What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 40

But while we are saying this, a doubt has already made itself felt. It is this--must we first make an effort to reach a correspondence with the Being of being? Are we, humans, not always already in such a correspondence, and, what is more, not only de facto, but by virtue of our nature? Does not this correspondence constitute the fundamental trait of our nature?

[Next]  ¶ 8:27 PM 0 comments

  Got the Bobby Friction & Nihal double CD from Amazon uk yesterday and it's the bangingest bhangra since the Punjabi MC CD from last year. Filled with hard beats, dhol drums, and brit rapping, the CD marks another milestone in the asian underground that started with Talvin Singh's Anokha compilation. That was a variation on the then popular drum'n'bass. I catch the occasional Amen sample here and there but the genre has moved on and diversified--absorbed hip-hop; dropped cheesy synth pre-sets--and is now ready to take over the world. There's no Talvin on this, and the rest of the old school appears to have imploded after their initial success. Where are State of Bengal and Fun-Da-Mental today? There's some old-timers on this, Bally Sagoo and Nitin Sawney (sounding more jungly than customary), tons of new names, DSI v Desi Underground doing Be There, and even Timbaland and Mos Def. And it's all a lot of fun. This is not kitschy Bollywood. This is Bhangra! Get it or get out of the way of the desi posse.  ¶ 4:22 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Philosophical Conversations delved into Heidegger's critique of the human centered subject in The Age of the World Picture a few days ago:

Heidegger's narrative is about radical transformation in our understanding of being that took place in the 17th century. The change was implicit in Descartes' introduction of representation. Kant then made Descartes' unthought explicit in the centrality of his notion of Vorsetellung.

Furthering the rise of subjectivism:

With Kant, man becomes the source of the meaning of everything and so philosophy becomes anthropology.

  ¶ 11:35 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

For My Ego believes Life is a harsh reality. It's all about the human self, but Heidegger told us not to trust perceptions:

My point for mentioning the cynicism is that we humans are incredibly self-orientated. And why ought we not be? For all we know nothing is real but what we are; perception is untrustworthy, as shown by modern day versions of this philosophical weave of thought started by Heidegger. But it is exactly this self-orientation that leads us to what is known as 'the crumbling of society'.

Crumbling societies are sort of a fixture going back to Beowulf:

Grendel witnesses the crumbling of society, the rejection of God, and the subsequent descent into insanity

It's really the same recurring eternally.
  ¶ 11:20 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Bag of Worms Yet Words struggles to make sense of Subjectivity:

It is true also that in the first half of the twentieth century, before the Brown decision, psychology, as in Freud, child psychology, and psychological therapeutics, and philosophy, as in the phenomenological tradition of Heidegger and Sartre, made subjectivity a central concern.

The Brown decision is central concern on this blog. Subjectivity was a central concern of Heidegger's, but for different reasons from Sartre.

As Heidegger sees it, the subjectivistic view was adopted by the most prominent figures in modern philosophy and, in fact, formed the axis of the modern philosophic tradition.
...
[S]ujectivism not only leaves the nature of man unquestioned, but blocks all further ontological inquiry and brings philosophy to a dead end.

  ¶ 11:03 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 39

This path to the answer to our question is not a break with history, no repudiation of history, but is an adoption and transformation of what has been handed down to us. Such an adoption of history is what is meant by the term "destruction." The meaning of this word has been clearly described in Being and Time (S 6). Destruction does not mean destroying but dismantling, liquadating, putting to one side the merely historical assertions about the history of philosophy. Destruction means--to open our ears, to make ourselves free for what speaks to us in tradition and the Being of being. By listening to this interpellation we attain the correspondence.

Section 6 of B&T is The Task of Destroying the History of Ontology. It is essential because

The question of Being does not achieve its true concreteness until we have carried through the process of destroying the ontological tradition.
P. 49

[Next]  ¶ 7:45 PM 0 comments

  Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Inquisition, and Habermas, mullah of modernism, unite to fight the usual suspects. Habermas reads the charges:

Today, in the field of anti-rational postmodern criticism, these neopagan conceptual figures are back in fashion: a broad anti-Platonism carelessly spread by fashions inspired by late Heidegger and late Wittgenstein, in the sense of a definitive repudiation of the universalism that characterizes the premises of unconditional truth.

"We have THREE ways of making you embrace Platonism!"  ¶ 7:35 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Nomadic Thoughts quotes Heidegger on Teaching and Learning. And so, with that, we here are

linked to that most thought-provoking matter which gives us to think.

Ipso facto.  ¶ 6:27 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

ToneArm has a tricky blog entry:

As cowardly brilliant State Philosophist Marty starts stacking the gerunds, one wonders if he was on to something, his time and ours---as though there were any kind of difference---when he speaks of 'standing-in-reserve' [dashes mine, by necessity, it becomes a proper noun of sorts], and then one asks

questions about technology and such. Try selecting the posting to read it.  ¶ 10:45 AM 0 comments

  In the Trinidad and Tobago Express, Heidegger is invoked to support the notion of finding one's own path or local solutions to global problems:

Although he turned out to be a Nazi and himself ended up with doubts about Being and Time, I still favour Heidegger's notion of 'being there'. Few things have influenced me more than my own experience of the shaping power of place and the vital role of moment. History is necessarily replete with clues to the human condition. On the question of family and its impact, my own feel for the Caribbean warns me against the careers of other places that sound similar but are only approximate.

  ¶ 9:37 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 38

The answer to the question, "What is philosophy?" consists in our corresponding to [answering to] that towards which philosophy is on the way. And that is--The Being of being. In such a correspondence we listen from the very outset to that which philosophy has already said to us, philosophy, that is, φιλόσοφία understood in the Greek sense. That is why we attain correspondence, that is, an answer to our question, only when we remain in conversation with that to which the tradition of philosophy delivers us, that is, liberates us. We find the answer to the question, "What is philosophy?" not through historical assertions about the definitions of philosophy but through conversing with that which has been handed down to us as the Being of being.

[Next]  ¶ 9:28 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Determinate Negation examines the differences between animals and how humans are in the world, and what that tells us about boredom in Comportment and Having a World.  ¶ 9:26 PM 1 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Grrl ISO has a bit on being authentic from the Martin Heidegger entry of The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.  ¶ 9:04 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The 4th Century discusses the ontological difference in the Anaximander fragment.  ¶ 10:10 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

pas au-delà quotes from a Richard Rorty piece on Derrida.

Heidegger had read the history of Western philosophy as a series of increasingly desperate attempts to achieve what Derrida called "a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude... beyond the reach of play".

Certainly that strain--that reality is all an unchanging unity--has been there in philosophy since Parmenides, but there are alternative views of Heidegger reading.

Heidegger perceives history as monumental; it is a chain of monuments, deeds performed by people who are heroes of their culture, by philosophers and artists. Their activities disclose Being and make history. They create a world and bequeth it to future generations, who adopt it and protect the revelation of Being. The actions of cultural heroes are neither fully intentional nor conscious. In this vein, we can say, for example, Abraham, in binding Isaac, did not make a concrete decision to bring the Jewish people into existence. Similarly, Jesus did not consciously intend to found a new religion with his actions or of handing down a moral code that would survive for thousands of years. The same is true of all historical characters--thinkers, writers, artists--who, through their actions, created new cultural paradigms that served as historical milestones.

These considerations also apply to traditional metaphysics. Modern subjectivism is not the result of intended and thoughtful action. Even though subjectivism was the by-product of human's effort to emancipate from dogmatic and irrational authority, their will did not have a decisive impact on its creation or on freeing human beings from it effects. This is, rather, the happening of Being.
P. 136

  ¶ 10:01 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 37

Thus, if we assume that the Being of being addresses itself to philosophers to the extent that they state what being is, in so far as it is, then our discussion with philosophers must also be addressed by the Being of being. We must then ourselves, through our thinking, go to meet philosophy on the path it is traveling. Our thinking must co-respond to that which addresses the philosophers. If this co-responding is successful for us, then, in the true sense of the word, we respond to the question "What is philosophy?" The Greman word antworten [answer to] actually means the same as ent-sprechen [to respond]. The answer to our question is not exhausted in an affirmation which answers to the question by determining what we are to understand by the concept "philosophy." The answer is not a reply (n'est pas une response), the answer is rather the co-respndence (la correspondance) which responds to the Being of being. Yet, we should like at the same time to know what constitutes the characteristic feature of the answer in the sense of co-respondence. But everything first depends upon our attaining a corespondence before we set up a theory about it.

Being of being = Sein des Seienden
[Next]  ¶ 9:26 PM 0 comments

  Incredibly useful link of the day: Ism-logy Index for: Martin Heidegger Contributions to philosophy (from enowning) (GA65). Not that I need it right now, mind you, but be sure to send Daniel additonal references as you come across them in your reading.  ¶ 3:50 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Bolg-sein

The Three Traitors's shocking revelation: Heidegger is not the worstest writer.

The Bible, we're told, is the final, and only authority on how to escape from inexorable eternal fire. But there's a significant flaw in God's arduous work, nobody understands it. God is a worse writer than Martin Heidegger.

Caveat, authorship of the Bible has been eternally misattributed.  ¶ 3:36 PM 0 comments

  Finally tracked down the "_audiolounge" double CD of laptop music from the foyer of the Berlin's Academy of Fine Arts. Thank you Aquarius (There's a old pic of Sofia and Alexandra shopping here). The 30 minute Ammer & Console track, Heimat und Technik, samples throughout from a Heidegger lecture. Parts of the CD are ambiently beatless, whilst others have beats at trance BPMs, with much glitchyness. Surprisingly a major musical influence on the Berlin's music is Detroit techno, as this article from Detroit's alt-weekly describes. Then again German electronica is diverse, and Berlin is not central. Nor were most German thinkers rooted in that city.

Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Jung, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels, Schopenhauer, Weber, Wittgenstein and Oswald Spengler all challenged and beguiled while perched atop the German academies, many of them rooted in Berlin.

Spengler studied there, Weber has to live there because he couldn't afford to move away from his parents, and Hegel and Schopenhauer both taught there--Schopenhauer scheduled his lectures at the same time as Hegel's to protect his students' minds. The others avoided the capital. Then again on this CD Heidegger finally lectures in Berlin.

Also in the drop from Aquarius was the Wipe That Sound 12" from Düsseldorf's Mouse on Mars's recent album Radical Connector. They're following the organic beats formula they hit upon with Niun Niggung, and diversifying with more guest vocalists. One of the 12" remixes has multi-tracked Mark E. Smith's phlegmy comments on "hiddenness" all over it--a font of jollity chez Enowning.

Also got DJ/Rupture's split with Mutamassik on the Violent Turd label. Primo multi-ethnic mashup there.

DJ/Rupture is also on possibly the last album from the Wordsound label, the fourth volume of Certified Dope compilations from the Crooklyn Dub Outernational collective. Fresh low-end turgid illbient that doesn't disappoint. Subtitled Babylon's Burning it topically features GIs advancing into Mesopotamia on the front and the shock-and-awing of Baath ministries on the back.  ¶ 3:29 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraphs 35 & 36

When is the answer to the question, "What is philosophy?" a philosophizing one? When do we philosophize? Obviously only when we enter into a discussion with philosophers. This implies that we talk through with them that about which we speak. This mutual talking through of what always anew peculiarly concerns philosophers as being the Same, that is talking, λέγειν, in the sense of διαλέγεσθαι [conversing], is talking as dialogue. If and when dialogue is necessarily dialectic, we leave open.

It is one thing to determine and describe the opinions of philosophers. It is an entirely different thing to talk through with them what they are saying, and that means, that of which they speak.

[Next]  ¶ 3:04 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Spookspot investigates neocon conspiracy promulagators' fave target Leo Strauss, with digressions through imagined SNL silliness:

And yet there is the nagging problem of Heidegger, who rejected all tellers of absolute truth and Socrates most vehemently. As an impressionable young man, Strauss fell under Heidegger's influence and never quite shook it. Considering Heidegger's grandiose reputation, it is depressing to consider how cheap was the trick he played. What is Being?, he demanded of a generation that after the First World War felt the ground shaky under their feet. It is a shame that Eddie Murphy never studied philosophy, for then we might have had the following Saturday Night Live sketch about Heidegger's definition of Being with respect to Non-Being, namely death. The use of dialect would make Heidegger's meaning far clearer than in the available English translations:

You can read the rest there. I suspect there was a germ of insight in there somewhere, but that potential is occluded by the post's slighting dialect speakers, relgions, and serious students of philosophy unnecessarily.

For actual insight into where the neocons are coming from read the Wolfowitz interview in the December Prospect, wherein neocons come off sounding like liberal-democracts. It appears that Democrats devoted to foreign policy end up serving Republican presidents. Probably because most Democrats aren't concerned with foreign policy, preferring to demagogue the issue for domestic advantage they end up delegating foreign matters to propagandists for barbarism.  ¶ 1:26 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The Pangrammaticon decides to do its own translation:

This is the last sentence of Heidegger's essay "The Turning" as it appears in William Lovitt's translation from The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (p. 49):

"May world in its worlding be the nearest of all nearing that nears, as it brings the truth of Being near to man's essence, and so gives man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own."

I offer here a particular kind of reading, proceeding by substitution of phrases and words salva veritate.

Saving the truth, or 17 steps to do enown ding.  ¶ 6:54 AM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 34

What is the result from what has been said for our attempt in a discussion to treat the question, "What is philosophy?" First of all this one thing: we must not adhere only to Aristotle's definition. From this we deduce the second point: we must realize the earlier and later definitions of philosophy. And then? Then, through a comparative abstraction, we shall reduce them to the common denominator of all the definitions. And then? Then we shall arrive at an empty formula which fits every kind of philosophy. And then? Then we shall be as far removed as possible from an answer to our question. Why does it come to this? Because in proceeding thus we are only collecting by historical methodology the definitions at hand and resolving them into a general formula. All of this can, indeed, be carried out with great erudition and the help of correct verifications. In so doing we do not in the least have to enter into philosophy in such a manner as to contemplate the nature of philosophy. In such a manner we acquire manifold, thorough, and even useful knowledge about how philosophy has been presented in the course of history. But on this path we never reach a genuine, that is, a legitimate answer to the question "What is philosophy?" The answer can only be a philosophizing answer which, as a response, philosiphizes in itself. But how can we understand this statement? In which way can an answer, and particularly in so far as it is a response, philosophize? I shall now try provisionally to clarify this by a few suggestions. What is meant will disturb our discussion again and again. It will even be the touchstone to determine whether our discussion may become truly philosophical. This is by no means within our power.

[Next]  ¶ 7:08 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Goethea is recovering from an inaccurate reading of Heidegger:

My current take is that his philosophy was an admirable but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at holism. I feel that his negativity towards Western metaphysical/scientific/technological rationality is too dualistic...Manichaean as Walter Kaufmann would say. His thought fails to answer the question why, if Western metaphysics is so harmful, is it so widespread?

Mosquitos, and other pests, are also widespread and harmful. Evolution works that way. At various points Heidegger indicates that although he is critical of metaphysics, he thinks it evolved the way it did for apparent reasons. For one, it works. Science and technology have been successful in their ways. I'm not sure where the holism or duality are in this interpretation of Heidegger.  ¶ 7:05 PM 0 comments

  Paul Johnson in today's Spectator implies that Heidegger wouldn't have supported Dubya:

Whatever else the re-election of Bush signifies, it was a smack in the face for the intelligentsia. Like a crazed Kappelmeister sitting at a nightmare organ, they pulled out all the stops, from the bourdon in lead to the fiffaro, not excluding the trompeta magna, and what emerged, far from being a thanksgiving gloria in excelsis, was a lugubrious marche funèbre. In America they were all at it, from old Chomsky to that movie-maker who looks like a mushy jumbo cheeseburger. In Germany the Heidegger Left were goose-stepping in force. In France the followers of ‘Jumping Jack’ Derrida were at the barricades. Here in England all the usual suspects were on parade, from the Oxford stinks-don to the public-sector playwrights, with the Eumenides-novelists spitting fury. What a caterwauling and trilling! Why are intellectuals so impotent today?

Could be a paucity of libido, although a surfeit of values is also suspected.

'Values', says Heidegger, by which he means values divorced from facts, are 'impotent'; 'no one dies for mere values' (QCT p.142)

That's from Julian Young's Heidegger's Philosophy of Art.

More silliness on presidental candidates, virility and Heidegger here.  ¶ 10:37 AM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 33

By saying this we by no means maintain that the Aristotelian definition of philosophy is absolutely valid. Even within the history of Greek thought it is only one particular interpretation of Greek thinking and of the task assigned to it. The Aristotelian characterization of philosophy cannot in any case be transferred back to the thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides. On the contrary, the Aristotelian definition of philosophy is, to be sure, a free consequence of early thinking and its conclusion. I say "a free consequence" because in no way can it be seen that individual philosophies and epochs of philosophy have emerged from one another in the sense of the necessity of a dialectic process.

[Next]  ¶ 6:03 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Abreact on : forgetting says that:

In his later years, Heidegger seemed to think it was up to poetry to save the world.

I'd understood it was a god that could save us, but he did have a soft spot for poetry. As I do myself, feeling that a poem resonating within me is a truth that is not mere correspondence.  ¶ 7:48 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Fides et Ratio has some praise:

In modernist Correspondance theories, truth becomes an autonomous sphere and can be gained by anyone, and ontology becomes relegated to nothing, hence Heidegger's "destuktion" of classical ontology.

Derrida and the Postmoderns are also carrying Heidegger on their shoulders. Heidegger is the greatest of all 20th century Philosophers, in my opinion.

I'm not quite sure that correspondance is modernist, nor that Heidegger was focused specifically on classical ontology, but then again I thought we had a googlewack above--I hadn't counted the 60s classic Eve of Destuktion.  ¶ 7:38 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Two Fish asks:

A portion of my research has been concerned with oblivion: the figure of Lethe, mother of the Graces. Why might Forgetting give rise to Splendor, Delight and Blossoming, the three Graces?

Then finds assistance in a poem by Heidegger.  ¶ 7:18 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Maverick Philosopher is concerned about too many questions:

There is no doubt that Derrida borrows from Heidegger what I call a fetishization of the question. I hope to devote a separate post to this topic. Here too Derrida attempts to out-Heidegger Heidegger. The notion that endless questioning, the questioning of questioning itself, the questioning of the presuppositions of the very posing of the question about questioning itself, the endless preparing to be in a position where one can finally, perhaps, authentically pose a question about something - what is this if not the fetishization of questioning for its own sake, when questioning by its very sense is oriented toward answers?

But having this fetish would be useful - you could swat pests away with endless questions. But if only it were the case.

If it were the case that it is only endless questioning, the questioning of questioning, then it could easily be implemented in LISP.

(defun QUESTION (x)

          (QUESTION(QUESTION (x)))

  ¶ 9:05 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 32

The question which is to give our discussion fruitful unrest and movement and to indicate the direction it is to take, the question, "What is philosophy?" Aristotle has already answered. Therefore, our discussion is no longer necessary.It is at an end before it has begun. The immediate reply to this will be that Aristotle's statement as to what philosophy is can by no means be the only answer to our question. To state it favorably, it is one answer among many others. With the help of the Aristotelian characterization of philosophy one can, to be sure, conceive and interpret both the thinking before Aristotle and Plato, as well as philosophy after the time of Aristotle. However, it will be pointed out with ease that philosophy from Aristotle to Nietzsche, precisely because of these changes throughout their course, has remained the same. For the transformations are the warranty for the kinship in the same.

[Next]  ¶ 9:51 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

i will eat you all alive. there will be no more lies, the blog, reports on a Derrida panel:

Richard Rorty: I never understood what deconstruction was. If you think that the main achievement of mid-twentieth-century philosophy was that of the later Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, etc., who made us see words in terms of their use, rather than as kernels of meaning that you can deconstruct, then you're not going to have much use for it. I think in time we'll remember Derrida for other things, just as we no longer consider Nietzsche primarily as the philosopher of the superman. Derrida comes out of the anti-metaphysical tradition started by the Sophists and reawakened by Nietzsche. He took Heidegger's tragedy of existence and rewrote it as farce.

Woman in audience: I feel such a presence here as we're talking. Professor Rorty, do you think we'll speak with Derrida again in this life?

Richard Rorty: Er, what's that?

Judith Butler: She said, will we ever speak with Derrida again in this life?

Richard Rorty: No.

Tragedy. Farce. Finality.  ¶ 9:46 AM 0 comments

    ¶ 8:58 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The Ruminations of Juniper Flesco had Some Random Thoughts yesterday, including:

Heidegger's left earlobe

Clearly an allusion to Derrida's Heidegger's Ear: Philopolemology (Geschlecht) wherein

What the ear is, the essence and the destination of Dasein's ear, will be understood starting from this Hören [hearing], and not the inverse.
P. 173

And so the destiny of the left ear lobe starts with the ear ring, whereas inversely the right ear rings from hea(ring) the call of Dasein.

Or, as Bauhaus put it:

But their choice don't seem to matter
They got swollen breasts and lips that putter
And their choice of matter and their scream of chatter
Is just a philopolemologic scream of Hören
Scream ring Hören

  ¶ 7:28 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Trust me, you have no idea how much I hate Bush, the blog, hosts Heidegger in 60 seconds. Not bad given the brevity. Certainly better than the execrable Heidegger in 90 Minutes. Today's dictum, then: The shorter, the better.  ¶ 10:59 AM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraphs 30 & 31

In what sense is Being conceived that such things as "principle" and "cause" are qualified to set their seal upon beings and take possession of them?

But now we note something else. The phrase of Aristotle cited above tells us in what direction that which since Plato has been called "philosophy" is going. Philosophy is a kind of aptness which makes it possible to see being in respect to what it is in so far as it is being.

[Next]  ¶ 6:50 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Over at Net Politik a certain J.P. Sartre demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding:

The question is only complicated because there are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence -- or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective.

No. Nope. Not the subjective.

Whether, however, the saying "No" at first posits the Not as merely something thought or whether the nihilating at first claims the "No" as what is to be [doing the] speaking in the letting [come to] be of [any kind of] be-ing, this can certainly never be decided in terms of a subjective reflection on thinking already formulated as subjectivity.

And earlier in the Letter on Humanism Heidegger responds directly to Sartre:

On the other hand, Sartre articulates the fundamental statement of existentialism in this way: life precedes what is of the essence. In doing so, he takes existentia and essentia in the sense they have for metaphysics, which since Plato has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this proposition. The reversal of a metaphysical proposition, however, is still a metaphysical proposition.

  ¶ 1:17 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraphs 29 & 30

Aristotle says what it is when he names the πρῶται ἀρχαι καὶ αἰτίαι. This may be translated as "the first principles and causes" namely, of being. The first principles and causes thus constitute the Being of being. After two-and-a-half thousand years it would seem to be about time to consider what the Being of being has to do with such things as "principles" and "causes."

In what sense is Being conceived that such things as "principle" and "cause" are qualified to set their seal upon beings and take possession of them?

[Next]  ¶ 10:19 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

naijablog is back in London:

It makes me think of Heidegger's concept of Sorge (care) being back - there is a layer of general care here that doesnt exist in Nigeria - care for the other. Even though the news is of rising homophobic attacks and train crashes, it is the response to these events that is interesting: so much earnest attention on prevention. In Nigeria, if a bus load of people die in a crash, no one ever knows their names, let alone think about how to avoid it happening again. It is an Act of God or force majeur that cannot be interpollated.

It's not that I don't care about someone dying on the Clapham omnibus, but for Heidegger Sorge meant something different from the transitive: I care about them. In 1925, Heidegger's was on about care as the being of Dasein.

It is this peculiar structure of the being of the entity, that it is an entity for which, within its in-being, that very being is at issue, which we must now grasp in greater detail. But how? We shall define this structure terminologically as care and designate it as a primal structure, the structure of Dasein itself. But I would like to emphasize expressly that this structure does not uncover the ultimate context of the being of Dasein. It is the penultimate phenomenon, so to speak, on the way toward the authentic structure of the being of Dasein. Care is the term for the being of Dasein pure and simple. It has the formal structure, an entity for which, intimately involved in its being-in-the-world, this very being is at issue.
P. 293

(ital. in orig.)

A decade later, people already weren't following orders.

The directive, already often repeated, to think "care" only in the inceptual realm of the question of being and not as some arbitrary, personal accidental, "ideological," or "anthropological" view regarding humans--thsi directive will continue to be without effect in the future, as long as those who only "write" a "critique" of the question of being do not experience--and do not want to experience--the distress of the abandonment of being.
S. 5

R U Xperienced?  ¶ 9:37 PM 0 comments

  Apropos The Incredibles, from Tucson, the fourfold:

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger once divided being into four spheres: the earth, the sky, gods and men. Of course, he left out the most essential realm of being, one that exists between earth, sky, gods and men: superheroes.

While chubby European intellectuals might not be sharp-minded enough to see it, what sets Americans apart from the rest of the world is the greatness of our comic books.

That's a quaint notion. These days the worthwhile comic books are written by gaunt Europeans.  ¶ 7:52 AM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 28

At the moment, it is not yet necessary to explain more exactly what Aristotle means by ἐνέργεια and to what extent the οὐσία can be determined by the ἐνέργεια. Now it is only important what we note how Aristotle circumscribes philosophy in its nature. In the first book of the Metaphysics he makes the following statement: Philosophy is ἐπιστήμη τῶν πρώτοων ἀρχῶν καὶ αἰτῶν θεωρητική. Episthmh is commonly translated as "science." This is misleading because we are only too apt to let the modern conception of "science" infiltrate. The translation of ἐπιστήμη by "science" is also wrong if we understand "science" in the philosophical sense of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. The word ἐπιστήμη is derived from the participle ἐπιστάμενος. That is what a man is called when he is competent and apt in something (competent in the sense of aptitude). Philosophy is the ἐπιστήμη τις, a kind of competence, θεωρητική, which is capable of θεωρείν, that is, of being on the lookout for something and of seizing and holding in its glance what it is on the lookout for. Philosophy therefore is ἐπιστήμη θεωρητική. But what is it that it seizes in its glance?

[Next]  ¶ 5:51 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Mormon Philosophy & Theology has been examining positivism. Yesterday's post contrasted Heidegger and Carnap and asked:

Heidegger moves towards an understanding of nothing that was much more in line with the medieval and neoPlatonic traditions whereas Carnap most definitely did not. Are there practical implications to this 'nothing' in philosophy and more practical disciplines such as science or history?

  ¶ 11:25 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The Ludologist asks:

Did Heidegger say that German was the only language in which you could do philosophy?

He did, echoing Herder.

For along with the German language, Greek (in regard to the possibilities of thinking) is at once the most powerful and the most spiritual of languages.
P. 60

He thought German was essential for the return of Being. Apparently the French are partly to blame.

SPIEGEL: Do you believe that Germans have a special qualification for this return?
HEIDEGGER: I think of the special inner kinship between the German language and the language and thought of the Greeks. This is something that the French confirm for me again and again today. When they begin to think [about the mystery of Being], they speak German. They assure me that they do not succeed with their own language.

  ¶ 7:39 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The Religious Left is a new blog started to:

challenge the right's claim on religious and moral language in the political realm and to develop and promote positive, religious understandings, which can provide the moral foundation for the liberal democratic political tradition and enable progressive politics to speak mroe effectively to religious people

The blog studies the opposition:

Areas of research
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Republican party is the coming together of fundamentalist Christianity and Leo Strauss's disciples (neo-conservatism). As I understand them, they both believe in Right vs Wrong and that gives them enormous strength.

And asks:

To win the hearts and minds of middle America, do we need to find a liberal version of Strauss (saying, there really are Right and Wrong) or do we need to throw our lot in with anti-Strauss philosophies? Can mainstream Christianity join with Heidegger?

Hmm. Area of research: deconstruct this.  ¶ 9:38 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 27

Philosophy seeks what being is, in so far as it is. Philosophy is en route to the Being of being, that is, to being with respect to Being. Aristotle explains this by adding in the cited statement to the question τί τὸ ὄν, What if being? the explanation τοῦτο ἐστι τίς ἡ οὐσια; in translation: "This (namely, τί τὸ ὄν) means, what is the Beingness of being?" The Being of being rests in the Beingness. But this--the οὐσια--Plato calls ἰδέα and Aristotle ἐνέργεια.

[Next]  ¶ 8:02 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The 4th Century quotes Heidegger on the saving god from his TV interview, and pines:

In any case, add these words to the long list of slightly disheartening utterances from great men grown old. (For even more read the late plays of Shakespeare, especially The Tempest: "We are the stuff that dreams are made of.")

Shakespeare? Thank the coming god for that. Here I was going through life thinking it was a Carly Simon song; the Human League ditty being about "things" and not "stuff"--it's all ousia to me. Which is good to know as I have tickets for a sci-fi rock musical, based on Forbidden Planet and The Tempest, later this month. Bracing myself for a dose of Carly Simon. Shields up. Deploy earplugs.  ¶ 7:45 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Musings on Information Seeking muses about The Question Concerning Technology:

[I]nformation can be thought of as negantropy: that element which brings order to an open system and countervails entropy. If enframing is a mode of revealing by ordering, then one can see enframing as consonant with information itself.

I thought information was negantropy by definition (Shannon). As such, information, and enframing, ordering as standing reserve, is a temporal phenomenon that will be overtaken by heat death of the universe. Hail Eris.  ¶ 7:30 AM 0 comments

 

Release the vats! Release the vats!
Release them!

Baby is a cool machine
she moves to the pulse of a generator
she says damn that demon supreme
she says, she says damn that horror vat
demon horror demon vat demon horror
demon vat horror
cool machine

Release the bat, Nick.
  ¶ 6:58 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The Web of Belief asks if determinism matters:

In light of Heidegger's da-sein, can we put the determinism we get out of physical reductionism into the same place as external skepticism? That is, maybe we're brains in vats or being toyed with by an evil demon, but so what, it doesn't feel that way so it doesn't really affect our lives at all.

Release the vats!  ¶ 6:56 PM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 26

This yearning search for the σοφόν, for the "Εν Πάντα," for the being in Being, now becomes the question, "What is being, in so far as it is?" Only now does thinking become "philosophy." Heraclitus and Parmenides were not yet "philosophers." Why not? Because they were the greater thinkers. "Greater" here does not signify the estimation of an achievement but indicates another dimension of thinking. Heraclitus and Parmenides were "greater" in the sense that they were still in harmony with the Λόγος, that is, with the "Εν Πάντα." The step into "philosophy," prepared for by Sophism, was first accomplished by Socrates and Plato. Then, almost two centuries after Heraclitus, Aristotle charcterized this step by the folowing statement: "καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ πάλαι τε καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ ζητοὐμενον καὶ ἀεὶ ἀπορούμενον, τί τὸ ὄν." (Metaphysics Ζ 1). In translation this reads: "And thus, as was in the past, is now too and will be ever more, that towards which (philosophy) is moving and to which it again and again does not find access, is (the question raised)--what is being? (τί τὸ ὄν)."

[Next]  ¶ 6:05 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Philosophical Conversations continues posting and weaving strands of Geist and university reform:

Derrida is critical of Heidegger's conception of historicity as fate or destiny because of the contamination of spirit by (German) nationalism. Derrida interprets Geist in terms of the destiny of the west as a spiritual force and argues that the price of the latter strategy is contamination by the racism and the biologizing of 'blood and soil.' Heidegger does not deconstruct Geist.

Go read all the posts.  ¶ 10:37 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

James Crystal quotes from "Building, Dwelling, Thinking" and asks:

What does this all have to do with the price of an election?

I think if one reads it slowly, with the present dangers in Iraq, for one, and the current hellish state of the Democratic Party, for another THING, it's possible to DWELL in a realistically CONSTRUCTIVE attitude that will SPARE us all from all the either willfully stupid or blindly ignorant ranting going on.

  ¶ 9:04 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Buff-sein

Less Than Rockin explores the rationale for varsity streaking:

Sean Tice, a junior who is majoring in both English and religious studies, said that talk also circled toward how philosophers like Heidegger might interpret their acts before coming to the realization that harnessing Heidegger to naked sprints in public seems, at best, a reach.

  ¶ 8:58 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Shades of Gray reflects post-election:

Then, please, explain to me - am I also one of those goobers, one of those mouth-breathing, intolerant, gay-bashing, sexist, nationalistic morons that you have read (or even written) about? That somehow I slipped under the radar getting to grad school, and have not yet learned a bloody thing? Or am I instead something more vicious - if I'm not a goober, than am I a Machiavellian, an accursed accomplice in horror, waiting to take my role as a future Heidegger?

No. That'll be 5 cents, Canarum Umbrae.  ¶ 8:49 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Martin, Terence, Rupert, Bucky
sitting in a tree
d-i-s-s-i-n-g  ¶ 8:36 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Buddha, Dwelling, Spelling  ¶ 8:29 AM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 25

However, even the Greeks had to rescue and protect the astonishingness of this most astonishing thing against the attacks of Sophist reasoning which always had ready for everything an answer which was comprehensible to everyone and which they put on the market. The rescue of the most astonishing thing--being in Being--was accomplished by a few who started off in the direction of this most astonishing thing, that is, the σοφόν. By doing this they became those who strove for the σοφόν and who through their own striving awakened and kept alive among others the yearning for the σοφόν. The loving the σοφόν, that already mentioned harmony with the σοφόν, the ἁρμονία, thus became an ὄρεξις, a striving for the σοφόν. The σοφόν--the being in Being--is now especially sought. Because the loving is no longer an original harmony with the σοφόν but is a particular striving, towards the σοφόν, the loving of the σοφόν becomes "φιλόσοφία." The striving is determined by Eros.

[Next]  ¶ 7:32 PM 0 comments

  In a piece about the film director Terrence Malick, The Daily Texan notes that:

Born in Waco, Malick studied philosophy at Harvard and Oxford, producing a translation of Heidegger's "Essence of Reason" before disagreements with his thesis advisor led him to turn his back on academics.

In his translator's introduction Malick observes:

There is a way in which one cannot agree with Heidegger "on ceratin points" any more than one can, even in a manner of speaking, be insane or revolutionary on certain points. None of his concepts, the concept of world included, can be understood until one knows how to turn all of them to account.

  ¶ 7:27 PM 0 comments

  From a review of Clarence J. Munford's Race and Civilization in Red Nova yesterday:

The existential philosopher Martin Heidegger precedes Foucault in attempting to understand the historical conditionalitics of Being

Conditionalitics is a single word googlewack!  ¶ 6:06 AM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 24

All being is in Being. To hear such a thing sounds trivial to our ear, if not, indeed, offensive, for no one needs to bother about the fact that being belongs in Being. All the world knows that being is that which is. What else remains for being but to be? And yet, just this fact that being is gathered together in Being, that in the appearance of Being being appears, that astonished the Greeks and first astonished them and them alone. Being [small "b"] in Being--that became the most astonishing thing for the Greeks.

[Next]  ¶ 5:43 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

The Web of Belief asks Does determinism matter?

In light of Heidegger's da-sein, can we put the determinism we get out of physical reductionism into the same place as external skepticism?

Go vote!  ¶ 8:54 AM 0 comments

  What is Philosophy?

Paragraph 23

The ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος loves the σοφόν. What this word means for Heraclitus is hard to translate. But we can explain it according to Heraclitus' own interpretation. According to this τὸ σοφόν means, Εν Πάντα, "One (is) all." "All" means here, Πάντα τὰ ὄντα, the whole, the totality of being. Εν, one, means, the one, the unique, the all-uniting. But all being is united in Being. The σοφόν says--all being is in Being. To put it more pointedly--being is Being. In this instance "is" speaks transitively and means approximately "gathered together," "collected." Being gathers being together in so far as it is being. Being is the gathering together--Λόγος.

[Next]  ¶ 11:08 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Over at Christopher's Blog difficulty is pondered:

Still, mere difficulty of text in Aristotle or any other philosopher could be irrelevant to the question of whether he can speak to us, and do it in a way to make us sit up and take serious philosophical notice. The current philosophical scene is dominated by two figures, Martin Heidegger and Ludgwig Wittgenstein. Consider the experience in store for anyone who chances to take a first look at a page in the work of either one.

At least there's some consolation in that Aristotle's Physics is easier than contemporary physics.  ¶ 9:00 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Spurious in Personal - Impersonal examines the I:

Levinas will always maintain that the profundity of Being and Time lies in the discussion of mineness, of Jemeinigkeit, in which the 'I' is assigned to itself. But even as he makes this claim, he sets this discussion in another context. Where the assignation happens in an event which will bear no etymological link to Heidegger's Ereignis. An event of hypostasis when the 'I' gathers itself together.

Levinas loses me with his event of hypostasis. My understanding of Aristotle is that hypostasis is the underlying substance, that is static--timeless.  ¶ 8:41 AM 2 comments

  The New Yorker has a humorous short story:

Ron was probably the world's leading authority on Heidegger's moral philosophy

Leading and, most probably, only.  ¶ 8:28 AM 0 comments