Cologne, 19 August 1996
To follow up a bit on patricide and Iain's Vorstoss, especially concerning the
necessity of doing violence to the father in the passing of the generations,
I've been wondering whether Oedipus' downfall lay in fact in NOT having done
violence to the father. For he never 'killed' the father AS father, but a
stranger blocking his way on the road. This absence of having it out with the
father, the very lack of resistance was perhaps his downfall, leading him to re-
and uncovering the father? If this is at all plausible, then the parallels to
Plato's doing violence to father Parmenides do not hold up, for Plato's
"violence" is a loving violence. (Just as Heidegger's violence against Husserl
is a loving violence.) Taking the father seriously in having it out with him
seems to be part of the downward compatible love between the generations in the
West.
I've been looking at GA19 'Sophistes' Marburger Vorlesung WS 1924/25 over the
last couple of days. It is one of the longest volumes (633 pp.!) in the GA and
an amazingly thorough-going, line-for-line interpretation not only of
'Sophistes' but also of parts of the 'Nikomachean Ethics' and 'Metaphysics'. A
beautiful way to learn philosophical Greek.
In the central part of the lecture series and of 'Sophistes', the issue turns on
whether non-being can even be said (_me on legein_). If one goes along with
Parmenides, the Father, then "what is non-being is not, thus: there is no such
thing as _pseudes logos_" (S.411) If non-being is not, then it cannot be said
and thus there can be no such thing as a sophist. Plato is put before the choice
of either being true to the tradition (Parmenides) or breaking with it in the
attempt to return to "the issues themselves": "Sachforschung" (S.412). Plato of
course decides for the latter alternative: to think through the issues himself
in the "silent dialogue of the soul/psyche with itself". Violence must be done
to the tradition/father: "_Ruecksichtslosigkeit gegen die Tradition ist
Ehrfurcht vor der Vergangenheit_, - und sie ist echt nur in der Aneignung dieser
- der Vergangenheit - aus der _Destruktion_ jener - der Tradition." (S.414)
(Engl.: "_Ruthlessness against tradition is awe of the past_, and it is only
genuine in the appropriation of the past resulting from the _destruction_ of the
tradition.")
But this only explains the genuine philosophical attitude toward earlier
thinkers; it says nothing about the particular issues facing the thinker
thinking today or Plato thinking two millenia ago. For Plato the issue is that
the _me on_ must *be* in a certain sense if he is to be able to say anything
against sophistry. But there are seemingly insuperable difficulties (_aporia_)
in saying what is not (_me on legein_) which Plato has to find a way out of
(_poros_).
"Im Reden ueber das _me on_ macht man sich selbst staendig offenbar in der
Unmoeglichkeit des eigenen Unternehmens. Sofern Sprechen-ueber immer ist
Ansprechen von etwas und das Sprechen ueberhaupt die primaere Erschliessung- und
Zugangsweise zu dem, was ist, bleibt das _me on_ fuer den _logos_ verschlossen."
(S.424)
Engl: "By speaking about the _me on_, one is continually made plainly aware that
one's own enterprise is impossible. Insofar as speaking-about is always an
addressing of something, and speaking in general is the prime way of
encompassing and accessing what is, the _me on_ remains closed to the _logos_."
The concept of the other (_heteron_) provides the clue to the way out of the
aporia:
"This concept of _heteron_ however is the concept from which Plato will proceed
to revise the concept of _me_ of the _on_, the negation. Such a _prosgenesis_,
coming-as-an-appendage, being-said-together of a being with another being
obviously presents no difficulty; if I address the _ti_ [something] as _on_
[being] and simultaneously address the _ti_ as _hen_ [one], then that is
completely comprehensible. But what is the situation regarding: '_me onti de to
ton onton ara pote prosgignesthai phesomen dunaton einai; (a7 sg)' 'Will we say
that it is possible to assign an _on_ to the _me on_' or to speak an _on_
together with the _me on_?" (S. 422)
Does the way out lie in the possibility of speaking enclitically?
_Chaire ek klines_,
Michael
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