Tom said,
>Is the martyr authentic? He or she can be: authentic,
>inauthentic, alienated or ruptured. But then, Hitler was in
>certain ways very authentic. Does "authentic" mean "good"
>for you here?
No "authentic" doesn't neccesarily mean "good", although
the temptation to say 'yes' to your question
is somthing very much on my
mind. It seems to be 'obvious' that the martyr is
'good' and therefore 'authentic', so the tendency to say so
right off the bat is very likely to
be misleading. I'm not sure, but I think this is what
you are getting at when you say that certain 'martyr's'
serve to keep ones own responsibilities distant from
oneself?
On the other hand, for anything like being a martyr to be
possible, one must be able to have an authenitc relationship
with one's own possibility for death. The choice of
martyrdom (or of not betraying 'the cause', perhaps) removes
any possibility of putting ones own death off.
>The question of repudiation is interesting: if the Christian
>Church tortur(es)(ed), then it already fully repudiates
>itself, unless its cheif constitutive element is alliance
>and not nonviolence.
"I come to bring not peace but the sword"
(I quote inexactly, I think)
Yes, the purpose and meaning of religious martyrdom is
unlike that of political and seems to imply an entirely
different kind of hope (doesn't Heidegger seem hesitant
to speak about hope?). I was thinking of a church in Rome
know as "St. Stephen in the Round". The church contains
anatomically correct frescoes of the martyrdom of several
chief martyrs (I visited it with a mortician who verified
the accuracy of the images). Why this catalogue of agonies?
Is this to ritualize violence in some sense of keeping it
distant, or does the monument to the martyrs serve to
bring them closer to the religous person?
Perhaps the martyrology, the icon, and the 'Lives
of the Saints' is a sort of working out of the
multiform particular modes of... well, not authenticity
but holiness perhaps?
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
>Is the martyr authentic? He or she can be: authentic,
>inauthentic, alienated or ruptured. But then, Hitler was in
>certain ways very authentic. Does "authentic" mean "good"
>for you here?
No "authentic" doesn't neccesarily mean "good", although
the temptation to say 'yes' to your question
is somthing very much on my
mind. It seems to be 'obvious' that the martyr is
'good' and therefore 'authentic', so the tendency to say so
right off the bat is very likely to
be misleading. I'm not sure, but I think this is what
you are getting at when you say that certain 'martyr's'
serve to keep ones own responsibilities distant from
oneself?
On the other hand, for anything like being a martyr to be
possible, one must be able to have an authenitc relationship
with one's own possibility for death. The choice of
martyrdom (or of not betraying 'the cause', perhaps) removes
any possibility of putting ones own death off.
>The question of repudiation is interesting: if the Christian
>Church tortur(es)(ed), then it already fully repudiates
>itself, unless its cheif constitutive element is alliance
>and not nonviolence.
"I come to bring not peace but the sword"
(I quote inexactly, I think)
Yes, the purpose and meaning of religious martyrdom is
unlike that of political and seems to imply an entirely
different kind of hope (doesn't Heidegger seem hesitant
to speak about hope?). I was thinking of a church in Rome
know as "St. Stephen in the Round". The church contains
anatomically correct frescoes of the martyrdom of several
chief martyrs (I visited it with a mortician who verified
the accuracy of the images). Why this catalogue of agonies?
Is this to ritualize violence in some sense of keeping it
distant, or does the monument to the martyrs serve to
bring them closer to the religous person?
Perhaps the martyrology, the icon, and the 'Lives
of the Saints' is a sort of working out of the
multiform particular modes of... well, not authenticity
but holiness perhaps?
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------