Iain:
I won't pretend to satisfy your questions. But maybe the following will
help. My quotes have been from _..On Being and Acting: From Principles to
Anarchy_. The "monstrous site" is Schurmann's quote from a Derrida essay in
_Writing and Differance_ (p.293) meant to contain the astonishment at his
use of a table of categories to elaborate Heidegger's genealogy of epochal
principles and the transition that marks the culmination of this history
under the emblem "principle of anarchy". It goes something like this: "...
the as yet unnamable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so, as is
necessary whenever a birth is in the offing,only under the species of the
nonspecies, in the formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity."
Could the essay by Jean Grondin published in Vol 15 No. 1 of Graduate
Faculty Philosophy Journal "Prolegomena to Understanding of Heidegger's
Turn" where referance is made to the Contributions... perhaps be the one
you had in mind? I'd like to mention how Schurmann interprets the "turn"
and dismisses the 'earlier nationalistic fervor' when seen backwards from
the thought of 'Ereignis' or event of appropriation: essentially it is
because the notion of technology in _Being and Time_ is still not
sufficiently developed: "How could a political movement be supposed capable
of bearing up against global technology, unless the latter was still viewed
as a force that might be stemmed and modified?" (&2, p.15) It is perhaps as
close as Schurmann gets to condemning Heidegger's political involvement
inasmuch as it reflects immaturity in Heidegger's philosophy during the
early 30's on the question of technology, which a project of authentication
(the people rising to the occassion) could "in some way redress." The
project of authentication remains under a double transformation, according
to Schurmann, seen at work in Heidegger's path leading from
"potentiality-for-being" in _Sein und Zeit_ to the "principle of anarchy"
in his later writings where the event of appropriation signals the end of
metaphysics. It is this event of appropriation that Jean Grondin calls the
"cosmic refusal of being" in the above essay. What has changed in these
successive transformations? The rejection of a certain "humanism" that
brought Heidegger close to the political aspirations of his nation in the
early 30's for starters.
Your hunches on the substance of Derrida's possible topic are informative. I
will forward them together with your request to the Derrida group which has
provided whatever information I have on this Symposia in Memorium of Arendt
and Schurmann at the New School. Also: perhaps somebody there may know of
the essay you are thinking about that Schurmann wrote on the Beitrage, if it
isn't the Grondin one I mentioned.
Thanks
Bob
At 10:31 AM 10/6/95 -0700, you wrote:
>Bob,
>
>Could you perhaps say a little bit more about the "monstrous site"
>or the 'monstrosity' to which Schuermann is riveted in his reading
>of the Beitraege? (I know that he gave this paper at a conference
>in 89, but I don't know where it's been published.)
>
>I know there are those who read the Beitraege as Heidegger's quiet
>condemnation of National Socialism; what I find disturbing there is
>the proximity of his thinking of 'erignis' to the earlier
>nationalistic fervor.
>
>
>BTW, if you get the chance, I (and I'd bet many others) would love
>to hear about Derrida's paper. (I'd guess that he's going to talk
>about Nietzsche's 'On Truth and Lie In an Extramoral Sense' and
>Heid's B&T claim that 'Dasein is in the truth and untruth
>equiprimordially'--but Derrida is notoriously unpredictable!)
>
>Thanks,
>Iain
>
>
>
> --- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
I won't pretend to satisfy your questions. But maybe the following will
help. My quotes have been from _..On Being and Acting: From Principles to
Anarchy_. The "monstrous site" is Schurmann's quote from a Derrida essay in
_Writing and Differance_ (p.293) meant to contain the astonishment at his
use of a table of categories to elaborate Heidegger's genealogy of epochal
principles and the transition that marks the culmination of this history
under the emblem "principle of anarchy". It goes something like this: "...
the as yet unnamable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so, as is
necessary whenever a birth is in the offing,only under the species of the
nonspecies, in the formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity."
Could the essay by Jean Grondin published in Vol 15 No. 1 of Graduate
Faculty Philosophy Journal "Prolegomena to Understanding of Heidegger's
Turn" where referance is made to the Contributions... perhaps be the one
you had in mind? I'd like to mention how Schurmann interprets the "turn"
and dismisses the 'earlier nationalistic fervor' when seen backwards from
the thought of 'Ereignis' or event of appropriation: essentially it is
because the notion of technology in _Being and Time_ is still not
sufficiently developed: "How could a political movement be supposed capable
of bearing up against global technology, unless the latter was still viewed
as a force that might be stemmed and modified?" (&2, p.15) It is perhaps as
close as Schurmann gets to condemning Heidegger's political involvement
inasmuch as it reflects immaturity in Heidegger's philosophy during the
early 30's on the question of technology, which a project of authentication
(the people rising to the occassion) could "in some way redress." The
project of authentication remains under a double transformation, according
to Schurmann, seen at work in Heidegger's path leading from
"potentiality-for-being" in _Sein und Zeit_ to the "principle of anarchy"
in his later writings where the event of appropriation signals the end of
metaphysics. It is this event of appropriation that Jean Grondin calls the
"cosmic refusal of being" in the above essay. What has changed in these
successive transformations? The rejection of a certain "humanism" that
brought Heidegger close to the political aspirations of his nation in the
early 30's for starters.
Your hunches on the substance of Derrida's possible topic are informative. I
will forward them together with your request to the Derrida group which has
provided whatever information I have on this Symposia in Memorium of Arendt
and Schurmann at the New School. Also: perhaps somebody there may know of
the essay you are thinking about that Schurmann wrote on the Beitrage, if it
isn't the Grondin one I mentioned.
Thanks
Bob
At 10:31 AM 10/6/95 -0700, you wrote:
>Bob,
>
>Could you perhaps say a little bit more about the "monstrous site"
>or the 'monstrosity' to which Schuermann is riveted in his reading
>of the Beitraege? (I know that he gave this paper at a conference
>in 89, but I don't know where it's been published.)
>
>I know there are those who read the Beitraege as Heidegger's quiet
>condemnation of National Socialism; what I find disturbing there is
>the proximity of his thinking of 'erignis' to the earlier
>nationalistic fervor.
>
>
>BTW, if you get the chance, I (and I'd bet many others) would love
>to hear about Derrida's paper. (I'd guess that he's going to talk
>about Nietzsche's 'On Truth and Lie In an Extramoral Sense' and
>Heid's B&T claim that 'Dasein is in the truth and untruth
>equiprimordially'--but Derrida is notoriously unpredictable!)
>
>Thanks,
>Iain
>
>
>
> --- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------