----- Original Message -----
From: "Haukur Thor Thorvardarson" <a02hauth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 5:16 PM
Subject: Unterwegs zur Sprache
> On The Way Of Language /*
> */Martin Heidegger/*
>
> Summary By Haukur Amon Thor Thorvardarson.
> */Introduction/*
>
> In his book /Unterwegs zur Sprache /(1959);/ /Martin Heidegger explains
his little understood phrase ‘Language is the house of being’.
>
> A DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE:
>
> The dialogue is between Heidegger and Professor Tezuka. Tezuka mentions
the possible danger that the Japanese language will be led astray by the
> wealth of concepts which the spirit of European languages has in store.
Heidegger calls this the Europeanization of man, and of the earth, which
> attacks everything that is of an essential nature.
GCM: I find your 'summary' interesting and well expressed. I will try to
respond as well as I can trying to get back into the philosophical way of
expressing things without falling into too many of its traps as Jud Evans as
so well demonstrated.
[1] 'The Europeanization of man' is a purely political designation if one
stays with personal senation as the only grounding of what becomes
abstracted as 'facts'. Taking on 'facts' as purely words gives words a false
validation of sense reality -- a validation primarily grounded on
undeniableness, that is, universal and necessarily compelled assent which is
pain, a pain that can only be real to oneself and tends to be ambiguous and
fake as expressed to others which necessarily then makes ALL language,
including this, thoroughly ambiguous -- 'The Europeanization of Man' is a
legitimate designation of a historical political process very poorly defined
because it, in experienced reality, becomes as many different concepts with
each and every speaker of the concept. As a sensed fact, it is empty, but as
a concept does it relate to anything ones actually experiences? Since words
are based on experiences, whether one likes it or not, even such a concept
must do so. But one must remember nothing at all definitive or solid is
expressed by such concepts by themselves.
[1a] 'The spirit of European languages' does indicate something vaguely real
in each person but absolutely nothing applying generally. However, 'the
Europeanization of man' can be related to specific political events, places,
acts and their consequences while allowing for the pitfalls of abstraction.
If sense impressions and the 'facts' that designate those sense impressions
as things, identities, and concepts, in a growing degree of ambiguity, then
'Europeanization of man' refers to the undeniable, and therefore painfully
motivated, material success of 'the wealth of concepts which the spirit of
European languages has in store'. Success is measured by the destruction of
concepts which oppose such 'Europeanization' as in the World Bank,
industrialization [the basis of Marxism], the success of technological
'things' which totally overwhelm vague religious beliefs which are almost
entirely traditionally inherited feelings with nothing material -, and
therefore solid - undeniable - and pain begetting - to support them against
the material onslaught of actual things and events and processeses.
'Europeanization' forces languages traditionally bound up in poetic and
religious expression to deal with 'the facts of the matter at hand' instead
of over-all abstractions of any 'meaning' whatsoever. 'Meaning' is a purely
emotional connotation set up to oppose a concept of 'meaning' which simply
means 'Does it work? How? What does it accomplish that I want specifically
for other specific purposes?' Now. BOTH concepts of 'meaning' have the same
ground which is desire or emotion or feeling. But one kind of desire is
focused on physical action and the other is self-absorbed into private
abstractions that when expressed come into conflict immediately or
eventually with all other expressions of the same abstraction whereas the
first necessarily refers to a universally available sense impression that
can be validated in a number of different ways by pain, though one may not
immediately think of it as such. Not thinking 'of it as such' is revealed by
the factual 'Europeanization' felt when one becomes deprived of a material
item one has become dependent upon such as me and my present-at-hand
computer. The absence of such which Heidegger talks so much about as the
revelation of nothingness is actually a very sense based, factually oriented
experience and Heidegger expresses it as such in BEING AND TIME, though this
tends to get obscured in his later writings. In fact the whole of BEING AND
TIME is deliberately trying to stay sense based and personally fact oriented
in such a way it is far more in agreement with David Hume's A TREATISE ON
HUMAN NATURE rather than such a late production as 'On the Way to Language'
upon which, however, it is STILL necessarily based as anything and
everything must be based on sense impressions, events, facts, etc.
[1b] Now, 'the Europeanization of man, and of the earth, which attacks
everything that is of an essential nature' is a grandiose overinflation of
real facts as well as deliberate misapprehensions in order to say something
abstract. 'The Europeanization of man' always wins over other cultures based
primarily on abstractions and emotions just as real objects always overcome
mere feelings treated as if they were real objects. There is no 'a way of
life'. There is only 'How to live and why?' OR 'Should one die?', questions
that can have no objective relevance whatsoever since they relate to one's
'ownmost'. Even trying to express what these questions mean to one's self to
others ALWAYS brings about immediate and total confusion because each person
thinks they understand it in the 'proper' way - which is entirely personal -
which only becomes evident when each person tries to express their
'understanding' to another person. The 'understanding is real, but in each
case developed in an ABSOLUTELY personal manner through one's private
history which is one of the basic underpinnings of Heidegger's BEING AND
TIME again. "Essence' in reality in Heidegger merely denotes what a specific
thing is expressed as a generality. There is no 'essential nature' that CAN
be 'attacked' since it is just an abstraction. That 'Europeanization. can
'attack' a thing is reification gone wild. If anything truly was of an
'essential nature' it would be universally compelling to everyone and only
one things fits that situation: pain.
[1c] Now then, I would say the only important and relevant question left is,
'What is the nature or even meaning [emotion based] of pain? Why do we avoid
it instead of embracing it or just ignoring it?' This is actually an aporia
or crux since it seems superficially what I am saying is, 'What is the basis
of a feeling rejecting another feeling?' Is there an inherent and necessary
hierarchy of feelings? Are some more necessary than others or are some just
not real feelings as sense impressions? Feelings definitely are not language
though feelings wholly motivate the 'meaning' and usage of language.
Feelings are prior to and ground language. This is undeniable. Heidegger
describes this quite well in his first volume of lectures on Nietzsche, THE
WILL TO POWER AS ART, chapter 8, 'Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling'.
'But something can be nurtured only if it is already there and is alive.
Because hate lurks much more deeply in the origins of our being it has a
cohesive power; like love, hate brings an original cohesion and perdurance
to our essential being.' [pg. 47] However, why does Heidegger say so much in
this chapter about hate and next to nothing about love? Is this chapter a
commentary on the first eleven chapters of Aristotle's RHETORIC? Do
Heidegger and Hume in the TREATISE use 'passion' in the exact same sense?
[1d] That is all for now. I must go back to dealing with real things.
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