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From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 06:04:26 +0800
On Sunday, March 23, 2003, at 04:26 AM, Anthony Crifasi wrote:
> but all the reasons you gave me for WHY my justifications don't "have
> anything directly to do with how super power states use their power"
> were addressed by me, and these answers in turn were not addressed by
> you in your last reply to me
Sorry, I can't find anywhere that you have addressed the notion of
machination that I addressed to you and that Heidegger sets out in his
critique of Nazism and the problem concerning technology. Your belief
that anything that happens on the world stage has anything to do with
justice is simply superfluous to the rule of will to power as
machination. This is a Heidegger list so it's unfortunate that:
> I'm not interested in your arguments against my reasons for my beliefs
cos they're Heideggerean arguments. As I said, you're free to believe
in the righteousness of your own beliefs. You believe the war is
'justified' and claim that the individuals at the White House feel as
you do... that's all well and good Anthony.
However, if you're at all interested in Heidegger's writings in
relation to the world historical truth of being, which means in
relation to what is happening now in this world of ours, you might like
to have a read of his Nietzsche volumes. Very interesting stuff, but
from the perspective of the problem concerning technology your notion
of justice is something of an anachronism. It holds no weight in the
calculation of power because power is its own justification.
A court can rule on a matter of justice within its jurisdiction, an
international court can even indict, convict and sentence to death the
failed rulers of vanquished states. A super power however is
accountable only to its constituency, and while your belief that men of
righteous honour and good christian ideals have control of the destiny
of the US and therefore of this world is rather quaint, what if no one
is actually in control of anything except the execution of an amoral
will to order that already sets up and historically constitutes the
current world order since at least the second world war?
To get you started here's a few quotes from Heidegger's Nietzsche
volumes 3 and 4 of the anglo translation:
"in a metaphysical sense, every power has its own right and can only
come to be in the wrong through impotence. But it belongs to the
metaphysical tactics of every power that it cannot regard any act of an
opposing power from the latter's power perspective, but rather subjects
the opposing activity to the standard of a universal human morality -
which has value only as propaganda, however" (IV, p. 145).
"Truth becomes rightness, in the sense of a commanding absorption by
the one who commands into the compulsion of self-surpassment. All
correctness is merely a rehearsal of and an opportunity for such
surpassing; every fixation merely a foothold for dissolving all things
in Becoming, hence a purchase for willing the permanentizing of 'chaos'
... Truth is 'rightness', that is to say, supreme will to power. Only
an unconditioned dominion over the earth by human beings will be right
for such 'rightness'. Instituting planetary dominion, however, will
itself be but the consequence of an unconditioned anthropomorphism"
(III, pp. 173-174).
Machination as "that Being which has released itself into sheer
accessibility through calculation, into the disposability of the beings
appropriate to it by way of unconditioned planning and arranging...[as]
the prepotence of all unquestioning self-assurance and certitude in
securing" (III, p. 175).
"The meaninglessness in which the metaphysical articulation of
modernity is consummated becomes something we can know as the essential
fulfilment of this age only when it is apprehended together with the
transformation of man to subiectum and the determination of beings as
the represented and produced character of the objective" (III, p. 179).
"meaninglessness now attains power, defining in unconditional terms the
horizon of modernity and enacting its fulfilment... Everywhere and
always machination, cloaking itself in the semblance of a measured
ordering and controlling, confronts us with beings as the sole
hierarchy and causes us to forget Being" (III, p. 181).
"The extremity of subjectivity is reached when a particular illusion
becomes entrenched - the illusion that all the 'subjects' have
disappeared for the sake of some transcendent cause that they all now
serve" (III, p. 180).
Regards,
Malcolm
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