Cologne, 18 September 1996
Iain, was that you with the heavy thinking? I loved it. It merits a bout of
serious drinking.
Thinking about the multiple meanings of draft/draught, a more apposite
translation of "Entwurf", usually translated as "project", has now occurred to
me: "casting". The out-standing thinker is the casting agent of being who helps
cast beings in their being, casting the veil of being over them.
Thus, for example, Descartes casts beings as res extensa, which opens up
mathematical access to them, making them amenable to Cartesian geometry, i.e.
analytic calculus (differentiation, integration, etc.). This casting of beings
has been refined since 1650, say, with the laws of electromagnetism, but the
basic role remains the same.
Thinkers as the casting agents of being have been and are often misunderstood,
which makes them into a kind of outcast from the polis.
Michael
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