Subject: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 13:39:08 +0200


Dear Tom,

there is nothing special with languages, just the same as trying to
undertstand (modern) physics without mathematics, you can do it, but only up
to a certain point, and the you have to relay on the people who understand
mathematics. Languages belong just to the basic tools of philosophy and
there are, of course, limits where we have to relay on translations.
One possible way of deepening the question of power/violence that concerns
you so much is probably to deepen yourself in H. reading of Nietzsche (Will
to power, will to will etc.), this is, according to H. (in the
Spiegel-interview) his response to national-socialism.
A propos, when I sometimes read some American propositions and put instead
of _american_ and _the American people_, German and _das deutsche Volk_ I am
a little bit threatened (please remember that I am not German...). What I
mean is, that there is a kind of American nationalism (trying to _sell_
American values, way of life etc. ) that is probably not very different from
other kinds of European (and non-European) nationalisms in this century (and
in other centuries). But this is another matter...
kind regards
rafael

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
An: heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
<heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Datum: Freitag, 3. Juli 1998 23:25
Betreff: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time


>On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro wrote:
>
>> Dear Tom
>>
>> thanks for making clear your intentions.
>> You should try to learn German otherwise you will have almost
unsurmontable
>> problems trying to understand Heidegger.
>> (like trying to understand Plato etc. withouth Greek etc.: there is
nothing
>> peculiar about this, just the case that, I think, language and thought
are
>> not in-dependent, because of our _in-carnation_...)
>
>I only buy that part-way, but of course it is always better to know the
>original language and some things are untranslateable. But...
>
>
>> Being and Time is oriented toward the question of being, it is not a
>> philosophic anthropology (although it entails parts of it)
>
>I'm not suggesting, at all, that it is.
>
> and it is not
>> primarily oriented towards its _applications_.
>
>This is strictly untrue. Not only is it oriented towards its applications,
>it is *impossible* to proceed with its understandings without some
>concommitant application on the part of the reader. It's language and
>moves become incomprehensible without this, it seems to me.
>
>
> You will find much more
>> concrete support on this (I think this is what you are mainly looking
for)
>> if you read Medard Boss: Grundriss (again, in German; may be there is an
>> English translation), which was also _re-viewed_ by H., and the works of
the
>> School of Daseinsanalyse from Zuerich. There you will surely find much
more
>> of what you want.
>
>That is a good avenue.
>
>> Of course, if you try to bring down to earth (ontically) the ontological
>> statements of Being and Time you will have a lot of work, as your
examples
>> show.
>
>I'm actually not trying to do that at all, in a way. Earth itself is not
>quite as "ontical" as one may be given to believe...I suggest that what is
>called "earth" is permeated with the ontological through and through.
>Indeed, the division between "earth and world", in this regard, strikes me
>as being quite (too) crude.
>
>
>> Concerning polemos etc. I believe we should not discard _argumentation_
in
>> phenomenology.
>
>Of course not, but the *employment* of polemos is not at all the same as
>*thinking* the *essence* of polemos and the *essence* of violence, even as
>one operates within that which is unavoidably at the same time to some
>extent dependent on polemos, argumentation and, even at times unavoidable
>violence. The very fact that you can make this statement here, while
>utterly missing my comment about the *thinking of the Being (essence) of
>polemos and violence" indicates a certain "missing the point" about the
>*question of Being" that Heidegger so painstakingly develops. Of course,
>I am not saying that you miss this altogether or even elsewhere, just in
>terms of my statement specifically in this regard. I don't mean to sound
>rude at all.
>
> In my view when H. talks about _mastering_ of moods he is
>> re-acting critically against the big (ethical) tradition (starting with
>> Socrates/Plato) of _sophrosyne_ and becoming a master of oneself
(autarkeia,
>> andreia etc.).
>
>I actually see no sign at all of a *reaction* to _sophrysyne_. I think
>Heidegger is taking this as a very clearly self-evident truth: for example,
>without reflection, he notes, moods can disintegrated into *bad moods*. He
>is not at all denying this nor saying that the notion of "reflection" on
>moods, as a part of some kind of *mastery* is to be avoided. He is working
>against the notion that rationality could ever promise a complete
>surpassing of being mooded.
>
> This is the (a) kind of (ethical) polemos which is indeed
>> central to H. when he articulates the finitiy of Dasein and the question
of
>> _casting_ one's existence without a _basic ground_.
>
>There is variously polemos in what Heidegger does. The work of Destruktion
>is, in a certain way, polemical, though it is more painstaking and
>"deconstructive" than simply attack, etc. However, I do, in fact, question
>the notion of a truly "groundless" "existence". The "ground" (gravity) of
>violence is, in fact, *always there*, as are many basic "existentialia"
>constituting Dasein. The nature of these "things" *as ground* is not the
>same as what is usually meant, in philosophical contexts, by ground, but
>their nature *is* in agreement with many senses of "ground" that
>ordinarily obtain: ground as what lies beneath, what supports, what is
>impenetrably beneath, what is stably or even unstably beneath, what has
>expanse and perdurance, what has gravity and constituting function, that
>into which roots grow, etc. Nor, I think, should we even imagine that
>Heidegger is in fact talking about any sort of simple "groundlessness"
>(abgrund). Heidegger is pointing to and finding grounds all the time, but
>the have different forms than is usually understood. All that Heidegger
>speaks of as *primordial* is, in a certain sense, a *ground*, though
>admittedly it a sense of "ground", founding, being-founded-upon, etc.,
>that is quite other than the usual sense of grounding in a series of
>simple axioms, principles or propositions, first principles, etc.
>
>Put one way, I would have to say that since one important "unthought" in
>Heidegger is, indeed, the sense of "The Him" as "external force that
>issues statements to be followed as axioms", etc. he leads into sense of
>*groundlessness* (null basis of a nullity, thrown projection, ethical
>freedom and guilt as counterbalance, etc.) that works throughout to
>counter the notion, deeply embedded in the prevailing conception of
>*ethics* of *external control and domination*. But a deeper thinking of
>the essence of ethics leads to very different orientations, provided one
>can shake free of "the Him" which dominates to the extremely precisely
>when it is not understood as such.  The general polemos that obtains all
>too often around ethics is precisely this *being lost* in the battle with
>"the Him", either against it as such or in favor of this or that "Him" or
>"leader", "Furher", etc. But in the process, the original *essence* of
>ethics (I don't mean the historical origin) is lost again and again, and
>Dasein *predominantly*, but, contra Heidegger, not always, circles around
>this aspect of its essence, utterly lost from itself. And I could include
>Heidegger, but not, say, Gandhi, as being primarily in this condition. The
>"original" essence of *ethics* is not a rule, a dictum, a leader's
>command, etc. but the nonviolence that even the *most violent* (e.g.,
>Hitler, for example, and some others often not considered even to be
>violent) in fact *always also* maintain themselves (however selectively)
>in. This lostness is utterly related to the forgetting of the question of
>Being and Dasien's *flight*, but that *flight* is, in fact, often well
>motivated as a flight from violence. Heidegger's approach is to refurbish
>polemos and to with to go boldly back into polemos in a way, and we see a
>certain corresponding irresponsibility that is, simply speaking, just
>plain undeniable, and whose net results (death of millions) has
>consequences which have, in a certain way, an *ontological* import that
>reaches unavoidable into the very depths of Heidegger's most ontological
>moments. The remembering of Being entails, in part, the capacity to
>question the *essence* of something/anything. The all-to-often
>unquestioned is polemos and violence. The sure sign of this lack of
>questioning (again, on an *essential level* that Heidegger so well
>explores and helps to preserve) is that polemos and ethics are employed,
>invoked or referred to, or are in operation, solely as "handmaidens" to
>some other, ostensibly "free" trajectory of "existence and desire".
>
>There is, however, a *certain* gap between the question of essence and the
>specific question of the *essence of violence*, the standing in
>nonviolence, etc.  However, when the question is opened, the gap itself
>disappears, since the question itself will have already been founded in
>part in nonviolence from the start and should understand this. This gap,
>enabling the circling I mention here, is the true forgetting of Being of
>Dasein and its falling away from its essence as a care that is, as care,
>in this case for the question of Being, utterly founded in nonviolence in
>a vulnerability that juts up through and in fact equiprimordially founds
>every single question. Being and nonviolence are equiprimordial through
>and through.  Heidegger's blindness and complete lack of mention of, for
>example, Gandhi, whose achievement, lacking in bloodshed in crucial ways,
>*should* have stood out for Heidegger (who was in fact given to talk of
>his times and world in a substantive way) as a staggering and
>world-historical achievement of unsurpassed significance. Neither Gandhi,
>nor what Hitler promised, made it into Heidegger's thought in many ways. I
>attribute this, again, to a forgetting of nonviolence that is deeply
>lodged, unquestioned, in the very depths of Heidegger's thought, his
>polemos (good and bad), his pursuit of the question of Being, the nature
>of his questions and ontological trajectories, etc. But aside from this
>and more originally, it appears to me a kind of obviously datum of
>experience and "existence", as it were, that Being and (non)violence are
>equiprimordial, and that Dasein is given to *stand in nonviolence* in a
>way that appears fully to exceed, and to operate prior to and more
>originally than the "call of conscience"  and "guilt" as these takes place
>in Heidegger's thought. The uttermost *height* of the forgetting I am
>pointing to is the development of the philosophy of *guilt* that emerges
>in Heidegger, while its uttermost Western manifestation is its
>*mechanization*.
>
>
>The question of violence, utterly wanting in Heidegger, is most startlingly
>absent when we think some of Heidegger's most famous and important
>"mantras":
>
>-- That which is closest to us can be hardest of all to see.
>-- What calls for thinking?
>-- How is it with Being?
>
>Indeed, indeed...
>
>Regards,
>
>TMB
>
>
>
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