Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 13:25:25 -0500
Subject: Re: Medium
--Boundary_(ID_HRN4e7ehqZ8+ATt+OgZfmw)
>
>Allen,
>Of course you put your finger on the weak link in the translation. "Vermeinen"
>is not easy to get across. "Think" is too bland or misleading, so I chose
>"perceive", although sensuous perception ("wahrnehmen") is NOT intended.
>
>As for 'purity' of the _logos_, in the context of the passage cited it would
>seem that it is precisely the impurity of the _logos_ which is being
>addressed,
>for it can only come to its 'truth' ("Wahrsein" S.256) "via the detour of the
>_pseudos_". (S.256) This means that the perceiver of the object has to work
>their way through how the object seems to be in the course of addressing and
>discussing it in order to arrive at how the object shows itself of itself as
>itself.
>
>The _logos_ is impure for this reason, whereas the _nous_, insofar it is
>without _logos_ (_aneu logou_) in an immediate perception of the _archai_, is
>pure and without _pseudos_. The _nous_ does not require any detour through the
>_logos_ and its falsity.
>
>To come to your question, the involvement of the perceiver in this "addressing
>and discussing" (perhaps just for and with oneself) is one of working through
>how the object shows itself in order to come finally to its true
>(unadulterated
>with _pseudos_) self-showing. This working-through for oneself
>(_dialegesthai_,
>another medium) is necessary because, at first and for the most
>part, we _take_
>things to be not what they are in their self-showing of themselves as
>themselves (Dafuernahme, Dafuerhalten), and they also _give_ themselves in
>deceptive appearances which have to be cleared away. Things are not what they
>seem.
>
>Michael,
But how do they "seem"? And"how" is the seeming different from the
"how" of the appearing ( Erscheinen) of the object from itself as
itself. The fascination with the middle voice here would seem(sic!)
to be an attempt to focus precisely on this ambiguity and to bring it
to some degree of phenomenological clarity. The problematical
rendering of "Vermeinen" in this regard might be fruitfully pursued
perhaps by relating it to color. Wouldn't a phenomenological
approach to color perception be ideally suited to the problematic of
the middle voice? ( I'm fresh off of reading about Goethe and
Schopenhauer on this issue, so the foregoing might be a total
irrelevancy forced into the discussion.)
More relevantly, clarity in this matter is helped immensely by your
more precise rendering of the relationship between logos and pseudos.
Would it be accurate to say that the detour of the pseudos is
"built into" the intentional character of the logos as a gathering,
and so the "working through" you speak of must necessarily be
detoured by way of the pseudos. ? If this is so, then how do we
"theorize' ( see and say philosophically) this "being detoured". . .
( should I say by the logos?) A first easy answer would seem to be
through a willingness to encounter ( be encountered by) the refusals
of language to render a full bodied and "accurate" phenemenology of
how the object shows itself from itself as itself for oneself; i.e.,
the problematic of the middle voice "moves along with" the
intentional character of the logos.
Thanks Michael for your clarifications and further provocations,
Allen
--
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
--Boundary_(ID_HRN4e7ehqZ8+ATt+OgZfmw)
HTML VERSION:
Allen,
Of course you put your finger on the weak link in the translation. "Vermeinen"
is not easy to get across. "Think" is too bland or misleading, so I chose
"perceive", although sensuous perception ("wahrnehmen") is NOT intended.
As for 'purity' of the _logos_, in the context of the passage cited it would
seem that it is precisely the impurity of the _logos_ which is being addressed,
for it can only come to its 'truth' ("Wahrsein" S.256) "via the detour of the
_pseudos_". (S.256) This means that the perceiver of the object has to work
their way through how the object seems to be in the course of addressing and
discussing it in order to arrive at how the object shows itself of itself as
itself.
The _logos_ is impure for this reason, whereas the _nous_, insofar it is
without _logos_ (_aneu logou_) in an immediate perception of the _archai_, is
pure and without _pseudos_. The _nous_ does not require any detour through the
_logos_ and its falsity.
To come to your question, the involvement of the perceiver in this "addressing
and discussing" (perhaps just for and with oneself) is one of working through
how the object shows itself in order to come finally to its true (unadulterated
with _pseudos_) self-showing. This working-through for oneself (_dialegesthai_,
another medium) is necessary because, at first and for the most part, we _take_
things to be not what they are in their self-showing of themselves as
themselves (Dafuernahme, Dafuerhalten), and they also _give_ themselves in
deceptive appearances which have to be cleared away. Things are not what they
seem.
Michael,