Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 23:17:49 +0200
Subject: Re: Medium


Cologne 11-Apr-2001

allen scult schrieb Wed, 11 Apr 2001 10:32:37 -0500:

> >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.

Allen,
Thanks for this and your example from Hebrew. I think you are right in your
characterization of Heidegger's awareness of the strictures of grammar. Even
when editing his manuscripts for publication he is known to have shown a
willingness 'when in doubt' to go against Duden (the canonical authority on
questions of German grammar). The problem with grammar is that it is a formal
way of understanding language, with implicit, but obvious, metaphysical
underpinnings, which does not fathom its depths (which cannot be formalized).

Michael
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> 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 Translator" 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 anomalies, 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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