Re: Gravity and Light

>I hope that I have understood something of how you want to use the
>metaphor so that my comments make some sense.

The more I have thought about it the less clear I am about my
intuition, but I appreciate the comments people have made and I will offer
up my own second thoughts.
On the one hand, it seems unfair to early Heidegger to accuse him of
overlooking the particulars associated with concrete cultural existence when
he explicitly brackets exactly those kind of particulars. It seems to me
that Heidegger wants to argue that there are structural features to Dasein
which remain constant in spite of the manner in which a given culture
chooses to articulate its being. On the other hand, in later Heidegger one
starts to encounter an analysis of concrete interpretations of being as
exemplified in his analysis of technology, and here I think he is looking
for a middle space. This layer can't exist out in the transcendent space of
Being & Time, nor can it merely mirror the topology of the ontic structures
modern society has instituted. In this middle atmosphere, the abstract
/general features of the age exhibit their own integrity, but they are
susceptible to the gravity of the social order in a manner in which those
examined in Being and Time are not. Here I do think that the ontical and
ontological exert forces on each other as Peter Durigon suggests.
I think it is this sense of middle space that I have tried to
capture with the imagery of light being bent by the gravity of the concrete
cultural landscape. In this level, where one stands does matter, which is to
say, the position one has in the ontic structure of society will mediate or
interpret the sense one has of the light afforded by the clearing.
The straight light of Being & Time has to bend when it encounters
the mass of earth and its uneven topology. In a sense, our light, the only
light we see, is already bent. I get the impression that part of Foucault's
consideration of this constellation is the realization that bent light is
the only light that matters to us

Hagen Finley
Berkeley, CA


Hagen Finley
Berkeley, CA



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