In his response to Robert Scheetz, Dr. Michael Eldred briefly claims that
tragedy, the Bible, Shakespeare are not sites of thinking, whereas
Heraclitus and Heidegger are 'thinkers'. (Sorry for the bad paraphrase, I
inadvertently deleted the relevant post). Without rehashing the 1967
French debate on the philosophy / literature borderline, I simply want to
point out that for Heidegger, at least, the tragedies of Sophocles cannot
so easily be 'bracketed' from or by thinking. Especially when the topic (the
issue, the question, whatever) under discussion is violence, and it is in
Sophocles that Heidegger finds the thoughtful meditation on man as to
deinotaton, das Unheimlichste (in H's translation), the most uncanny,
subsequently (as the 1935 lecture develops) the violent one, the one open
to being (holding sway for the Greeks as physis) in such as way as to
struggle against it in a primal 'scene' of violence (Gewalt-taetigkeit).
Heidegger's recourse to Heraclitean polemos goes by way of a long
meditation on Sophocles (and does so again in the 1943 lecture on
Hoelderlin's _Der Ister_).
This isn't the only 'recourse' to 'the literary' in Heidegger's oeuvre,
of course; see the 'myth of care' in _Sein und Zeit_.
Cheers,
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
tragedy, the Bible, Shakespeare are not sites of thinking, whereas
Heraclitus and Heidegger are 'thinkers'. (Sorry for the bad paraphrase, I
inadvertently deleted the relevant post). Without rehashing the 1967
French debate on the philosophy / literature borderline, I simply want to
point out that for Heidegger, at least, the tragedies of Sophocles cannot
so easily be 'bracketed' from or by thinking. Especially when the topic (the
issue, the question, whatever) under discussion is violence, and it is in
Sophocles that Heidegger finds the thoughtful meditation on man as to
deinotaton, das Unheimlichste (in H's translation), the most uncanny,
subsequently (as the 1935 lecture develops) the violent one, the one open
to being (holding sway for the Greeks as physis) in such as way as to
struggle against it in a primal 'scene' of violence (Gewalt-taetigkeit).
Heidegger's recourse to Heraclitean polemos goes by way of a long
meditation on Sophocles (and does so again in the 1943 lecture on
Hoelderlin's _Der Ister_).
This isn't the only 'recourse' to 'the literary' in Heidegger's oeuvre,
of course; see the 'myth of care' in _Sein und Zeit_.
Cheers,
Paul N. Murphy
University of Toronto
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---