School, school is a place, where nothing, nothing ever happens, in Lower Merion.

Daly said that the student is a juvenile and he would not release her name or age. Nor would he disclose the full contents of the letter the girl taped to the door along with the knife and left copies in several places throughout the school.

He did say that it "was full of philosophical mumbo jumbo," quoting the philosopher Martin Heidegger. It contained no direct threats or racial or ethnic slurs, he said, but "had information that would lead you to believe that something was about to happen today," at the school.

Better have the legislature criminalize mumbo jumbo before, you know, it happens.

Be careful what you do,
Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
And all of the other
Gods of the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.

-- Vachel Lindsay, Congo

  ¶ 8:16 AM 0 comments

  Upcoming in the Continental Philosophy Review, Stuart Elden reviews Richard Polt's The Emergency of Being and Richard Polt reviews Stuart Elden's Speaking Against Number. Now, I know from reading their works that they are both scholars, and from communications that they are gentlemen of integrity, so I don't suspect any hanky panky, but I'm still tickled.

Here's a bit from Stuart's review:

This book is a major contribution to that subfield of Heidegger studies [1930s forward]. If it lacks the textual fidelity and contextual insights of the work of Theodore Kisiel, it is more philosophically, that is argumentatively, concerned.

And from Richard's:

Elden follows scholars such as Theodore Kisiel in paying close attention to the development of Heidegger's thought in its context and to the unfolding nuances of his polyglot vocabulary.

Heh. With that, I think I'll go read some Kisiel.  ¶ 9:26 PM 0 comments

  A review of Stephen Mulhall's Philosophical Myths of the Fall notes the recurrence of the Pauline vision.

Upon [Being and Time's] publication, Rudolf Bultmann thought he had discovered gold in Marburg. Undertaking what can only be described as a monumental work of apologetics, Bultmann tried to show that the existential core of the New Testament's teaching could be affirmed as true because it was corroborated by the neutral, philosophical work of Heidegger's Being and Time. O happy coincidence!, thought Bultmann. The New Testament understanding of the human condition could be demonstrated as true through the secular philosophical confirmation of just this vision of the human condition unveiled by Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology. But as the later publication of Heidegger's early lectures has shown, this was not merely a happy coincidence: the "secular" vision of the human condition in Being and Time did not constitute independent evidence for the New Testament. In fact, there was no independence at all: Heidegger had first worked out the basic themes of Being and Time by lecturing on Saint Augustine and Paul's Letters to the Thessalonians! What emerged from his hut in the Black Forest was not the independent verification of the New Testament that Bultmann's apologetic project required; rather, Being and Time was a sort of translation or "formalization" of the Pauline vision.

  ¶ 8:14 AM 0 comments

  This is a post from yesterday, only using unicode for greek characters instead of the symbol font.

Ontological goodness in Aristotle.

...[Aristotle] suceeded in showing for the first time that the αγαθόν is nothing else than an ontological character of beings: it applies to those beings which are determined by a τέλος. To the extent that a being reaches its τέλος and is complete, it is as it is meant to be, ευ. The αγαθόν has at first no relation to πρᾶξις at all; instead, it is determination of beings insofar asthey are finished, com-plete. A being that always is does not at all need to be produced; it is always already constantly there as finished. Insofar as Aristole understands the αγαθόν as τέλος--being finished--and counts the τέλος among the other causes, like ὔλη, εἰδος, and ἀρχὴ κινέσεως, he achieves for the first time a fundamental ontological understanding of the αγαθόν. If we take the αγαθόν as value, then this is all nonsense.

P. 84-85

αγαθόν: good
ἀρχὴ κινέσεως: the efficient cause
εἰδος: form
ευ: well being
πρᾶξις: goal directed action
τέλος: purpose
ὔλη: matter

I tried various methods of getting the unicode characters and ended up turning on the greek character set in Windows. I couldn't find any one mechanism that let me enter all the diacritcal marks. I still haven't figured out how to do iota subscript, but it was required today. Let me know if you have any comments today's versus yesterday's method of rendering greek, or have any advice on greek on the web.  ¶ 9:51 PM 1 comments

  How a letter in high school gets on Action News.

Parents tell Action News that they are concerned that a disturbing letter found at Lower Merion High School today could be a sign of a greater problem.
...
The letter contained specific references to philosopher Martin Heidegger, and referred to an incident planned for "tomorrow."

Perhaps more an "event" than an "incident"?  ¶ 7:58 PM 0 comments

  Ontological goodness in Aristotle.

...[Aristotle] suceeded in showing for the first time that the agaqon is nothing else than an ontological character of beings: it applies to those beings which are determined by a teloV. To the extent that a being reaches its teloV and is complete, it is as it is meant to be, eu. The agaqon has at first no relation to praxiV at all; instead, it is determination of beings insofar asthey are finished, com-plete. A being that always is does not at all need to be produced; it is always already constantly there as finished. Insofar as Aristole understands the agaqon as teloV--being finished--and counts the teloV among the other causes, like ulh, eidoV, and arch kinesewV, he achieves for the first time a fundamental ontological understanding of the agaqon. If we take the agaqon as value, then this is all nonsense.

P. 84-85

agaqon: good
arch kinesewV: the efficient cause
eidoV: form
eu: well being
praxiV: goal directed action
teloV: purpose
ulh: matter  ¶ 8:59 PM 2 comments

  Slavoj Žižek minimizes the ontological difference in his upcoming "Why Heidegger Made the Right Step in 1933".

What this also means is that ontological difference is not "maximal," between all beings, the highest genus, and something else/more/beyond, but, rather, "minimal," the bare minimum of a difference not between beings but between the minimum of an entity and the void, nothing. Insofar as it is grounded in the finitude of humans, ontological difference is that which makes a totalization of “All of beings” impossible - ontological difference means that the field of reality is finite. Ontological difference is in this precise sense “real/impossible”: to use Ernesto Laclau’s determination of antagonism, in it, external difference overlaps with internal difference. The difference between beings and their Being is simultaneously a difference within beings themselves; that is to say, the difference between beings/entities and their Opening, their horizon of Meaning, always also cuts into the field of beings themselves, making it incomplete/finite. Therein resides the paradox: the difference between beings in their totality and their Being precisely “misses the difference” and reduces Being to another “higher” Entity. The parallel between Kant’s antinomies and Heidegger’s ontological difference resides in the fact that, in both cases, the gap (phenomenal/noumenal; ontic/ontological) is to be referred to the non-All of the phenomenal-ontic domain itself. However, the limitation of Kant was that he was not able to fully assume this paradox of finitude as constitutive of the ontological horizon: ultimately, he reduced transcendental horizon to a way reality appears to a finite being (man), with all of it located into a wider encompassing realm of noumenal reality.

P. 22

That may sound familiar to readers of The Parallax View because essentially the same paragraph appears there on page 24.  ¶ 7:17 PM 0 comments

  Leon Kass explains the problem concerning technology.

Without irony, Pinker, a psychologist, denies the existence of the psyche. Yet he is ignorant of the fact that "soul" need not be conceived as a "ghost in the machine" or as a separate "thing" that survives the body, but can be understood instead as the integrated powers of the naturally organic body—the ground and source of awareness, appetite, and action. He does not understand that the vital powers of an organism do not reside in the materials of the organism but emerge only when the materials are formed and organized in a particular way; he does not under-stand that the empowering organization of materials-the vital form or soul—is not itself material.

There is, of course, nothing novel about reductionism, materialism, and determinism of the kind displayed here; these are doctrines with which Socrates contended long ago. What is new is that these philosophies seem to be vindicated by scientific advance. Here, in consequence, would be the most pernicious result of the new biology—more dehumanizing than any actual manipulation or technique, present or future: the erosion, perhaps the final erosion, of the idea of man as noble, dignified, precious, or godlike, and its replacement with a view of man, no less than of nature, as mere raw material for manipulation and homogenization.

  ¶ 7:05 PM 0 comments

  Hubert Dreyfus's "Being and Time" (2007) cracks a hit parade.

It's a stretch to say that professors compete for iTunes popularity, but many are eager to know how many people tune in and see whether the university can benefit.

Dreyfus has cracked the top 20. He's the iTunes U equivalent of an indie rocker with a cult following.

I wonder how the lecture MP3s chart on berkeley.edu.  ¶ 10:49 PM 0 comments

  An attempt to cope with elitism, from the James Hynes farce The Lecturer's Tale.

"So gender is a kind of playacting?" he has asked her once. "We're all in drag?"

"No, no, no!" Vita has cried, "You don't understand at all! That's a gross oversimplification!" This outburst had culminated in a rather huffy exhortation to review, if he hadn't already, all the sources cited in her bibliography, and then to read her article again more carefully. Nelson, trying to be clever, dredged his memory of Professor Evangeline's literary theory class at Sooey and quoted Adorno's critique of Heidegger to Vita, that "he lays around himself the taboo that any understanding would simultaneously be falsification." But Vita only flattened him with another Adorno quote, that "retention of strangeness is the only antidote to estrangement."

"So I can only understand your argument if I don't understand it?" Nelson had said, trying to understand.

P. 87

  ¶ 9:25 PM 0 comments

  Bret W. Davis thinks topologically.

Heidegger ultimately goes beyond, or radically steps back before, the name "being" (Sein) for this most originary event of needing/using/giving, and speaks rather of the "It" which gives as Ereignis. Ereignis is said to be "richer than any possible metaphysical definition of being" (GA 12:248-49/129). And yet, the dynamic relation between the correspondence of man and the Brauchen of being (now Ereignis) is carried over: "Ereignis appropriates [Ereignet] man to its own Needful-usage [Brauch]" (249/130). As the "within itself oscillating realm" which holds man and being together in holding them apart, Ereignis "needs" man's corresponsive thinking. Indeed, Heidegger's very thought of Ereignis as Er-eignis means to build onto the structure of this realm oscillating within itself" (ID 102/37-38). Man receives the "tools" (Bauzeug) for this building from language, as "the most delicate and thus the most susceptible oscillation holding everything within the hovering structure of Ereignis" (102/38). In thinking, man both draws on and gives back to language as the house of being. It is this non-willing relational interplay that is named Ereignis, as the event of mutual appropriation between man and being. Topologically thought, the Ereignen of Es gibt/Es brauchet is the regioning of the open-region of non-willing within which man cor-responds by way of his most proper fundamental attunement of Gelassenheit.

P. 230

  ¶ 10:59 AM 0 comments

  Aeronautics mingles with philosopher in William Vollmann's Europe Central.

Oh, yes, I was there; I was there at the very beginning; even before the Heinkel-Hirth turbojet experiments. I'd always wanted to visit the moon myself, you see.

Of course I was also practical. As Heidegger writes: The upward glance passes aloft toward the sky, and yet it remains below on the earth [P. 220]. You're to young to understand the spiritual nature of flight becasue rockets and planes are everywhere now; flying's debased.

P. 77

...

In 1933, when the sleepwalker took power, I happened to be a philosophy student in Freiburg. It was night. We stood in a cricle outside the library, waiting. The command came. I was ready; I did my part. Liftoff! And so it rose and flew, gloriously propelled by human force; with indescribable joy I watched it spinning sharp-cornered like some strange new propeller device designed to cut the wires of enemy barrage ballons. I estimated its mass and velocity; I predicted its trajectory; I foresaw the duration of the flight down to the last second; I already knew the combustion temperatures involved. Just before it reached maximum altitude, it vanished for the merest eyeblink in the smoke that rose up all around us; next it entered the zone of pitiless light, first as a silhouette, then, once its descent had begun, it opened, revolving about its spinal axis with the print on its pages stark enough for me to read it, had I wanted to, all the way across the pyre--it was some Jew book, something about pacifism, I believe--and Professor Heidegger, now unanimously elected Rector since his Anglo-Bolshevik predecessor had resigned, was speaking to us, or shouting. I should say, his voice deep, exultant, and more certain than it had sounded in any lecture I'd ever heard; he was telling us all that this marked a new night for German culture; that the old must burn for the sake of the new.

P. 79

  ¶ 12:28 PM 0 comments

  Thinking about the Absolute.

The "matter itself" (which metaphysics is to think) is "the Absolute." Because the Absolute is thought as unconditional subjectivity (that is, subject-objectivity), as the identity of identity and non-identity, and subjectivity essentially as will-full reason and thus as movement, it looks as if the Absolute and its motion coincided with what the thinking of the history of Being thinks as Appropriation [Ereignis]. But Appropriation is neither the same as the Absolute nor is it even its contrary, for instance, finitude as opposed to infinity.

Rather, Being itself is experienced in Appropriation as being, not as a being and not at all posited as the unconditional being and the highest being, although Being presences, after all, as that which alone "is." The Absolute, on the contrary, is what it is in terms of the abandonment of Being of beings like every "being," yes, even more essentially than every being, only that precisely in the subjectivity of the Absolute the abandonment of Being is most of all hidden and cannot appear.

P. 191

That's from seminar notes at the end of the Schelling book, but I expect it also applies to Hegel.  ¶ 6:15 PM 0 comments

  The superhero elite ran up against the intellectual elite, substantiated as Deconstructo, in 1992.







Justice League Europe, Nos. 37-39.  ¶ 1:56 PM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Goodreads hosts part of "The Alternative History of Martin Heidegger" by Richard Rorty.

Suddenly a call comes from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. There Heidegger spends two years slowly and painfully learning English, aching for the chance once again to spellbind seminar rooms of worshipfully attentive students. He gets a chance to do so in 1937 when some of his fellow emigres arrange a permanent job for him at the University of Chicago.

There he meets Elizabeth Mann Borgese, who introduces him to her father. Heidegger manages to overcome his initial suspicion of the Hanseatic darling of fortune, and Mann his initial suspicion of the Black Forest Bauernkind. They find they agree with each other, and with Adorno and Horkheimer; that America is a reduction ad absurdum of Enlightenment hopes, a land without culture. But their contempt for America does not prevent them from seeing Hitler as having ruined Germany and being about to ruin Europe. Heidegger’s stirring anti-Nazi broadcasts enable him to gratify a need a strike a heroic attitude before large masses of people - a need that he might, under other circumstances, have gratified in a rectorial address.

  ¶ 12:57 PM 0 comments

  Went into the city to see Control last Saturday. It begins with Ian brooding:

Existence well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can.
The past is now part of my future,
The present is well out of hand.

P. 100, Joy Division, Ian Curtis, Lisbon, Assirio e Alvim, 1983.

This bilingual edition includes in the back part VII of Plato's Republic; the bit about the cave.  ¶ 5:50 AM 0 comments

  Meanwhile, back amongest the Tehrani elite.

Soon after the creation of the Islamic Republic, a series of lectures and discussions were held in Tehran led by a stridently conservative cleric, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, and a philosophy professor named Ahmad Fardid. A student of German philosophy and a disciple of Heidegger, Fardid believed that Freemasons and Jews have for the past century conspired together to dominate the world. When Ayatollah Khomeini won power Fardid abandoned his sycophantic royalism and became not just a devout Moslem, but a passionate advocate of the rule of mullahs as the necessary and anointed prelude to the return of the Hidden Messiah. Together with Mesbah-Yazdi—Ahmadinejad’s religious mentor—Fardid forged key elements of an Islamic pseudo-fascist ideology founded on a sour brew of anti-Semitism, Heideggerian philosophy, and Khomeini’s theory of the guardianship of the jurist.

Some disciple. Fardid didn't know Heidegger had a thing for Jewish girls and served as Imam XII of the Freiburg Freemason lodge.  ¶ 11:12 PM 0 comments

  In a retrospective look at Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, Thomas G. West interprets:

The second cause of our problems today, Bloom tells us, is post-Lockean modern philosophy. The big names are Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, but their views have been popularized (and degraded) by such men as Marx, Freud, and Max Weber.

I don't trecall Bloom saying that explicitly. After all, big name Heidegger was born after those popularizers, whom he derided.

But let's keep at the cultural pathogens.

AIDS is a kind of bodily relativism, a self-destructive openness to good and evil alike. Similarly, an AIDS-infected American mind loses its ability to tell the difference between healthful and harmful opinions. Salutary customs and traditions, such as moral self-restraint and the habits and attitudes necessary for sustaining family life, for seriousness of purpose, for national survival, and for deep and intense love, become indistinguishable from life — destroying doctrines and beliefs, such as the hostile teachings of 19th and 20th century German philosophy. If Bloom is right, the American mind suffers from Hobbes-Locke induced AIDS — a liberty that has no respect for nature and natural limits. It therefore not only fails to resist the destructive infection of Nietzsche-Heidegger, but with its false openness, the American mind mindlessly welcomes the infection, thus bringing on what may be the terminal stage of the disease.

So, who's closing the American mind then? Bloom taught Nietzsche and Heidegger. Should they now be proscribed?  ¶ 9:44 PM 0 comments

  That persistent problem with elitism.

Are you eager to dismiss others with a flippant remark about their philosophy or writings? Do you hold yourself above those non-philosophy students in discussion or just in general? Have you mentioned Heidegger, Nietzsche or any other authoritative mind in order to exclude and impress rather than inform or further discussion?

  ¶ 8:54 PM 0 comments

  The new (Sep/Oct) issue of Philosophy Now reports that Being and Time - The Musical was staged by the Regent's College existentialist psychotherapy department, to raise funds for Child Action Nepal. Apparently it consisted of sketches accompanied by music, and they recount some of them.

Prof. Heidegger's chosen subject in the opening 'Mastermind' sketch, is his Phenomenological Ontology in Being and Time. This is Heidegger's own study of the nature of being through his analysis of the contents of his experience, but alas, he scores only two points, with two passes. "Being and Time is a very big book" asks the quizmaster, "How much does it weigh?" Naturally Heidegger gets this wrong, and is perturbed by this frivolous question, which detracts from serious matters of grave philosophy. Does this man have no sense of humour? You'd have to be there to make that judgement.

Say no more.

Also in this issue is a discussion in the Underworld about who really started philosophy, with most of the pre-Socratics making their case. A surprising number cite Heidegger as evidence in their favor. He is largely responsible for rehabilitating them, after earlier generations (ob. cit.; Russell's History of Western Phil.) reduced them to mere footnotes to Plato, before the fact.

It's notable that these days a mainstream Anglo publication like Philosophy Now can mention Heidegger without being completely misinformed, as was the case ten years ago. Raymond Tallis, who has even written a book on Heidegger, is to start a column. I wonder if students are allowed to study him at Oxbridge yet.  ¶ 9:17 PM 0 comments

  Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, reviews Lions For Lambs in Asia Times [Careful with that link, it tried to drop several malware packages on my PC. Shields up!], and manages to name drop Lacan, Habermas, Godard, Renoir, Eco, Malick, Kubrick, and this gem:

German philosopher Martin Heidegger once wrote: "We do not yet hear, we whose hearing and seeing are perishing through radio and film under the rule of technology."

But he didn't. John Mann wrote that.  ¶ 8:10 PM 0 comments

  More of that ontological elitism. This time, it's about about relocating sociologists amongst the people they report on, and their push back.

Aubervilliers, which backs onto the railway line connecting Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport was centre stage of the riots. Here, the oppositional camp protest, there's not a tree in sight let alone a library and everything that made research in the Quartier Latin so pleasant is completely absent from the infrastructure, Brasserie Lipp and cafe Deux Magots for example. Naturally restaurants and cafes do not feature publicly in the arguments of the critics. Instead they point to the unique tradition of their institutions, where educational functions were open to everyone to attend, pensioners, school kids, housewives, and particularly clochards in the winter. None of these people would dream of boarding the train to Aubervilliers because it was getting chilly on the Boulevard Saint-Michel or a new Heidegger interpretation was shaking the Ecole Pratique.

  ¶ 9:09 AM 0 comments

  How to tell if you are part of the elite.

Elites are always minorities. This concept is not negotiable. Do you want to include in the USA elites the millions of white small labourers and farmers? And this is true, as I have said, in all parts of life. How many people understand quantum mechanics? How many people understand post-modern paintings and sculptures? How many people can comprehend relativity? Who can understand Heidegger?

  ¶ 8:48 AM 0 comments

  The Gesamtausgabe edition of Zur Sache des Denkens (GA 14) has finally been published. Here hoping that a new traslation is forthcoming, soon.  ¶ 11:06 PM 0 comments

  Dinesh D'Souza waxes nostalgic for the days when real atheists walked the earth.

The really big figures in modern atheism are people like the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, and the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Not one of the new atheist books can hold a candle to Russell's pungent Why I am Not a Christian. And when you read Heidegger and Nietzsche you find yourself in even-deeper waters. I chuckle to think of what Nietzsche would have made of a smug, self-satisfied character like Sam Harris who thinks he can refute Aquinas in a para or two.

I suspect Nietzsche would have coveted Harris's sales figures.  ¶ 9:10 PM 2 comments

  The audio of Hubert Dreyfus's course on Being and Time this semester at Berkeley is available in MP3 files. MP3s from a previous instance of the same course still circulate on Bittorrent. Developing.  ¶ 3:42 PM 1 comments

  Heidegger and Heideggerian have made it into the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Not much there, unless you are curious about the pronunciation. I expect that Heideggerean is the Anglo spelling.  ¶ 3:25 PM 0 comments

  Spengler, in this Monday's Asia Times, reviews a book on 20th Century Catholic Theology, and proposes an alternative history of metaphysics.

From acidic asides in Kerr's volume, we learn some disturbing things about the "metaphysics of modernity", that is, the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger and his ilk to substitute the neutral concept of Being for faith in a personal God. Heidegger never produced a consistent theory; God put Heidegger in a circular room, and told him that Being was in the corner. Yet he mesmerized the likes of Leo Strauss, the patron saint of American neo-conservatism, who thought Heidegger the greatest mind of the century, despite Heidegger's public support for Hitler through the whole of 1933-1945, and his refusal to apologize for this or to repudiate Nazism through the rest of his life.

Strauss's may have recognized his significance, but that didn't stop Strauss from criticizing Heidegger.

Heidegger, though, imbibed from his teachers the "sawdust Thomism" (Urs von Balthasar) of the 16th-century Jesuit Suarez. As Urs von Balthasar wrote, Suarez thought of Being as the "univocal and neutral principle that is beyond God and the World". God, in other words, is subject to Being, along with things animal, vegetable, and mineral. It is a short hop from this viewpoint to the clockwork universe of 18th-century rationalism. And if Being is superior to God, should we not investigate the metaphysics of Being rather than divine revelation?

That is precisely what Heidegger set out to elaborate, albeit without the appendage of a God who already had become ossified inside Suarez' system. As Kerr reports, Chenu, De Lubac and Urs von Balthasar argued that the irreligious deism of the 18th century followed from the efforts of the Catholic Counterreformation to propagate rationalism against the Protestant emphasis on faith. That opens an investigation in intellectual history not for the squeamish. If the "new theologians" are correct, the secular philosophers beloved of the American neo-conservatives merely added footnotes to the work of 16th and 17th-century Jesuits. Heidegger, supposedly the founder of modernist metaphysics, becomes a minor commentator on the work of Francisco Suarez.

Heidegger brings up Suarez, once, in Being and Time. And in that instance, Suarez is merely a step in the history of metaphysics that neglected the question of the truth of being. The question which Heidegger's way of thinking set out to overcome.

With the peculiar character which the Scholastics gave it, Greek ontology has, in its essentials, travelled the path that leads through the Disputationes metaphysicae of Suarez to the 'metaphysics' and transcendental philosophy of modern times, determining even the foundations and the aims of Hegel's 'logic'. In the course of this history certain distinctive domains of Being have come into view and have served as the primary guides for subsequent problematics: the ego cogito of Descartes, the subject, the "I", reason, spirit, person. But these all remain uninterrogated as to their Being and its structure, in accordance with the thoroughgoing way in which the question of Being have been neglected.

P. 43-44

Heidegger discusses Suarez's distinctio rationis in some detail in part G of the section on Thesis of Medieval Ontology from The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. There, Suarez is interpreted as a minor commentator on Aristotle, who anticipated Kant views on existence.

Spengler continues with this question:

Where is the Father Merrin who at last will exorcise the dybbuk of Heidegger from America's National Security Council?

Perhaps amongst the Kantians at the Pentagon? Father Merrin was the priest that coaxed the dybbuk out of Linda Blair in the The Exorcist.  ¶ 8:41 AM 0 comments

  In-der-Blog-sein

Lichtung on Erschrecken.

"Startled dismay" is to be in front of a worthy failure. It is to see the failure as failure no matter how shaking or disappointing it may be. If modern philosophy, starting with Descartes, begins with doubting everything that can be doubted (De omnibus dubitandum est) and proceeds to building from ground zero another castle, a new one now founded on solid ground (ego cogito) until it reach its towering height (Hegel), the "other" beginning begins not by leaving the destruction (the failed building), but--as difficult as it may be--by staying in the ruins of those very stones.

  ¶ 4:34 PM 0 comments

  Alain Badiou on the question of life, being and naming such.

We have now come to the real question. Why should being, conceived of as univocity or immanence, receive the name of "life"? Why should being as power be the "powerful inorganic life that grips the world"? In philosophy, assigning the name of being is a crucial decision. It expresses the very nature of thought. Even the name "being", if chosen as the name of being, harbours a decision that is by no mean tautological, as can be readily seen in Heidegger. And of course any name of being conditions the further nominations that it induces. Thus in Heidegger we witness the turning movement that envelops and displaces Sein, Dasein, and, at the end of the line, Ereignis.

  ¶ 4:20 PM 0 comments

  Being true, Freiburg, 1930, summer semester, a piece of chalk.

Let us explain this once again by an example: 'the chalk is white'. The 'is white' expresses the white-being, thus the so-and-so-being of the chalk: it is so-and-so. This so-and-so does not necessarily pertain to it, for it could also be red or green. When we say 'the chalk is a material thing', we also refer to the being of the chalk, but in this case not to anything arbitrary, rather to what must belong to it for it to be what it is. This being is not an arbitrary so-and-so-being , but a necessary what-being. When we say 'the chalk is', perhaps in response to a claim that we have only imagined it, then being means being-present (actuality). Again, if we enunciate these sentences with a specific emphasis -- 'the chalk is white', 'the chalk is a material thing, 'the chalk is present' -- then by this emphasis we also intend a specific kind of being. We now want to say that it is true -- the what-being of the chalk, the being-a-thing, the being-present. We now mean the being-true.

We have interpreted the Greek concepts of being corresponding to the first three of these meanings of being and have shown them to be grounded in 'constant presence'. In respect of being-true, however, we have thus far given no proof, remarking only that this would be too difficult and involved.

so-and-so-being (now this -- now that) apousia -- parousia

what-being (possibility) Plato: parousia

being-present (actuality) ergon parousia

being-true ?

Various investigations have shown me that understanding the first three meanings depends on clarifying the fourth. We can conclude this substantively from what we have just seen, namely being-true as that which is intended by emphasis. Even without emphasis, the meaning of being-true is included in all the others. Being-true is therefore an especially comprehensive meaning of being.

P. 52-53

  ¶ 9:42 PM 0 comments