Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 17:08:13 +0100
Subject: Re: WtP and justice


At 18:57 28-2-03 +0000, Anthony Crifasi wrote:

>Rene de Bakker wrote:
>
>>Two categories should not be confounded: France is a nation-state,
>>and has the power or unpower that belongs to a nation-state, and there
>>is Nietzsche, the highest cristallization point of power, that is capable
>>of judging how, in powerful decadent times, France, like Germany,
>>England and Russia, are going to play a suicidal game, because they
>>cannot admit that their values have become illusory.
>>Reflective of Nietzsche's spirit is his edict to Bismarck to lay down all
>>weapons of destruction. An act of generosity, not crusades.


>Many of Nietzsche's major criticisms of Bismark's Germany are not only 
>present, but magnified in Nazi Germany, so the idea that France's reaction 
>even remotely reflected Nietzsche's spirit is clearly ... well, let's just 
>say you need to read some more literature on European history. ;) The France 
>that Nietzsche admired was Napoleon's France. Can you picture Napoleon 
>laying down his arms before Hitler?


Anthony,

A world wherein a Napoleon is possible excludes a world containing Hitler,
and the
other way around. 

When there is something to what H says, that history is the freeing dimension,
then indifference is the bonding dimension. Comparable to the co-existence 
of Aristoteles and moon rockets.
There is not one controllable reality. Nietzsche made that clear with his
notion
of 'life', Heidegger with his notion of Geschichte: reality is timely. One
can check this
easily in oneself, esp. when one is somewhat older. What I consider now as
real or
illusory, is not only different from what I did when I was 20 or 35 - as
such this could
still suggest some form of identity, my life, wherein there is
differentiation -
somewhere there is a point where I fail to see any identity, linearity,
causality.
It's easy to say: why should everything have a ground? It's something else
to actually
meet the ungrounded, to accept the facticity. Why is EVERYTHING different?
When
only Stimmung can make everything different, what fundamental role plays
Stimmung?
(boredom or love or hate affect the 'as a whole') One goes along with
Nietzsche's or
Foucault's criticism of the subject, but when one imagines that one's
expectation to
rise in the morning as the same person that went to bed, is ungrounded at
last, such
ideas are either met with estrangement in the philosophical departments, or
made
innocent in a postmodern way.
But when Dasein has to do with transformation, and not with continuity, one
might learn
more from Gregor Samsa or Castaneda.

Hegel, when seeing Napoleon entering Jena: the worldsoul on a horse. Also
Heidegger
somewhere suggests, as did Goethe, Hoelderlin and many others, that he was
not so
simply human. 

But nowadays we all have the same DNA, and retrospectively all that was
different, can
be made equal. The last strange thing, than still can be noticed, is the
strange thing, that 
this leveling works, and has no rivals. Therefore it is useless to oppose,
in political and
all matters, but probably extremely important to 'build' outside of the
official channels,
if only in order to be prepared for what otherwise might pass by unnoticed,
like a last god.

Even and primarily Heidegger's existantials risk to get contaminated with
THIS kind of
neutrality. They aim at transformation, although not specific ones  (here
you are 'right',
but in view of what Heidegger himself said: Der Frevel an der Erde, the
plunder of the
earth, I find what John says truer)
But they most certainly are not eternal categories the way metaphysical
categories are
thought of. Not ontological fundamentals for all possible ontical
structures. (Which also
would make it possible to speak of 'the fundamentals of Heidegger's
philosophy'.
These don't exist.) 

rene






















-----------------------------------
drs. Rene de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering 
tel. 020-5252368              


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