Seems we have a lot of Oedipal issues...
I will try and repond to those who responded--believing that the response
is the beginning of responsibility, and co-respondence the beginning of
community.
Let me first second Michael's suggestion that we look at Heidegger's
remarks on the Sophist(s), GA19. Anyone who has the text care to let fly
with a passage or two?
In response to Bob Scheetz; I was actually tempted to bring the thematics
of the Holocaust into my post, but it was getting too long and I didn't
have time to treat it with the care it deserves. Since that hasn't
changed, let me just say a few things about the question of the distinction
between 'Holocaust' and 'Shoah.' Those who say 'Shoah' do so because they
want to avoid the connotations of redemption which 'Holocaust' presupposes.
I raise this distinction because Heidegger (in the third Nietzsche
lecture) considers tragedy asa redemptive act, as, per Zarathustra, a
'going under' in order to 'go over.' [see e.g. N3 p. 135].
But, at the same time, it seems pretty clear to me that Heidegger
thought of the 'factical' Holocaust as an ontic symptom of an ontological
"catastrophe" or "disaster" [Katastrophe]:
"This fall [Abfall] into the nonessence of himself is uncanny [hat darin
sein Unheimliches] in that it always seems harmless, in that business and
pleasure go on just as before, in that it doesn't seem so important what
and how one thinks; until one day the catastrophe [Katastrophe] is there--a
day that needs perhaps centuries to rise from the night of increasing
thoughtlessness [Gedanklosigkeit]. Neither moral nor cultural nor
political standards extend to the dimension of responsibility
[Verantwortung] in which thinking is placed [gestellt] in accordance with
its essence." [1939: N3 112/NI 603]
Is it the fact that even his supporters didn't like what Heidegger
had to say about the Holocaust/Shoah (and for Heidegger the Q of 'Shoah'
vs. 'Holocaust' is also the Q of our future paths in a Janus-Headed epoch
of Enframing; the greatest danger and its possibility of the saving-power)
that has lead so many for so long to maintain that Heidegger 'said nothing'
about the Holocaust? Anyone who would talk about 'Heidegger's shameful
silence' needs to read the Nietzsche lectures--if only from there perhaps
to re-raise the Q of shame (and its exhibitionistic expresssion) in
connection with his more infamous utterances, e.g., about the gas chambers
and the motorized agricultural industry being of the same essence). If the
saving-power if to be found in the greatest danger, then it is (for
Heidegger) the fact that the Holocaust is a factical expression of
ontological Seinsvergessenehit (and, suggestively, the 'oblivion' of Being)
that holds out the hope: our recognizing this oblivion of Being from out
of this disaster--that is for Heidegger the redemptive possibility inherent
in this tragedy. (Who has the right to interpret this event? No one?
Must it be remembered in its uninterpretability as pure disaster? That may
be what 'Shoah' connotes.)
Raising the Q (what Blanchot, Nancy and others call) "the
disaster," can we also re-raise their concomitant question of the fate of
the distinction between Poiesis and Techne? Perhaps the 'good' that this
western culture still rewards is the good of techne, technical expertise,
technique--and, while technique is an indispensible element of poiesis (the
artist must have some technical know-how), what is lost when poiesis is
lost is 'the making,' the altering, the simple everyday possibilities of
and for change (evolutionary and revolutionary). Can technicity change the
understanding of Being it presupposes, or does it dangerously reify that
understanding, calling for poietic acts from within a technocracy, acts
which perhaps begin to call the conditions of that ontopolitical
understanding into question? (What are the conditions of redemption
from/within Enframing?)
We are treading here, none too lightly, over Qs (I would insist on
the plural) of violence. For Tom, my post
>is a
>classic case of the failure to grasp the issue of (non)violence: violent
>thought/action kills the father, nonviolent thoughtaction approaches the
>problem of the *tyrant*, leaving *paternality* intact, albeit minus its
>*dominance*. It is a serious failing to attach *paternalism* as such,
>since there are, after all, fathers. Better to say, "the death of the
>tyrant".
Tom has chastised me several times for suggesting the ubiquity of violence.
But who is being naive here?
Perhaps I can address three last points (Tom's, Patrick Murphy's Q
of the promise, and Paul Murphy's reconnection with Derrida's analysis)
together:
We need Paul's reminder (of the pharmakon in Plato's pharmacy) to
mitigate Tom's (as a homeopathic counter-dose we should also address
Heidegger's readings of Plato, as Paul and Michael both suggest). On the
page Paul refers us to, Derrida writes: "Writing is parricidal." [Diss,
164] Children replace their parents. (Writing writes over the past.)
Tom's dream, of killing only the father as tyrant, of leaving the good
father intact and alive, this is a dream which (perhaps unfortunately)
flies in the face of the existential reality to which Oedipus (to hardly
mention Freud's staging of the primal scene e.g. in Totem and Tabboo) at
Colonus attests. Petar Ramadanovic asks 'Who' the father is. That is
precisely the Q., and these texts address the way life-in-time 'plays-out'
the *changing* answers to that Q (documenting certain perils inherent to
the porocess of transmission as well as providing a kind of program for
successful transmission). Patrick raises the Q of the promise, and here we
have to remember that Oedipus ellicits the promise from Theseus, who is not
Oed's son but who is the King--and who has thus inherited the mantle from
Oedipus (and thus is, in a sense, the true son). I would thus say that it
is not so much a Q of good fathers (or mothers!) as of good children. What
this means is that, given the fact of generation(s)--the fact about
temporaly finite beings that we re-place those who came before--we *filter*
the past for the sake of the future. This process is what Heidegger calls
'heritage' (over against a reifying 'tradition'). This simple existential
faktung leads to an ethical responsibility for what we transmit to the
future; we have to take responsibility for the inevitable filtration that
goes on as we mediate the transmission of intelligibility through time. We
can't not kill the father, sadly, but we may be able not to kill the
children,
hopefully,
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
I will try and repond to those who responded--believing that the response
is the beginning of responsibility, and co-respondence the beginning of
community.
Let me first second Michael's suggestion that we look at Heidegger's
remarks on the Sophist(s), GA19. Anyone who has the text care to let fly
with a passage or two?
In response to Bob Scheetz; I was actually tempted to bring the thematics
of the Holocaust into my post, but it was getting too long and I didn't
have time to treat it with the care it deserves. Since that hasn't
changed, let me just say a few things about the question of the distinction
between 'Holocaust' and 'Shoah.' Those who say 'Shoah' do so because they
want to avoid the connotations of redemption which 'Holocaust' presupposes.
I raise this distinction because Heidegger (in the third Nietzsche
lecture) considers tragedy asa redemptive act, as, per Zarathustra, a
'going under' in order to 'go over.' [see e.g. N3 p. 135].
But, at the same time, it seems pretty clear to me that Heidegger
thought of the 'factical' Holocaust as an ontic symptom of an ontological
"catastrophe" or "disaster" [Katastrophe]:
"This fall [Abfall] into the nonessence of himself is uncanny [hat darin
sein Unheimliches] in that it always seems harmless, in that business and
pleasure go on just as before, in that it doesn't seem so important what
and how one thinks; until one day the catastrophe [Katastrophe] is there--a
day that needs perhaps centuries to rise from the night of increasing
thoughtlessness [Gedanklosigkeit]. Neither moral nor cultural nor
political standards extend to the dimension of responsibility
[Verantwortung] in which thinking is placed [gestellt] in accordance with
its essence." [1939: N3 112/NI 603]
Is it the fact that even his supporters didn't like what Heidegger
had to say about the Holocaust/Shoah (and for Heidegger the Q of 'Shoah'
vs. 'Holocaust' is also the Q of our future paths in a Janus-Headed epoch
of Enframing; the greatest danger and its possibility of the saving-power)
that has lead so many for so long to maintain that Heidegger 'said nothing'
about the Holocaust? Anyone who would talk about 'Heidegger's shameful
silence' needs to read the Nietzsche lectures--if only from there perhaps
to re-raise the Q of shame (and its exhibitionistic expresssion) in
connection with his more infamous utterances, e.g., about the gas chambers
and the motorized agricultural industry being of the same essence). If the
saving-power if to be found in the greatest danger, then it is (for
Heidegger) the fact that the Holocaust is a factical expression of
ontological Seinsvergessenehit (and, suggestively, the 'oblivion' of Being)
that holds out the hope: our recognizing this oblivion of Being from out
of this disaster--that is for Heidegger the redemptive possibility inherent
in this tragedy. (Who has the right to interpret this event? No one?
Must it be remembered in its uninterpretability as pure disaster? That may
be what 'Shoah' connotes.)
Raising the Q (what Blanchot, Nancy and others call) "the
disaster," can we also re-raise their concomitant question of the fate of
the distinction between Poiesis and Techne? Perhaps the 'good' that this
western culture still rewards is the good of techne, technical expertise,
technique--and, while technique is an indispensible element of poiesis (the
artist must have some technical know-how), what is lost when poiesis is
lost is 'the making,' the altering, the simple everyday possibilities of
and for change (evolutionary and revolutionary). Can technicity change the
understanding of Being it presupposes, or does it dangerously reify that
understanding, calling for poietic acts from within a technocracy, acts
which perhaps begin to call the conditions of that ontopolitical
understanding into question? (What are the conditions of redemption
from/within Enframing?)
We are treading here, none too lightly, over Qs (I would insist on
the plural) of violence. For Tom, my post
>is a
>classic case of the failure to grasp the issue of (non)violence: violent
>thought/action kills the father, nonviolent thoughtaction approaches the
>problem of the *tyrant*, leaving *paternality* intact, albeit minus its
>*dominance*. It is a serious failing to attach *paternalism* as such,
>since there are, after all, fathers. Better to say, "the death of the
>tyrant".
Tom has chastised me several times for suggesting the ubiquity of violence.
But who is being naive here?
Perhaps I can address three last points (Tom's, Patrick Murphy's Q
of the promise, and Paul Murphy's reconnection with Derrida's analysis)
together:
We need Paul's reminder (of the pharmakon in Plato's pharmacy) to
mitigate Tom's (as a homeopathic counter-dose we should also address
Heidegger's readings of Plato, as Paul and Michael both suggest). On the
page Paul refers us to, Derrida writes: "Writing is parricidal." [Diss,
164] Children replace their parents. (Writing writes over the past.)
Tom's dream, of killing only the father as tyrant, of leaving the good
father intact and alive, this is a dream which (perhaps unfortunately)
flies in the face of the existential reality to which Oedipus (to hardly
mention Freud's staging of the primal scene e.g. in Totem and Tabboo) at
Colonus attests. Petar Ramadanovic asks 'Who' the father is. That is
precisely the Q., and these texts address the way life-in-time 'plays-out'
the *changing* answers to that Q (documenting certain perils inherent to
the porocess of transmission as well as providing a kind of program for
successful transmission). Patrick raises the Q of the promise, and here we
have to remember that Oedipus ellicits the promise from Theseus, who is not
Oed's son but who is the King--and who has thus inherited the mantle from
Oedipus (and thus is, in a sense, the true son). I would thus say that it
is not so much a Q of good fathers (or mothers!) as of good children. What
this means is that, given the fact of generation(s)--the fact about
temporaly finite beings that we re-place those who came before--we *filter*
the past for the sake of the future. This process is what Heidegger calls
'heritage' (over against a reifying 'tradition'). This simple existential
faktung leads to an ethical responsibility for what we transmit to the
future; we have to take responsibility for the inevitable filtration that
goes on as we mediate the transmission of intelligibility through time. We
can't not kill the father, sadly, but we may be able not to kill the
children,
hopefully,
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---