Alain Badiou proposes.

As all of you know perfectly well, the fundamental problem is to distinguish on the one hand, being as such, being qua being, and, on the other hand, existence, as a category which precisely is not reducible to that of being. It is the heart of the matter. This difference between being and existence is often the result of the consideration of a special type of being. It is the case for Heidegger, with the distinction between Sein and Dasein. If we take into account the etymological framework, we can see that "existence," which depends on Dasein, is a topological concept. It means to be here, to be in the world. And in fact, I also shall propose to determine the very general concept of "existence" by the necessity of thinking the place, or the world, of everything which is.

  ¶ 4:50 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Larval Subjects on uncovering the truth.

To claim that truth is aletheia or disclosedness is to claim that an entity must first disclose or reveal itself as a particular sort of entity prior any statements we might make about it. Perhaps this idea can best be elucidated by way of the human body. In encountering the body as a seat of action, an object of medical intervention, a sexual object, and so on, is the body disclosed or revealed in the same way?

  ¶ 10:23 AM 0 comments

  Words of advice for the West.

Martin Heidegger alone perhaps made some philosophical sense in the last century. He complained that the modern mechanical and technological world has given rise to the abandonment of the search of true “Being”. To him, questions such as awareness of death and of man’s finitude in the universe were of great importance.

Philosophers have been divided into four categories, namely, metaphysical philosophers, epistemological philosophers, social and political philosophers, and ethical philosophers. Down the ages one finds very little of metaphysical philosophy from the west. This is the real philosophy that deals with the really big questions relating to human existence. On the other hand there is an endless array of social and political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, Hegel, Karl Marx and many others. They have very little metaphysics to contribute.

It is high time that the west realized that true philosophy essentially consists in metaphysics.

  ¶ 2:25 PM 0 comments

  The limits of genetic engineering.

Human genes are the necessary recipes for making human brains and bodies, but brains and bodies are manifestly shaped by their experiences. It might be possible someday, using genetic engineering, to give a child a brain smart enough to understand why Heidegger is wrong, but there is no getting around the fact that he will have to undergo the experience of learning about Heidegger first. There are no genes for Heidegger debunking.

Did mother nature not put those genes in, or were they an evolutinary dead end, bred away eons ago?  ¶ 2:18 PM 0 comments

  Anton Corbijn's Joy Division band-pic, Control, is on its way to the big screen, having played the festivals and to the press. I'm not expecting it'll make it out to this corner of the burbs--although they will put on the film of the concert of someone who was once in Pink Floyd. It stars Samantha Morton as Deborah Curtis, on who's memoir the screenplay is based, so it may appeal to more than the usual suspects. Can light romantic tragedy find success as a date movie? And what happened to the other Joy Division flick, the one Moby was going to soundtrack? The soundtrack for Control is mostly a mix of the songs that were influential on the band, but they missed a critical pick, one song Joy Division covered live, The Door's Riders on the Storm, with its choice line

Into this world we're thrown

In the meantime, while we wait for the Weinstein Company to throw it into the local cinemaplex, those in need of a dose of that Manchester milieu, there's always the first half of Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People.  ¶ 8:29 AM 0 comments

  A familiar affront to idealism from Lucy Eyre's If Minds had Toes.

"..[I]dealism means that you think nothing exists except experiences in people's minds -- or ideas, " Lila explained. "There are no solid objects that are there when we're not experiencing them; instead the world is just a construction out of these experiences. To say a tree exists simply means 'a tree is seen'."

"Oh."

Polly sighed. "It must be exhausting being an idealist. Whenever you stand up, you take the chair with you."

"I never went that far," Max said.

"The scandal of philosophy," said Polly, "is not that there is no decent answer to this question, but that people still think it's worth asking."

P. 51

  ¶ 10:04 PM 0 comments

  Are you ready for an authentic message cum viral marketing?  ¶ 3:22 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Trans-Mongolia visits the Haus der Geschichte for Baden-Württemberg, with its Heidegger memorabilia.

His letter accepting the rectorship of Freiburg. A first edition of the speech he gave when he accepted the position--the one where he famously says that a university must find its own identity and essence in order to adequately support the Nazi state. The letter where he resigns his position the next year. A heil Hitler signature. And, most interestingly, the academic garments he continued to wear at formal functions, signifying his position in the philosophy department, even long after he was removed from teaching after the war.

A few years after being removed he was reinstated, as Emeritus. I expect pensions and such were the main issue.  ¶ 1:25 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Have you visited Martin's MySpace page?

As authentically temporal, Dasein as potentiality-for-being comes towards itself in its possibilities of being by going back to what has been; it always comes towards itself from out of a possibility of itself. Hence, it comports itself towards the future by always coming back to its past; the past which is not merely past but still around as having-been. But in this "going back" to what it has been which is constitutive together with "coming towards" and "being with" for the unity of Dasein's temporality, Dasein hands down to itself its own historical "heritage," namely, the possibilities of being that have come down to it.

  ¶ 9:20 PM 0 comments

  Heidegger's hut.A dwelling for an end of the valley kind of a guy.  ¶ 8:32 PM 0 comments

  Kate Fodor on writing the play.

"We all started talking about the story of Hannah Arendt's relationship with Martin Heidegger and what an interesting play it would make," says Fodor. "I was going home on the subway and I got to thinking I could write that play. At that point I still definitely had a very full professional life, but I started writing this play on the side, just for fun. Every now and then I'd pick it up, then think: 'Oh, this is silly.' Then I'd put it away for three months, and then I'd pick it up again."

Sort of like blogging, really.  ¶ 10:43 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Not All Martyrs See Divinity gets the mean.

As part of the "they" or "the one" we are undifferentiated, insofar we take part in using public utilities. When you walk into a department store, the clothing is for somebody, but not any particular body. It's for everybody in other words. Since this is the case, the they are grounded by averageness. To define average is hard enough to do, and therefore we can just say averageness is produced and reproduced by thrusting away the exceptional, and taking the middle road so to speak.

  ¶ 10:36 PM 0 comments

  A review of Wayne Koestenbaum's book on hotel-ness.

"Hotel Women" isn't so much an independent novella as it is an enactment of hotel consciousness. Throughout the story, the articles "the" "a" and "an" never appear -- Koestenbaum's refusal to distinguish definite from indefinite. The effect is to transform all things into ideas: One does not sit in a chair; one sits in chair. So when "Hotel Women" ends first, leaving "Hotel Theory" alone to dissolve into fragments, Koestenbaum's project is complete: The hotel no longer exists; what is left is "hotel."

  ¶ 7:12 AM 0 comments