Re: Heidegger, Bacon, Science

I've been following this intriguing discussion, and noticed that
there are at least two questions raised by Laurence Hemming that
have yet to be addressed.

The first is the question of Heidegger's knowledge of
English. My understanding is that it was pretty minimal; in a
letter to Hannah Arendt (quoted by Ettinger in her recent account of
their relationship--an interpretation which might also bear
discussion here) Heidegger says that his English is not good enough
for him to read her work (but that his wife read them). If one
accepts Ettinger's interpretation at all, then this statemnet looks
very overdetermined... The Heidegger she poprtrays does not seem
above telling Arendt this as an excuse not to have to read her work.
But since I don't accept her portrayal (not unlike Farias's book,
there is a very strong negative spin put on 'the facts') I tend to
believe that Heidegger was being forthright about his English.
All of which raises another question: would Heidegger have
been as disparaging about 'America" and "Americanism' if he had some
firsthand acquaintence with our thinking? (His position on the
French certainly mellowed after he started teaching in France...
anonther contextually overdetermined statement Heidegger made is the
famous line about the virtues and deficiencies of French and German
for thinking--does anyone remeber the exact phrasing?)

The second remaining question concerns the 'logic' or
'force' governing the unfolding of the history of being. Is it an
eschatology (if not a teleology), and if so in what sense is there a
necessity to the order according to which its epochs unfold? Here
two passages (at least) suggest themselves.
In _Time & Being_, p. 52, Heidegger is said to have
distanced his understanding from Hegel's by saying that 'one cannot
speak of a 'why,' Only the 'that'--that the history of being is in
such a way--can be said." Nevertheless, Hiedegger reportedly goes
on to assert that even if one stichs to the that (the way in which
being happens to unfold, what earlier he called the truth of being,
and then the happening of being) we can ascertain "something like
necessity in the sequence, something like an order and a
consistency" (52). This order turns out to be the familiar
"oblivion of being escalating itself" (52). (Heidegger then talks
about the Janus-headed character of Enframing, a theme taken up in
"The Turning" and "Identity and Difference" the most puzzling aspect
of which is how Enframing is supposed to be "a first form of
Ereignis itself," facilitating an awakening to Ereignis (53)? Any
suggestions?)
The second passage is from 4 years later (1966), in the
Heraklitus seminar with Fink. There Heidegger speaks briefly about
'destining'--the happening of the history of being--as a
"noncoercive steering" (12). As he is no longer speaking of the
increasing 'oblivion' of being, so his talk of necessity seems also
to disappear.
It occurs to me that a third place to look to try and answer
these questions would be, and I think Laurence Hemming suggested
this in his post, the Parmenides lectures, but especially the
lecture that was excised from _What is called Thinking_, "Moira".
There, though more than ten years earlier, Moira is discussed as the
'dispensation' or happening of being, i.e., the way being unfolds
itself. I will reread that piece and see if it helps.

Iain Thomson
UCSD Philosophy






--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

------------------

Partial thread listing: