My capacity to receive e-mail is down, so I am able to participate in this
conversation, only indirectly through what I can retrieve from the
archives. Sorry for the delay and for what I might be missing. I did see
Michael Eldred's last message regarding the matter of Aristotle's Rhetoric
and would like to ask about his observations on the difference between
speaking rhetorically and responding to the call of being. I think this is
a crucial distinction/ambiguity for Heidegger. Right after he credits
Aristotle's discussion of the emotions as the "First systematic hermeneutic
of everyday life," he goes on in the very next sentence to say that
"publicness, as the kind of Being which belongs to the "they" not only has
in general its own way of having such a mood (Gestimmheit), but needs
moods, and "makes" them for itself. It is into such a mood and out of such
a mood that the orator speaks." One can't be sure that the "orator" is not
"making" the very mood to which he seems to be responding. This
constitutive capacity of rhetoric, what it is able to "make" as a techne, I
think is a large part of what might distinguish rhetorical responses, as
eloquent ( appropriate) as they might be, from authentic responses to the
call of being. With the latter, you say " There is only the response
itself," as if the response to the call doesn't do any "making,"
"constituting" of the situation of its own speaking. Doesn't the response
have to be spoken? And doesn't its spokenness require somehow engagegment
with some other to/with whom the responding takes place? An engagement
which is rhetorically constructed/consituted?
I think one way of reading Heidegger's "discussion" of the call with a
rarified set of others ( Parmenides, Hericlitus, Holdernin etc.) is an
attempt to enact an authentic co-responding (" Entsprechenden" he calls it
in Was ist das-die Philosophie?") to the call.
More later on the rest of your note when I can get this bloody
mail-function in order. Thank you for your patience.
Allen Scult
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
conversation, only indirectly through what I can retrieve from the
archives. Sorry for the delay and for what I might be missing. I did see
Michael Eldred's last message regarding the matter of Aristotle's Rhetoric
and would like to ask about his observations on the difference between
speaking rhetorically and responding to the call of being. I think this is
a crucial distinction/ambiguity for Heidegger. Right after he credits
Aristotle's discussion of the emotions as the "First systematic hermeneutic
of everyday life," he goes on in the very next sentence to say that
"publicness, as the kind of Being which belongs to the "they" not only has
in general its own way of having such a mood (Gestimmheit), but needs
moods, and "makes" them for itself. It is into such a mood and out of such
a mood that the orator speaks." One can't be sure that the "orator" is not
"making" the very mood to which he seems to be responding. This
constitutive capacity of rhetoric, what it is able to "make" as a techne, I
think is a large part of what might distinguish rhetorical responses, as
eloquent ( appropriate) as they might be, from authentic responses to the
call of being. With the latter, you say " There is only the response
itself," as if the response to the call doesn't do any "making,"
"constituting" of the situation of its own speaking. Doesn't the response
have to be spoken? And doesn't its spokenness require somehow engagegment
with some other to/with whom the responding takes place? An engagement
which is rhetorically constructed/consituted?
I think one way of reading Heidegger's "discussion" of the call with a
rarified set of others ( Parmenides, Hericlitus, Holdernin etc.) is an
attempt to enact an authentic co-responding (" Entsprechenden" he calls it
in Was ist das-die Philosophie?") to the call.
More later on the rest of your note when I can get this bloody
mail-function in order. Thank you for your patience.
Allen Scult
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---