Steve wrote:
"I'm interested in using the distinction between Gestell and world ..."
--- I think there's a quote of Heidegger saying to someone
while walking, "I never really did understand what Husserl
meant by 'the lifeworld'" (not exact, no reference).
What follows doesn't operate between Gestell and world very
directly, but perhaps it is of some relevance.
--- Vis a vis outright problems, it might be that the
"frame" of enframing is in a certain way epitomized by the
four sided figure, and the four-fold might in a way
constitute a frame-like numericity, as something like a most
extreme moment of western metaphysics. Thought of as
"fourfold", as above all, *four things*, and thus, as *four*
and as a *number*, this gesture might in a certain way
accomplish a dominance of the quantitative mode of thinking
in which beings are, for at least a moment, but possibly
longer, taken as "things", as X, thus bracketed, suspended,
reified, and thought together with others as: four things.
"Those four things" (Earth, Sky, Divinities, Mortals). A
conversion of essence to sign, to symbol transposable
algebraically in a particular progression, discourse,
technical apparatus, if to be reactivated after "operations"
are performed, or not.
Is "fourfould" a "bracketing?" Metonymization? No question,
the discourse of Heidegger in which this appears is often
very invocational and not very "numerical". But my feeling
is that there is a kind of process where: original world
relation (this earth, that divinity, this sky, these mortals
named Curly, Moe, and Joe, etc.) are given into categorical
shift in which they occur as *instances*. The general
categories are *activated as such* and given priority and
then opened outward in a kind of "supreme" movement of
generalization. For Levinas, the relation to Curly is lost
in the process. But in any event, there is a kind of
"permeated" power of "suspension" in the process: no simple
gesture of "bracketing", on the one hand, but on the other
hand, something just as "pure" as the pretentions or
aspirations of Husserl. "Real People" emerge in certain ways
only: always as *examples*: Peasant women, mad hymnal poets,
avatars, etc. Here is the coalescence of the "enfiguration"
of the first categorical remove, which I often think of as
the "appearance of the gods". This space "gathers into" a
certain projectional figuration in thinking. I rather
imagine that this is not what most people mean by "gods".
These "gods" are not the Apollo and Dionysus of Nietzsche,
let alone, to be sure, of the Greeks. In this respect, of
course, we know that Heidegger is still nostalgic for this
Experience in certain ways. But I'm suggesting that the
*very permeation* of the power of suspension, the permeated,
rich, subtle, intelligent movements of categorization which
constitute a kind of "clothed will to transcendence", unlike
the "unclothed mechanism of transcendence of the epoche" is
itself, *if not enframing* proper, then *made of the same
stuff as enframing*.
What is this stuff? A certain move to other, after, etc.
Meta as "after", "afterizing", being done with, being out of
and above, beyond, around, categorically shifted. Is the
"fourfold" thus "metaphysical"? In a way, this may be true:
the operation "after physics" must always posit physics
*first*. It must have a first and a second and a movement
from the one to the next. At issue is a prioritization of
the "really real" and how some very fundamental moments
concerning this operate, the degree to which they manifest
themselves in thematization, are taken up, or on the other
hand are not, as per so many deconstructive readings of, for
example, Husserl. But here Heidegger's *metaphysical*
commitments are difficult to get at. Are these commitments
there? What for do they take? What do we make, in the face
of the question or suspicion of his metaphysicality, of the
question of Heidegger's metaphysicality?
I take his texts as in some way "borderline", vacillating
between a rather traditional reaffirmation of ontotheology
(whose metaphysical commitments operate somehow outside of
Heidegger's vision), and as something which is fundamentally
non-metaphysical. If the "stuff" of enframing inheres in
Heidegger as the rich and intelligent movements of
categories through gestures/acts of will, choice,
resolution, etc., then the issue is no longer "metaphysics"
proper, but something like a ground of metaphysics.
The question might then become: not, "metaphysics or not
metaphysics?", or even, "enframing or not enframing"? But
violence or not violence? The cohesion of enframing with
violence, much like the cohesion of capitalism and greed
which permeates Marxian and generally critical perspectives
on the world of economics and politics, constitutes in the
first place the failure to separate or distinguish between
violence and nonviolence, and a kind of powerful
capitalizing movement. That is to say, the movement which
lets capitalization mean at the same time greed, is itself a
prime example of just the very capitalization, the
"destruction in the process of becoming" which constitutes
capitalism. The movement which lets the *violence* of
enframing ride undistinguished in enframing is itself an
enframing or a capitalization.
Of course, the movement of "capitalization" as such still
constitutes the *essential numerical movement and shift*:
the one and then the other. Capitalization, with regards to
money, shifts labor from original/primordial/species being
relation into the X which is approached "algebraically". The
movement by which the "God or gods" are so named, rather
than approached *by name* (Dionysus, Apollo, Technology) is
itself a capitalizing move which enframes and reifies these
things in the process of moving on to something else, going
"meta", being after in some fundamental way. And we may
guess that Heidegger, perhaps with his own alienated
protestations heard muffled behind and around the texts,
capitalizes on Apollo, Nietzsche, Holderlin, Van Gogh, *for
the sake of* something else.
I want to throw in here that one rather naive sentiment, and
in a certain way, "pathetic" as well, of Heidegger's is the
very identification of enframing and the essence of
technology. Let us allow for the moment that his essential
definition is adequate. But getting clear on this does not
yet assure that a distinction is going to then be made on
account of the recognition of this essence according to its
violence. When is the discourse on violence to begin? It
does not get underway in Heidegger: it operates in an
unthematic background. Is it possible that this does not
"preserve" nonviolence, but rather holds it in a certain
prethematic suspension and silence? Violence, the moral, and
the question of justice go hand in hand. We know that the
"moral" is suspended for the accomplishment of the thinking
of Being and Time. Against the suggestion on the list to not
"center" on Being and Time in discussing Heidegger, I have
the strong feeling that the "later Heidegger" is quite fully
founded in Being and Time in many ways. There are may quotes
in his later writings to bear this out. The later Heidegger
appears often to me to be the "calculus" phase of what
started out as the "algebra of being" that constitutes Being
and Time.
Such "algebra", like enframing and capitalization is
essentially possible, and *actual*. The point is not to
grasp the essense and stand and stare at it, or pine for
gods. It seems to me that such an "algebra", recognizing
itself as such, must kick its ladder out from under itself,
not the more bravely to stand on the *new plane* the ladder
provided the ascension into, but to "fall" right back into
that ground from which the ladder, as the "after" or "meta
move" provided the exit from. Or one may, soberly, climb
down the ladder. To fall into that ground means here to
"take up the ethical", the "moral", and this means,
fundamentally, the question of violence. A thinking that
moves forward, develops itself in this way, would have
several preliminary desiderata. Among these would be, in
prudence, the question of how the "moral" hid the Being of
beings in the first place. The progression of this thinking
would be a kind of thinking of nonviolence.
This might well lead to "ethics as first philosophy", ala
Levinas. Or to something else. What happens when nonviolence
makes it way to language? In any event, the "turning back"
which would recognize the violence of the enframing of the
thinking of the fourfold would probably not give us a
fourfold in Heidegger's sense, but instead, so many
topologies, adequate essential definitions, etc. Something
else would come forward. Something else would happen. Could
it be that the whole topology of being, of which "the
fourfold" is a kind of extreme metatopology, would have to
be reconsidered not according to *time* as the "last and
grounding horizon*, but would have to be rethought in a
secondary role to the question of the Other, and of
violence?
---
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 ---
------------------
"I'm interested in using the distinction between Gestell and world ..."
--- I think there's a quote of Heidegger saying to someone
while walking, "I never really did understand what Husserl
meant by 'the lifeworld'" (not exact, no reference).
What follows doesn't operate between Gestell and world very
directly, but perhaps it is of some relevance.
--- Vis a vis outright problems, it might be that the
"frame" of enframing is in a certain way epitomized by the
four sided figure, and the four-fold might in a way
constitute a frame-like numericity, as something like a most
extreme moment of western metaphysics. Thought of as
"fourfold", as above all, *four things*, and thus, as *four*
and as a *number*, this gesture might in a certain way
accomplish a dominance of the quantitative mode of thinking
in which beings are, for at least a moment, but possibly
longer, taken as "things", as X, thus bracketed, suspended,
reified, and thought together with others as: four things.
"Those four things" (Earth, Sky, Divinities, Mortals). A
conversion of essence to sign, to symbol transposable
algebraically in a particular progression, discourse,
technical apparatus, if to be reactivated after "operations"
are performed, or not.
Is "fourfould" a "bracketing?" Metonymization? No question,
the discourse of Heidegger in which this appears is often
very invocational and not very "numerical". But my feeling
is that there is a kind of process where: original world
relation (this earth, that divinity, this sky, these mortals
named Curly, Moe, and Joe, etc.) are given into categorical
shift in which they occur as *instances*. The general
categories are *activated as such* and given priority and
then opened outward in a kind of "supreme" movement of
generalization. For Levinas, the relation to Curly is lost
in the process. But in any event, there is a kind of
"permeated" power of "suspension" in the process: no simple
gesture of "bracketing", on the one hand, but on the other
hand, something just as "pure" as the pretentions or
aspirations of Husserl. "Real People" emerge in certain ways
only: always as *examples*: Peasant women, mad hymnal poets,
avatars, etc. Here is the coalescence of the "enfiguration"
of the first categorical remove, which I often think of as
the "appearance of the gods". This space "gathers into" a
certain projectional figuration in thinking. I rather
imagine that this is not what most people mean by "gods".
These "gods" are not the Apollo and Dionysus of Nietzsche,
let alone, to be sure, of the Greeks. In this respect, of
course, we know that Heidegger is still nostalgic for this
Experience in certain ways. But I'm suggesting that the
*very permeation* of the power of suspension, the permeated,
rich, subtle, intelligent movements of categorization which
constitute a kind of "clothed will to transcendence", unlike
the "unclothed mechanism of transcendence of the epoche" is
itself, *if not enframing* proper, then *made of the same
stuff as enframing*.
What is this stuff? A certain move to other, after, etc.
Meta as "after", "afterizing", being done with, being out of
and above, beyond, around, categorically shifted. Is the
"fourfold" thus "metaphysical"? In a way, this may be true:
the operation "after physics" must always posit physics
*first*. It must have a first and a second and a movement
from the one to the next. At issue is a prioritization of
the "really real" and how some very fundamental moments
concerning this operate, the degree to which they manifest
themselves in thematization, are taken up, or on the other
hand are not, as per so many deconstructive readings of, for
example, Husserl. But here Heidegger's *metaphysical*
commitments are difficult to get at. Are these commitments
there? What for do they take? What do we make, in the face
of the question or suspicion of his metaphysicality, of the
question of Heidegger's metaphysicality?
I take his texts as in some way "borderline", vacillating
between a rather traditional reaffirmation of ontotheology
(whose metaphysical commitments operate somehow outside of
Heidegger's vision), and as something which is fundamentally
non-metaphysical. If the "stuff" of enframing inheres in
Heidegger as the rich and intelligent movements of
categories through gestures/acts of will, choice,
resolution, etc., then the issue is no longer "metaphysics"
proper, but something like a ground of metaphysics.
The question might then become: not, "metaphysics or not
metaphysics?", or even, "enframing or not enframing"? But
violence or not violence? The cohesion of enframing with
violence, much like the cohesion of capitalism and greed
which permeates Marxian and generally critical perspectives
on the world of economics and politics, constitutes in the
first place the failure to separate or distinguish between
violence and nonviolence, and a kind of powerful
capitalizing movement. That is to say, the movement which
lets capitalization mean at the same time greed, is itself a
prime example of just the very capitalization, the
"destruction in the process of becoming" which constitutes
capitalism. The movement which lets the *violence* of
enframing ride undistinguished in enframing is itself an
enframing or a capitalization.
Of course, the movement of "capitalization" as such still
constitutes the *essential numerical movement and shift*:
the one and then the other. Capitalization, with regards to
money, shifts labor from original/primordial/species being
relation into the X which is approached "algebraically". The
movement by which the "God or gods" are so named, rather
than approached *by name* (Dionysus, Apollo, Technology) is
itself a capitalizing move which enframes and reifies these
things in the process of moving on to something else, going
"meta", being after in some fundamental way. And we may
guess that Heidegger, perhaps with his own alienated
protestations heard muffled behind and around the texts,
capitalizes on Apollo, Nietzsche, Holderlin, Van Gogh, *for
the sake of* something else.
I want to throw in here that one rather naive sentiment, and
in a certain way, "pathetic" as well, of Heidegger's is the
very identification of enframing and the essence of
technology. Let us allow for the moment that his essential
definition is adequate. But getting clear on this does not
yet assure that a distinction is going to then be made on
account of the recognition of this essence according to its
violence. When is the discourse on violence to begin? It
does not get underway in Heidegger: it operates in an
unthematic background. Is it possible that this does not
"preserve" nonviolence, but rather holds it in a certain
prethematic suspension and silence? Violence, the moral, and
the question of justice go hand in hand. We know that the
"moral" is suspended for the accomplishment of the thinking
of Being and Time. Against the suggestion on the list to not
"center" on Being and Time in discussing Heidegger, I have
the strong feeling that the "later Heidegger" is quite fully
founded in Being and Time in many ways. There are may quotes
in his later writings to bear this out. The later Heidegger
appears often to me to be the "calculus" phase of what
started out as the "algebra of being" that constitutes Being
and Time.
Such "algebra", like enframing and capitalization is
essentially possible, and *actual*. The point is not to
grasp the essense and stand and stare at it, or pine for
gods. It seems to me that such an "algebra", recognizing
itself as such, must kick its ladder out from under itself,
not the more bravely to stand on the *new plane* the ladder
provided the ascension into, but to "fall" right back into
that ground from which the ladder, as the "after" or "meta
move" provided the exit from. Or one may, soberly, climb
down the ladder. To fall into that ground means here to
"take up the ethical", the "moral", and this means,
fundamentally, the question of violence. A thinking that
moves forward, develops itself in this way, would have
several preliminary desiderata. Among these would be, in
prudence, the question of how the "moral" hid the Being of
beings in the first place. The progression of this thinking
would be a kind of thinking of nonviolence.
This might well lead to "ethics as first philosophy", ala
Levinas. Or to something else. What happens when nonviolence
makes it way to language? In any event, the "turning back"
which would recognize the violence of the enframing of the
thinking of the fourfold would probably not give us a
fourfold in Heidegger's sense, but instead, so many
topologies, adequate essential definitions, etc. Something
else would come forward. Something else would happen. Could
it be that the whole topology of being, of which "the
fourfold" is a kind of extreme metatopology, would have to
be reconsidered not according to *time* as the "last and
grounding horizon*, but would have to be rethought in a
secondary role to the question of the Other, and of
violence?
---
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 ---
------------------