Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 10:32:37 -0500
Subject: Re: Medium


>
>  > I don't have time to explore this, but I imagine it
>>  would well cohere with the sense of the medium as
>>  encompassing in _Gelassenheit_
>>
>>  Paul
>
>Paul and Jan,
>At least Zuntz and Sihler seem to pretty much agree on the meaning of
>the medium voice in Greek. There is something evocative in the notion of
>a middle or medium voice 'between' subject and object, but it seems to
>crumble under closer scrutiny, I think mainly because we of necessity
>think of these formal aspects of grammar in terms of verbs having
>'subjects', 'objects', 'indirect objects', i.e. in terms based on the
metaphysics of _hypokeimenon_.

>
>It is probably better to learn to listen to language for signs that it
>does not obey grammar.

Michael,

This last sentence of yours really struck me.  I read (into) it with 
some obvious interpolations:  "  It's better to learn to listen with 
Heidegger to language for signs that it refuses to obey grammar." 
The refusal is  a response to a "higher calling" from language itself 
that what is being said must find its way between the words.  Grammar 
forces connections between words which the saying of language must 
overcome by refusing the impositions of grammar.  In the moment of 
tension created by the the grammatical, structural impediment to 
saying, " Language has the floor," as Heidegger puts it, and the 
philosopher is forced out on a limb.  What comes of such moments is 
philosophical Dichtung, the attempt to speak philosophy poetically.

But as you suggest , the philosophical reader must also join in the 
saying by listening to what is being said beyond the barriers of 
grammatical structure.  The inventiveness required here is helped 
enormously by a sense of possibility one brings from languages other 
than the one in which the saying is explicitly being said. Walter 
Benjamin has an essay called " the Task of the Tranlsator" where he 
speaks of certain texts as being "translatable" in just this 
hermeneutical  sense  of offering a possibility which lies not only 
between the words, but also between the languages.

There is an example in Hebrew of a verb form which I have always 
found particularly evocative, precisely because its suggests 
something like a middle voice, a self implicating act which is self 
implicating because of the orientation of the actor towards the act. 
I would say that this orientation may be captured  in the verb form, 
but only  AS ONE LISTENS to it.  The form in Hebrew is called the 
Hit-paeal and technically is simply reflexive as in "washing oneself" 
( Mitlavesh).  But there are some interesting anomolies, the most 
signficant one for our discussion here being a verb for "bow down"( 
Mishtachaveh) used  in the liturgy to describe one's orientation to 
God in the present moment of prayerful address.  The Hitpaeal form 
here has a problematical suggestiveness about it.  One can say that 
one bows oneself down in the sense that one intentionally directs any 
action which the body performs.  But we wouldn't need the Hitpaeal 
for that.  It seems to me that there is an orientation toward the 
other implied here which gives the bowing before god a sense of the 
"middle voice."  Not the act itself, but how one puts oneself the 
act, or (closer to the Ge in Gelassenheit), how one lets oneself be 
pulled into the act becomes the "medium" in which the experience 
takes place..  There is obviously a bit of Gadamer mixed in here as 
well ( being conducted by the converstaion, being read by the text), 
which doesn't surprise me.  Maybe you need to have been there to 
appreciate it.

Allen

P.S. For any Hebrew speakers in the crew, i realize that Mishtachaveh 
is not normal hitpaeal, but I think most Biblical grammarians agree 
that the shin and tof  got reversed in order for the word to be 
pronouncable.





-- 
Professor Allen Scult					Dept. of Philosophy
HOMEPAGE: " Heidegger on Rhetoric and Hermeneutics":		Drake 
University
http://www.multimedia2.drake.edu/s/scult/scult.html		Des 
Moines, Iowa 50311
PHONE: 515 271 2869
FAX: 515 271 3826


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