featureless netizens,
It one of those times that I don't know where I am after readings the latest missives and following links here and there around this complex system we call the internet. I have been reading Schelling for a couple of years so when Heidegger starts to discuss a differention whereby sky and earth and man and gods split apart which is to be distinguished from a conceptual cognition from a comprehensive understanding determined to grasp an object of experience under a definition and then store it up in a memory; I think a crisis of reason which leads Schelling to not knowledge but learned ignorance. As Heidegger teaches his course on Holderlin he is reading Schelling whose course follows the year after his course on The Rhine (1935). It's a difficult course on Schelling's idea of freedom. At issue Heidegger says is the question of evil and the freedom and enslavement of will. How evil is an issue whenever we discuss freedom is very obscure and no doubt requires a closer look at texts that today are completely ignored. The book on Schelling is the key course and relates directly to Heidegger's train of thought in his course on The Rhine. The first thing to notice which I have brought to your attention when discussing GA26 (summer course of 1928 _The Metaphysical Foundation of Logic_) is that the "for-the-sake-of-which-..." on which being-in-the-world or the understanding of being is grounded 'is' freedom or nothingness: "The for-the-sake-of is what it is in and for a willing. But the latter does not mean the existentiell-ontic act of will, but means the intrinsic possibility of willing: freedom. In freedom, such a for-the-sake-of has always already emerged. This self-presentation of the for-the-sake-of resides in the essence of freedom. There is not something like the for-the-sake-of somewhere extant, to which then freedom is related. Rather, freedom is itself origin of the for-the-sake-of[...] freedom is one with the for-the-sake-of.' (GA 26 246-47). We are still discussing Kant's definition of free will in _Critique of Practical Reason_: "The essential point in all determination of the will through the moral law is this: as a free will, and thus not only without co-operating with sensous impulses but even rejecting all of them and checking all inclinations so far as they could be antagonistic to the the law, it is determined by the law" (chapter III, pg72-73). The law -- that would be the frontier or limit of the homeland as the passage through the foreign land that is the itinerary of Holderlin's poetry. As that which bars the way it operates as an aporetic knot that problematizes cognitive conceptualizations causing the cut of a de-cision that does not involve our own will but is an occurence (Ereignis). Our will is in state of being able to choose but choosing not to choose... choice here is pure ability. Schelling is the one who first shows in his 'concept' of "crisis of reason" the failure of German philosophical conceptual cognition and the necessity of an approach to truth via a learned ignorance along the lines of Cusanos et al. The other thing to notice that I discussed yesterday or the day before is that in Schelling Heidegger finds a way of thinking that is relatively free from the Scholastic distinction of the ontological difference understood as the distinction between essence and existence, necessity and contingency, possibility and actuality and so on. This he finds in Schelling's distinction of foundation (Grund) and existence which also helps him see another aspect of Heidegger esoterica that points to a hinge or joint of Being which when thought of as the fundamental tone is then it seems to me given all I have said; an oscillating vibration of Dionysus' bow and lyre (critical differentiation of the fourthfold). For any living being that holds itself in itself and forms a whole and as such is singular there is the distinction between foundation and existence. A foundation in Schelling as Heidegger points is a ground in the sense of a submission of a sub-ject before that which is superior, as when for instance we obey the circumstance and limit of our situation. The crucial insight is that in no way is a ratio under discussion (this all taken up in a different way in Heideger's book on Leibniz and the principle of reason) "... the 'base', submission, is not foundation in the sense of reason, of a ratio, to which is opposed and responds the concept of a consequence, in so far as ratio accounts of a why, of a reason for which such and such a thing has value or not." "Ground" is precisely for Schelling the "non-rational" which we should not confuse with the irrational. The tradition or context here is clearly that of the poet's "flower without a why". Outside of this context Heidegger makes zero sense. In this same page (129 in the German edition) Heidegger says what we are now familiar with, namely, that this distinction between foundation and existence is not that between essentia and existentia. A Foundation in this regard is a kind of gravitational attraction or recollection that operates somewhat like a black hole since it indicates the nothingness, dark night, or cloud of knowledge where a Lichtung happens... One other thing to be made clear so that we can get through to more deeper and esoteric readings of Heidegger is that on pg. 130 the Seynsfuge as the jointure of being is this disctinction according to Schelling which also relates to his three epochs or potencies which show the total deployment of the bow. And the last thing is that as I read all this and the textual evidence keeps supporting me, foundation is the past, nature, youth, spring, Persephone, latin subjectum that is not a Cartesian I, unconsciousness. As a highly concentrated extract that is potent and therefore essential foundation, submission or flexibility that comes with the taking up the markings of our surroundings is constitutional power;-- and that is why it institutes the site Beyng rather than comprehend the why of anything. It is absolutely crystal clear that there is no reasoning ratio operative in Heidegger's mature thoughts. On pg. 138 Heidegger refers rather to the foundation as what Schelling calls a gravitational attraction that reminds us of the gravity of black holes which themselves are a form of nothingness or metamorphosis of Dionysus that string theorists like susskind talk about. Lichtung is what illuminates this dark contraction and obscurity of thinking not with a ratio but with something more in the order of recognizing how wonderful and beautiful all of nature is.
tympan
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