Vienna, 20 September 1996
dear Michael,
when we write on fire, as I am doing it now, we speak aloud! this is a very
interesting subject, namely the question of reading aloud (remember the
famous passage by Augustinus as well as the ambiguity of this practice in
the early middle ages, cf. the excellent book by maria tassinato: l oeil du
silence), we are speaking/writing with Stentor's voice.
I was trying to (re-)translate 'casting' into German, the dictionary tells:
giessen, fischen, wurfnetz.
Thinking as throwing the net (fishing: a very old metaphor, remember Plato's
Sophist! and of course the Christian symbolic of fish and fishermen,
ichthus=fish as anagram of Iesus/Chisthos/Theou/Uios/ Soter). How do you
translate: the casting agent of being into German?
The superfluity of information is almost nothing compared with the
superfluity of beings in the universe!
Maybe we are thinking still the accidental and the incidental with regard to
a substance (matter or history) and to necessity. But that the universe
happens as it happens, with different kinds of unpredictable und highly
unprobable accidents and incidents (such as life, conscience, language and,
of course, t h e accident (or incident?) ob being itself) is probably
primordial to the 'special effect' of natural laws and determination and
substantiality (also to the unity of substance and subjectivity in Hegel) IT
happens. The way we a r e in the happening is the one of giving form(s) to
messages. We a r e messengers (angeloi) as a condition of possibility of
giving reasons (logon didonai). The demiourg is defined out of the logos
(cf. Timaios and the wonderful study by Margel: le tombeau du dieu artisan,
paris 1995, with a preface by derrida). We are indeed ' just' bearings of
the logos, but the bearing is basic!
Weak technology means, as I understand it, that accidents (and incidents)
can happen, without the possibility of a mortal risk (the idea of a
'Restrisiko' is cynical and presupposes the concept of an ideal power, as
criterion for good technology, what is similar to the idea(l) of
verification of (scientific) truth compared to fallible knowledge).
cheers
rafael
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