LAMENT—AND HOPE FOR ARRIVAL
from MINDFULNESS, 1939, pp.377-8
[Facebook preface: My header here is not from Heidegger. Heidegger is 50 years of age when he wrote the following, ending a retrospective sense of his career—as if anticipating that his life may end soon—and having a large body of work that is to remain unpublished while he’s alive. Of course, he does live to work decades beyond this Moment in his pathmaking, which will antedate this Moment (especially his work of 1946 to the mid-'50s). But here, 1939, he anticipates that, in any event, he is likely to be misunderstood.]
“The worst that could happen to these efforts would be the psychological-biographical analysis and explanation, that is, the counter-movement to what is precisely assigned to us, namely, to [annul counter-movement, i.e., to] place everything ‘psychic-emotional’—however intimately this has to be preserved and enacted—at the service of that aloneness which is demanded by the work that strikes one as strange....
“What would happen if the pack of the curious once throws itself at the ‘posthumous works’! It cannot be expected from this commotion to grasp anything at all or to transform what is grasped into the futural. For the gang of the curious only longs for that which completes this gang’s own already established calculation and confirms it in each case.
“If deep down these ‘posthumous works’ do not possess the power of ‘letting-go-ahead’—do not possess the power of path-opening-grasping-ahead into an entirely other and quite drawn-out questioning—[then] these ‘posthumous works’ would not be worth being pondered upon....
“The least that may perhaps remain is THE DYNAMICS OF THE RAISING OF THE ONLY QUESTION. And this may show that today the strongest and most consuming exertion of a modest power still cannot accomplish anything AGAINST the rigidness of beings FOR restoring be-ing as the sphere of the coming to pass of the arrival or [else] the flight of the last god.
“And yet—ahead of all ‘results’, all propositions and all concepts—there is the long pathway that perhaps occasionally succeeds in flashing the determining power of a great future.
“The splendor of Da-sein rests upon the alternating, and overreaching, struggle that consumes within and belongs to the self, shelters and conceals the most reticent, and yet remains inexpressibly grateful for every little help.”
.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[back to the project: http://gedavis.com/mh/heid003.html ]
.
THIS HEIDEGGER STUDIES PROJECT
My Heidegger project is intended to be a reliable introduction to his work in English.
All of the earlier postings here have been grouped and organized into the areas of my Web project that will develop in coming years.
...My own interests are clearly distinguished from posting for the sake of reliable guidance about Heidegger's own thinking, Yet, my own excursions are both with and apart from Heidegger's ways, like a son or daughter; or devoted students.
All good mentors want to see you go your ownmost way.
.
I get occasional notices from Facebook indicating that people haven't heard from me lately. Let me say: I won't bother you with anything not important for Heidegger studies, and I don't have anything new to offer yet. But I'm not dead.
A NOTE ABOUT HEIDEGGER AND THE UNIVERSITY
The discussion below, from last July, wasn't noted here, via the Heidegger Page. So, excuse me, if you've already seen this.
The more that a reader understands Heidegger's broadly practical interest—and emancipatory interest toward higher education in Germany—the better that one might understand why casual framing of him as politically suspect (or naïve) is suspect (and naïve).
BEGINNING TO READ "HEIDEGGER":
an annotated set of readings in English
The Webpage of links is an ongoing introduction to Heidegger’s thinking, wanting to be useful for new students of his work.
...When Heidegger was writing, there was no tenable psychology of "being," no tenable philosophical humanism, no humanistic phenomenology that could be adequate to what called for thinking in his Time.
Heidegger brought the existential dimension of once-religious, then Literary, interest in being well to prominence in the 1920s that led to broadly European efforts to transform "philosophy" (as received in tradition) into a progressive renewal of potential for conceptual inquiry.
.
This is a response to a terrible review of Heidegger's 1931-38 notebooks, but without directly referring to the review or details of it, because the review is merely typical, in ways that I sketch here. I'm interested in the importance of dwelling with what Heidegger is doing, not attending to others' rationalizing of why they are being dismissive.
The discussion is titled "'Heidegger' is no mirror of the few and the rare" because "the few and the rare" is a rubric in Heidegger's posthumous work that has long figured into dismissiveness toward that difficult work, a rubric that is cynical rather than arrogant, I think.
.
[Excuse this re-posting of "Marketing Dark Shadows." I've changed blog locations for all Facebook/Heidegger links, revised the "Marketing..." posting that was image-linked, and couldn't change that link without deleting the posting. I want to re-post two other postings. Then no more re-postings.]
-------------------------------------
MARKETING DARK SHADOWS
Is there a conspiracy among a few scholars to ensure that Heidegger's critique of academic thinking doesn't disrobe thei...r hermeneutics of gossip?
The upshot of my posting is this: Heidegger's notebooks do NOT “cast a dark shadow over Heidegger’s legacy” (the quote on the back cover of "Ponderings II-VI"). That quote is from a gossip column by Peter Gordon in the usually-authoritative NY Review of Books. Gordon doesn’t understand Heidegger (amply demonstrated by his breezy discussion) and gives little attention to the notebooks themselves. But exploiting aromas of scandal sells books.
But I don't get into details of Gordon's article (which I don't link to, because I don't recommend it; but it's easy to access). The point that I would elaborate, but did not, is that a small number of scholars who cite each other are very intent on establishing an incriminating view of Heidegger. It's my view that in every case, close examination of what Heidegger is doing dissolves the bad faith reading.
I'm more interested in advocating what Heidegger is doing—and pursuing my own projects (with due indication of what's mine, not pretending to be Heidegger)—than I am interested in defending Heidegger against bad faith reading. But some scholars are more interested in prosecution.
[This re-posting has to happen because I've changed archive cloud for everything—from Dropbox to GoogleDrive. One more re-posting after this. (I worry about being a burden.)]
----------------------------
THE ROLE OF THE "BLACK NOTEBOOKS" WITHIN HIS WORK
Heidegger’s Überlegungen (CONSIDERATIONS) were intended by Heidegger to be supplements to his main work, not exposés of secret fundamentals.
...A definitive account of what Heidegger intended with his private notebooks has been recently provided by the “personal assistant” to Heidegger in his last years, F.-W. von Herrmann (link below).
Keynotes of his discussion are offered by me:
“the role of Considerations within his ways”
http://gedavis.com/mh/harpt05.html
At the end, there’s a link to a detailed discussion of some entries in Heidegger’s notebooks, some entries by Heidegger that have been invalidly regarded as suspicious.
.
CONSIDERATIONS IN CONTEXT OF CONTRIBUTIONS
Heidegger was privately flourishing in the late 1930s, while also deeply critical of what was happening in Germany. But prospecting critique of ideolology is for the sake of recovery and renewal. His pocket notebooks were compiled into volumes of "Überlegungen," literally: "Considerations." They've been called the "black notebooks" because the little notebooks that he carried around in his pocket, from the mid-1930s until 1971 or so, had black covers.
Entertaining specious visitors.
The tea will be ready in a moment.
The hat is fine as is, thank you, a piece of work indeed (like Van Gogh's shoes.)
One might say THE experience of thinking.
Indeed, the text that has been translated as "The Thinker As Poet" (link below) is titled by Heidegger "Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens" (1947), "From the experience of thinking."
The once long posting here has become too long, too revised to not move:
... "on 'the experience of thinking'"
http://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2014/08/thinking.html
Heidegger as poet meets himself as "Heidegger, the poet." Heidegger on "Heidegger."
March 15, 2017: Due to Dropbox, Inc's change in platform, the image link below is no longer valid. Please rely on the link from the discursive-living blog. Thanks.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
[back to the project: http://gedavis.com/mh/heid002.html ]
.
REAL MARTIN...
summer 1924.... Young Gadamer organized a picnic, including a cart that had to be pulled to the site, which he enlisted philosophers Hartmann and Heidegger to endure, each pulling one shaft of the 2-shafted cart (meant for a mule). Late in life, Gadamer recalled that day: “Heidegger on such occasions displayed a charming boyish sense of humor. When, on the return journey, the cart was empty, he suddenly let Hartmann do all the pulling on his own...jumped onto t...he cart and opened his umbrella.” Martin was 34, composing Being and Time.
summer 1946 (a year after "Conversation on a Country Path")....Chinese philosopher Paul Shih-yi Hsiao was in Todtnauberg studying with Heidegger. Eventually, they decided to translate the Tao Te-Ching together. “Because of the very thorough nature of Heidegger’s thinking, we had only worked on eight of eighty-one chapters by the end of the summer. According to the insightful observation of his friend Hans Fischer-Baricol on a personal visit, Heidegger was 'a timid, very shy person. Not only modest in the conventional sense, but one who listened in a remarkable way, very attentive to what the other person had to say, humble....Committed to thinking, and, it seemed to me, most people did not want to come without any thoughts before the presence of these eyes—these truly remarkable, astonishing eyes that listened rather than looked. Even though the nature of Heidegger’s humor was not clear to me, these eyes were able to laugh.'...” Martin, 56, would compose, that autumn, "What Are Poets For?" after the Holocaust.
I say: LIFE...Let there be fair flourishing
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[back to the project: http://gedavis.com/mh/heid001.html ]
FOR ITS ARRIVING
"The default of God and the divinities is absence. But absence is not nothing; rather it is precisely the presence, which must first be appropriated, of the hidden fullness and wealth of what has been and what, thus gathered, is presencing, of the divine in the world of the Greeks, in prophetic Judaism, in the preaching of Jesus. This no-longer is in itself a not-yet of the veiled arrival of its inexhaustible nature."
from: "A Letter to a Young Student, 18 Ju...ne, 1950," PLT, 182
(His response isn't excluding there being the divine beyond regioning of Europe; rather, he addresses what's appropriate to the student's letter of 1950.
The entire book from which that's quoted, PLT: 182, is available online here:
https://drive.google.com/…/0B-uGyW1Q1MeMclhHazEtb2cwaW8/view
ABOUT BEGINNING AGAIN in reverence
This is 1975, referring the viewer to a specific work, 1964, which is available in the book _On Time and Being_ (1972). He died in May, 1976. Born on a 26th, he died on a 26th, a few months after Hannah Arendt, December, '75.
________________________________________
What is his sudden look in the last fraction of the last second of the video—a little, very private recoil: embarrassment toward a fatefulness OF the word? von Kleist's reverence has been made into an interview object, there and gone, like so much of our talktalktalk?
Anyway, notice that Heidegger is pulling out a black notebook, from which he reads. There are hundreds of black notebook pages (1200+, I've heard) at the end of his Collected Works, now being published. (The notebooks were least important in his Collected Works, therefore bound last. But they are there.) He knows exactly where to go in the black notebook at that moment, for the quote he wants to share for posterity (in this piece of rare interviewing in a singular documentary that he agreed to do). The ready-to-hand presentness of that notebook is surely because he intended in advance to emphasize that passage. He knows his hundreds of pages intimately. Reading THAT passage was like appearing nude for an examination.
That passage is what all of the notebooks are essentially about because his works are essentially about being a precursor for future thinking: THAT thought. The gang media will pull something else out, and will make something else THE thought that matters to them. But the thought prevailing for Heidegger from the notebooks is the one he chooses to share, about being a reverent precursor possessed by reverent precursors.
Anyway, here's the lecture: "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking": http://tinyurl.com/nwthlrd
The rigorous simple-mindedness of Heidegger's presentations in later life is due, I think, to wanting to influence young audiences. I loved his work when I was young. When I read him now, I can feel again my fresh introduction to beginning to learn how to think better WITH things (texts, ideas, loves, etc.). But we're not in the mid-'60s. One should think with a philosopher in understanding his time THROUGH him (or her!).
Yet, presencing presence—presence OF presencing—already always appeals to one's loving of life.
For what, to where is your love drawn? Think of it, how it is, how it may be.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[back to the project: http://gedavis.com/mh/heid001.html ]
PATHS AND HEIGHTS
Heidegger’s path in Messkirch is allegorical of his career, perhaps.
"To head toward a star—this only..."
from M.H., "The Thinker as Poet"
The Heidegger family gravestones that aren't for Martin and his wife have Christian crosses at the top. The gravestone for Martin and his wife has a six-point star.
WHAT IS TRANSLATION?
The great translator Ralph Manheim (namesake of a coveted award given to translators, the “PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, ” “likened his work...,” says the New York Times obituary, 1992—”likened his work to acting, saying a translator’s challenge was ‘to impersonate his author,’” NOT to impersonate THE author, but to enown the author, “his author,” in the Act of translation.
[CAPPED words only mean italics for me, in this crude medium that won'...t allow italics. So, a better version of this long posting is now:
"what is translation?"
http://discursive-living.blogspot.com/20…/…/translation.html
The essentially hermeneutical question will be pursed beyond this posting (and beyond my 2007 discussion:
"discursive reading"
http://gedavis.com/re/reading.html
.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[back to the project: http://gedavis.com/mh/heid003.html ]
.
WHAT IS BEING GERMAN?: 1934-35
What is renewal for "We" who must enown Our region?
[publisher's description} Martin Heidegger’s 1934–1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine” are considered the most significant among Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger’s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and ...his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin’s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger’s changing relation to politics, his turn toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. First published in 1980 as volume 39 of Heidegger’s Complete Works, this graceful and rigorous English-language translation will be widely discussed in continental philosophy and literary theory.
See More
THINGS OF APPROPRIATING
Though Heidegger's essay "The Thing" is widely available in English, it's maybe useful to also indicate a PDF of it, the link below. Also, at the end of this note is a link to a PDF of the entire book (which downloads slower, maybe).
[March 15, 2017: Due to Dropbox, Inc's change in platform, the image link below is no longer valid. A revised version of this posting is here:...
Continue Reading