Bob Scheetz writes:
>Here's how I see the framework of IM:
>
>1. opens with jeremiad about the decline of the spirit of history,
>darkening of the earth, the West gone to seed in the techno-manic
>USSR/USA, etc., and pronounces it the especial burden of philosophy
>to provide the moral locus (vulgarly, ideology) from which a nation
>can generate a pattern of meaning into a history and culture.
No problems with this reading, I think (though I have to confess, I haven't
read that part of the book in a long time). Derridean interjection: note
the curtain-raising in the invocation of Geist without scare-quotes.
>2....then extensively developes the onto-theological premise that
>"being/thinking" is wholly other, and that its essence consists
>in a creative becoming, i.e. non/anti-"traditional" (i.e. by way of
>contemptuously dismissing the two main available alternatives:
>marxian humanism and "Platonism for the masses", Christianity).
Why onto-theological? It's worth pointing out that Heidegger's burgeoning
attention to Nietzsche, only hinted at in SZ and the subsequent
lecture-course attempts to work out fundamental ontology, is evident in IM,
on the brink of the Odyssey to follow: namely, the Nietzsche lectures (and
essays and sketches ...). The 'premise' you name will not be unrevised by
the end of this odyssey (which also passes through Hoelderlin).
In any case, you've leaped forward somewhat: the discussion of the grammar
of Being is fascinating, and difficult (I think) to assimilate to the
'narrative' you are constructing. Michael Eldred has made some thoughtful
remarks on this section, to which I'll briefly add the observation that the
citation of Goethe's Ueber allen Gipfeln is worthy of further thought. What
the 'is' says in 'Above all summits / is rest' should be pondered...
>3....and concludes with an ontological romance equivalent of
>Nietzsche's anti-christ doing Junger's "total war" ...and catastrophe.
>
>with Heraclitus, Parmenades, Sophocles the compounding mythopoeic
>functions. And the crowning proof of this (i.e., that its focus is not
>scholarship and "being and thinking")is manifest in the
>outrage he does on the Antigone chorus
I wonder how much of an outrage this is. Heidegger reads Sophocles here the
way he reads Kant (among others): a 'violent' decontextualization intended
to displace the ordinary, common-sense, complacently received notion of
what the text says. Through this reading of the chorus, attention is
focused on one word: deinotaton. It is man's uncanniness / un-home-liness
(Unheimlichkeit) which determines the 'tragic' Gestalt of Greek existence;
the 'theory' of tragedy elaborated within these pages takes up the
conflictual model articulated by Nietzsche but also, importantly, by Hegel
(recall the PhG account of Antigone as the staging of the conflict of laws:
divine and human). Heidegger draws a line through the Sophoclean text,
connecting it to Heraclitean / Parmenidean concerns, in order to underline
the 'tragic' dimension of the being / thinking relation.
Hence the catastrophe -- I don't have the text with me right now, but I
draw your attention to the paragraph on 'disaster' (in Mannheim's
translation; the German is Verderb: ruin, spoil). Insofar as Dasein is
exposed to being qua physis qua ueberwaeltigende Gewalt ('overpowering
force' in Mannheim, I believe; but listen to the resonance of 'governance'
or 'holding sway' at work in the walten root), Dasein is prone to failure,
to collapse, to disaster. The rhetoric of failure (for these German spirits
in the materialistic Yankee / Bolshie world) in the texts listed in my
previous post develops from this 'tragic' view Heid. is propounding in IM.
Techne here is configured as a defiance, an exposure to ravishment which
toils against the extra-human order in order to set in place an historical
world, but which fails magnificently (heroically, sacrificially). The
counterpart to Sophocles in 'our' day and age, is, of course, Hoederlin,
the one most 'exposed' to the elements, authentically "heroic" (as stated
in GA34), also "sacrificed".
Again, this disturbs me. Again, there's more to IM than this Wagnerian
bombast. Christopher Fynsk writes well on this topic, if you're looking for
further references (I especially appreciate his reading of the suicidal
pathos encrypted in IM).
Cheers,
Paul Murphy
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>Here's how I see the framework of IM:
>
>1. opens with jeremiad about the decline of the spirit of history,
>darkening of the earth, the West gone to seed in the techno-manic
>USSR/USA, etc., and pronounces it the especial burden of philosophy
>to provide the moral locus (vulgarly, ideology) from which a nation
>can generate a pattern of meaning into a history and culture.
No problems with this reading, I think (though I have to confess, I haven't
read that part of the book in a long time). Derridean interjection: note
the curtain-raising in the invocation of Geist without scare-quotes.
>2....then extensively developes the onto-theological premise that
>"being/thinking" is wholly other, and that its essence consists
>in a creative becoming, i.e. non/anti-"traditional" (i.e. by way of
>contemptuously dismissing the two main available alternatives:
>marxian humanism and "Platonism for the masses", Christianity).
Why onto-theological? It's worth pointing out that Heidegger's burgeoning
attention to Nietzsche, only hinted at in SZ and the subsequent
lecture-course attempts to work out fundamental ontology, is evident in IM,
on the brink of the Odyssey to follow: namely, the Nietzsche lectures (and
essays and sketches ...). The 'premise' you name will not be unrevised by
the end of this odyssey (which also passes through Hoelderlin).
In any case, you've leaped forward somewhat: the discussion of the grammar
of Being is fascinating, and difficult (I think) to assimilate to the
'narrative' you are constructing. Michael Eldred has made some thoughtful
remarks on this section, to which I'll briefly add the observation that the
citation of Goethe's Ueber allen Gipfeln is worthy of further thought. What
the 'is' says in 'Above all summits / is rest' should be pondered...
>3....and concludes with an ontological romance equivalent of
>Nietzsche's anti-christ doing Junger's "total war" ...and catastrophe.
>
>with Heraclitus, Parmenades, Sophocles the compounding mythopoeic
>functions. And the crowning proof of this (i.e., that its focus is not
>scholarship and "being and thinking")is manifest in the
>outrage he does on the Antigone chorus
I wonder how much of an outrage this is. Heidegger reads Sophocles here the
way he reads Kant (among others): a 'violent' decontextualization intended
to displace the ordinary, common-sense, complacently received notion of
what the text says. Through this reading of the chorus, attention is
focused on one word: deinotaton. It is man's uncanniness / un-home-liness
(Unheimlichkeit) which determines the 'tragic' Gestalt of Greek existence;
the 'theory' of tragedy elaborated within these pages takes up the
conflictual model articulated by Nietzsche but also, importantly, by Hegel
(recall the PhG account of Antigone as the staging of the conflict of laws:
divine and human). Heidegger draws a line through the Sophoclean text,
connecting it to Heraclitean / Parmenidean concerns, in order to underline
the 'tragic' dimension of the being / thinking relation.
Hence the catastrophe -- I don't have the text with me right now, but I
draw your attention to the paragraph on 'disaster' (in Mannheim's
translation; the German is Verderb: ruin, spoil). Insofar as Dasein is
exposed to being qua physis qua ueberwaeltigende Gewalt ('overpowering
force' in Mannheim, I believe; but listen to the resonance of 'governance'
or 'holding sway' at work in the walten root), Dasein is prone to failure,
to collapse, to disaster. The rhetoric of failure (for these German spirits
in the materialistic Yankee / Bolshie world) in the texts listed in my
previous post develops from this 'tragic' view Heid. is propounding in IM.
Techne here is configured as a defiance, an exposure to ravishment which
toils against the extra-human order in order to set in place an historical
world, but which fails magnificently (heroically, sacrificially). The
counterpart to Sophocles in 'our' day and age, is, of course, Hoederlin,
the one most 'exposed' to the elements, authentically "heroic" (as stated
in GA34), also "sacrificed".
Again, this disturbs me. Again, there's more to IM than this Wagnerian
bombast. Christopher Fynsk writes well on this topic, if you're looking for
further references (I especially appreciate his reading of the suicidal
pathos encrypted in IM).
Cheers,
Paul Murphy
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---