, if we think and hear carefully,
the illusion that violence is done with altogether, hence the standing in
nonviolence, with violence as the moral gravity of being, is a continuous
maintenance, just as "Dasein is always guilty".
At issue is *world organization*: camps, races, racism, arenas, games,
teams, sides, groupings, causes, "the economy", parties. Violence
*worlds*. Take this away, and there's nothing left but "structure", a
lifeless world, a mere, chattering world, Gadamerian "niceness",
machine-like civilization, technology, Nietzsche's "last man". There is,
could be, nothing else. Technology, for Heidegger, may in fact be in part
the enemy of war, the new enemy. The charcterization of Nazi violence as
"manufacture of corpses" may signify, for Heidegger, the corruption of
war's capacity to bring forth authentic/genuine slain heros and martyrs.
---
A note: It was pointed out recently that the discussion on polemos has
taken on a polemical tone. Two comments: first of all, I think taken in a
broad view this is not the case. On the contrary, Michael Eldred's
capacity to be *persuaded* is evidence precisely of the absence on his
part of a dominance of polemos. Secondly, minimally mature nonviolence
does not commit the violence of the attempt to totally eliminate polemos,
an futile effort which of course is *pandemic* in milieus in which the
attempt is to maintain in the "purity" of a so-called scholary and/or
peaceful/peace-oriented attitude. The level of violence in academic
worlds, like the atrocious histories of bickering, disgruntled empoyees,
vicious infighting, etc., easily traced in "peace activism" settings,
testifies to this naivete.
Tom B.
_____________________________________________________________________
"I'll take my 'coffee' without 'sugar' produced in slave labor camps, on
third world plantations or by prison chain gangs, thank you."
_____________________________________________________________________
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---