On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, M.Eldred_artefact wrote:
> Cologne, 5 August 1996
>
> In response to Tom Blancato's interpretation of composure (Verhaltenheit) I'd
> like to make a brief comment.
>
> I agree with the possibility of inherent violence in one possible understanding
> of composure. It made me think again whether my translation was appropriate, so
> I queried Astrid Nettling about it this evening. I wanted to avoid the
> dictionary translation of Verhaltenheit as "restrainedness" because this seems
> to me too close to "repressed", "bottled up". Astrid and I did get a little
> closer to Verhaltenheit via Zurueckhaltung and Reserviertheit. As behaviour,
> Verhaltenheit is reservedness, holding-oneself-back, but this not necessarily in
> a negative sense of being constrained or repressed, but in the sense of being
> reluctant to put oneself in the centre, of looking first to see what the others
> are doing before revealing oneself or bringing oneself into the foreground.
> Verhaltenheit is a word very much tied to being together with others. So my
> translation as composure (Gefasstheit) seems on retrospect somewhat off the
> mark. Verhaltenheit can have the meaning of allowing others their space,
> allowing others to be who they are.
Well, for all of that, I did not mean the sense of composure as "bottled
up", even thought I mentioned the situation of analysis/therapy, but, well,
just those senses I mentioned. Your reading of me is quite selective.
Composure before rage as fury, and for that matter, as an enactment of a
prescribed program of "how to act" as set forth by Heidegger, was more
what I had in mind. Again, I think you dispense, in some ways, with too
much of what I've been saying by fastening on one element, a rather
truncated reading, and ignoring simply *too* much of what I say,
dismissing as incoherent, etc.
What does this imply for the passage I
> quoted:
>
> "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. Reservedness/restrainedness - 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."
>
> The restrainedness/reservedness relates to the "self-certainty of the founding
> provision of a measure". The measure provided for and by human being as dasein
> is belonging to beyng. This provision is done quietly, without putting oneself
> into the foreground, without pushing forward to centre stage. In this quiet,
> reserved preparation of a belonging to beyng, dasein has to withstand the fury
> of human beings standing on centre stage and of the oblivion to beyng rampant in
> Western civilization.
I'll take this as meaning that you're sticking to the "charging to the
fore" reading of the Q of V. Interestingly, the hiding of the question of
violence is, indeed, accomplished by the "star scene" you cite here. On
the other hand, the wresting strife by which a theme comes to stand (if
we can in fact weave ourselves into the discourse in this way) as
sub-stance or standing on its own can be all too easily dismissed as
"star phenomenon". How to judge? It isn't easy. I can only affirm that
my own thinking on nonviolence is grounded, as I've already said, in the
view that it is covered *precisely* by the star scene. On the other hand,
the mere reversal of this, becoming as little, unassuming, perspicacious
and circumspect is but one possibility in response to this kind of problem.
I'm reminded that it appears to me that all over the place Heidegger is
in an engagement with the problem of violence: a violence to Being. That
the translation of Greek bears within it a deep violence which is not
easily separated from the political violence of the Roman happening, for
example.
>
> So there is a selfcertainty of belonging to being that does not have to blow a
> trumpet and which has its own reserved style. This quiet selfcertainty of
> belonging to beyng has somehow gone beyond the moral outrage at the violence
> human beings do to each other since, it is no longer beings, or human beings in
> particular who can be in the centre.
Somehow: but *how*, precisely? The mere donning the dress of a prescribed
mood within a program? Or *authentic attainment*? In any event, all that
you say here is quite applicable to nonviolence. Permeating Being, I
think, is the *gravity of violence*, and part of what is happening in
Heidegger with what you identify here *is* a kind of recognition of the
problem of violence, a standing in nonviolence. My contention is that it
is a kind of *alienated nonviolence*.
>
> Tom Blancato also wrote, among other things:
>
> "--- And perhaps I am not [trying to see the phenomenon of violence
> phenomenologically]: I am trying to see it *thoughtfully* and in
> light of the *thought of Being*. I am suggesting, in part, that it is an
> underlying violence and alienation from Da-Sein's emergence *as
> nonviolence* that motivates Heidegger's shift from *phenomenology* to
> *thinking*, even "the other thinking", and poetic dwelling. But a *mere
> reinstantiation* of polemos, of the rift between earth and world, a
> dwelling in the fourfold which does not *open up the vast history of
> violence* is, to be frank concerning Heidegger, sheer ignorance and
> blindness."
>
> There are certainly shifts in Heidegger's thinking through the fifty years from
> 1920 on, but in my view he remains, especially in the craft of his thinking, a
> phenomenologist [his 'use' of Hoelderlin may be an exception, but here I am
> thinking of his interpretation of philosophical texts, which are the mainstay of
> his thinking and are all phenomenological hermeneutics]. The positive drafts of
> a longing to beyng in the fourfold, which owe a lot to Hoelderlin, may not be
> phenomenolgical, but they are also to my 'mind' among the most questionable
> aspects in Heidegger.
>
> Heidegger is concerned with preparing a belonging of human being to beyng. The
> accusation that he is ignorant of the history of violence comes only from you
> making the question or phenomenon of violence the central concern.
My reading is more complex and subtle than that. I think you are trying
to reduce my gesture here to one of "trying to steal center stage", as
if, in seizing on what I've found to be some "unthought", I might cash in
on this and thrust it to the center. I do not think this is the case at
all. I just don't think you get what I'm saying. And perhaps I'm not
saying it well enough.
Interpreting
> a shift into Heidegger on the basis of an ostensible emergence of Dasein as
> nonviolence is an effect of your central concern/question.
I think the phenomena give me to this interpretation, the data. My
central concern is, admittedly, in this thread, the question of violence,
but the implication is that it is simply a childish narcissism, a desire
to seize the center (reserved for Being). If I check myself for every
such impulse, and even demand of myself, in discipline, that I remove
myself utterly from the scene of this question, in order to avoid
centering in the way you suggest, I am never the less left with the
perception, which *may be mistaken*, that interpenetrating Being, at the
core, is the issue of violence.
You have
yet to show
> a connection between the question of being and the question of violence if you
> claim to see the latter "in the light of the thought of being".
I think I have not supported this "claim" as much as is possible, and I
am working within my limits. On the other hand, since your reading of my
posts has been so selective, I think you have dismissed too much as
either incoherent, trying to steal center stage, "enraged", charged,
etc. I hold that I have in the course of my posts in this thread given
enough indication of prima facie routes, *as well as substantive,
developed routes* to allay this problem.
Where is the
> engagement with the thought of being? Where is the engagement with the
> understanding of being in Western civilization as "staendige Anwesung"?
If we look at the "how does it stand with Being" in _Intro. to
Metaphysics_, I guess I would say that we are looking at Dasein circling
around its essence *as nonviolence*, ever trying to proceed politically,
thoughtfully, artistically without taking up the burden of the question
of violence as such: as a lived question. I would say that Heidegger's
indictment of *technology* is not enough to gather in and summarize this.
I have indicated this already. You simply have dismissed so much of what
I've said that you can now concoct a case founded on the partial evidence
of your partial reading of me. *On the other hand*, you rightly ask for a
much more substantive reading and suppot of my thesis, which I will try
to do when I can.
Where do
> you show up a connection between violence and this understanding of being?
Let me affirm again: I think it is *everywhere* in Heidegger's own
reading of the forgetting of being, and more than that. I think so many
flights, flights into technology, into taking Being as manipulable
beings, into transposing the opening of the Greek polis into manipulable
machinations of the state, arise in part from the staggering wages of
violence. Heidegger's project is to *restore* to some original, rightful
place the truth of Being, the understanding of Being, etc., which may be
to the good. But the more I look at this, the more it appears to me that
the flight from Being is at the same time a flight from the incredible
violence which has taken place, a violence which has also been a violence
in the form of the forgetting, but not only that violence. What calls for
thinking, to my hears, louder and clear than anything, if you'll pardon
this "centering", is the problem of violence. If you can make an
ambiguous comment about the future of Gandhi's India in favor of Western
Civilization (if I read you correctly), then surely the future of
Heidegger's Germany at the time of _Intro. to Metaphysics_ could be
called into question. But I don't like that tit for tat. I do so under a
certain "duress".
It
> almost seems to me that English is not given to the thinking of beyng because it
> is not given to being used as the working medium of thinking itself. (This is an
> experience I have had now for many years, to the point where I today habitually
> think in German and translate into English as required - and an unusual English
> it often is too! Perhaps English is too glib [easy, not offering resistance] for
> the thinking of beyng.)
>
> To accuse Heidegger of an ignorance of the history of violence is to presuppose
> that this question is central to (Western) philosophy (there is no philosophy
> other than _Western_ philsophy).
This is really a bit much. But, yes, j'accuse. I accuse, to the extent
that it is an "accusation", philosophy.
Heidegger sees metaphysical thinking as the
> founding force par excellence in Western history and sets out to get a view of
> what this thinking is in its essence and essencing in order to open up other
> historical possibilities, another history of belonging to beyng. Whether the
> world would become less or non-violent thereby is another question.
The necessity of lessening violence can not affect indepent thought
concerning metaphysics and philosophy. Well, not exactly. I think this is
a bit more complicated than how you portray it here.
All we can
> say is that the thinking of beyng and a belonging to beyng involve a step back
> (in a four-step, as outlined in previous posts). Any movement towards
> nonviolence has to be seen in these steps back, if anywhere at all. I do not see
> any engagement on your part trying to show such interconnections.
Well, ok, as I've said, are you really looking? I think that if you look
for it with an open mind, you will find it. It *appears* to me to be
almost everywhere in Heidegger in certain ways. I just don't think you
get what I'm pointing to. Who knows, perhaps I'm entirely wrong and am in
fact pointing at shadows cast, perhaps, by my own being-centered. I can
only strive to take your precautions and criticisms, under consideration
as much as possible. But of course, the phenomena are first.
>
> That's all I have time for at the moment,
> Regards,
> Michael
Regards,
Tom B.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
> Cologne, 5 August 1996
>
> In response to Tom Blancato's interpretation of composure (Verhaltenheit) I'd
> like to make a brief comment.
>
> I agree with the possibility of inherent violence in one possible understanding
> of composure. It made me think again whether my translation was appropriate, so
> I queried Astrid Nettling about it this evening. I wanted to avoid the
> dictionary translation of Verhaltenheit as "restrainedness" because this seems
> to me too close to "repressed", "bottled up". Astrid and I did get a little
> closer to Verhaltenheit via Zurueckhaltung and Reserviertheit. As behaviour,
> Verhaltenheit is reservedness, holding-oneself-back, but this not necessarily in
> a negative sense of being constrained or repressed, but in the sense of being
> reluctant to put oneself in the centre, of looking first to see what the others
> are doing before revealing oneself or bringing oneself into the foreground.
> Verhaltenheit is a word very much tied to being together with others. So my
> translation as composure (Gefasstheit) seems on retrospect somewhat off the
> mark. Verhaltenheit can have the meaning of allowing others their space,
> allowing others to be who they are.
Well, for all of that, I did not mean the sense of composure as "bottled
up", even thought I mentioned the situation of analysis/therapy, but, well,
just those senses I mentioned. Your reading of me is quite selective.
Composure before rage as fury, and for that matter, as an enactment of a
prescribed program of "how to act" as set forth by Heidegger, was more
what I had in mind. Again, I think you dispense, in some ways, with too
much of what I've been saying by fastening on one element, a rather
truncated reading, and ignoring simply *too* much of what I say,
dismissing as incoherent, etc.
What does this imply for the passage I
> quoted:
>
> "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. Reservedness/restrainedness - 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."
>
> The restrainedness/reservedness relates to the "self-certainty of the founding
> provision of a measure". The measure provided for and by human being as dasein
> is belonging to beyng. This provision is done quietly, without putting oneself
> into the foreground, without pushing forward to centre stage. In this quiet,
> reserved preparation of a belonging to beyng, dasein has to withstand the fury
> of human beings standing on centre stage and of the oblivion to beyng rampant in
> Western civilization.
I'll take this as meaning that you're sticking to the "charging to the
fore" reading of the Q of V. Interestingly, the hiding of the question of
violence is, indeed, accomplished by the "star scene" you cite here. On
the other hand, the wresting strife by which a theme comes to stand (if
we can in fact weave ourselves into the discourse in this way) as
sub-stance or standing on its own can be all too easily dismissed as
"star phenomenon". How to judge? It isn't easy. I can only affirm that
my own thinking on nonviolence is grounded, as I've already said, in the
view that it is covered *precisely* by the star scene. On the other hand,
the mere reversal of this, becoming as little, unassuming, perspicacious
and circumspect is but one possibility in response to this kind of problem.
I'm reminded that it appears to me that all over the place Heidegger is
in an engagement with the problem of violence: a violence to Being. That
the translation of Greek bears within it a deep violence which is not
easily separated from the political violence of the Roman happening, for
example.
>
> So there is a selfcertainty of belonging to being that does not have to blow a
> trumpet and which has its own reserved style. This quiet selfcertainty of
> belonging to beyng has somehow gone beyond the moral outrage at the violence
> human beings do to each other since, it is no longer beings, or human beings in
> particular who can be in the centre.
Somehow: but *how*, precisely? The mere donning the dress of a prescribed
mood within a program? Or *authentic attainment*? In any event, all that
you say here is quite applicable to nonviolence. Permeating Being, I
think, is the *gravity of violence*, and part of what is happening in
Heidegger with what you identify here *is* a kind of recognition of the
problem of violence, a standing in nonviolence. My contention is that it
is a kind of *alienated nonviolence*.
>
> Tom Blancato also wrote, among other things:
>
> "--- And perhaps I am not [trying to see the phenomenon of violence
> phenomenologically]: I am trying to see it *thoughtfully* and in
> light of the *thought of Being*. I am suggesting, in part, that it is an
> underlying violence and alienation from Da-Sein's emergence *as
> nonviolence* that motivates Heidegger's shift from *phenomenology* to
> *thinking*, even "the other thinking", and poetic dwelling. But a *mere
> reinstantiation* of polemos, of the rift between earth and world, a
> dwelling in the fourfold which does not *open up the vast history of
> violence* is, to be frank concerning Heidegger, sheer ignorance and
> blindness."
>
> There are certainly shifts in Heidegger's thinking through the fifty years from
> 1920 on, but in my view he remains, especially in the craft of his thinking, a
> phenomenologist [his 'use' of Hoelderlin may be an exception, but here I am
> thinking of his interpretation of philosophical texts, which are the mainstay of
> his thinking and are all phenomenological hermeneutics]. The positive drafts of
> a longing to beyng in the fourfold, which owe a lot to Hoelderlin, may not be
> phenomenolgical, but they are also to my 'mind' among the most questionable
> aspects in Heidegger.
>
> Heidegger is concerned with preparing a belonging of human being to beyng. The
> accusation that he is ignorant of the history of violence comes only from you
> making the question or phenomenon of violence the central concern.
My reading is more complex and subtle than that. I think you are trying
to reduce my gesture here to one of "trying to steal center stage", as
if, in seizing on what I've found to be some "unthought", I might cash in
on this and thrust it to the center. I do not think this is the case at
all. I just don't think you get what I'm saying. And perhaps I'm not
saying it well enough.
Interpreting
> a shift into Heidegger on the basis of an ostensible emergence of Dasein as
> nonviolence is an effect of your central concern/question.
I think the phenomena give me to this interpretation, the data. My
central concern is, admittedly, in this thread, the question of violence,
but the implication is that it is simply a childish narcissism, a desire
to seize the center (reserved for Being). If I check myself for every
such impulse, and even demand of myself, in discipline, that I remove
myself utterly from the scene of this question, in order to avoid
centering in the way you suggest, I am never the less left with the
perception, which *may be mistaken*, that interpenetrating Being, at the
core, is the issue of violence.
You have
yet to show
> a connection between the question of being and the question of violence if you
> claim to see the latter "in the light of the thought of being".
I think I have not supported this "claim" as much as is possible, and I
am working within my limits. On the other hand, since your reading of my
posts has been so selective, I think you have dismissed too much as
either incoherent, trying to steal center stage, "enraged", charged,
etc. I hold that I have in the course of my posts in this thread given
enough indication of prima facie routes, *as well as substantive,
developed routes* to allay this problem.
Where is the
> engagement with the thought of being? Where is the engagement with the
> understanding of being in Western civilization as "staendige Anwesung"?
If we look at the "how does it stand with Being" in _Intro. to
Metaphysics_, I guess I would say that we are looking at Dasein circling
around its essence *as nonviolence*, ever trying to proceed politically,
thoughtfully, artistically without taking up the burden of the question
of violence as such: as a lived question. I would say that Heidegger's
indictment of *technology* is not enough to gather in and summarize this.
I have indicated this already. You simply have dismissed so much of what
I've said that you can now concoct a case founded on the partial evidence
of your partial reading of me. *On the other hand*, you rightly ask for a
much more substantive reading and suppot of my thesis, which I will try
to do when I can.
Where do
> you show up a connection between violence and this understanding of being?
Let me affirm again: I think it is *everywhere* in Heidegger's own
reading of the forgetting of being, and more than that. I think so many
flights, flights into technology, into taking Being as manipulable
beings, into transposing the opening of the Greek polis into manipulable
machinations of the state, arise in part from the staggering wages of
violence. Heidegger's project is to *restore* to some original, rightful
place the truth of Being, the understanding of Being, etc., which may be
to the good. But the more I look at this, the more it appears to me that
the flight from Being is at the same time a flight from the incredible
violence which has taken place, a violence which has also been a violence
in the form of the forgetting, but not only that violence. What calls for
thinking, to my hears, louder and clear than anything, if you'll pardon
this "centering", is the problem of violence. If you can make an
ambiguous comment about the future of Gandhi's India in favor of Western
Civilization (if I read you correctly), then surely the future of
Heidegger's Germany at the time of _Intro. to Metaphysics_ could be
called into question. But I don't like that tit for tat. I do so under a
certain "duress".
It
> almost seems to me that English is not given to the thinking of beyng because it
> is not given to being used as the working medium of thinking itself. (This is an
> experience I have had now for many years, to the point where I today habitually
> think in German and translate into English as required - and an unusual English
> it often is too! Perhaps English is too glib [easy, not offering resistance] for
> the thinking of beyng.)
>
> To accuse Heidegger of an ignorance of the history of violence is to presuppose
> that this question is central to (Western) philosophy (there is no philosophy
> other than _Western_ philsophy).
This is really a bit much. But, yes, j'accuse. I accuse, to the extent
that it is an "accusation", philosophy.
Heidegger sees metaphysical thinking as the
> founding force par excellence in Western history and sets out to get a view of
> what this thinking is in its essence and essencing in order to open up other
> historical possibilities, another history of belonging to beyng. Whether the
> world would become less or non-violent thereby is another question.
The necessity of lessening violence can not affect indepent thought
concerning metaphysics and philosophy. Well, not exactly. I think this is
a bit more complicated than how you portray it here.
All we can
> say is that the thinking of beyng and a belonging to beyng involve a step back
> (in a four-step, as outlined in previous posts). Any movement towards
> nonviolence has to be seen in these steps back, if anywhere at all. I do not see
> any engagement on your part trying to show such interconnections.
Well, ok, as I've said, are you really looking? I think that if you look
for it with an open mind, you will find it. It *appears* to me to be
almost everywhere in Heidegger in certain ways. I just don't think you
get what I'm pointing to. Who knows, perhaps I'm entirely wrong and am in
fact pointing at shadows cast, perhaps, by my own being-centered. I can
only strive to take your precautions and criticisms, under consideration
as much as possible. But of course, the phenomena are first.
>
> That's all I have time for at the moment,
> Regards,
> Michael
Regards,
Tom B.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---