Interesting.
Somewhat in relation to ethics in early Heidegger:
Also, what are your present views on being able to laugh at this?
Is it necessary? Not the vain philosophical crusades, but the
discourse in general? Philosophical debate seems to grow more impotent
and severed from society due to technocracy and professional philosophizing.
In order for ethical/moral/political/etc change to occur in the
fuzzy societal field do you think this requires more a combination of being
within the system (as a philosopher, politician) perhaps or as just leaving it
behind? Or some other method?
That is, if you are interested in doing anything thing as such.
James
Tympan Plato <daxsein@xxxxxxxxxxx> skrev den Fri, 08 Oct 2004 20:37:31 -0400:
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Lots of people from Latin America and Africa would just laugh and cry at these academic discussions on a philosopher's history. Their memories are fresh with genocidal policies. To put so much effort into persecuting one person is just stupid guilty vanity when you are really dealing with a traumatic memory that is global in scope.
Somewhat in relation to ethics in early Heidegger:
Also, what are your present views on being able to laugh at this?
Is it necessary? Not the vain philosophical crusades, but the
discourse in general? Philosophical debate seems to grow more impotent
and severed from society due to technocracy and professional philosophizing.
In order for ethical/moral/political/etc change to occur in the
fuzzy societal field do you think this requires more a combination of being
within the system (as a philosopher, politician) perhaps or as just leaving it
behind? Or some other method?
That is, if you are interested in doing anything thing as such.
James
Tympan Plato <daxsein@xxxxxxxxxxx> skrev den Fri, 08 Oct 2004 20:37:31 -0400:
Rene writes:
Contrary to Tympan, i think that this sort of painful confrontation
is precisely what we need, and what has been left out in the pre-Iraq
period.
You enjoy this sort of discussion Rene, you always have. It's because you are full of the details of what happened and who is what. These are the times your knowledge shines. I was about to ask you if you knew what Heidegger ate for breakfast. But seriously don't get me wrong, it's a good thing we have you to put preassure on these persecuting lying threads. I just wonder why Hiroshima would not be much more significant and worthwhile for people to understand than one person's biography. Hiroshima is the lesson of the limits of science and technological reason. People like Serres tell us that living through Hiroshima was the wake up call for his generation. It was the atomic bomb that concentrated many around the question of the purpose of technological knowledge. The painful confrontation is more general i think having to do with the experience of oppression which doesn't have to come down to a purely subjective discussion. Part of it has to do with the limit of what can be said in language since horror is unspeakable much like love which makes all this sort of uncanny. I assume I'm part of a trial and I have been ordered to testify as a witness. I have done my part to bring out this approach to this whole issue of what is surely a global problem and not confined to European history. Lots of people from Latin America and Africa would just laugh and cry at these academic discussions on a philosopher's history. Their memories are fresh with genocidal policies. To put so much effort into persecuting one person is just stupid guilty vanity when you are really dealing with a traumatic memory that is global in scope. It's interesting to read some of the literature on testifying in court, trauma and memory. What kind of memory do you think that a body wounded by rape has? Here are the words of a Muselmann from a book by Agamben called the _Remnants Of Ouchwitz_ "I remember that after the move to the barrack, I completely collapsed as far as my psychological life was concerned . The collapse took the following form: I was overcome by a general apathy; nothing interested me; I no longer reacted to either external or internal stimuli: I stopped washing, even when there was water; I no longer even felt hungry.... (Feliksa Piekarska)." In another book on trauma and testimony _The Limits of Autobiography_ Leigh Gilmore writes that "...cultural memory, like individual memory, developes characteristics and defensive amnesia with which those who have experience trauma must contend." In another more popular book, _Close to the Bone_ Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. writes about how life is turned upside down with the diagnoses of a life-threatening illness. There is radical distinction in our life's narrative that now has a *before* and an *after* diagnoses. She writes that "Persephone is the innocent part of men and women, youngsters and elders, who encounter Hades as the perpetrator of incest, rape, mugging, betrayal, of a any unexpected and unforeseen act that shocks us into awareness of our emotional or physical vulnerability... Illness is a descent of the soul into the underworld." Becoming a Muselmann and surviving makes you very humble I think. There is a kind of submission to circumstances that makes one very flexible and open to whatever which is to say glad to be alive and willing to enjoy life fully. There is nothing more invigorating and vital than a close call of death. I'm not avoiding anything or trying to hide pain behind objective historical frameworks totally disconnected from everyday life and our common sense as people who suffer and overcome suffering.
tympan
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