Michael writes:
Jud, I shall remain silent on your exploitation of my little piece in order
to produce yet another inappropriate poxy rant (and, of course, that is your
privilege). In stead, a quick outlining of three dimensions of Heidegger's
silence(s):
1) his infamous silence concerning the holocaust {a-part from the apt
comparison with other extreme, now normal!, forms of industrial production
of beings};
Jud:
Apt maybe — but surely most preposterously insensitive? That is what gets up
my nose with Heidegger - no sensitivity — a lack of intellectuality-
a terrible and depressing peasant crudity. This is skinhead philosophy — an
oaf boasting in a bar whilst exaggerating dim-witted peasant concepts into
profundities, spouting half-grasped ontological ideas in a garbled,
boondockian George Bush-like version of "philosophical" language.
Not only that Michael:
Read this:
ESSAY _
http://www.nextbook.org/features/feature_kirsch.html_
(
http://www.nextbook.org/features/feature_kirsch.html)
Hot for Teacher
Long after Hannah Arendt stopped being his "saucy wood nymph,"
Martin Heidegger had absolute control of their heady correspondence.
BY Adam Kirsch
"Yet over the next two years, as Heidegger sends Arendt
romantic-philosophical poems and attempts, rather comically, to include Elfriede in their
friendship, the evasions only continue. At times, the reader is even angered by
Arendt's refusal to engage with Heidegger's provocations. His self-pitying
references to the Soviet threat ("I, with my ideas, am among the most threatened,
the ones who would be wiped out first") echo Nazi apologetics about defending
the West against Communism. Incredibly, in the whole correspondence, he makes
only a single oblique reference to the Holocaust: "the fate of the Jews and
the Germans has its own truth, for which our historical calculation is no
match." This evasive fatalism, this refusal of concrete politics and moral
judgment, surely infuriated the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Yet
Arendt, whose voice is again missing much of the time, seems never to have argued
back. Heidegger's absolute control of the terms of their relationship is
never so damaging as here."
The cheeky little Nazi turd! "The fate of the Jews and the Germans has its
own truth, for which our historical calculation is no match."
HE was part of the historical process, enthusiastically Nazifying the
university — scurrying around hosting teach-ins at his squalid little shack.
Arendt-wise Heidegger completely dominated her, just like he has taken over and
dominates your whole intellectual life.
2) the Heideggerian silent ringing of the stillness of being [as a musician
this ap-peals to me];
Jud:
Sometimes it is wise to remain schtumn in sullen silence as Heidegger did as
the archetypal defeated and saturnine Nazi.
"RINGing of the STILLness of BEing"? If you wish to spondaise the attitude
of this guilty criminal into "the SI -Ient RING-ing of the STILL-ness of
BE-ing" you are perfectly free to do so. Would you describe the sulking attitude
of a chastised child in similar terms?
3) the analytical silence inevitably reigning at and terminating in the
heart of any thinking that is virtually lacking in dogma and doctrine
{inscribed within a/the metaphysical language of statements and
predication}, in stead preferring to think the ways and be-waying of beings
Jud:
Heidegger's "thinking" was the MOST dogmatic and doctrinal of all the
puerile German and/or "Continental" metaphysical discharge that spewed forth at
that period from the philosophical anus of Europe. It is oozing at the seams
with Platonic doctrinal ontocrap, religious allusions and Nazi trigger-words as
well as outright and up front rectoral exhortations to lend support to the
odious Hitler and his murderous programme, (as made clear in Mein Kamf and
agreed-to by Heidegger prior to joining.]
Michael:
I would like to suggest that these silences are bound together and not so
different as they might seem.
Jud:
And I would like to suggest that they were all part and parcel of his
pathological deviousness.
His prudent refusal to open his big mouth in case he put his foot in it. Far
better to deal with a subservient figure
like Arendt - cow-like and compliant — scurrying towards the light
of his perceived genius and his study window.
Michael:
Only silence can hold the tension of Ballard's quietly terrifying image/icon
of terminal beach and the only-just inutterable reluctance of
Cartier-Bresson to not kill the imbecilic reporter/interviewer. Oh, and
Albert Ayler's silent scream...
Jud:
Ballard's silence is the silence of a man surveying the total destruction of
the world
NOT just HIS world. Heidegger's silence was the silence of a man surveying
the total destruction of the Nazi world and a rejection of his personal
political ideas, the world with which he had been totally and enthusiastically
associated and aligned himself and ultimately consecrated with the endowment of
[what passed for] his philosophy.
If in some small way I was to declare myself jealous of Heidegger, it would
be of his determined and blindfolded supporters and defenders like you and
Arendt and poor Nunc, who are completely and utterly hypnotised by his
overpowering power to dominate. There are those who seek to dominate and there are
those who have a psychological craving to be dominated. Heidegger's instruments
of domination were probably not bullwhips and leather restraints, [Arendt
makes no mention of such things, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn
otherwise,] they were the vague gossamer weapons of the
metaphysician-retiarius — the net-and-trident,” rhetorician who binds the unwary in the viscid
strands of metaphysical nonsense, a mucilaginous spider's web of exaggerated
individual self importance, appealing to the weak and vain, and denigrating
of greater scientific minds.
His is a conservative peasant villager's view of the outside world,
transmogrified into philosophical text. He was contemptuous of new-fangledry and
modern tractors, and the new "cosmopolitan" enterprises that were insinuating
themselves into the unventilated sauerkraut-stinking Heimat, and introducing
"alien" American ideas which affected the farmhands and disturbed the rooks in
the trees along the Feldweg.
Michael:
The cat just smiled at me in the incipient quiet but not quite present
dawn...
Jud:
Check out Heidegger's cat at:
_
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/heideggerscat.htm_
(
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/heideggerscat.htm)
regards
Jud.
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