Cologne, 4 August 1996
Robert Scheetz wrote:
"Your dismissiveness here: mere bombast, penile [purile? penal? penibel?
peinlich?] melodrama ...,
seems maybe too abrupt. As for methodological punctilio,
it' s, frankly, beyond me. But, I'm still unconvinced
this theme is an ontological nullity. So perhaps you'd
consider a brief argument."
This charge of dismissiveness is echoed by Tom Blancato (see below). That is not
my intention, and my apologies to Tom if I have given this impression. My
concern is to get the discussion of violence into a phenomenological perspective
so that I/we can see what is going on within a context of thinking from being.
The moral charge [of the bull] staged here by Robert Scheetz may work him up
into a lather of moral outrage but it is not to the point phenomenologically.
The sobre matador nimbly sidesteps this charge. Heidegger refers in the
'Contributions to Philosophy' to the mood of the transition to the other
beginning, calling it Verhaltenheit (composure, batedness):
"It [Verhaltenheit] is the style [cf. Nietzsche!] of originary thinking only
because it has to become the style of future human being, of human being
grounded in Da-sein, i.e. pervades this founding moodedly and bears it.
Composure - as style - the selfcertainty of the founding provision of measure
and of Dasein's withstanding fury." (GA65:33 Section 13)
German: "Sie ist der Stil des anfaenglichen Denkens nur deshalb, weil sie der
Stil des kuenftigen Menschseins, des im Da-sein gegruendeten, werden muss, d.h.
diese Gruendung durchstimmt und traegt. Verhaltenheit - als Stil - die
Selbstgewissheit der gruendenden Massgebung und der Grimmbestaendnis des
Daseins."
Thinking cannot event-uate in a mood of moral outrage. Robert Scheetz, on the
other hand, accuses me of punctiliousness and stiltedness. I am attempting to
defuse the moral charge and deflect its fury. If phenomenological method is
beyond Robert Scheetz, then there is still something for him to learn. Nowhere
do I say or suggest that the phenomenon of violence is an "ontological nullity".
Rather, I have questioned the originariness of this phenomenon.
Robert Scheetz continues at some length and asks:
"How is it conceivable, Violence - dynamic, engrossing, Heraclitean Violence,
were not the controlling trope?"
Is this supposed to be accepted as an axiomatic truth? Where does this
rhetorical flourish lead us? The totalizing sweep of this statement as well as
R. Scheetz's post on the whole gives me the creeps. The only person to date to
pose a *question* of violence in this discussion to date has been Rafael
Capurro, who coyly asked: "Why shouldn't we be violent?" The tone of moral
outrage attempts to gag this question. It is still an open question for me
whether and in which sense Heraclitean polemos can be translated as 'violence'.
And if Western Civilization is violent to the core, as Robert Scheetz claims, so
what? What is then left to think? Being in its essential violence? Open and shut
case - violent foreclosure through accusation. I would suggest on the contrary
that moral diatribes have nothing to do with thinking but instead obfuscate it
and attempt to drive it into impotence.
Tom Blancato is concerned at my dismissiveness and my "a-voiding a range of
phenomena". I repeat: that is not my intention. Rather, I am trying to see the
phenomenon of violence phenomenologically, which is apparently now leading us
into a dispute about: What is phenomenology? Tom writes in response to some
quotes from SZ on phenomenology:
"Again, I appreciate this, but at the same time, I think the suggestion
that the 'ontic world' is always and only never understanding beings in
their Being is mistaken, indeed, perhaps something of a "coup", a
"rushing in" and installation of an historical advent of the "phenomenon"
as such. I suggest that in the litigation process, there are some
genuinely ontological moments in various ways, as there are all over the
place. The suggestion that everything outside of phenomenology is "mere
narrative" is a bit too much. Likewise, when phenomenology *fully*
clarifies itself, it, too, remains blind to the disclosure of beings in
their Being, being transferred utterly over into what I've metanymized as
"the skeletal", the dream of structure. This, as you have reaffirmed, for
you constitutes part of the "charging" and, by indications, will not be
regarded substantively, I suspect."
I did not say "the 'ontic world' is always and only never understanding beings
in their Being" but that phenomena almost never present themselves in a way that
allow them to be seen as what they are: modes of being. All phenomena presented
to human being presuppose in a way an understanding of being, which Heidegger
calls "Vorverstaendnis" ('pre-understanding'). This pre-understanding has to be
transformed by thinking to reveal beings AS beings, beings in their beyng. When
Tom claims there are "genuinely ontological moments" "in the litigation
process", I agree, but point out, these moments are not visible prima facie,
i.e. at first sight, but have to be brought to a language that discloses them in
their being. I tried to do this in a sketchy way in my last post by showing how
the adversarial process can be situated in an essencing of truth as veritas.
As to the claim that phenomenology reduces phenomena to a skeletal structure: Of
course phenomena are not left in their (endless) narrative detail. To complain
about, say, the structure of care as worked out in SZ and which can easily be
reduced to a formula, as Tom has given, is, in my view, to warn against the
dangers of formulae in which nothing is thought, i.e. there is an entire
development in SZ in which a multitude of phenomena are brought before the
readers' eyes before Heidegger announces his 'formula' for the care-structure of
Dasein. It is the path of thinking that is important, going through it oneself;
the 'result' in itself is worthless. And SZ is only ONE path of thinking, not
the be all and end all. It works out the structure of Dasein in a transcendental
path of thinking that works out conditions of possibility. (This is the sense in
which 'possibility' is 'higher' than necessity (of logic).)
Rather than talking of a skeleton, I prefer to talk about a simplifying
disclosure of essence/essencing. There are a few essential words of Western
history that lie at its core and whose transformations account for basic,
elemental and simple shifts in this history. Heidegger's tracing of the
essencing of truth is perhaps the paradigm of this. The myriad phenomena of
Western history over 2500 years are thus 'reduced' to this 'skeletal' history?
Yes, if you will. But nevertheless, this history of the transformations of the
essencing of truth is not just any story.
It is currently the fashion to dismiss 'essentialism' as 'metaphysics', to which
I retort, quoting Heidegger; we have to learn to think. Getting into a lather of
moral outrage or losing oneself in narrative detail are two ways of evading this
task of learning to think.
I take your point, Tom, that phenomenology cannot "fully" clarify itself. There
are various paths of thinking, various attempts at trying to reveal beings in
their being, different languages of phenomenology. Perhaps all these attempts
ultimately fail. That doesn't matter. Thinking is open-ended and never-ceasing,
never coming to a conclusive conclusion. Phenomenology, in my view, is not a
super-discourse that masters and dominates every other discourse or phenomenon.
Like all thinking, it has its blind-spots, which however cannot be taken as an
excuse to give up thinking. In fact the thinking of being achieves very little.
But this little is nevertheless capable of founding history in its fundamentally
simple structure. Heidegger writes on this repeatedly, e.g.:
"The _first beginning_ of the essence-history of the Occident stands under the
heading 'being and word'. The 'and' names the essence-relation which being
itself (and not, say, first humans thinking about it) causes to e-merge in order
to bring its [being's] essencing to truth in it [the essence-relation]. In Plato
and Aristotle, who say the beginning of metaphysics, the word becomes logos in
the sense of statement. Logos transforms itself in the course of the unfolding
of metaphysics into ratio, reason and spirit. Occidental metaphysics, the
essential history of the truth of beings as such as a whole which brings itself
to language in thinking from Plato to Nietzsche, stands under the heading 'being
and ratio'. For this reason, 'the irrational' also appears in the age of
metaphysics and only in this age, and subsequently also 'lived experience'. If
we think of the title 'Being and Time', then 'time' says here neither the
calculated time of the clock in the sense of Bergson and others. The name 'time'
in the title according to the clearly expressed relation of belonging to being
is the preliminary name for the more originary essencing of aletheia and names
the essential ground (ground of essencing) for ratio and all thinking and
saying. 'Time' in 'Being and Time', a strange as this may seem, is the
preliminary name for the initial _ground_ of the word. 'Being and word', the
beginning of the essential history of the Occident, is experienced more
originarily. The treatise 'Being and Time' is only an indication of the E-vent
that being itself sends a more _originary_ experience to Occidental humankind."
(GA54:113f 'Parmenides')
This does not get us any closer to clarifying Heraclitean polemos and its
relation to violence (assuming that Robert Scheetz' accusational and totalizing
charge is left to one side), but may help clarify what it means to think
phenomenologically. I do not intend to foreclose phenomenological clarification
of the relationship between polemos and violence. Perhaps we could dwell on this
issue a bit.
Cheers,
Michael
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