-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Eldred <artefact@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sunday, August 22, 1999 7:00 AM
Subject: Re: Ge-stell
>Cologne, 22 August 1999
>Bob,
>
>Philosophy is the love of sophia, i.e. it is the love of questioning and
>thinking through what the world is as whole and who we are in it. It has
>in its origins -- and today when genuninely understood -- nothing at all
>to do with Christian dogma, Christian canon, Christian theology and the
>like. The learning undertaken by a lover of questioning is not the
>appropriation of a doctrine, nor can questioning take for orientation a
>political stance which tells it when it is thinking 'right'. Learning to
>read phenomenologically means gaining sight of the questions at issue
>putting this insight into words.
>
>Reading the texts of the philosphical tradition philoosophically is not
>a philological activity, nor merely a scholarly one, but an attempt to
>come closer to the questioning and the issues for thinking which are
>alive in these texts.
>
>The questioning alive in philosophical texts can never be explained by
>socio-historical observations. The only access is to question and think
>oneself; only then can adequate criticism become possible.
>
>Because your utterances on this list have their source in exogenous
>political convictions i.e. in a stance which you have firmly adopted
>towards the world, they are ideological, Weltanschauung, not philosophy.
>There is no genunine questioning in ideological stances, just the
>pleasure of reaffirming one's stand in the world.
>
>The Ge-stell can only be put into question if we are still capable of
>questioning. Ditto the relationship between the Gestell as the essence
>of modern technology and the valorization of value as the essence of
>capitalism. 'Critical' political stances are completely useless in this
>realm of questioning.
>
>Michael
michael,
these are the stock indictments with which ghetto-think
opposes all threats (mutatis mutandis, i was expelled from the cp almost
verbatim); so i know there's no need to take it serious,
philosophically nor personally.
as for yer notion of phil as the operation of transcendant
intelligence independant of tradition and the material universe,
meditating the runic locutions of the great one
...one can't not be amused by the extravagence your absurdity.
thinking, of course,
begins with habeus corpus, here the text,
sifting the viscera ...theology, anthropology, history,
psychology, messkirch, fascism,
...even marx...no exclusions
...regardless how dopey,
and following where it leads.
and assuredly no comprimises,
mincing or spanieling to authorities, taboos, fetishes,...or class.
the opposite of idealogical, essence of homespun,
just quizzing the entrails,
pricking and probing the corpus,
till it jumps,
at which pt you Know
you've touched the life of Truth.
the ethos/fate/destiny/meaning/...of the spirit of the west
is xianity,
not in the narrow sense of your polemicist's conception,
but as it has been created out of mediterranean
culture and by the artists, thinkers, heroes and saints
of the preceding 2 millennia,
viz. Tradition.
there is no choice in the matter,
no more can i chose to prescind from being bob.
heid's value has been
to begin the thinking of the meaning of that ethos
into the 3rd K;
...and, sweet jesus forfend, not the mephisto
narcissism of your confession.
yours,
bob
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