Wednesday, December 15, 1999

David Farrell Krell, Animality, & Heidegger

Seventh letter.

Forget what I said about Krell. His style is irritating but he really has a thorough grasp, not only of Heidegger, but especially of the nature of animal life. You would get a lot out of reading DAIMON LIFE. He does discuss the similarity of God and dog, the divinity of animal, but always with an air of hesitancy as though he's afraid he is going to make an absurd statement that his colleagues are going to laugh at him for. And yet he still lays it plainly on the line even though at times he resolves in the form of a question left hanging which, unfortunately, also leaves the discussion hanging in the air with a failure to fully commit when one has just presented all the evidence like a defense lawyer concluding, "Now do you really think my client is guilty?" This does have the virtue of not determining what the reader should believe, but does leave the subject inconclusive when we are on the verge of going on to fabulous things! He quotes Heidegger saying (p17), "human analysis practically runs out of alternatives when it rejects mechanistic views of animality" which sums up the difficulty of reading THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS. He notes that the main difference between animal and man is that man can speak but misses the key ambiguity on p. 259 that, "From the perspective of the animal (captivation) we should never take these other things as beings, though for us it is only possible to approach such things by way of naming through language. But linguistic naming, and all language, always already involves an understanding of beings . . ." LINGUISTIC NAMING, not human naming. Maybe this is unjustified also, but Krell's insistence on the superhumanism of Heidegger (footnote 23, p. 323) ignores statements Heidegger made numerous times that language speaks man, not the other way around. Therefore Heidegger's whole analysis of animal life as "poor in world" is an analysis of the "They-self" of man, the inauthentic necessity of human life as opposed to the purely momentary "moment of vision" of authenticity. "It is nothing enduring that could stand over against the animal as a possible object--whether as something changed or unchanged in the process. The self withdrawal of that which disinhibits (uncovers, a description of being 'itself'-- from me) corresponds to the essential inability to attend to it which is involved in behavior, that is, the inability to attend to that which disinhibits as something present to hand." The categories "present to hand" and "ready to hand" in the purposeful context of the human WORK world cover over how these beings reveal themselves presenting their active phenomena that "shine", as both Heidegger and Indian philosophers say, that arise from "phusis" and return to it ("It is nothing enduring that could stand over the animal as a possible object . . ."). Must go now, shall conclude with an important quotation from THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS (p. 257):

"Thus we can see that the circumsized range of possible disinhibition or, as we put it, the disinhibiting ring, is intrinsic to the animal itself; that in its factical life amongst beings in each case the animal itself carves out a quite specific encircling ring within which it can be stimulated, i.e., a prior ring of potential disinhibition. Every animal surrounds itself with such an encircling ring, but it does not do so subsequently, as if the animal initially lived or ever could live without this encircling ring altogether, as if this encircling ring somehow grew up around the animal at a latter stage (pre-ontological understanding from BEING AND TIME from me). On the contrary, EVERY LIVING BEING (me), how every rudimentary (go in the opposite direction--me) it might appear (! me) to be, is surrounded in every moment of its life by such an encircling ring of possible disinhibition (the clearing, uncovering, "aletheia"--me). More precisely, we must say that life (all life--me) is nothing but the animal's encircling itself and struggling with its encircling ring, a ring by way of which the animal is absorbed without its ever being with itself in the proper sense (the "They" self--me)."

I hope you haven't responded because you are too busy and not because something has happened to you. I am about the same age as you and am all too aware of the frailty of fleshly existence. And I want to read your future planed books, especially animals and fatherhood and, of course, FALLEN HEROES. But I also want you to write a book on your life and studies in India. The passing hints you have given in your books are extremely intriguing and I would love to find out why you specifically choose Abhinavagupta to study instead of what would seem to be the automatic choice of Shankara! Thank you for your time.