Unfortunately, I lost Tony Can't-help-
thinking-about-Socrates Dowler's post, but
wanted to toss out some responses as per my
memory.
The "presentation" of the image of the martyr
seems to me to preserve a non-thoughtful
basic relation to death. The "bringing home"
is precisely in service of those who are
unable to think "home" through to the end,
and hence Heidegger's call to think the
essense of home. It seems, indeed, that many
important things are trapped in a certain
refusal to think without the help of war.
The identification of the good of a violence
is something to be questioned very carefully.
Obviously, two countries living in a state of
constant war will have a certain heightened
existentiality, but what of the side-effects
of this ongoing state? And in any event, such
is an attempt above all to take means ends
thinking and push it to crisis to the end of
getting some truth of being back into Dasein.
The whole movement of Being and Time is to
come around and up behind, in a certain way,
to enter the question of Being into existence
in a certain way that is not bound to crisis
or violence.
The case of the woman who is good provided
she has someone to shoot at her every day is
a good case against the kind of "death" you
are on the brink of extolling the virtue of.
This "death", as "threat of violence", seems
also to speak fully against the *death as
death* that Heidegger is trying to get at.
The system of martyrdom seems to be a high
point in the eclipsing of this "softer"
truth, and one who has encountered this
"other truth", this "other thinking", this
nonviolent way in the play of the world might
well shed Nietzschean tears for the covering
over in relentless and obsessive judgment
which seems to take place.
As to whether "we" are out of hand, first
off, of course, who, we? But granting some
broad American we for myself here, *we are
definitely out of hand*, in precisely the
manner of being violence-dependent. The
existential activation of the sixties was
bought and paid for by the Vietnam war. Exit
the war, exit a whole range of existential
truth into a certain psychism which is
profoundly corrupt and capitalistic. In just
this way: that the call that was heard in the
sixties was precisely the immature call given
to those of draft age, amidst the anti-
thought movement of those popular
philosophies which negated thought and which
literally built their world on the aesthetic
creation of crises. I sound
like a terrible classicist here or Adorno or
something. In any event, it is telling, all
too telling, that in fact in the last ten
years as many children have been violently
killed in our country as Americans were
killed in Vietnam. That if current trends
continue, half of the African American male
populatio will be n jail by the year 2050,
that Mumia Abu-Jamal faces a death penality
in a highly problematic case which should be
thrown out of court. And, is the time of the
200,00 + Iraquis recently killed over? Or can
we still hear their agonies? In whose minds
will they echo? On what conditions? It is
time for those who genuinely know how to care
and think at the *same time* to step forward
against the supposed inexorables of history
which currently are exploited to brutal ends.
Out of hand?
And this, like so many of the problems
presenting themselves today to those with
eyes to see, is fully bound up with the
structure of how "death" is approached, how
the moral develops itself, etc. For,
precisely, it is that which is accessible
*only* by thoughtful reaching out and not
through the direct impingment appealing to an
extremist narcissism of the martyr mentality,
which is at the same time the "star"
mentality, that the *statistically
accessible* depravities (child deaths,
prisons in general, adult deaths, horrendous
movement in psychiatry, homelessn ess, etc.)
which testifies, like a diffuse martyr, if
you must, to the inauthenticity, of "our"
being-awakened. And little *sounds* as
inauthentic to me as the calls issued by the
prevalent culture, the moral tone of its
spokespeople, and the amount of money the
make.
Out of hand?
The same "sixties" and all for which that may
serve as metanym hypostatized, according to a
relentless and out of hand capitalistic
movement, made martyrs, not through killing,
but through interpretation, of those actors
who accomplished most in nonviolence. Yet
their accomplishment was founded precisely on
the disruption of the martyr-basis of
nonviolence in favor of the posture of the
scientist. Much like the disruption of
dogmatism, which itself is founded on a
certain "star structure" in philosophy,
phenomenology's movementy "to the things
themselves!" constitutes far more than a
simple shift of orientation or order of
approach with regard to the data of
philosophical thinking. It constitutes, like
the humility of Monhandas Gandhi on "the ethical
plane", as Sartre might put it, whose
autobiography he entitled "My Experiments
with the Truth", a radical break with the
prevailing Dasein's relation to the other, to
knowledge, etc. And for its vehement failure
to recognize this, the sixties have bequethed
to us those self-appointed caretakers of
nonviolence who scarcely understand what it
is.
Little could be more out of hand.
---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
thinking-about-Socrates Dowler's post, but
wanted to toss out some responses as per my
memory.
The "presentation" of the image of the martyr
seems to me to preserve a non-thoughtful
basic relation to death. The "bringing home"
is precisely in service of those who are
unable to think "home" through to the end,
and hence Heidegger's call to think the
essense of home. It seems, indeed, that many
important things are trapped in a certain
refusal to think without the help of war.
The identification of the good of a violence
is something to be questioned very carefully.
Obviously, two countries living in a state of
constant war will have a certain heightened
existentiality, but what of the side-effects
of this ongoing state? And in any event, such
is an attempt above all to take means ends
thinking and push it to crisis to the end of
getting some truth of being back into Dasein.
The whole movement of Being and Time is to
come around and up behind, in a certain way,
to enter the question of Being into existence
in a certain way that is not bound to crisis
or violence.
The case of the woman who is good provided
she has someone to shoot at her every day is
a good case against the kind of "death" you
are on the brink of extolling the virtue of.
This "death", as "threat of violence", seems
also to speak fully against the *death as
death* that Heidegger is trying to get at.
The system of martyrdom seems to be a high
point in the eclipsing of this "softer"
truth, and one who has encountered this
"other truth", this "other thinking", this
nonviolent way in the play of the world might
well shed Nietzschean tears for the covering
over in relentless and obsessive judgment
which seems to take place.
As to whether "we" are out of hand, first
off, of course, who, we? But granting some
broad American we for myself here, *we are
definitely out of hand*, in precisely the
manner of being violence-dependent. The
existential activation of the sixties was
bought and paid for by the Vietnam war. Exit
the war, exit a whole range of existential
truth into a certain psychism which is
profoundly corrupt and capitalistic. In just
this way: that the call that was heard in the
sixties was precisely the immature call given
to those of draft age, amidst the anti-
thought movement of those popular
philosophies which negated thought and which
literally built their world on the aesthetic
creation of crises. I sound
like a terrible classicist here or Adorno or
something. In any event, it is telling, all
too telling, that in fact in the last ten
years as many children have been violently
killed in our country as Americans were
killed in Vietnam. That if current trends
continue, half of the African American male
populatio will be n jail by the year 2050,
that Mumia Abu-Jamal faces a death penality
in a highly problematic case which should be
thrown out of court. And, is the time of the
200,00 + Iraquis recently killed over? Or can
we still hear their agonies? In whose minds
will they echo? On what conditions? It is
time for those who genuinely know how to care
and think at the *same time* to step forward
against the supposed inexorables of history
which currently are exploited to brutal ends.
Out of hand?
And this, like so many of the problems
presenting themselves today to those with
eyes to see, is fully bound up with the
structure of how "death" is approached, how
the moral develops itself, etc. For,
precisely, it is that which is accessible
*only* by thoughtful reaching out and not
through the direct impingment appealing to an
extremist narcissism of the martyr mentality,
which is at the same time the "star"
mentality, that the *statistically
accessible* depravities (child deaths,
prisons in general, adult deaths, horrendous
movement in psychiatry, homelessn ess, etc.)
which testifies, like a diffuse martyr, if
you must, to the inauthenticity, of "our"
being-awakened. And little *sounds* as
inauthentic to me as the calls issued by the
prevalent culture, the moral tone of its
spokespeople, and the amount of money the
make.
Out of hand?
The same "sixties" and all for which that may
serve as metanym hypostatized, according to a
relentless and out of hand capitalistic
movement, made martyrs, not through killing,
but through interpretation, of those actors
who accomplished most in nonviolence. Yet
their accomplishment was founded precisely on
the disruption of the martyr-basis of
nonviolence in favor of the posture of the
scientist. Much like the disruption of
dogmatism, which itself is founded on a
certain "star structure" in philosophy,
phenomenology's movementy "to the things
themselves!" constitutes far more than a
simple shift of orientation or order of
approach with regard to the data of
philosophical thinking. It constitutes, like
the humility of Monhandas Gandhi on "the ethical
plane", as Sartre might put it, whose
autobiography he entitled "My Experiments
with the Truth", a radical break with the
prevailing Dasein's relation to the other, to
knowledge, etc. And for its vehement failure
to recognize this, the sixties have bequethed
to us those self-appointed caretakers of
nonviolence who scarcely understand what it
is.
Little could be more out of hand.
---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------