Stuart in response to Jan:
> Some interesting stuff on this.
>
> I think that the Beitraege and other works like it (Besinnung etc.) need to
> be seen as another layer above/beneath the lecture courses and other works
> of the late 1930s. Some of the lectures - most of them even - are not that
> different to ones of earlier periods in style: The Hoelderlin ones are
> perhaps the exception. As Heidegger says in the Letter on Humanism, he is
> trying to find another language than that of metaphysics, but that this
> remains in the background of published works. Equally compare Age of the
> World Picture to the Beitraege - some of the phrases are almost exactly the
> same, but the published text is largely in a different style.
Stuart there is some difference between "another language" being one of
'style' (e.g., in the Beitraege where the form and style are musical, a
series of fugues of fugues; the repetition, or near repetition, almost
hypnotic) and when it is attempting to extricate itself out of itself
(metaphysics), say, in the Anaximander Fragment. It is this second
difference I am most interested in.
> I don't therefore think this is a simple divide: he was working on one form
> of writing while most of his (visible) output was still of the same style.
> Equally the themes: much of what the Beitraege covers is only made public
> much later, but that doesn't mean he changed to it suddenly. Equally there
> are some interesting indications: the Beitraege was probably begun in 1932
> (when Heidegger was on sabbatical), and in 1943 or 1944 he requested another
> sabbatical to try to 'finish' some of this work.
Again I think the tension in the declared aim of B&T to dismantle western
metaphysics (not destroy it, note: heidegger makes an emphatic stand against
those that interpreted his word "Destruktion" (as announced in B&T) in that
manner:
"Destruction does not mean destroying (Zerstoren) but dismantling,
liquidating, puttingto one side the merely historical assertions about the
history of philosophy. {Destruction} means -- to open our ears, to make
ourselves free for what speaks to us in tradition as the being of being."
[from 'What is Philosophy?']
and
"It is hardly possible to surpass the grotesqueness of proclaiming my
attempts at thinking as smashing metaphysics to bits and of sojourning at
the same time, with the help of those attempts, on paths of thinking and in
conceptions which have been derived -- I do not say, to which one is
indebted -- from that alleged demolition."
[from 'The Question of Being']
) and the equally pietistic desire to respect and maintain it, perhaps
itself a response to looking into the abyss that opens and threatens to
engulf as a result of the opening up of that gulf in the process of the
dismantling of metaphysics (and that means the entire western tradition
including the latest johny-come-latelies); a shrinking back from the abyss
that looks back into one as one looks into it. I suggest that this tension
exists all throughout heidegger's thinking and is not analysable in terms of
any chronological logic (periodisation), rather, in terms of the way even a
single text slips within its own folds of difference.
regards
michaelP
>
> I don't buy the secular --> religious move in any straight-forward sense.
> The terms in SuZ are forged out of two main furnaces - Christian thought and
> Aristotle. They undergo radical changes, but I don't think it makes sense to
> overplay this, at least, _as I keep stressing_ in any straight-forward
> sense.
>
> Language is treated in detail in summer semester 1924 (GA18) for example,
> and although neglected perhaps in SuZ rests on a much deeper analysis (see
> also GA17 and GA19). There it is very much a call and destiny; and the
> notion of listening/hearing is central (also there in muted form in SuZ).
> The 1924 course also seems to me to radically challenge any idea that
> Heidegger was apolitical until the 1930s - it is an incredibly political
> course.
>
> I'd agree with the question of the mathematical-technological issues being
> central: there are distinct relations between work of (say) 1924-25 and 1936
> and later. But they too undergo quite important changes.
>
> As before, I am not saying there are no distinctions or moves in Heidegger's
> work, but that it doesn't make sense to me to see them as clearly distinct.
> It's a thought always in progress, that undergoes some quite profound
> transformations (only idiots and dogmatists never change their mind:
> Lefebvre, Russell and Keynes all said interesting things about this). But
> this doesn't mean that any simplistic Heidegger I and II (Richardson), pre
> and post-Kehre Heidegger, A and B, etc. makes sense.
>
> So, Jan, I wouldn't disagree with the general thrust of what you say, but on
> the specifics it seems the vast amount of material and the ability to trace
> things much more carefully than even a few years ago complicate any such
> straight-forward chronologies.
>
> Stuart
>
>
>
> --- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
> Some interesting stuff on this.
>
> I think that the Beitraege and other works like it (Besinnung etc.) need to
> be seen as another layer above/beneath the lecture courses and other works
> of the late 1930s. Some of the lectures - most of them even - are not that
> different to ones of earlier periods in style: The Hoelderlin ones are
> perhaps the exception. As Heidegger says in the Letter on Humanism, he is
> trying to find another language than that of metaphysics, but that this
> remains in the background of published works. Equally compare Age of the
> World Picture to the Beitraege - some of the phrases are almost exactly the
> same, but the published text is largely in a different style.
Stuart there is some difference between "another language" being one of
'style' (e.g., in the Beitraege where the form and style are musical, a
series of fugues of fugues; the repetition, or near repetition, almost
hypnotic) and when it is attempting to extricate itself out of itself
(metaphysics), say, in the Anaximander Fragment. It is this second
difference I am most interested in.
> I don't therefore think this is a simple divide: he was working on one form
> of writing while most of his (visible) output was still of the same style.
> Equally the themes: much of what the Beitraege covers is only made public
> much later, but that doesn't mean he changed to it suddenly. Equally there
> are some interesting indications: the Beitraege was probably begun in 1932
> (when Heidegger was on sabbatical), and in 1943 or 1944 he requested another
> sabbatical to try to 'finish' some of this work.
Again I think the tension in the declared aim of B&T to dismantle western
metaphysics (not destroy it, note: heidegger makes an emphatic stand against
those that interpreted his word "Destruktion" (as announced in B&T) in that
manner:
"Destruction does not mean destroying (Zerstoren) but dismantling,
liquidating, puttingto one side the merely historical assertions about the
history of philosophy. {Destruction} means -- to open our ears, to make
ourselves free for what speaks to us in tradition as the being of being."
[from 'What is Philosophy?']
and
"It is hardly possible to surpass the grotesqueness of proclaiming my
attempts at thinking as smashing metaphysics to bits and of sojourning at
the same time, with the help of those attempts, on paths of thinking and in
conceptions which have been derived -- I do not say, to which one is
indebted -- from that alleged demolition."
[from 'The Question of Being']
) and the equally pietistic desire to respect and maintain it, perhaps
itself a response to looking into the abyss that opens and threatens to
engulf as a result of the opening up of that gulf in the process of the
dismantling of metaphysics (and that means the entire western tradition
including the latest johny-come-latelies); a shrinking back from the abyss
that looks back into one as one looks into it. I suggest that this tension
exists all throughout heidegger's thinking and is not analysable in terms of
any chronological logic (periodisation), rather, in terms of the way even a
single text slips within its own folds of difference.
regards
michaelP
>
> I don't buy the secular --> religious move in any straight-forward sense.
> The terms in SuZ are forged out of two main furnaces - Christian thought and
> Aristotle. They undergo radical changes, but I don't think it makes sense to
> overplay this, at least, _as I keep stressing_ in any straight-forward
> sense.
>
> Language is treated in detail in summer semester 1924 (GA18) for example,
> and although neglected perhaps in SuZ rests on a much deeper analysis (see
> also GA17 and GA19). There it is very much a call and destiny; and the
> notion of listening/hearing is central (also there in muted form in SuZ).
> The 1924 course also seems to me to radically challenge any idea that
> Heidegger was apolitical until the 1930s - it is an incredibly political
> course.
>
> I'd agree with the question of the mathematical-technological issues being
> central: there are distinct relations between work of (say) 1924-25 and 1936
> and later. But they too undergo quite important changes.
>
> As before, I am not saying there are no distinctions or moves in Heidegger's
> work, but that it doesn't make sense to me to see them as clearly distinct.
> It's a thought always in progress, that undergoes some quite profound
> transformations (only idiots and dogmatists never change their mind:
> Lefebvre, Russell and Keynes all said interesting things about this). But
> this doesn't mean that any simplistic Heidegger I and II (Richardson), pre
> and post-Kehre Heidegger, A and B, etc. makes sense.
>
> So, Jan, I wouldn't disagree with the general thrust of what you say, but on
> the specifics it seems the vast amount of material and the ability to trace
> things much more carefully than even a few years ago complicate any such
> straight-forward chronologies.
>
> Stuart
>
>
>
> --- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---