Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Mary-Jane Rubenstein on Plato's cave allegory at The Immanent Frame.
Now, the source I find most helpful and most frustrating for re-thinking this infamous allegory is Martin Heidegger. In his two interpretations of Plato’s cave—one in a 1931 lecture series on Plato and the other in an essay written in 1947, after Freiburg University’s denazification committee had forbidden him to speak in public—Heidegger’s great insight is that truth does not reside in the brilliance of the Forms, but rather in the transitions from the cave to the sunlight, and from the sunlight back down to the cave. This is to say that truth and shadow open through one another, or to push Heidegger a bit further than he allows himself to go, the cave and the sunlight are not two separate spaces at all. They are, rather, different modes of seeing the same world. The sunlight opens through the cave. I think this is a fair extension of Heidegger because it echoes one of the central claims of Being and Time, which is that authenticity is not some realm set apart from the everyday—it is merely a modified way of apprehending everydayness itself. The true, the authentic, the space of freedom is folded into and only emerges by means of the ordinary, untrue, and unfree state of things.¶ 10:13 AM
So, where are we? Weren’t we talking about secularism? We will recall that the Euro-American secularist construes “the religious” as an escapist or tyrannical privilege of the space outside the cave over the cave itself. As a remedy, she offers the space inside the cave as the only space there is, leaving us, as far as I’m concerned, cut off from anything that truly differs from the rather intolerable way things are. The pseudo-Heideggerian interpretation I have offered here weaves itself somewhere between the religious other-world and the secular this-one, not only refusing to privilege either over the other, but, more radically, reading them as thoroughly interwoven. So, if the religious standpoint lodges itself in the extraordinary as such, and the secular perspective roots us in the ordinary as such, I am pressing here for some way of seeing the extraordinary in and through the ordinary.
To remain a bit longer with Heidegger, there is a name for this attentiveness to the extraordinary in and through the ordinary. Plato called it thaumazein, a word most often rendered in English as “wonder.” In his reading of Plato’s Theaetetus, which claims wonder as the origin of all philosophy, Heidegger explains that unlike curiosity, amazement, or stupefaction, wonder (Erstaunen) wonders not at the extraordinary as such, but rather, at the strangeness of the everyday. As Heidegger puts it, “precisely the most usual whose usualness goes so far that it is not even known or noticed in its usualness—this most usual itself becomes in and for wonder what is most unusual.”
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We will recall that the Euro-American secularist construes “the religious” as an escapist or tyrannical privilege of the space outside the cave over the cave itself. As a remedy, she offers the space inside the cave as the only space there is, leaving us, as far as I’m concerned, cut off from anything that truly differs from the rather intolerable way things are...
More ideology posing as philosopher--pussy politics, E. Rubenstein ,like most of the religious PoMo types starts with an assumption, or rather generalization--secularists claim religion's escapist, and secularism's always wrong. Then the rest of her rant follows. Shouldn't we question those premises from the start, before even venturing into the discussion of the Cave?? Anyway..
Perusing Heid's reading of the Cave allegory a few weeks ago (im trying to get up to speed with the Enk. posse when time allows), I felt a certain...pedagogical aspect to his interpretation--we are in the presence of...greatness, etc.--not lacking a certain scholastic vibe either. So the force of the actual allegory itself--ie, the reality of the Ideas as opposed to the shadows and illusions of the cave--was not questioned. Mere plebes should approach Lord Platon on their knees or somethin', but...at the very least the ancient philosopher makes a claim (via allegory, which however sublime, is not...axiomatic really) about a supra-sensible reality (ie Ideas, Forms, the Sun-god, etc) which exists apart from the merely apparent. But really...there is little or no disputation about the specifically metaphysical claim, ie platonic Realism. It's accepted prima facie, isn't it.
From a ...cynical point of view, Heidegger sounds nearly....Panglossian at times, and no more so than in his lectures on the greeks.
More ideology posing as philosopher--pussy politics, E. Rubenstein ,like most of the religious PoMo types starts with an assumption, or rather generalization--secularists claim religion's escapist, and secularism's always wrong. Then the rest of her rant follows. Shouldn't we question those premises from the start, before even venturing into the discussion of the Cave?? Anyway..
Perusing Heid's reading of the Cave allegory a few weeks ago (im trying to get up to speed with the Enk. posse when time allows), I felt a certain...pedagogical aspect to his interpretation--we are in the presence of...greatness, etc.--not lacking a certain scholastic vibe either. So the force of the actual allegory itself--ie, the reality of the Ideas as opposed to the shadows and illusions of the cave--was not questioned. Mere plebes should approach Lord Platon on their knees or somethin', but...at the very least the ancient philosopher makes a claim (via allegory, which however sublime, is not...axiomatic really) about a supra-sensible reality (ie Ideas, Forms, the Sun-god, etc) which exists apart from the merely apparent. But really...there is little or no disputation about the specifically metaphysical claim, ie platonic Realism. It's accepted prima facie, isn't it.
From a ...cynical point of view, Heidegger sounds nearly....Panglossian at times, and no more so than in his lectures on the greeks.
J writes, "Heidegger sounds nearly....Panglossian at times..." Whenever I read MH, I hear his S&Z message that everyone has to start someplace but that it needs to be preliminary and tentative. I understand hermeneutics to continue to be provisional even when it has taken things as far as it can. Even while Sprache spricht, the voice is multidimensional. It remains a path not a formula.
Rubenstein quotes MH with “precisely the most usual whose usualness goes so far that it is not even known or noticed in its usualness—this most usual itself becomes in and for wonder what is most unusual.” I now recall reading those words and vowing to never forget them. Of course, I forgot to remember my vow.
What brings me the greatest wonder is the realization that my universe has no need for me and that abyss is the closest I may ever come to the "wooshup" of phusis. purr, purr
Rubenstein quotes MH with “precisely the most usual whose usualness goes so far that it is not even known or noticed in its usualness—this most usual itself becomes in and for wonder what is most unusual.” I now recall reading those words and vowing to never forget them. Of course, I forgot to remember my vow.
What brings me the greatest wonder is the realization that my universe has no need for me and that abyss is the closest I may ever come to the "wooshup" of phusis. purr, purr
Cool, J. As Sheryl Crow sang, "if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad." So as a self-help technique I can understand, somewhat, the appeal of Heideggerian "Being" and the existentialists.
Yet....Heidegger offers a unique form of Platonism. Badiou I'm not, but Heid's readings of Plato seem unorthodox..psychological. For one, the Dialogues and Republic are supremely rational--the ancient thinker known as Plato (and socrates for that matter) may be doing ontology of a sort ...but it seems more like metaphysics, IMHE. The rational seeker for truth comes to perceive Noesis, Mind, the Idea--whether via mathematics, metaphysics, Justice, or perhaps artistic beauty (tho Soc.Pl was not as fond of poesy as Heid. was).
He usually proceeds via...precise arguments--the allegory's sort of anomalous in that sense. The Meno for example--the philosopher argued that some types of knowledge--ie geometric deductions-- appear to be a priori, or at least innate. So...metaphysics, ie, disputable--not dogma.
Is the Form of the Good...the Sun in the Cave allegory (AFAIK)....Being itself, according to MH? I wasn't clear on that. There are a few varieties of Platonism, or platonism, are there not (Big P, and little P. Or Neo)--Frege's a platonist, according to some. But that's a bit different than say PB Shelley's platonism. There may be mystical elements, but it's not really monotheism.
Yet....Heidegger offers a unique form of Platonism. Badiou I'm not, but Heid's readings of Plato seem unorthodox..psychological. For one, the Dialogues and Republic are supremely rational--the ancient thinker known as Plato (and socrates for that matter) may be doing ontology of a sort ...but it seems more like metaphysics, IMHE. The rational seeker for truth comes to perceive Noesis, Mind, the Idea--whether via mathematics, metaphysics, Justice, or perhaps artistic beauty (tho Soc.Pl was not as fond of poesy as Heid. was).
He usually proceeds via...precise arguments--the allegory's sort of anomalous in that sense. The Meno for example--the philosopher argued that some types of knowledge--ie geometric deductions-- appear to be a priori, or at least innate. So...metaphysics, ie, disputable--not dogma.
Is the Form of the Good...the Sun in the Cave allegory (AFAIK)....Being itself, according to MH? I wasn't clear on that. There are a few varieties of Platonism, or platonism, are there not (Big P, and little P. Or Neo)--Frege's a platonist, according to some. But that's a bit different than say PB Shelley's platonism. There may be mystical elements, but it's not really monotheism.
J writes, "...Heidegger offers a unique form of Platonism"
I accept that as a fair characterization. His many comments about how mired we are in traditional metaphysics and unable to move to "another beginning" would fit such a characterization.
Incidentally, I am slowly working my way through Eldred's new book, SOCIAL ONTOLOGY. As his title suggests, it may be a book for those of us, regretfully, interested in self-help, after finding ourselves in an indifferent universe with beyng that cares. I just took a look at his chapter on "we plus I," my description, not his. He takes off from Hegel to make the move to MH and I noticed several references to Plato. It will be a while before I know what he says, but you may recall enowning's announcement of the new book with some resources a few days ago.
I accept that as a fair characterization. His many comments about how mired we are in traditional metaphysics and unable to move to "another beginning" would fit such a characterization.
Incidentally, I am slowly working my way through Eldred's new book, SOCIAL ONTOLOGY. As his title suggests, it may be a book for those of us, regretfully, interested in self-help, after finding ourselves in an indifferent universe with beyng that cares. I just took a look at his chapter on "we plus I," my description, not his. He takes off from Hegel to make the move to MH and I noticed several references to Plato. It will be a while before I know what he says, but you may recall enowning's announcement of the new book with some resources a few days ago.
PS After having read only a couple chapters and reviewing the TofC, it appears Eldred's SOCIAL ONTOLOGY is a philosophy of civil society. So far what caught my eye in skimming is that he uses MH's conceptualizations (along with dozens of other philosophers) to correct MH's practical politics. That amounts to giving the lie to the accusation that one can find fascism in MH's philosophy.
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