enowning
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
 
Bret Davis on the longer Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking (GA 77).
The original version of this text is titled “Αγχιβασίη: A Three-way Conversation between a Scientist, a Scholar, and a Guide.” Anchibasie is a one word fragment from Heraclitus that at the end of the conversation is translated as “going-into-nearness.” The conversation begins by taking up the epistemological question of the nature of “knowing” or “cognition” (Erkennen), and it proceeds to gradually develop a contrast between thinking as willing and thinking as waiting. The conversation calls for a releasement from the anthropocentrism of transcendentalhorizonal representation and technological calculation, and a releasement into a participatory belonging to the open-region of being.
[...]
The authentic way of thinking, which Heidegger characterizes as non-willing, releasement, waiting upon, and meditative thinking (Besinnung), does not attempt to transgress horizons toward a transcendental horizon of horizons, but rather takes place as Anchibasie, “going into nearness.” It is crucial, however, that, in contrast to the “climbing over” of transcendental thinking which tends to abolish the difference between the open-region of being and the ultimate horizon of transcendental subjectivity, the nearness that Heidegger speaks of here is a nearness that preserves, rather than cancels out, distance. Meditative thinking is said to be a “coming into nearness to the far”. That is to say, by standing out (ek-stasis) near the limits of human horizons of thought, but not attempting to hubristically exceed these limits, humans are most authentic when they listen and correspond to the ways the open-region of being addresses itself to them, rather than seeking on their own to willfully master the horizonal delimitations of their environment.
From "Horizon and Open-Region: Epistemology in Heidegger’s Country Path Conversations (GA 77)".
 
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