The Question Concerning Technology, 2.0.  ¶ 6:42 PM 0 comments

  Jean-Luc Nancy and ontological priorities, from a review of his reading of Claire Denis’s Beau travail.

In The Inoperative Community, Nancy argues that the problem of being has been thought predominantly in isolation from the question of community. For Nancy, the demand of community is the blindspot of Western metaphysics. Nancy criticises Heidegger’s Being and Time for positing Dasein before Mitsein, as it appears to assert atomised existence before the ‘with’ of community. Contra Heidegger, Nancy argues that being cannot pre-exist in itself: the Mit- does not come to qualify the sein, rather the Mit- or ‘with’ of being is that which constitutes being itself. For Nancy, being must be thought first and foremost in terms of what he calls ‘being-with’ (‘l’être-avec’) or ‘being-incommon’ (‘l’être-en-commun’). Nancy thus reverses the order of the Heideggerian existential structure, proposing the originary ‘with’ of community as the background against which being demands to be thought, the ‘with’ continually interrupting any ontological claim to self-presence or atomised identity.

  ¶ 10:02 AM 2 comments

  Bert Olivier on art and more.

Art may and sometimes does carry with it great economic value — while Van Gogh was penniless during his short life, his paintings (paradigms of art that transcended the shortsightedness of his time) are today repositories of “safe” investment amounting to millions. Their value as art remains untouched by this, however — whether one owns a Van Gogh (or a Monet, thinking of the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair), or whether one contemplates it in an art museum, its value remains the same as art.

Thus, the art value of a pile of bricks is the same at a building site as in an art gallery. And the art value of a can of soup remains the same on the supermarket shelf, absent Warhol's signature.

The paradox of art is that, in Heidegger’s idiom, it “preserves” its dislocating, defamiliarising capacity even when it is not being apprehended by viewers, a capacity activated as soon as viewers enter into a sensory and cognitive relationship with it.

Is placing some word in quotes required when referring to Heidegger? It seems to be a trend. Does Heidegger actually say that art is permanent, independent of its observer? The Greek temple preserves something for observers over the ages, but art is not immune to thanatos, as this review notes:

Heidegger says art died (and turned into aesthetics and business) because it was unable to preserve its “world-soliciting force”. This means the work NOT as a re-presentation of the world but as the revelation, the disclosure, of that world in the first place.

  ¶ 7:51 AM 0 comments

  On propagandizing the next dear leader.

[I]n his 1990 manifesto, Fairey wrote that "the Giant sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as 'the process of letting things manifest themselves.' Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they become muted by abstract observation."

We're talking German philosopher and author of "Being and Time" Martin Heidegger? The very same. "The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker," wrote Fairey.

Regarding the poster itself, this design detail, on what was obscured and what not, stood out.

Fairey employs a red, white and blue patriotic palette, but plays with the colors, using beige for white, a pastel blue, lots of red.

Red? "People are freaked by red," Fairey says. Perhaps flashing on socialist constructivist propaganda? "But I say don't let the Soviets steal our red. Red is a good primary color," he says.

A Bandiera Rossa was also what the Third Reich's flag was built on. Without it, national socialist "party comrades lacked any outward sign of their common bond".

More on flags, propaganda, and the campaign.  ¶ 9:43 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Metablog on the recursions in the event.

First, as the structure of reality and of our thought, it is simply recursive; that is, it has a recursive pattern of down and up loops in which each iteration down to the basis is a more simple version of the previous one and each iteration up from the basis is more complicated than the previous one.

Second, as the structure of entities and their environment, Ereignis is mutually recursive. As mutually recursive, this structure describes or determines the interrelatedness of entities with each other and with their environment. This mutual recursion works like two functions which use as input the output of the other. For example: f (x) = y and g (y) = x. When pointing out such a situation Heidegger often uses the terms "equiprimordial," "mutual conditioning," "interpenetrating," and soon.

  ¶ 6:26 PM 0 comments

  Psychology Today explains that authentic attitude.

For Heidegger and confreres, authenticity was an attitude: the project of embracing life, constructing meaning, and building character without fooling yourself that your so-called essence matters in any absolute, a priori sense.

"The philosophical question is, do we invent this authentic self?" says Portmann. "Or do we discover it?" Socrates believed we discover it; the existentialists say we invent it.

  ¶ 10:35 AM 1 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Mark Vernon reviews Raymond Tallis's new book The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head.

Another joy of Tallis' book is that the mystery deepens as our knowledge deepens, the two go hand in hand. And the resulting awe mounts up again when he reflects on how we do not have objective knowledge of the world, a view from nowhere, but subjective knowledge of the world, a viewpoint.

That is far more baffling and alarming, since 'aware of being located in a boundless world, we are not sure of our place in that world.' It is what Heidegger called 'de-experiencing': we see as subjects confronted by objects. This means, for example, that 'one can terrify with one's eyes not with one's ear or nose', as Wittgenstein noticed. Sight is always a two-way process: we can peep, point, press with our eyes and that can have a devastating effect on others.

I hadn't come across 'de-experiencing' before, but I can immediately use it: Wittgenstein was de-experienced in the Edgar Allan Poe department.  ¶ 9:46 AM 2 comments