Aphorisms: recent and new developments

1 Both Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers wanted philosophy to move beyond the dead historical writings of academic school/university philosophy departments. They both wanted a "living philosophy" instead of these ultra-dry historical "problems". Heidegger in the early 1930s tried the political turn - unsuccessfully. Jaspers left Germany for a better life.

Although they had an impact on 20th century philosophy, both had their plans stopped, since philosophy does not have a "pay off".

2 At what point is a new beginning just another re-bake of the same old thing? Who are the ones that come but once? Philosophical schools are only for the weak. How much can we break with what has been our tradition for thousands of years? Is this all dead and gone? Or must we gather all of our strength for our bow and shoot a new arrow into the future?

3 Did Nietzsche ever have a sense of wonder like the Greeks (Aristotle's beginning)? Nietzsche's wanderings meant he never landed, he never came to rest; but his roots, his origins, and his beginnings were religion and morality. Heidegger may have started with religion but he never took up ethics. Heidegger denied wonder as the starting point for a new beginning. Where should our age beginning for a new beginning in philosophy? I do not think this is a personal decision; rather, this is the issue of distress.

4 Heidegger's reading of the Plato's Sophist was the beginning of the publication of Being and Time (1927); but did every thing really begin with lecture courses and the questions from the winter semester of 1919-1920? The roots may have been with Da-sein, but the whole tree and the woods are with a single, sole, unique, and one-only question (the foundations for all questions) for Heidegger. Answer/question/questionable: Being? What about Franz Clemens Brentano's (1838-1917) dissertation, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862) which was given to Heidegger by Conrad Gröber in September of 1907. Heidegger certainly would not have forgotten about this jewel. Historical note: Husserl started with Brentano's of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. (1874)

5 In what way do Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, and now Heidegger all function as a critical bottleneck which restricts what is and what is not philosophy - what can be philosophy in the future and what cannot be philosophy evermore? Hegel is a different case - in a way that leads to Karl Marx (1818-1883) and a major change in the world. Marx was more concerned with changing the world than merely an interpretation and a conceptualizing of the world. Was Marx's point more toward defining a worldview, which, of course, was socialism and communism? Can we call those worldviews? Moreover, do they need and use facts for their own rational positions? Even the name Marx used "scientific socialism"; this speaks volumes to us today.

6 Which philosophers presuppose the whole notion of man as rational animal, as man being a mix of animal and reason? Heidegger wrote, ".all philosophy from first to last merely unfolds its presupposition."
(Heidegger's Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. (GA 32, et. 36). Why do we assume and presuppose that man has reason? Where did philosophers find this faculty? Answer: in the bushes (Nietzsche's remark). Reason is a sub-species of thinking. Even just a simple statement like: man is the thinking animal - already has all of the presuppositions built into it. Can we say that Nietzsche still presupposes man as animal rational? Is this yet another case of Heidegger contra Nietzsche?

7 If we use Plato's allegory, should philosophical systems start with shadows in the cave or with world in the sunlight? Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit starts with the shadows and shows 'us' the direction up to the sunlight. We can then consider Hegel's Science of Logic in this allegory as our world in the sunlight. Where can philosophical or metaphysical systems (systema) start? Can we take a stand or position where we see the whole overview of the cave? Or, are we trapped in the images and are we moving in shadows? Hegel wants to move us toward the sunlight - why is it so hard for us to advance? There are ties back to the cave and that always draws philosophers like Hegel to the metaphysical and onto-theological within the essence of metaphysics.

8 Question: who is our Heidegger? Teacher? Preacher? Advocate? Speaker? Guru? Pundit? Scholar? Philosopher? Thinker? Guide? Climbing guide? Spokesman? Boss? Truth policeman? Priest? Moral authority? Sirdar? Questioner? Interrogator? How is our understanding of Heidegger based on these views? Which one would Heidegger pick? Where would you place others - like Anaximander, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Lotze, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Husserl, Jaspers, or Wittgenstein? Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger did not want disciples. Why is that? Our direction is thinking and not forming schools of philosophy. Why would you want another -ism? Viewlessness may lead you to thinking - at least we can hope.

9 Can any of us say we are feeling sick until the overman appears? Newspaper headlines - Heidegger finds Nietzsche's overman in the Black Forest. Reinhold Messner does a solo up the mountain. Futurologists call in Utopians - stock market is affected. You see how confusing this can become? None of this fits very well together. This shows how the practical nature of philosophy does not fit very well with the practical aspect of our current events. Kant is a methodologist.

10 The method question. The importance of method brings us to Rene Descartes' (1596-1650) work Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Regulae ad directionem ingenii), which was published fifty years after his death in 1701. Descartes said in Regula IV, "Method is necessary for discovering the truth of nature." For example, Kant says he was working out the method, that is, the proper method for metaphysics. Right in the beginning of the Critique of Pure Reason (first edition 1718, second edition 1787), he writes about what he is up to "It is a treatise on the method, not a system of the science itself; but it catalogs the entire outline of the science of metaphysics, both in respect of its boundaries and in respect of its entire internal structure." (CPR, Bxxii). Yes, what is our method? Do you think the method will help you?

11 Heidegger in a letter to Medard Boss (August 17, 1965 - Heidegger's age would be in the mid-70s; he was planning a seminar) their he wrote, "This time I need more leeway to prepare for it because the correct introduction to the methodological problem creates considerably more difficulties than everything else to date." (Zollikon Seminar, et. p. 272). He then follows up that remark with a point in a later letter
(September 12, 1965), when he writes, "I am still not quite clear about how to proceed with the reflection about method." (et. p. 272). Does philosophy have its own method? Why did Heidegger get stuck on the reflections about method when he was in his 70s? One of the key points of Heidegger's early breakthrough publication, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927, was his building on the radical methodology of phenomenology
("to the things themselves"), which Heidegger re-did with his own approach of hermeneutical phenomenology for fundamental ontology. So, the point of re-doing philosophy with a methodology of hermeneutical phenomenology was a major change at that time. Can we say that Heidegger was a methodologist at that time? Answer: yes. Therefore, what happened later to his methodological approach? Heidegger says in the Contributions to Philosophy (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1938), "For when it comes to Seyn (Being) and its truth, one must begin again and again." (GA 65 section 5). This was always a criticism of Schelling that he did not have a finished and complete system; that Schelling often started over again. For Heidegger this was his way of doing philosophy. Philosophy is not a dead system without questions.

12 Philosophers come after large social revolutions (Hegel's motto of the Owl of Minerva). Philosophers come before their time (Nietzsche, Heidegger). Philosophers have nothing to do with their time or epoch
(analytical philosophers). Where does Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) stand? Was Wittgenstein a product of his Vienna just like Heidegger was a product of southern Germany? Should we speak of philosophers as physicians? Who are the physicians of our culture or our planetary age?

13 If water is the analogy for the Dao (Tao), then what is the analogy for Heidegger's Ereignis? The rock is the quarry. How far will Heidegger let the tree bend? What is the real bottom line for Heidegger - time is Being (Seyn). (Note: no question mark here).

14 Can we reverse time as a series of moments to a spatialized temporality of lived experience? This has become a sound byte on T. V. since no one can pay attention any longer. Music is the counterconcept to time as a series of moments. What is the time of dreams? How do we wake up just before the alarm goes off in the morning? Trust reality or be chained to our appearances - you chose.

15 What lead Karl Marx beyond being just a simple philosophy professor? Heidegger tried some political involvement in just university politics; his teacher Joseph Sauer
(1872-1949) (Päpstlichen Hausprälaten, Papal House Prelate) did the same with wildly different results. Everyone knows about Heidegger's involvement and how he ended up digging ditches at the end of WW II. But Karl Marx had a different destiny and influence on the world. Has Heidegger's great influence moved much beyond being a philosophy professor? Answer: ok, a little, but that was not his destiny nor his goal in life.

16 "The alpha and omega of all philosophy is freedom." Contained in a letter from Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775-1854) to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770-1831), February 4, 1795. Ferrer, on the other hand, thinks that the alpha and omega of philosophy is not freedom, but rather the essential nature of philosophy in itself. What is philosophy? The revolution inside philosophy is a question about the very nature of philosophy as such. This is always the radical revolution within the sway of philosophy in general. The paradigm switches are not in how we understand or think about freedom; but, rather, in the nature of what are we doing when we are doing "philosophy", when we are "philosophizing" - this is what have changed for us. Perhaps this is what philosophy turns around and what it does "to" us.

17 How much philosophy is really about the utopian question? The better the "other" world the better world here on earth, the better person, the moral person, the good person, the better government, the better university; all of this hovers around the issue of how to bring a utopia to us on earth. Heaven on earth. If only we had the "answer," then we would be able to bring earth up to the ideal. Really? I do not think so - what kind of a realist are you? Plato's Republic is just the beginning.

18 Heidegger, said in regard to Aristotle, "With Aristotle the greatest philosophical knowledge of antiquity is expressed, a knowledge which even today remains unappreciated and misunderstood in philosophy" (GA 33, Aristotle's Metaphysics U 1-3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force, et. p. 188).

Aristotle writes in the Metaphysics: "it is because of wondering that men began to philosophize and do so now. First they wondered at the difficulties close at hand; then, advancing little by little, they discussed difficulties also about greater matters; for example, about the changing attributes of the Moon and the Sun, and about the generation of the universe. Now a man who is perplexed and wonders considers himself ignorant . . . so if indeed [he] philosophized in order to avoid ignorance, it is evident that [he] pursued science in order to understand and not in order to use it for something else. This is confirmed by what happened; for it was when almost all of the necessities of life were supplied, both for comfort and activity, that such thinking began to be sought." (Metaphysics I, 2.982b13-25). Does this not ring with what Hegel said in the Science of Logic? However, we see how the whole concept "wonder" becomes the sine qua non of the beginning of philosophy in the first and original beginning of philosophy by the Greeks. Where is the beginning of philosophy for the Indian and Chinese philosophers? Wonder was just where the Aristotle started (perhaps he got that from Plato, maybe the rest of the Greeks too). Philosophy and religion in India maybe said to have started with suffering.

19 Fundamental insight: Nietzsche started with morality. Heidegger started very early with theology and he certainly had a methodological stage. But somewhere in the 1920s Heidegger started with the ontological phase. As far we know, Heidegger never left it. Heidegger equals ontology, or Heidegger = ontology; but it is not Heidegger equals metaphysics or ontology as an ontotheological project.

20 "Nihilism as the divine way of thinking". (Will to Power, #15, Spring-Fall 1887). This means that nihilism is the powerfulness to create everything anew (Will to Power, #14, Spring-Fall 1887). Nietzsche lamented these thoughts with the words: two thousand years and not a single new God. But he thought that we still have enough chaos within us to give birth to a "dancing star." Therefore, the question is simply: do we still have the power for our own creative forces? Do we still have the power to create ex nihilo? Answer: no, we do not have the power to overcome. The re-valuation of all values needs the clean power to create the values; in fact, the trans-valuation of all values needs the power to revive up new values and to posit them as ideas, ideals, and goals toward which we move our life force (assuming we have any life force left). All of the old goals: life-in-the-hereafter, the progress of civilization, the space race, Johnson's Great Society - nothing else comes to mind (what does that tell you?).

21 Nietzsche said in 1885 (Will to Power, #409), "What dawns on philosophers last of all: they must no longer accept concepts as gifts, nor merely purify and polish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them convincing." Heidegger talks about Reinigung, section 110, subsection 26."(What unfolds as "destruction" in Sein und Zeit does not mean dismantling as demolishing but as purifying..."
(Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1939), GA 65, German pp. 220-221) Heidegger continues, "in the direction of freeing basic metaphysical positions. But considering the enactment of echo and playing-forth, all of this prelude." Somehow I take this as a basic stance by Heidegger as to what he is up to with his thinking. The living (not dead) in Heidegger.

22 Why are philosophers concerned with how to act? Not just with themselves, but that they should want "laws" for how others should act. How many "rules" do we need? What happened to the one "rule"? The golden rule - can they think of how to apply that rule? Why do they want to tell others what are the "rules?" Is it the fear of overcoming the chaos with rules? Is this the answer or the question mark? Instead of moral people we have rule following people, who are just following the "rules" without humanity. Even the military has seen through this logic and trained soldiers how to fight and kill in a moral and humane way. No, I was just following the rules (orders).

23 Do thoughts come to us as a philosophical article or "work"? I think not. (Will to Power, #424, 1885). Nietzsche agrees, he says "no". The aphoristic method is somehow our "raw" thoughts that are encapsulated in words and language. Philosophical research and investigations are where the analysis phase takes over and "produces" something for all or at least, for someone to read. This is often the justification after the "fact" of the written word - but where is thought? I think? Then why does this come out in English? Or, sometimes it comes out in German or Hindi. I can say it in Chinese, but somehow it is not my thinking process. Why is that?

24 Is Heidegger part of a reaction? Nietzsche said in Will to Power (#427 Nov 1887- March 1888), that "The philosopher, on the other hand, is the reaction: he desires the old virtue." In what way does Heidegger desire the old virtues of the Greek world? Heidegger is using the new modern phenomenological method, but is he pointing backward to a non-modern, non-technological world? Or, does he point toward the future? Heidegger is both; he provokes the contradiction and all of the countermovements, plus he has certainly provoked the reaction. But is the reaction to Heidegger really connected to what is Heidegger's main thrust, his sole unique thought, his single thought? Or, is it less connected? All great thinkers demand a reaction of us. Heidegger makes us into a re-action, a movement in thought, a countermovement and counter-motion as part of contra-thinking. In other words, he pushes us and we want to push back. At bottom we have some level of "discontent" with Heidegger's project - he does not want mindless followers who chase his every word. Philology is the other side of philosophy. Why do the Germans have philology departments and why are there very few in the USA?

25 Can we view Heidegger as a "destroyer" like Nietzsche? Did he stop us in our tracks and make us backup and re-think everything? Yes and no. Heidegger is and was a destroyer of our classical "metaphysics"; but his great "yes-saying" seems to be more. Both of them understood the problems connected with the use of given "concepts". Even Hegel understood the problem of making 'German' speak real, honest-to-goodness "philosophy". Martin Heidegger said: "Philosophy cannot appear in public in any other way, since all essential titles have become impossible, because all fundamental words have been used up and the genuine relation to the word has been destroyed." (Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1939, first page). This is part of the reason why Heidegger had a tough time with Nietzsche, when he realized a part of the nature of Nietzsche's critique of Philosophers and their like. Heidegger seems to be caught in the Nietzschean dilemma - one horn or the other. Hegel notes, "The method itself by means of this moment expands itself into a system." (Science of Logic, et. p. 838). The system has the inner movement of the method to push toward the telos. How do speak of philosophy without the use of grammar that is tied to metaphysics.

26 Nietzsche's answer to Plato is Thucydides. Was that because of his philosophy or just simply his worldview? My answer to Plato is Heidegger. Heidegger's answer to Plato is the high point of metaphysics
(the great Hegel) and the complete countermovement to Plato is Nietzsche. Twist Plato until he becomes Nietzsche - this is Heideggerian squeeze play. Wring and mangle Plato until he produces a Hegel and a Nietzsche. How does Plato become both the central force for both Hegel and Nietzsche? How much of Aristotle is Hegel? Perhaps more Aristotle than Plato, but still the overall background is still Plato. Even Aristotle spent years with Plato. Where is Kant in this picture? The transcendental conditions transform the issue of eternal ideas. Hegel has infused Aristotle and Plato with an ontotheological "system". Kant has questions, but Hegel's metaphysical system is a complete picture once you get out of the cave into the sunlight.

27

Nietzsche uses the German expression Versuch an experiment, and an attempt. In the Gay Science: la gaya scienza, 1886, he says, "We ourselves wish to be our experiments." (#319). Individuals must develop and attempt their own singular unique historical thinking. Fly and be your own eagle, do not be sheep. Nietzsche stated clearly with the expression, "I want no "believers" (Ecce Homo, "Why I am a Destiny", section #1). How many philosophers in the history of philosophy would have said they want no "believers" in their metaphysical systems? Why write out philosophy at all? On the other side, all philosophy is a journey - therefore, why is there a need or desire to write it down for others to digest? Alternatively, get sick. Write what down is really our/the question.

28 If we knew the truth, then why do we have to search for it? In addition, if we do not know the truth, then how will we find it out in the world? If I told you the nature of truth, then would you believe me? Alternatively, in fact could I even write it on this page? Truth is written on a page and read by someone, who is somewhere, and at some time in the future. Although this is really just a question to make you think along with me, have you followed me yet? Who will read this and see anything close to the Truth on this written page? What is the ultimate value of your truth or is it just my truth? Can you lose the truth like your car keys?

29 "Aus einem einfachen Ruck des wesentlichen Denkens muß das Geschehen der Wahrheit des Seyns versetzt werden vom ersten Anfang in den anderen, damit im Zuspiel das ganz andere Lied des Seyns erklinge". Martin Heidegger. (GA 65 p. et. 7).

"Following a simple shift of essential thinking, the happening of the truth of Seyns must be transposed from the first beginning into the other, so that the wholly other song of Seyns sounds in the playing-forth." (GA
65 p. et. 7).

How to read the Contributions to Philosophy? Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)?

This is the question, but the answer is simple - carefully. What makes this a difficult text for the reader? Heidegger is not lecturing on a philosophical text or a historical philosopher. This is not a typical philosophical text working through philosophical problems, arguments, investigations, schools, or -isms. One of the most difficult problems with reading this text is that there is no object. The matter for thought is no thing or no object. The text is not some reflections on different topics. All this makes the text a difficult text for readers. Heidegger does not structure the text for the reader even though these are not aphorisms or just simple notes to himself. This text is a very original philosophical project similar to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Plato's Sophist, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Schelling's Of Human Freedom, or Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. On the other hand, for that matter, it similar to Heidegger's own Being and Time. All of these philosophical texts (and some of them are 'works') are exceedingly difficult to read and to understand their philosophical purpose. Many original philosophical texts have their own innovative and creative use of language and the Contributions to Philosophy (1936-1939) is certainly a case in point. Heidegger used an original but structured language in Being and Time (1927) and yet, ten years later Heidegger re-invented his language in a way that does not resemble Being and Time. Even a famous Heideggerian term like Da-sein, which used extensively in both texts, is re-conceptualized and re-polished in the Contribution to Philosophy. It is almost a pre-rhetorical use of the same terms that Heidegger wants us to hear in a different way. Nietzsche often over-determines his concepts (too enriched), but Heidegger has strength in his deep understanding of language and the inner nature of philosophical thinking. Heidegger did not publish this text during his lifetime and it was only published fifty years after it was written. Supposedly, Martin Heidegger directed his son Dr. Hermann Heidegger to publish this text after the so-called historical lectures had already been published in the Gesamtausgabe (GA) (Ausgabe letzter Hand. "Wege - nicht Werke"). Heidegger makes many references in the Contributions to Philosophy to many other writings that were written during those same years (1936-1939) that have not been published yet.

Hence, it makes those references in the Contributions to Philosophy difficult for the reader, since the context for those references is missing. For instance, in the important section number 265 with title: "En- thinking of Being (Seyn)*". The footnote reference '*" at the bottom of the page says, "Cf. Überlegungen VII, 78ff." This is a reference to volume 95 of Gesamtausgabe to be published at the very end of the Gesamtausgabe project. In the middle of section 267 is a more general reference to the Überlegungen IV (GA 94). There are many references to these volumes and many other volumes that have yet to be published, but these were for Heidegger in some "final" state such that he could make references to exact pages. The dates for these volumes, which are not yet published, start from 1930 and go up to 1939. There is some indirect evidence that the Überlegungen (English translation of this word might be "considerations") were at least started in the late 1930s, but until these are published we only have part of the story and context related to Contributions to Philosophy. So, the internal text points to a much wider context of texts and writings which extend beyond the Contributions to Philosophy and relate to the whole of Heidegger's path of thinking during this fruitful and productive period. Heidegger was in his later
40s during this time. At first glance, readers may think that these are just Heidegger's personal notes to himself and were never meant for publication. Heidegger remarks in Bestimmung (GA 66, p. 427) that the Contributions to Philosophy is not up to the level of a philosophical "work". But even though Heidegger calls it an unmastered plan
(GA 65 section 1, et. p. 5), still it does have a structure. Martin Heidegger compared the handwritten version with the typed version that his brother Fritz Heidegger had completed in June 1939. In addition, Heidegger makes references to how central the Contributions to Philosophy is in other publications written just after it.

Therefore, even though Heidegger viewed this as major text and important project - nevertheless, we need to ask the question why Heidegger did not publish it during his lifetime. In theory, Heidegger may have thought it was only after the publication of many of his other writings that we would be "prepared" for a deeper understanding of what he was attempting in Contributions to Philosophy. It remains to be seen if "we" Heideggerians are in fact ready to read the Contributions to Philosophy. Just as when Nietzsche complained about being "misunderstood, misjudged, misidentified, slandered, misheard, and not heard"
(The Gay Science, Book Five, section 371), can we assume that Heidegger would say the same thing? Heidegger knew that most likely he would be at least "misunderstood." The whole structure that he tried to put into Being and Time was one attempt to be "clear". But very little was attempted by Heidegger in Contributions to Philosophy to make it "clear" for the reader. I think it is an important point that Heidegger has called the first part of the text "Preview" (Sections 1-49 or some 70 pages in the English translation). Where is Fichte when we need him?

Hegel never like 'prefaces' or 'introductions' since they were really never part of the actual system or science of philosophy, but Heidegger wants to give us a 'preview' before we get going into the six unequal jointures or facets. Heidegger says, "Each of the six joinings of the jointure stands for itself, but only in order to make the essential onefold more pressing. In each of the six joinings the attempt is made always to say the same of the same, but in each case from within another essential domain of that which enowning names." (GA 65 et., p. 57). In this passage Heidegger points out the 'essential domain' is what differs in the attempt. But the structure itself is still difficult in the reading and interpretation of this text. The question of why it appears to have 'repetitions' of topics and named sections is answered by Heidegger (GA 65, cf. section
39). But Heidegger then makes an interesting remark, a "hidden inter-resonating" about the structure of the whole text. However, many of us have yet to see how this is worked out in the details of the text.

On the other side, Hegel, in the Science of Logic, makes a great number of points about the whole progression within the Science of Logic and also in his letters. For Hegel, this is more than just a simple idea of dialectical. Heidegger is contra Hegel on speculative philosophy. A letter from Hegel states, "Philosophical content has in its method and soul three forms: it is, 1, abstract, 2, dialectical, and 3, speculative." Hegel to Niethammer Nuremberg, October 23, 1812. (Werke III, 301-16). It is in the Science of Logic that Hegel sees the progression and the unity inside the movement of the notion (Begriff). Heidegger also sees the question of the inner unity of the text, but, unlike Hegel, he is not doing a "system". The question of the inner unity and structure of the Contributions to Philosophy goes to one of the most difficult questions for Heidegger, namely, how to do philosophy but not to do systematic metaphysics. Without doing aphorisms, Heidegger is drawn back into the issue of doing philosophy but not doing metaphysics. What is Heidegger's methodology in the various stages of his philosophical development?

30 We now need to try to gain some insight into how to come to grips with Heidegger through a Heideggerian methodology (hermeneutics, phenomenology - you name it). How would Heidegger read Heidegger? How would Heidegger expect "us" as thoughtful Heideggerians to read Heidegger and write about him? Heidegger (more than Kant or Hegel) has made us aware of the difficulties with the whole issue of the "how" of reading philosophical texts. Nietzsche often talked to his "readers" about how to read him. Do we know anywhere that Heidegger has given us much direction on how to read his "real" philosophical texts (like GA 65)? We know that he wanted most of the lectures on historical philosophical texts to be published before the Beiträge was published - I think this gives us some indication of how we might read his texts. But I think we still have an open problem for Heideggerians on how to read Heidegger as Heidegger would want us to read him. It is interesting that some of his students' Protokolls have been published with the Gesamtausgabe. How can we read Heidegger as a Heideggerian without being a "believer" or a "disciple"? Where does Heidegger talk to his readers as Nietzsche does in Ecce Homo?

31 "For the rare who bring along the utmost courage for solitude, in order to think the nobility of Seyn and to speak of its uniqueness." Martin Heidegger. (Footnote: GA 65 et. p.
9).

Who are the rare? Reading some of these thoughts by Heidegger, I get a strong feeling that Nietzsche is in the background. "I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it is perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant.' (Will to Power, #420 1884). My first sense in reading this whole text is: Nietzsche is in the background. Nietzsche is certainly not in the foreground
(Heidegger is in the foreground), but I think Nietzsche is much closer than Kant or Hegel.

32 "By contrast, in philosophical knowing a transformation of the man who understands takes place with the very first step - not in a moral, "existentiell" sense but rather with Da-sein as measure." (GA 65, et. p.
10)

The more I read, the more I realize that Heidegger is radically transforming what it means to do philosophy. What is the nature of Philosophy and philosophical knowing according to the Beiträge? How does one do philosophy according to the Beiträge? One of the reasons this is a difficult text is because Heidegger is not just "telling" us some philosophical result, but he is "showing" what it means to do philosophy. Heidegger is not telling us about a house with four walls and that it looks like it has green siding on the outside of the house. Rather, the comparison is that Heidegger has moved us inside the house and there are no walls there, just open space. Since there are no walls inside the house, it is like no other house you have ever entered, that is, a different way of philosophizing. Thus, philosophers have a problem reading this text because it is not like any other philosophical text that they have read. Another part of this problem is that Heidegger is actually doing something different, not just giving us a picture or some proofs. Notice the word "transformation".

33 "If gods are the undecided, because at the beginning the opening for godding is still denied, what does it mean to say: at the disposal of the gods? That word means to stand ready for being used in opening the open." (GA 65, et. p. 13-14).

I think that as Heidegger made some points about the relationship between philosophy and theology, so this is not traditional theology. Heidegger is not sure if the God or God or gods have come and gone for good or are just hiding - which certainly does not sound like ontology and theology. BUT (and I underscore the "but") Heidegger is making the point about being open to the divine (the God or God or gods). Heidegger did raise the questions and clearly thought about the divine, so on the one hand, we can not say that Heidegger was closed to the possibility, but it is not clear that he had an actual theology. In other words, I think this is an open question that Heidegger wanted to remain an open question. The Buddha was silent on some questions and Heidegger has been silent on some questions (does Da-sein in Being and Time have a soul?); but, in this case, Heidegger wants to open the question and leave it open (at least that is my reading). Why do we want to find closure on this question? If there is a Divine/divine force, then we need to back out and let the divine force have its way with us.

34 "In this way the inceptual mindfulness of thinking becomes necessarily genuine thinking, i. e., a thinking that sets goals. What gets set is not just any goal, and not the goal in general, but the one and only and thus singular goal of our history. This goal is the seeking itself, the seeking of Seyn. It takes place and is itself the deepest find when man becomes the preserver of the truth of Seyn, becomes guardian and caretaker of that stillness, and is resolute in that." (GA 65, et. p. 13).

I find this passage insightful for me as a way to understand Heidegger. The background for me is teleology, maybe even active nihilism. Heidegger takes all of the metaphysics out of the question and directs in toward his transformation of philosophy - all in a very neat way. I really enjoyed this brief text and the way Heidegger has brought it together. Could we do teleology without metaphysics? Heidegger is at least trying. What are our future goals? Where are we heading and is there a purpose to the way we are heading (what are the 'reasons', the directions)?

35 Following his critique of Feuerbach, Marx wrote, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." (Theses On Feuerbach, written spring of 1845). One of Feuerbach's main works was entitled: Principles of Philosophy of the Future (1843), Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft. Nietzsche was reading this book in 1882 (see Thomas H. Brobjer, "Nietzsche's Reading and Private Library, 1885-1889"). I think Nietzsche got some of his inspiration from Feuerbach's pointing toward the future. One of Nietzsche's important works is entitled, "Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886). Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft. Therefore, in a sense, there is more than just the question of changing the world with philosophy, but the direction of philosophical thinking as pointing toward the future. Could Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and the later Schelling write something with this kind of title that is directed toward the future?

36 Kant begins the Critique of Pure Reason with a striking image: the "battlefield of these endless controversies is called metaphysics" (CPR, Avii). He then tells us a little story of how in the beginning metaphysics started with the "administration of the dogmatists, her rule was despotic" (CPR, Aix). These battles continued and almost came to an end with the famous John Locke (1632-1704), but "fell back into the same old worm-eaten dogmatism" (CPR, Ax). Thus, the text of the Critique of Pure Reason begins with the history of philosophy and then the final section is called the history of pure reason (Die Geschichte der reinen Vernunft). Within this beginning and ending is this treatise on the method of the "metaphysics of metaphysics", namely, the Critique of Pure Reason (Letter To Marcus Herz, May 11, 1781, Correspondence, et. p. 181). So, Kant is situating himself within his own history of pure reason, that is, within his own Metahistory of philosophy.

37 What Real Progress has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? Kant wrote this work in 1793. The German title is: Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte, die Metaphysik seit Leibnizens und Wolffs Zeiten in Deutschland gemacht hat?

Thus, philosophy has gone through three stages in regard to metaphysics. The first was the stage of dogmatism, the second skepticism, and third, the criticism of pure reason. (CPR, et p. 61).

This sounds again like Leibniz and Wolff (Wolff's follower, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762), Kant used his Metaphysics (1757). When Kant thinks of skepticism, I think, in this context, it must be in reference to Hume. Although already in December of 1792, in a letter to Jacob Sigismund Beck, Kant mentions the assumed name of Aenesidemus (real name is: Gottlob Ernst Schulze, 1761-1833) where "an even wider skepticism has been advanced" (Correspondence, et. p. 445). The complete title of the book was Aenesidemus oder über die Fundamente der von Herrn Professor Reinhold in Jena gelieferten Elementar- Philosophie, 1792. In Germany at this time, Schulze's name became synonymous with skepticism. Kant might also be thinking of the early Greek skeptics. For example, Kant mentions in a different context, "Pyrrho among others was a great Skeptic" (Lectures on Metaphysics, et. p. 305). Moreover, on the same page, he says, "Sextus Empiricus, who brought all doubts together"
(Lectures on Metaphysics, et. p. 305). Thus, Kant was well acquainted with skepticism from a variety of sources in the complete history of philosophy.

38 Kant said that Hume "aroused me from a dogmatic slumber" (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 1783). However, in the lecture notes called Metaphysik Mrongovius (1782-1783), we have an interesting and perhaps a more candid remark about Hume from almost the same year. Kant said,

"Something similar to a critique of pure reason was found with David Hume, but he sank into the wildest and most inconsolable speculation over this, and that happened easily because he did not study reason completely, but rather only this or that concept. An investigation of practices (facti), how we arrive at cognition, where from experience or though pure reason. Locke accomplished much here." (Lectures on Metaphysics, et. p. 137).

An interesting point is that again, we have the praise of the empiricist Locke and rather critical and almost sarcastic remarks about Hume. Kant is saying rather decisively that Hume's philosophy looked at "only this or that concept". This is Kant's position on the overall consequence of Hume's philosophical skepticism in relation to Kant's project of transcendental and critical idealism ("my transcendental, or, better, critical idealism" (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 1783). Kant's critical idealism points away from Humean skepticism. Kant does have unbounded trust in reason. The pervasiveness of these criticisms of Hume suggests strongly that Kant's rationalism was the foundation of his project. He was one among many. Kant knew more about the history of philosophy thanks to Johann Formey (1711-1797), Kurzgesfassete Historie der Philosophie von Hernn Formey, Berlin, 1763, (Abridged History of Philosophy).

39 Heidegger on Hegel:

1) Heidegger said in 1915, "Philosophy. now faces the huge task of fundamentally confronting the system of a historical worldview which is the most powerful with regard to its fullness, its depth, its conceptuality, and the richness of its experiences, and which as such has resumed and surpassed all proceeding fundamental philosophical problems; that is, it has to confront Hegel" (translation by Karin de Boer, GA 1:410
-411).

2) Heidegger said in 1946, "In spite of the superficial talk about the breakdown of Hegelian philosophy, one thing remains true: only this philosophy determined reality in the nineteenth century, although not in the external form of a doctrine followed, but rather as metaphysics, as the dominance of beingness in the sense of certainty. The counter movements to this metaphysics belong to it. Ever since Hegel's death
(1831), everything is merely a countermovement, not only in Germany, but also in Europe. (GA 32, "Overcoming Metaphysics", et. 89).

3) Heidegger said in 1958, "Accordingly, philosophy as the self-development of spirit into absolute knowledge and the history of philosophy are identical. No philosophy prior to Hegel's had acquired such a fundamental grounding of philosophy, enabling and requiring philosophizing itself to simultaneously move within its history and be in this movement philosophy itself. ("Hegel and the Greeks," Conference of the Academy of Sciences at Heidelberg. 1958).

Heidegger saw Hegel's philosophy as a huge system and as a task to overcome as part of metaphysics, but Heidegger's philosophical thinking was not close to Hegel. Question: how close is Heidegger to Hegel? - The simple answer is that they are not very close at all. Perhaps Nietzsche, the great anti-system thinker, is the farthest from Hegel. Heidegger is not far behind Nietzsche. We must attempt to be without a system and to do philosophy without doing metaphysics on our journey.

40 Heidegger seems to be closer to Schelling than to Hegel, when he remarks, ".for Schelling is the truly creative and boldest thinker of this whole age of German philosophy. He is that to such an extent that he drives German Idealism from within right past its own fundamental position." (Heidegger's Schelling's treatise on the essence of human freedom, et. p. 4). Heidegger made the following interesting statement about Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom when he remarked that it is, "The treatise which shatters Hegel's Logic before it was even published." (Schelling's treatise on the essence of human freedom Treatise, et. p. 97). Thus, it was Schelling that Heidegger saw as the boldest thinker of this epoch, not Hegel. For us this means Hegel still needs to be encountered, and thus his metaphysical systems need to be confronted. Heidegger is still part of that countermovement to the movement to Hegel, and if he needs Schelling's help to push the metaphysical foundations, well so be it! Let Schelling speak and be heard!

41 Hegel's thinking is in the camp of reason. There are of course the typical rationalist's positions, such as Descartes (1596-1650), Leibniz (1646-1716), and even Spinoza
(1632-1677). Spinoza's system was in the air during these times and was talked about in intellectual circles. Hegel's friend, Schelling, is often linked to Spinoza. Schelling at one stage often mimicked Spinoza's method of geometry, for example, laying down axioms and trying to prove those propositions.

Spinoza's rationalism led to pantheism. This raises the specter of the pantheism controversy ("All-is-one-ists") debated by F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819) and Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786); started by a report about G. E. Lessing (1729-1781). Lessing said he was a Spinozist shortly before his death, according to a report from Jacobi. The pantheism controversy drew Kant (1724-1804) into the dialogue as well. Hegel certainly would have understood his own theological position vis-a-via this debate. Hegel made a number of remarks about the shortcomings of Spinoza in the Science of Logic (e. t. p. 536). In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel said, "Spinoza's system is absolute pantheism and monotheism elevated into thought." Hegel sees himself within rationalism. However, Hegel's is a different kind of rationalism than Spinoza's. For example, the first part of the Science of Logic deals with substance similar to Spinoza's position and it is the only way of uplifting Spinoza is through Hegel.

42 Heidegger's own specific philosophical position vis-a-vis Hegel was, "If reading the problematic of Being and Time into some other text is ever nonsensical, then this is the case with Hegel. For the thesis that the essence of Being is time is the exact opposite of what Hegel tried to demonstrate in his entire philosophy." (GA 32, et. p. 145). Therefore, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is not some kind of early Being and Time. Only Kant has a glimmer of the problematic of Being and Time, according to Heidegger in his 1930 lecture. That glimmer was that the meaning of Being (Sinn von Sein) is finite temporality. Infinite has been lost to metaphysics.

43 The term "Phenomenology", it was used by J. H. Lambert (1728-1777) in 1764 the Neues Organon and was used by Kant in a number of places. The expression "Phenomenology" was also used by Fichte
(1762-1814) in his Berlin lectures of 1804. In a letter to J. H. Lambert, Kant stated, "A quite special, though purely negative Science, general phenomenology (phaenomologia generalis) seems to me to be presupposed by metaphysics." (1770). Kant discusses the position of phenomenology in his system in a 1772 letter to Marcus Herz: "The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its nature and method." Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason eleven years later in 1781. Kant's work could have been called the Phenomenology of Pure Reason. Both Hegel and Kant viewed their works as something that precedes metaphysics. These are philosophical issues that need to be worked out before actually engaging in creating the metaphysical system. This is not "physics" in the sense of Aristotle. Rather, these works are the presuppositions to metaphysics. Heidegger wrote, ".all philosophy from first to last merely unfolds its presupposition." (GA 32, et. 36). The Critique of Pure Reason is after physics, and yet before metaphysics; it is a prior, namely Kant's expression of the "metaphysics of metaphysics." Hegel at one point wrote in a similar vein of, "thinking of thinking". Kant spoke of phenomenology in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). The Fourth Chapter is entitled: "Metaphysical Foundations of Phenomenology", but his use of the term is different from Hegel's. At that point, for Kant, phenomenology meant something like a doctrine of appearance or Erscheinugslehre. Walter Kaufmann reported that Novalis (1772-
1801) used the term 'phenomenology' at this point in time as well. So, the term, phenomenology was being used in philosophical discourse at the time Hegel used it. Over time even Hegel changed the meaning and place in his philosophical system. Why did not Hegel footnote where he borrowed the term from?

44 Nietzsche said something very interesting to a position contra Hegel. "One chooses dialectic only when one has no other means. One knows that one arouses mistrust with it, that it is not very persuasive. Nothing is easier to erase than a dialectical effect: the experience of every meeting at which there are speeches proves this. It can only be self-defense for those who no longer have other weapons."
(Twilight of the Idols, 1888). Therefore, philosophers can see (pure, absolute, eternal) Notions as the ideas in the sunlight of Plato's cave, and yet, the Notion is methodology and the process of the dialectics. Spirit finds its pure element of existence in the Notion. The Notion is the entelecheia that is the internal movement of spiritual reality unfolding itself. Hegel, late in the Science of Logic, said, "In point of fact, as the principle of philosophy is the infinite free Notion, and all of its content rests on that alone." (Science of Logic, et. p. 817). In another important passage, he tied the Notion with Philosophy, saying, "Philosophy has the same content and the same end as art and religion; but it is the highest mode of apprehending the absolute Idea, because its mode is the highest mode, the Notion." (Science of Logic, et. p. 824). Thus, the purpose of the Phenomenology of Spirit is to get us to the standpoint of the circle of circles, namely, the pure, absolute, eternal, spiritual, ensouled reflected into itself - Notion. Where would Nietzsche see himself in this Hegelian process metaphysic (an absolute and final metaphysical system in the grand sense of the concept)? Nietzsche said, "In the history of the quest for knowledge the Germans are inscribed with nothing but ambiguous names, they have always brought forth only "unconscious" counterfeiters (-Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher deserve this epithet as well as Kant and Leibniz; they are all mere veil makers [veil makers = Schleiermacher (Ecce Homo, "The Case of Wagner"). [Die Deutschen sind in die Geschichte der Erkenntniss mit lauter zweideutigen Namen eingeschrieben, sie haben immer nur "unbewusste" Falschmünzer hervorgebracht (- Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher gebührt dies Wort so gut wie Kant und Leibniz, es sind Alles blosse Schleiermacher -)]. Nietzsche is making a pun on the last name of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834). The young Nietzsche, in his early essay "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life," 1873, said this about Hegel's influence: "I believe that there has been no dangerous variation or change in German culture in this century, which has not become more dangerous through the monstrous influence of the philosophy of Hegel, an influence which continues to flow right up to the present."

45 Philosophical anthropology. Heidegger says, "Having become philosophical anthropology, philosophy itself perishes of metaphysics." (Overcoming Metaphysics, 1946, et. p 99). Husserl and Heidegger attacked and counterattacked each other over the issue of whether their philosophies were philosophical anthropology only. Heidegger generally attacked most modern philosophers as being merely philosophical anthropologists. Of course, Heidegger connected this position to the metaphysical tendencies of contemporary philosophy. Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), in his attack on philosophical anthropology, mentioned Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) and Max Scheler (1874-1928), but Heidegger was the one who irked him the most. In his famous essay, Husserl started out saying, "As is well known, over the last decade some of the younger generation of German philosophers has been gravitating with ever increasing speed toward philosophical anthropology." (Lecture "Phenomenology and Anthropology" June 1931, et. p. 485). Part of his attack was the stinging remarks Husserl made about Heidegger that Being and Time was only philosophical anthropology.

46 Heidegger did an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel in September 1966, which was only to be published after his death. When Heidegger died in 1976, the interview was soon published a few weeks later. The interview seems to open up a much more personal tone of the later Heidegger's thinking on a great number of topics. You also get the sense that Heidegger is very humble about his influence and what can be done. However, this is a theology with no connections to metaphysics or the Onto-theo-logy nature of metaphysics. This is a step out. The followed passages give us a sense of Heidegger's thinking on the future of a post-metaphysical theo
-logy:

"Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poetizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering; for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder (Der Spiegel's Interview with Martin Heidegger, p. 277)."

Heidegger's last remark in this interview was, "For us contemporaries the greatness of what is to be thought is too great. Perhaps we might bring ourselves to build a narrow and not far-reaching footpath as a passageway" (Der Spiegel's Interview with Martin Heidegger, p. 284). So, we need a 'footpath' or some kind of path onward. Heidegger uses the image of the path a great deal in his writings for good reasons.

A Heidegger poem dating from 1971 says,

Paths, Paths of thought, going by themselves, vanishing. When they turn again, what do they show us? Paths, going by themselves, formerly open, suddenly closed, later on. Once pointing out the way, never attained, destined to renunciation - slackening the pace from out of the harmony of trustworthy fate. And again the need for a lingering darkness within the waiting light.

(Philosophy Today, vol. 21, 1976, p. 287)

Heidegger feels himself in the lingering darkness and he is waiting for the light. The lingering darkness is the absence of God and God is the light. And where is the trustworthy fate?

47

Nietzsche said, "Everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy; everything in the demigod's sphere turns to satyr-play; and everything in God's sphere turns to. to what? "world" perhaps?" (Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. section "Part IV: Epigrams and Interludes #150).

"Um den Helden herum wird Alles zur Tragödie, um den Halbgott herum Alles zum Satyrspiel; und um Gott herum wird Alles - wir? Vielleicht zur 'Welt'? - "
(Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunf. Section. Viertes Hauptstück: Sprüche und Zwischenspiele. #150).

This is an example where Nietzsche's thinking leaps off of the page and whirls us around - perhaps God to the world! Note: hero's sphere = tragedy; demigod's sphere = satyr-play; and God's sphere ="world". Do we have faith in a grammar that would hold this together and make sense to some one reading this on this page? Nietzsche pushes us closer to the abyss of our own philosophical comprehension. Remember Hölderlin (1770-1843), Hegel, and Heidegger all knew that they had to transform the basic nature of language to do philosophy. The very stuff of thinking is language, so how to transform thinking without the language. Heidegger said in the second sentence of the Beiträge, "Philosophy cannot appear in public in any other way, since all essential titles have become impossible, because all fundamental words have been used up and the genuine relation to the word has been destroyed." (GA 65, et. p. 3).

Some Recent Aphorisms

March/April 2004

1 Nietzsche has become my Rubicon - perhaps I am still not over him, perhaps I have not progress any further.

2 Who can say that that they have used Nietzsche's gold scales and to be able to set his own conscience to rest that these writing projects are totally honest?

3 Spinoza. Hegel. Pantheism. Skepticism. Idealism. Atheism. Naturalism. Realism?

4 Some of you have kept silent too long - pick up the pen (keyboard) and begin your life. Do it now! Are you serous? Where is your justification?

5 Pessimism is just the final end of realism. Russian fatalism as Nietzsche knew was the best kind of fatalism - why be totally superficial?

6 Every time you read some philosophy ask yourself if this has been "depersonalized" enough. Dried out and the life driven out of carcass.

7 Some philosophers dream of making distinctions whereas other philosophers are flooded with ideas. Take inspiration from artist.

8 My attempt to make everything: Riper Clearer Stronger Deeper Beyond good and evil I want the fruit to have finally ripened over the years. The days of being precocious are gone.

9 The time for metaphysical systems is gone but the new age is still gathering underneath us. Am I making conjectures or just reading the leaves on the ground?

10 Do you want to refute this as if refutations had any place on these pages? There you have been totally refuted.

11 How can we get the ideas on this page and then lift them up to reader; since, indeed much in you is still worm in the mud? The meaning of the earth is your nature is fixed in mud. Is this just refined materialism?

12 Worthlessnessing - boy is that worth writing.

13 Being, un-Being, truth, un-truth, time, un-time, substance, un-substance, unity, un-unity, identity, un-identity, appearance, un-appearance, worldly, un-worldly, ego, un-ego, self-hood, unself-hood, eternity, un- eternity. Can you see the pattern? Non-metaphysical speaking must also be allowed to speak to us.

14 Who do the philosophers write ads for? Who do the artists do works for? Then there are those few of us who let it rip, since we have no choice.

15 The image of the cold dip making you swift is also so that we are not re-baking ideas for the "reader", since the ideal "reader" is only the writer hidden in the disguise of a term "reader" as such.

16 Scholarship must be a side issue for thinkers. Freedom should be our nourishment.

17 Our service to God can only be by following our nature. How could it be otherwise? The shining glitter of snow must be like our wings of thought. Art should be the methodology for philosophy. Van Gogh. Can you be corrupted by art or is philosophy still too dry for that?

18 Who can follow me and say that I am now (I have become) a disciple of no one? A question mark for the ages. Heideggerians blush and refuse to take the next step.

19 When we read Heidegger we go through stages: enthusiasm, despair, hungry, boredom, then enlightenment, and final letting go. What stages of thinking and of life do you go through? Recuperation - that is the one word which that will let you down again and again.

20 Can we say that Hegel belongs to the ancients? His metaphysics is closer than we may know. Aristotle and Plato.

21 Do we really have any tremendous philosophical tasks left to us to ponder? All just crevasse to fill in and see the depths. Tasks lay unknown to us.

22 Perhaps we have asked too many questions and our questionable nature speaks out. Does the question mark make you think? Well I am sorry.

23 Can you count me among your counterexamples? Since in fact, you do not agree with me or if you did you were confused as if you could change your life. Amor fati - the great yes for life (that is what I think). Or can I can simply say know thyself (nosce te iosum)?

24 Kant's lectures seem to imply more Greek and the published texts had more Latin. Was there some influence by the Greeks on Kant? Some say very little, I think we need to look at the lectures and the books he owned.

25 When Nietzsche called philosophers crypto-priests did he know whom he was speaking about? Answer: Yes.

26 Take the ladder of life upward not to the beyond as such, but above the mud. The meaning of life is the meaning of the earth.

27 Epigrams maybe shorten aphorisms.

28 Long live the final moments of humanity. Ideals that have been sent home. Let us attempt to "improve" man - where could we begin such at task? Why would we want to? Reasons. Values. The ultimate ground for trying to make improvements to humanity is lacking. Ideal-lessnessing. Does that make sense to you?

29 We must always attempt to overstep our inner limits as philosophers. The shadow is out of the light.

30 Man is a mix between animal (sensuousness) and the rationale (nonsensuousness), so says the metaphysically nature of man. Where is there something more? What is man? Who is man? Who is man? Can there be an answer? Heidegger used the expression Da-sein (or I think closer to his intentions are: Da-Sein) for man is as Da-Sein.

31 Why is there no goal for mankind? Stumbling around seems to be normal - why is that?

32 Why do "we" leave behind thinking in words for others to read and expect that this will all make sense now or in the future to anyone? Answer: past practice. Thank you Plato.

33 Leitmotifs (GA 65 and Heidegger of the late 1930s) Distress Language, Semiotics, and rhetoric Types of thinking Dialogue with Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Schelling, Heidegger Animal rationale and Da-sein and Being (Seyn, Sein) The ones to come and Nietzsche's Overman

34 But my suspicions are as normal thinking just does not cut the cake. Why do philosophers think they can use some form of common sense to make sense out the wonder of life?

35 And now it seems that we are at the cross road after the decline of everything to find what is the true nature of philosophy. Perhaps there are only a few things left for philosophers. Philosophers (Kant, Heidegger) have painted us into a small part of the universe and there is very little left for us. The critical bottleneck for philosophy is very small. Almost nothing is left. Why bother?

36 We have grown accustomed to ask the Being question, but what about the question about the nature of the interrogative? The nature of Da-sein is to be open to possibilities, which allows us to ask the question or to ask the question of questions. Why can we ask questions at all? My question for you is: why dogs do not ask questions?

37 While I confess that I know the difference between scholars, philosophers, and thinkers - I still need to think it through for any writing project.

38 As a consequence, it is something like the known truth must be known at some basic level for error to then later be known to us. If we know truth, then how do we then know the false and error of truth? The whole truth is some how we know then error or false of the whole truth as well.

39 One must also say: Heidegger and Nietzsche wanted to smash philosophy as we thought we knew it - the method issue hit them both.

40 If we are against method and do not allow the use of any methodology to find the truth, then how would ever find the truth again without a method? Philosophy of science, social science, and perhaps anything close to "science" must have a method - but if we throw out the method, then where do we stand? Can we use certain methodologies based on some sort of regional ontologies (realms of beings)? The issue of categories and the fundamental unity of these categories lead us back to metaphysics or is there way to use method and not end up in metaphysics?

41 Can I speak directly to the reader? As you read this can you know that I am talking with you and you have to think along with me; and this use of third person does not work, since I need to talk with you. I do not want to shout but you need to read all of these philosophical texts with your third ear. Please enjoy and open your mind to thinking and philosophizing, which is what attempted down here on the paper you are reading now.

42 Although Heidegger does not quote this specific remark in Nietzsche, there is an important passage by Nietzsche in the Pre-Platonic Philosophers lecture series from
1870s at the University of Basel. In the section on Heraclitus (most likely dating from 1872), Nietzsche wrote a real propitious remark, "Well, this is the intuitive perception of Heraclitus; there is no thing of which we many say, "it is". He rejects Being. He knows only Becoming, the flowing." Nietzsche then continues in a few sentences later, "Heraclitus thus sees only the One, but in the sense opposite to Parmenides." (et. p.
62-63). Although Nietzsche here realizes the ontological issues, he does not make it a central issue or even a question for his thinking. For Nietzsche this is one remark among thousands of pages, for Heidegger this is the most damming and telling remark that Nietzsche could make.

43 "All the highest values are of the first rank; all the highest concepts, that which has Being, the unconditional, the good, the true, the perfect-all these cannot have become and must therefore be causa sui."
(Twilight of the Idols, "Reason" in Philosophy" section 4). How can these dead concepts change and be involved in any kind of "becoming"? How can the perfect and the final perfection every change? Can you hear Plato's eternal ideas speaking through these concepts? Can grammar real make sense only with metaphysics as the roots of our language and thought?

44 Ontology is not just one discipline among other philosophical discipline like ethics, epistemology, and logic (think of Lotze's thinking on this issue); but rather, philosophy is only as ontology. Certainly, Heidegger and Nietzsche were antipodes on ontology. Even though Heidegger wants to make Nietzsche the last metaphysician, he has hard time with this notion, since when we read Nietzsche out of the box, he sounds like anti-theological and anti-morality is his basic thinking.

45 I want to be read with brandy or single malt scotch, I think reading these words with beer would make no sense. Can a writer tell you what to drink with his writings? I ask you my reader, but perhaps water is not enough.

46 Will to Power #958 (1884). "I write for a species of man that does not yet exist: for the "masters of the earth." Where is Nietzsche looking for these masters? Are you talking about the military masters or rather the final philosophers who are the philosopher-kings (Plato's Republic)? Nietzsche should be clearer. I think he might be still looking.

47 Will to Power #1059 (1884). "Means of enduring it: the revaluation of all values. No longer joy in certainty but uncertainty; no longer "cause and effect" but the continually creative; no longer will to preservation but to power; no longer the humble expression, "everything is merely subjective," but "it is also our work! -- Let us be proud of it!" Nietzsche is shouting at this point to move from the no-sayers to the yes-sayers big time, let us help him. Can we just simple changes the values and sit back and wait and see what happens - no this is where the "will" pushes out in front toward the changes in the values with power and the great yes-saying.

48 Will to Power #1064 (1885). "Timelessness" to be rejected. At any precise moment of a force, the absolute conditionality of a new distribution of all its forces is given: it cannot stand still. "Change" belongs to the essence, therefore also temporality: with this, however, the necessity of change has only been posited once more conceptually." Why would Nietzsche even think that we were for timelessness? If Nietzsche could have talked with Marx or Lange, then these issues would have gone away. That is why Nietzsche always talking with people on the street, namely, the believers he grew up and not philosophers who have left all of this eternal stuff behind. What would Nietzsche and Marx talk about if they had met?

49 Heidegger does not mention Schelling in Being and Time (1927). However, in the little essay by Heidegger entitled "My way to Phenomenology," he mentions on his walks with his Professor Dr. Carl Braig
(circa 1911) ". . . I first heard of Schelling's and Hegel's significance for speculative theology as distinguished from the dogmatic system of Scholasticism" (p. 73). In a very early work of Heidegger's entitled "Review of Ernst Cassirer's Mythical Thought" (1928), he compares Cassirer's position to the later Schelling's work on mythology. In the last paragraph Heidegger writes, "The critical questions here brought forward cannot detract from the merit of Cassirer's work insofar as it is the first attempt since Schelling to place myth as a systematic problem within the range of philosophy (p. 45)." Heidegger knew Schelling well.

50 Heidegger, echoing Schelling said, "Both rationalism and irrationalism represent an external labeling of the standpoint of the Hegelian philosophy, which does not succeed in unfolding this philosophy in terms of the fundamental issue in question." (et. P. 30). Calling Hegel's system some kind of -ism does not really help engage and encounter Hegel's thought. Hegel is perhaps an idealist, but does that help us think with Hegel or just eliminate him from considerations.

51 Hegel's Philosophy of Right shows that, for Hegelianism, rationalism is important. Hegel in 1820 wrote, "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational." (et p. 10). This is the famous passage. But in another few later paragraphs, Hegel stated his position even stronger, where he says, "To comprehend what is, this is the task of philosophy, because what is, is reason." (et. p. 11). This is closer to Hegel's core philosophy than many of Hegel's other remarks. Hegel is putting down exactly where he stands!

52 Where does Hegel's specific use of the term Notion/Concept (der Begriff) come from? Historical usage? The last chapter in the Phenomenology of Spirit is "absolute Knowing" and the last chapter in the Science of Logic is the "absolute Idea" then why did he not use statement "the Notion" as part of the chapter heading? Why not a whole book just with that title? Why not just say - Plato in German?

53 What is left out of Hegel's system and why? Where is Hegel on the irrationalism issue? Is there any room for faith in Hegel's metaphysical system? His ontology seems to be theology and his theology is in his ontology, so where is faith in the system? There does not seem to be any need for faith.

54 The purpose of the Critique of Pure Reason is to find proper method (a critique) and procedure for metaphysics and the whole of philosophy. The critique of pure reason is derived architectonically from principles and is complete and certain. It is not the 'system of science' (Wissenschaft) itself and it is not a doctrine, but it catalogs the sources, the boundaries, and the entire outline of the science. The Critique of Pure Reason is a propaedeutic (preparation), it is after physics, and yet before metaphysics; it is a prior, namely, a "metaphysics of metaphysics." This is before ontology, where ontology belongs solely to metaphysics. This is an architectonic of all cognition or knowledge (Erkenntnis) from pure reason (rational not practical). The Critique of Pure Reason is to provide the foundation before metaphysics. The critical method has to be clarified first before moving onto any metaphysics, to any ontology. The foundations of any future metaphysics must have those foundations called in question and if we are to build the entire metaphysical system, only then must we be on the rock solid foundations at bottom. You see how Kant's project is laying the foundational ground of any future metaphysics and those terms and ideas should not seem out of context and too grandiose a project, since that is Kant as his core.
55 How come Hegel's most famous book in America had so many titles and do these changes reflect philosophical issues? Let us examine what has happen to Hegel first major book.

First title: System of Science: First Part, Science of the Experience of Consciousness (1806-1807). Note: Title appears on some the published books. Some books have both the first and second title pages in different places. The manuscript was essential completed October 1806. This first title can be considered the working title of the book until Hegel got closer to the publication.

Second Title: System of Science: First Part, Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).

Third Title: System of Science: First Part: The Phenomenology of Spirit. Note: This is the final title in 1807. Most the books published in 1807 have this on the title page and only this title page.

Fourth Title: Phenomenology of Spirit (1832). Note: title as it appears in the Collected Works. Publication begins right after Hegel's death in 1931.
(Werke, Berlin, 1832-1845). Note: Hegel or should we say someone has the "the" (German=Der) dropped. The final German title is: Phänomenologie des Geistes.

56 Aphorisms are both a closed and open universe. A good aphorism should be self-contained and yet open up a whole new universe within thought. Aphorisms almost by definition are against the essay and especial the form of the "book". Why has the "book" taken over as the common way of writing? After every event these days, then someone will write the book about it or if it is really interesting then the motion picture will be produced. Reality TV is against the non-reality of most TV shows. Back to the aphorism. Can we speak of the cold hard steel and razor sharpness of a good aphorism or is it rather the soft and flexibility of a contextual aphorism that bends and is mushy? Clearly, aphorisms are both and can be both - let them unwind and hit the spot!

57 In summa: the truth is known and will be written down and can be re-produced for everyone to see and hear. If you believe that then you will never have the "truth" since the "truth" is in motion and is flux itself. You want the chaos to be part of your world or you will be lost for ever in the appearance of reality where all is false.

58 The thing is only as relationships and their context.

59 "The truth of be-ing cannot be said with the ordinary language that today is ever more widely misused and destroyed by incessant talking. Can this truth ever be said directly, if all language is still the language of beings? Or can a new language for be-ing be invented? No. And even if this could be accomplished - and even without artificial word-formation-such a language would not be a saying language."
(GA 65, section 35). Heidegger speaks to what we can do with language and it comes up short. Our task: a saying language, yes - that is why Heidegger has laid down for us to pick up. Can we do language that will allow us to have a saying language of the truth of Being? First we need silence to hear Being, then we need a saying language to "say" the meaning and truth of Being. This has nothing to so with the TV or the stock market or our current political situation. As you ponder this question, I think it becomes increasingly clear that Heidegger in this mode has nothing to do with what passes as modern "philosophy".

60 Freedom Truth Being Will Factum No-thing
(Enough said for you?)

61 Heidegger said, "Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is among those philosophical works which, as long as there is philosophy on this earth at all, daily become inexhaustible anew. It is one of those works that have already pronounced judgment over every future attempt to "overcome" them by only passing them by." (What is a thing, p. 61, 1935
-36). What has happen to Kant's philosophy over the pass two hundred years? The neo-Kantian and the back to Kant movement have all past into history by now and still Kant's philosophy dominates and is studied a new by every generation. The life of Kant's philosophy perhaps has less and less to do with "us" living Kant's philosophy and more to do with our working on Kant's thought. For Heidegger this includes the unthought in Kant's philosophy which again directs us to Kant.

62 Heidegger is contra Nietzsche on the Greeks and of course Heidegger contra Idealism, realism, Platonism, and metaphysics. Our question is what is the relationship between our thinking today and the whole history of philosophy? But this is not just a simple passive relationship. Our historical period and our age is part of our thinking, since this is not an ahistorical reading of our past. Heidegger has addresses this in 1927 and this was written after Being and Time, which was final published in early 1927. Heidegger said, "These three basic components of phenomenological method - reduction, construction, destruction - belong together in their content and must receive grounding in their mutual pertinence. Construction in philosophy is necessarily destruction, that is to say, a de-constructing of traditional concepts carried out in a historical recursion to the tradition. And this not a negation of the tradition or a condemnation of it as worthless; quite the reverse, it signifies precisely a positive appropriation of tradition." (Basic Problems in Phenomenology, E. T. p. 23). We do not reject early philosophical thought but rather we "deal with it", we include within us. This is not including within the system like what Hegel did with his absolute system.

63 Is freedom just another empty word or does it have some meaning on our earth? Answer: freedom is not an absolute.

64 The "Back to Kant" (E. Zeller and then Otto Liebmann was core of this movement) movement is the philosophical context of Neo-Kantianism and is basically a rejection and an attempt at overcoming of G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) and his followers. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), and Neo-Kantians are against Hegel. The movement against Hegel shaped most of the philosophical thinking in
1800s. A Hegelian, Rudolf Lotze (1817-1881) and his Kantian critique of Hegel is sometimes credited with the being the forerunner of the Neo-Kantian movement. We and Heidegger can be viewed as an attempt to be a countermovement to Hegel's system. Can we escape Hegel?

65 Nietzsche said, "Philosophy reduced to "theory of knowledge," in fact no more than a timid epochism and doctrine of abstinence - a philosophy that never gets beyond the threshold and takes pains to deny itself the right to enter - that is philosophy in its last throes, and end, an agony, something inspiring pity. How could such a philosophy - dominate!" (Beyond Good and Evil; Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, p. 123). The weakness of our current philosophy and philosophy departments can be seen in Nietzsche's thought. The thin ice that is epistemology is what leads many good minds down the garden path to nowhere. In his work on Leibniz, Heidegger says the following about Neo-Kantians and epistemology: "It is crucial for understanding the Kantian concept of reality. Simple uncertainty about those connections misled the entire neo-Kantian interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason into a misguided search for an epistemology in Kant." Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, 1928 (GA 26).
(The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, E. T. p 65). Heidegger says else where, "The interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as epistemology completely misses the true meaning." (Basic Problems in Phenomenology, E. T. p. 128). So many philosophers do not read Kant and yet think they understand what Kant was up to - why, can they not read. What is the purpose of the Critique of Pure Reason? Or, for that matter pick almost any major philosophical work and its purpose are often subject to many different interpretations. What is the purpose of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit - the same issue, so many different interpretations of what is the purpose of Hegel's text?

66 If we are the light and just a part of the light, then what is the light? These images still does not lead us any further then before. I am the light. Ok, then what? I am also the dark and the interplay of the light and the dark. This whole is more than parts, but we are more than reason. But what more is more to the nature of humanity?

67 The history of Being is not the history of metaphysics.

68 What is that a funding problem for departments? As the concept of the university has become less and philosophy has become even less than less, since the culture has defined the university as the ticket to the job market. How does that work for philosophy, since the market is a very small place for PhDs that teach introduction to philosophy, logic, business ethics, and moral problems for the masses? Value metaphysics re-baked and re-baked - yes, it may take centuries before metaphysics is final left behind -if ever! Can we still ponder the silence of Being?

69 Heidegger said, "The whole of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a circling around the problem of transcendence - which in its original sense is precisely not an epistemological problem, but the problem of freedom - without Kant's having secured this phenomenon of transcendence radically from the ground up. (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, 1928 (GA26), The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, E. T. p 165). This deeper problem in Kant is precisely why the Critique of Pure Reason is not about ontic knowledge if anything it would be ontological knowledge, but even this does go to the core of Kant. That is why Heidegger points to the question of freedom. Although Heidegger worked on the Critique of Pure Reason in the early days of lecturing, but many of the later lectures on Kant are other Kantian texts.

70 Are you tired and want the dry air of philosophical abstraction?

71 Heidegger starts his analysis with saying that, "Schelling's treatise on freedom is one of those very rare works . . . "(GA 42, et. p. 4). Now, from a different point of view, G. W. F. Hegel remarked about this work, "Schelling had made known a single treatise on Freedom. It is of a deep speculative nature, but it stands alone. In philosophy a single piece cannot be developed" (Hegel's History of Philosophy, et. p. 13). This tells us more about Hegel's position than his understanding of what Schelling is trying to do with his work on freedom. This ripped up Hegel's system by exploding the absolute system from within through freedom. The sound of freedom split the air but was not heard by Hegel.

72 Kant says for example, in Critique of Pure Reason, A13, "Transcendental philosophy is here the idea of a science, for which the critique of pure reason is to outline the entire plan architectonically . . . "and in Critique of Pure Reason, A847 "The original idea of a philosophy of pure reason itself prescribes this division; it is therefore architectonic, in conformity with its essential ends . . . " Kant's concept of system is clearly - architectonic. Kant was a great system thinker, but the concept and implementation of the system clearly reach its climax in Hegel. Hegel is perhaps the greatest system thinker ever. Why is the second part of the Critique of Pure Reason hardly ever read and even less understood? What is living and dead in Kant -- the architectonic would be the at the top of the list of what is dead by most contemporaries accounts, but this is because they do not know the core and purpose of Kant's philosophy. Kant saw reason and system combined and it was taking him a while to get it all together in one system, however, I think it is clear Kant's direction.

73 Who was Schelling and why is he important? F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854) was a roommate with G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) and the famous classical poet, Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) at the Tübingen Stift. His first major publication Ideen zur Philosophie der Natur (1797) was published at the age of twenty-two. He was appointed to a chair of Philosophy at Jena University, 1798 (age of twenty-three). In 1803 he moved to a chair at Wurzburg University until 1806. During this time he wrote his treatise on human freedom in 1809 (age of thirty-six). This was to be his last major work published during his life time even though he wrote volumes. These were not to be published. Back to1806, he meets the theologian Franz von Baader (1765-1841) and was reading Jakob Bohme (1575-1624). Other influences on Schelling at this time were Christoph Oetinger, Paracelsus, Emanuel Swedenborg, Johann Bengel, Saint Martin, Johannes Tauler, Meister Eckhart, and Nicolaus of Cusanus. In 1841, he was finally called to University of Berlin to try to overturn Hegel's influence after Hegel's death in 1831. In Schelling's Berlin lectures was a group of students who perhaps became more famous than Schelling himself, namely, Søren Kierkegaard, J. Burckhardt, F. Engels, L. Feuerbach, and M. Bakunin. Schelling has become more famous in the twentieth century through his influence on Paul Tillich (1886-1965) and his theology. Heidegger has lectured and written about Schelling treaties on human freedom. One of Heidegger's teachers, Carl Braig (1853-
1923) was deeply influence by Schelling as well. Schelling is more than his biographical information.

74 There is a religious dimension to the absolute system of Hegel's metaphysical construction. Hegel included a section in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion entitled, "The metaphysical Notion or Conception of the Idea of God." Hegel declared, "The metaphysical Notion of God here means that we have to speak only of the pure Notion which is real through its own self. Spirit or the Absolute Idea is what appears simply as the unity of the Notion and reality in such a way that the Notion in itself represents totality." (et P. 348). Hegel thought something similar in the Science of Logic, when he said, "God as absolute Spirit, which alone is the true nature of God." (et.
527). The later Hegel was fond of quoting the Bible and his wife become even more religious after Hegel's death in 1831. According to Heidegger theology, philosophy, metaphysics, and ontology are closely linked. This position is not in line with what passes as Philosophy on most university campus today. Heidegger says, "Philosophy's questioning is always and in itself both onto-logical and theological in the very broad sense. Philosophy is Ontotheology. The more originally it is both in one, the more truly it is philosophy. And Schelling's treatise is thus one of the most profound works of philosophy because it is in a unique sense ontological and theological at the same time (GA 42 et. p. 51)." In the first part of the Science of Logic, Hegel has a section entitled "With What Must the Science Begin?" At this end of this section Hegel states: "... (and God has the absolutely undisputed right that the beginning be made with him) . . . "(p. 78). Why should we start and finish with God? Need I even ask this question?

75 Hegel in the Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik, et. p. 48) wrote the following about the Phenomenology of Spirit, "The path of this movement goes through every form of the relation of consciousness to the object and had the Notion (Begriff) of Science (Wissenschaft) for its result." What is the result of the Phenomenology of Spirit it is the final results of self-consciousness raised to the science (that means philosophical science of the time, meaning, and Hegel's absolute metaphysical system) as philosophy. Or, in other words, that means introduction to philosophical thinking. It is the process of getting out of the cave into the light of day (Plato's ideas as absolute knowing, on the way to the Science of Logic's absolute idea). Think of the connection to Plato's Republic and allegory of the cave. Should the process called the phenomenology of spirit (or the first title, System of Science: First Part, Science of the Experience of Consciousness) or should logic be the real introduction to philosophy and the philosophical way of thinking? Hegel went back and forth on this problem and the Science of Logic has an interesting essay at the beginning with the question being "With what must the science begin?" Also, he should be noted that Hegel never used the Phenomenology of Spirit for teaching. As a historical note, Hegel was reading the proofs (January 16, 1807) when he wrote, "Soon, but not quite yet, I will be able to say bon voyage to the child. But while reading through the manuscript for printing errors this one last time I truly often wished I could clear the ship here and there of ballast and make it swifter. With a second edition to follow soon-if it pleases the gods! (si diis placet?!) -everything shall come out better."
(Hegel: The Letters, p. 119). Of course, he was re-working the Phenomenology of Spirit right before he died in 1831, but there never was a second edition (during 1808,
1809 or 1810) instead he went to work on the Science of Logic (first part in 1812) while he was editing the newspaper in Bamberg. The Phenomenology of Spirit was somewhat forgotten by Hegel.

76 Hegel wrote a very important passage at the end of the Science of Logic. This is the nucleus of Hegel and his method of creating his philosophical system. Hegel said, "By virtue of the nature of the method just indicated, the Science (Wissenschaft) exhibits itself as a circle returning upon itself, the end being wound back into the beginning, the simple ground by mediation; this circle is moreover a circle of circles, for each individual member as ensouled by the method is reflected into itself, so that in returning into the beginning it is at the same time the beginning of the new member." (Science of Logic, et p. 842). This is connected with another remark at the end of the Logic, "The method itself by means of this moment expands itself into a system." (Science of Logic, et. P. 838). With these two thought you should be able to see how Hegel conceptual created and then tied his system into an absolute system that had at its center the movement and yet, the complete totality of the world and God. Hegel's metaphysical "notion" as method is the entelecheia that is the internal movement of spiritual reality unfolding and expands itself in to the system.

The circle of circles has an interesting connection to Kant, when he said in the later part of the Critique of Pure Reason, "Reason is driven by a propensity of its nature to go beyond its use in experience. and to find peace only in the completion of its circle in a self-subsisting systematic whole." (CPR, A798/B826). (In German, Die Vernunft wird durch einen Hang ihrer Natur getrieben, über den Erfahrungsgebrauch hinauszugehen, und nur allererst in der Vollendung ihres Kreises, in einem für sich .. bestehenden systematischen Ganzen, Ruhe zu finden). Reason finds its peace in the circle, which is in the systematic whole of a complete and absolute metaphysical system. Kant wanted and knew that reason would lead to the science of a metaphysical system, but he did not make it up the mountain, but the direction is clear where Kant wanted to go and was headed toward a system. It took Hegel to put in all together. Did he get help from Plato or Aristotle (entelecheia)? Or, where did the help come from? Some philosophers think it may have been Schelling. According to Hegel the first part of Science of Logic is based on the overcoming of Spinoza. That seems a great stretch. But it also shows how much that Hegel has taken past philosophical thought and his dialogue with other philosopher and transformed within his system.

77 Late in the Beiträge Heidegger asks the question: "What if that domain of decision as a whole, flight or arrival of gods, were itself the end?" (GA 65, section 254). The end is what has happen to the question of the gods (Götter). Has our gods given up on us? Is there no hope left for the hint of the gods? At this point Heidegger would warn us not to use reason to come with a rational argument on what it means to speak of the flight or arrival of the last gods. We use the word "ponder" to express the en-thinking in general, since the expression "ponder" gives us a sense of non-rational, non-representational, non-calculative thinking processes. So, we need to ponder the last gods.

78 In the author's forward to the multi-volume Nietzsche Band I-II (1961), Heidegger wrote, "The matter, the point in question, is in itself a confrontation (Auseinandersetzung)"
(et. p. xxxviii). Heidegger goes on to say in next few pages, "Confrontation is genuine criticism. It is the supreme way, the only way, to a true estimation of a thinker. In confrontation we undertake to reflect on his thinking and to trace it in its effective force, not in its weakness. To what purpose? In order that through the confrontation we ourselves become free for the supreme exertion of thinking." (Nietzsche Volume 1, et. p. 4-5). What is the purpose of reading a philosopher? The pivotal task is not scholarship or philology or witty repartee, but rather philosophical thinking and to stimulate a genuine dialogue with philosophers. This exertion of thinking is not linked to the notional thinking of Hegel.

79 Heidegger said something incredibly profound in his reading of Nietzsche that has to do more with philosophy in general. Heidegger's remark is "The greater a revolution is to be, the more profoundly must it plunge into its history." ("Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism," 1936). A paradigm shift or a revolution within philosophy can only come about by a plunge into the history of philosophy and for that we need a well-developed idea and concept of a Metahistory of philosophy.

80 There are the great philosophers who read and think through the history of philosophy, like Hegel and Heidegger. The counterexample seems to be Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951), who had no understanding of the history of philosophy. Scholars are finding more and more of Schopenhauer's influence in Wittgenstein writings. Wittgenstein did not read widely in the history of philosophy. But he did read poetry.

81 Kant often uses these analogies and images of building a house. The second division of the Critique of Pure Reason is called "Transcendental doctrine of method". On the incredibly first page we hear Kant's images. He talks of the building edifices, building materials, height, strength, erection of a sturdy dwelling, etc (CPR, A707/B735). Thus, when we come to the last chapter of the section and we hear from Kant that there are 'only ruins,' then keeping with this analogy from Kant's view there is nothing to really 'build-on' from history of philosophy. Therefore, I understand Kant's own position (from the 'transcendental point of view') that the history of philosophy is not helpful or important, it is in 'ruins'. I understand Kant is saying that Kant's own transcendental or critical idealism is not based on the history of philosophy and it totally unique to Kant. In other words, Kant has to begin his building from the ground-up or from the essential foundations. There is nothing to build-on, only a little dirt to begin the building. Therefore, sticking with this image, for Kant, the ground is reason and reason is what we need to use to build any foundations at all.

82 Kant said, "Carteius, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Wolffus, the last whom, through his industry, produced a systema of philosophy, were in recent times the ones who improved philosophy, and were its true fathers. All of the efforts of our philosophy are 1) dogmatic, 2) critical. Among critical philosophers Locke deserves priority."
(Lectures on Logic, et. p. 24). Where is David Hume? Yes, Kant is saying that Hume was not among the true fathers of philosophy, he is not worthy of mention. Since, Kant is considers himself as a critical philosopher, it is Locke that is at the top of the list of modern philosophers.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was reviewed 1782 by J. G. H. Feder (1740-1820). In this review Kant was portrayed as just restating Bishop George Berkeley's (1685-1753) Idealism and Kant responded is the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (2nd edition, 1787). However, in this passage we note two things of interest: a) Kant points to more recent philosophers as the 'true fathers' of philosophy, b) again Locke seems to be praised for his importance. Kant often has critical remarks about Berkeley, for example, calling him a "dogmatic idealism" (CRP, B274). Kant discusses this whole issue with Berkeley in his "Refutation of Idealism" (CRP, B274-287). Again David Hume is missing from the discussion - the text supports other philosophers as important for Kant. Funny, it is not taught that way in the little sandbox theory of the history of philosophy. It is interesting no matter how many current philosophers read Kant and article on Kant, nevertheless, even basic aspects of Kant's philosophy are misconstrued and confused by philosophers who should know better but are just using the old connection between philosophers.

83 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as "History should speak only of what is great and unique, of exemplary models." Notebooks: Summer
1872-Early 1873 19 [10]. This sounds a little like Hegel's great men theory of history, but Nietzsche takes it to a higher point. The masses are as you might think the Marxian proletariat, but for Nietzsche only the highest points for mankind count - only the great people of the age what should be spoken about, hence the rest of us or you are not part of the higher history. In our age the media has shown us who is worthy of network coverage and all of the dirty personal lives that come out in the court cases. Historically, remember the individual was above all not a citizen of a nation; he/she were a member of an estate (Stand in German, état in French). The developing concept of the "nation-state" was a big deal for Hegel and Nietzsche, who both thought that Europe would come together as a single nation
(sooner than it is).

84 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as" Philosophers appear during those times of great danger, when the wheel of time is turning faster and faster. Together with art, they step into the place vacated by myth. But they are far ahead of their time, since the attention of their contemporaries only turns toward them very slowly. A people which is becoming conscious of its dangers produces a genius." Notebooks: Summer 1872-Early 1873 19 [17]. Philosophers are needed as cultural changes takes place at a fast pace (think of the 1960s). Together with art we need a new myth of who we are and what we are up. The race to the moon and Johnston's Great Society, all point toward the grandiose plans and myths of the improvement and betterment of mankind or Americans anyway. Are we aware of our dangers today? Do we understand Heidegger's notion of our age as the lack of distress of the lost of Being? Heidegger is leading us down a path and also toward climbing a mountain with him - are we ready?

85 If you are looking for something shocking and dirty words that would jump off of the page and make you think of something shocking - insert your own imagination at this point, since what is in your head is a lot more than I can write down, so anyway here is your place to have that happen in your head. Wow was it good for you?

86 Interesting Marx is dying and the power of his thought from a high point is dropping fast at this time. We will see if history will tell a different story.

87 Do the number of dissertations tell us anything about philosophy itself or just some kind of sociology of philosophy? These numbers are from year range of: 1997-2001 (as of October 2003). The number of citations changes as they load more information into the database, so this information is only good for October 2003, but it does show trends.

Aristotle 67 citations Bergson 10 citations. Derrida 46 citations. Descartes 38 citations Dilthey 3 citations. Fichte 9 citations. Foucault 77 citations. Gadamer 25 citations. Hegel 93 citations. Heidegger 148 citations. Husserl 23 citations. Jaspers 5 citations Kant 158 citations. Kierkegaard 41 citations. Leibniz 28 citations. Levinas 55 citations. Marcuse 5 citations. Marx 38 citations Merleau-Ponty 26 citations Nietzsche 130 citations Plato 69 citations. Sartre 39 citations Scheler 3 citations Schelling 12 citations. Schleiermacher 17 citations. Schopenhauer 10 citations. Wittgenstein 81 citations.

So the general rank of the recent dissertations (1997-2001) is Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, and then Wittgenstein. Do you find something wrong with this approach as if numbers mean anything in philosophy? What is taught in philosophy department is different than this. why is that? This shows the interest of research. But some departments are trying to do less Heidegger dissertations, since they are so many young philosophers on the market with Heidegger backgrounds. What is the market for young philosophers and where should they stand?
88 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as "In a certain sense, Kant's influence was detrimental, because belief in metaphysics has been lost. No one would rely upon his "thing in itself" as if it were a principle which could master anything." Notebooks: Summer 1872-Early 1873 19 [28]. Here we have one of Nietzsche's attacks against Kant, since for Nietzsche metaphysic would not have been lost if Kant had come up something more believable than the crazy idea of the "thing-in-itself". Kant was not tricky enough for Nietzsche; we want Kant to help us with our problem of making room for "faith". Why could Kant not make us into total believers? Kant had problems of his own to try and make a believer out of himself. It was Kant's honesty that became his biggest problem, since he knew too much.

89 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as "Philosophy should hold fast to that spiritual mountain range which stretches across the centuries, and therewith, to the eternal fruitfulness of everything that is great." Notebooks: Summer 1872-Early 1873 19 [33]. Nietzsche often speaks about the spiritual/sacred mountains - but for non-believer this is nonsense. What is the meaning of the earth? Can the Greeks help us out after the death of God and the end of Christ Dom? Can we try to understand Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Brentano, Nietzsche, and Heidegger and their return to the Greeks as the attempt to reenergize western civilization without the whole Christian tradition? What is back in the pre-Christian era that will sustain us in our new myths? We live my myths?

90 The old game of attempting to see the various philosophers influence on Heidegger is almost over. With Nietzsche and with many philosophers Heidegger is completely contra to their philosophical positions. In one of the most telling quotes from Heidegger on this subject is when he said about Hegel, ".to place Hegel's system in the commanding view and then to think in a totally opposite direction. (GA
65).
91 Nietzsche was on the verge of seeing through his inversion of Platonism, but taking his overall considerate is still within the web of Platonism. Western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato according to a famous saying by Alfred North Whitehead. However, with Heidegger he sees this as the metahistory of metaphysics and forgottenness of Being as being caught in the limitation of Platonism or the inadequacy of western metaphysics. After Heidegger sees these limitations, this is the way that Heidegger wants to break out in to a new, other beginning for philosophy. Heidegger's break out is done through a confrontation with Platonism and its entanglement in Nietzsche's inversion of Platonism. Western metaphysics has happen all within the limitation and realm of Platonism. Nietzsche sees Christianity as Platonism for the people. For Heidegger, Nietzsche is simply the extreme opposition (the antagonist opponent) to eternal truth and ideas of Platonism. Although Nietzsche was reading many of the early Greek philosophers, the task for Nietzsche is still within the dominion of the fundamental trends of his engagement with Platonism. It should be noted that there is nothing of Kant or Hegel or the German philosophers in Nietzsche's on-going development and thinking. The crux to Nietzsche for Heidegger is Nietzsche's opposition to Platonism. For Heidegger, Nietzsche is trapped within the limited horizon of Platonism. Heidegger said, "Nietzsche remains caught in metaphysics: from beings to Being; and he exhaust all possibilities of this basic position." (GA 65 182, et. p. 127). Hence, according to Heidegger, Nietzsche task is simply the overturning
(Umkehrung) of Platonism.

92

Nietzsche does have his own way out of Platonism, which he summed up with the expression, "My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides." (Twilight of the Idols, "What I Owe to the Ancients" section 3). Can Heidegger take this approach as way of metaphysics? Answer: no, metaphysics lives at the central core of philosophy as such. Only by a radical transformation of philosophy can we hope to see a way out of the bottle (said the fly).

93 Nietzsche in an exceptionally telling passage in his autobiography, Ecce Homo outlines his philosophy in relationship to Heraclitus. Nietzsche said, "I retained some doubt in the case of Heraclitus, in whose proximity I feel altogether warmer and better than anywhere else. The affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; saying Yes to opposition and war; becoming, along with a radical repudiation of the very concept of Being (Sein) -all of this is clearly more closely related to me than anything else thought to date. The doctrine of the "eternal recurrence," that is, of the unconditional and infinitely repeated circular course of all things - this doctrine of Zarathustra might in the end have been taught already by Heraclitus. (Ecce Homo, "The Birth of Tragedy, section 3).

In this passage Nietzsche shows us his closeness to Heraclitus, Dionysus, his connections to Zarathustra, and the doctrine of the eternal return of the same; but most important for Heidegger is thought that for Nietzsche, Heraclitus is involved in the "radical repudiation of the very concept of Being (Sein)" (radikaler Ablehnung, refusal). This is clearly where there is a split between Heidegger and Nietzsche on the issue of the rejection or refusal of Being, since for Heidegger Being is full and not empty or a fiction.

94 What is the decisive question that Nietzsche never found? Certainly as a pristine metaphysician Nietzsche could have to come to the question of "What is the nature of beingness (Seiendheit)?" Or, he could have asked the question "Why is there something, rather not nothing?" Nietzsche's own critique of metaphysics predetermined that Nietzsche would not follow down this path. This is where Nietzsche stands in league with Heidegger and their basic position of being anti-metaphysics. Heidegger wants to take the next step by not being caught in the web of being "anti-" metaphysics. He wants to leave it behind and stand completely outside of metaphysics. Our question is does Heidegger actually stand in a new beginning. Can we still have a relationship to metaphysics by freeing and purifying metaphysics? Heidegger's historical lectures are the way that Heidegger has attempted to engage philosophers from the past, that is, to bring them to life in the present. Even though these philosophers are as Hegel said, ".with respect to the inner essence of philosophy there are neither predecessors nor successors." (The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy, et. p. 87). Philosophers stand side by side all thinking one thought but each in their own way.

95 Heidegger is contra Nietzsche as ontology is primary. Heidegger's position is exactly contra to Nietzsche thesis about the Being of beings as "empty fiction". It is through Heidegger's analysis of the Greeks
(specifically, Anaximander, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, and also Aristotle) that Heidegger draws out his resplendent ontological thinking. On the other hand, Nietzsche does not find ontology as central in the Greeks. What does Nietzsche find? Nietzsche wrote a short note in 1885 that not only summarized his closeness to the Greeks but may have foreseen Heidegger's bond to the Greeks. Nietzsche wrote, ". with discovery of antiquity, the digging up ancient philosophy, above all of the pre-Socratics - the most deeply buried of all Greek temples! A few centuries hence, perhaps, one will judge that all German philosophy derives its real dignity from being a gradual reclamation of the soil of antiquity, and that all claims to "originality" must sound petty and ludicrous in relation to that higher claim of the Germans to have joined anew the bond that seemed to be broken, the bond with the Greeks, the hitherto highest type of man." (Will to Power, #419) (1885).

In another note Nietzsche said in March-June 1888 (Will to Power, #437), "The real philosophers of Greece are those before Socrates". Nietzsche goes on to say, "Today we are again getting close to all those fundamental forms of world interpretation devised by the Greek spirit through Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras - we are growing more Greek by the day." Will to Power, #419) (1885). From these remarks it is clear that Nietzsche realizes the immense impact the Greeks had on German philosophers and will have in the future. The image of the Greeks had a profound effect on Nietzsche's philosophy and thinking even without having Nietzsche pedantically following every translation of the Greek to the final degree. This is not a question of Nietzsche's Greek philological scholarship, but rather the tremendous impact and influence of the Greek image. Heidegger wrote in an early section of the first volume of his famous work on Nietzsche, "Apart from the world of the Greeks, which remained decisive for the whole of Nietzsche's life." (Nietzsche volume 1, et p. 7). Clearly, the Greeks have more influence than Wagner or Schopenhauer; and the rest of Germans "German philosophy as a whole - Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to the name the greatest. (Will to Power, #419). Although Nietzsche calls them the great ones, nevertheless, there is very little influence in the end of the bulk of Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietzsche is rare plant and he takes in a strong breath of philosophical air from the Greeks.

96 This is an example of notes on from a close reading. Martin Heidegger's Contributions to philosophy (from enowning) (1936-1939) Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) Remarks on Sections 4 and 5.

As most of already know that this text (not a "werke") is very dense and Heidegger is responding to his own thinking in a direct way, which means that Heidegger is not writing for "us" and in these passages he is not writing for his students. I take it that this is Heidegger "right off of the top". In an autobiographical way, he is thinking with himself - in other words, he is not explaining and giving us the context for all of his writing in this text. This is his "thinking".

So, I have taken some passages from this text which seems to me to be the important sense of these sections. Now, of course we should note that these are taken out of context and I have more or less turned them into "representational thinking" as statements.

I have elsewhere spent a lot of time to trying to understand Heidegger's encounter methodology with other philosophers, now we need to try to gain insight into how to come to grips with Heidegger through a Heideggerian methodology (hermeneutics, phenomenology - you name it). How would Heidegger read Heidegger? How would Heidegger expect "us" as thoughtful Heideggerians read Heidegger and writing about him? Heidegger seems to make us aware of the "how" of reading philosophical text than Kant or Hegel. However, it is clear that Nietzsche did actually talk to his "readers" about how to read him. Do we know anywhere that Heidegger has given us much direction on how to read his "real" philosophical texts (like GA 65)? We know he wanted most of the lectures on historical philosophical texts to be published before Beiträge was published - I think this gives us some indication of how we might read his texts. But I think we still have an open problem for Heideggerians on how to read Heidegger as Heidegger would want us to read him. I think it is interesting that some of his student's Protokoll have been published with the Gesamtausgabe.

Issue #1. "Here everything is geared toward the sole and single question of the truth of be-ing, i. e., toward questioning.

"The question concerning the "meaning" [of being], i. e., in accordance with the elucidation in Being and Time, the question concerning grounding the domain of projecting
-open - and then, the question of the truth of be-ing - is and remains my question, and is my one and only question; for this question concerns what is most sole and unique."

In the age of total lack of questioning anything, it is sufficient as a start to inquire into the question of all questions."

"Seeking itself is the goal."

"For the few who from time to time again ask the question, i. e., who put up anew the essential sway of truth for decision."

Ferrer: I have written an essay on "Martin Heidegger as Interrogator". This is the part of Heidegger where he is not "answering" the questions or giving out his philosophy on table for dinner; but is directing us to consider that philosophy is asking questions. Not that we know nothing and can only ask questions, but again, we need to be clear about formulating the question and of course for Heidegger which he makes very clear to us that there is only one question for him really. The question meaning or truth of the Being of beings. In another place he adds a little bit more. In his work on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
(GA32, lecture 1930), Heidegger says, " . . . the inner necessities of the first and last problem of philosophy - the question of Being" and he continues, "I have been concerned with renewing the question of ontology - the most central problem of Western Philosophy - the question of Being . . ." (E. T. p. 13) Additional Heidegger says," We assert now that Being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy" (Basic Problems of Phenomenology (GA24, 1927 lecture), p11). "Philosophy is the theoretical conceptual interpretation of Being, of Being's structure and its possibilities. Philosophy is ontological." (Basic Problems of Phenomenology
(GA24, lecture 1927), p. 11). Note the dates from these lectures series. There maybe some development in terms of the "turn" (Kehre) that might leads us to think that Heidegger changed his 'mind'; but to put in a different expression, we might say that it was change in view point, rather than a real change in Heidegger's thinking. Were there more changes after the ontological period in Heidegger? 1945-?

Issue #2 Ferrer: Who are the rare? Some of these thoughts by Heidegger I get a feeling of Nietzsche in the background. "I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it is perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant.' (Will to Power, #420 1884). My first reading of this whole text is: Nietzsche is in the background. Nietzsche is certainly not in the foreground (Heidegger is in the foreground), but I think Nietzsche is much closer than Kant or Hegel.

"For the rare who bring along the utmost courage for solitude, in order to think the nobility of Seyn and to speak of its uniqueness."

Issue #3 "We must risk a projecting-open of be-ing's essential swaying as enowning, precisely because we do not know the mandate of our history." Ferrer: I think as we read this text it is important to see what Heidegger says about "our" place in the historical process, since he drops lots of hints for us along the way. What is the time, period, age, historical moment, historical beginning, etc for "us" asking the questions?

Issue #4 Ferrer: The more I read this text the more I realize that Heidegger is radically transforming what it means to do philosophy. What is the nature of Philosophy and philosophical knowing according to the Beiträge? How to do philosophy according to the Beiträge? One of the reasons this is a difficult text is because Heidegger is not just "telling" us some philosophical result, but he is "showing" what it means to do philosophy this way. Heidegger is not telling us about the house with four walls and it looks like it has green siding on the side of the house. The analogy is more like - Heidegger has moved us inside the house and there are no walls inside the house just space. Since there are no walls inside the house --- it is like no other house you have ever been inside, that is, a different way of doing philosophizing. Thus, philosophers have a problem reading this text because it is not like any other philosophical texts that they had read and part of this problem is because Heidegger is actually doing something different not just giving us a picture or some proofs. Notice the word "transformation".

"By contrast, in philosophical knowing a transformation of the man who understands takes place with the very first step - not in a moral, "existentiell" sense but rather with Da-sein as measure."

Issue #5 Ferrer: I think Heidegger as made some points about the relationship between philosophy and theology, so I do not think this is traditional theology. Heidegger is not sure if the God or God or gods have come and gone for good or just hiding - which certainly does not sound like ontology and theology. BUT and I underscore the "but" Heidegger is making the point about being open to the divine (the God or God or gods). Heidegger did raise the questions and clearly thought about the divine, so on the one hand, we can not say that Heidegger was closed to the possibility, but it is not clear that he had an actual theology. In other words, I think this is an open question that Heidegger wanted to remain an open question. The Buddha was silent on some questions and Heidegger has been silent on some questions (does Da-sein in Being and Time have a soul?); but in this case, Heidegger wants to open the question and leave it open (at least that is my reading).

"If gods are the undecided, because at the beginning the opening for godding is still denied, what does it mean to say: at the disposal of the gods? That word means to stand ready for being used in opening the open."

Issue #6 Ferrer: I like this remark and thought from Heidegger. This makes the whole way of 'care' in Being and Time make more sense for me. These are all in relationship to Seyn.

"Seeker, preserver, guardian, and caretaker: this is what care means as the basic trait of Dasein."

Issue #7 Ferrer: I find this passage insightful for me in a way to understand Heidegger. The background for me is teleology, maybe even active nihilism. Heidegger takes all of the metaphysics out of the question and directs in toward his transformation of philosophy - all in a very neat way. I really enjoyed this brief text and the way Heidegger has brought in together.

"In this way the inceptual mindfulness of thinking becomes necessarily genuine thinking, i. e., a thinking that sets goals. What get set are not just any goal and not the goal in general, but the one and only and thus singular goal of our history. This goal is the seeking itself, the seeking of Seyn. It takes place and is itself the deepest find when man becomes the preserver of the truth of Seyn, becomes guardian and caretaker of that stillness, and is resolute in that."

Think about Nietzsche and Spinoza and their anti-teleological direction.

Remarks on sections: 41-44. Daniel Fidel Ferrer. Nietzsche said in Ecce Homo, I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous - a crisis without equal on earth.
("Why I am a Destiny").

Ich kenne mein Loos. Es wird sich einmal an meinen Namen die Erinnerung an etwas Ungeheures anknüpfen,-an eine Krisis, wie es keine auf Erden gab.

Section 41, Heidegger says, "transformation of man himself". These sections all revolve around a central issue: the decision. Heidegger is asking us to see and then to make a "decision". Although right here I am already in deep water because I use the expression "to make a decision", which sounds like something 'we' can do today or this morning when we woke - and that is not the case. It is not a personal decision that we are making.

Side note: there is a very nice discussion by Heidegger at the bottom of English translation of page 58 and the top of page 59 (early section 42) about his methodology and the questioning approach that he is showing us. Heidegger also in section 42 used the expression Erdenken, en-thinking of Beyn, the attuning of questioning.

In section 44 (et p. 62-63), Heidegger gives us ten "or" is it that he asks us "whether" accept A or B, with B being where Heidegger is headed or where Heidegger thinks we are all headed, since this is not psychology or sociology or some utopian thinking. Then Heidegger summarizes this with remark:

"All of these decisions, which seem to be many and varied, are gathered into one thing only: whether Seyn definitively withdraws, or whether this withdrawal as refusal becomes the first truth and the other beginning of history." (GA 65, et. p., 63).

Note: the methodology of the "or". How does the abandonment of Being announce itself? (See section 56, et. p. 82, German p. 117-118).

The other beginning (Anfang) is a very important part of the Beiträge and it looks like this important part of Heidegger's direction (at least during this period). We have forthcoming volumes of GA with titles like: GA 70 Über den Anfang (1941), GA 72 Die Stege des Anfangs (1944). Basically, we have the first beginning with the Greeks and what Heidegger calls the other beginning (Anfang). Heidegger is pointing us toward the way. Even early in this text Heidegger is showing us his thinking:

"Contributions" enact a questioning along a pathway which is first traced out by the crossing to the other beginning, into which Western thinking is now entering. This pathway brings the crossing into the openness of history and establishes the crossing as perhaps a very long sojourn, in the enactment of which the other beginning of thinking always remains only intimation, but already decisive." (Contributions to Philosophy (Vom Ereignis). et. p. 3). "Die "Beiträge" fragen in einer Bahn, die durch den Übergang zum anderen Anfang, in den jetzt das abendländische Denken einrückt, erst gebahnt wird. Diese Bahn bringt den Übergang ins Offene der Geschichte und begründet ihn als einen vielleicht sehr langen Aufenthalt, in dessen Vollzug der andere Anfang des Denkens immer nur das Geahnte aber doch schon Entschiedene bleibt." (Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (GA 65, p. 4).

Toward the end of section 44, Heidegger uses the expression: "Da-sein must also prepare for the stillness of Seyn." I read this and thought of Gelassenheit.

Back to section 41 (GA 65) Heidegger again is critical of the whole concept of animal rationale. Needless to say, this is a recurring theme with Heidegger. Man is the animal with reason thrown in for good measure - Heidegger is contra this is in a big way. (Even starting on the first page of the whole text). Instead Heidegger is showing us man as Da-Sein, man as fundamentally defined as Man as in the opening of Being. This is not man as the rational animal, and oh by the way, also open to Being; but rather, as Being as the opening that is man. (Of course, women too). This is the "transformation of man himself ".

To: Reading Group. Remarks on Sections 56-60 of Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)
(1936-1939). Gesamtausgabe volume 65. These are hard sections because so much is loaded into the text by Heidegger. Section 55 Echo. Our distressfulness (Notlosigkeit) is pushing toward the forgotteness of Being (Seinsvergessenheit). Why is this an echo? Sound metaphors are being used by Heidegger to avoid perception and visual images. Do you smell something funny here? What do you hear about Being? We jump to beings and things, but all of the times forget what is it that makes up the whole process -- the Being of beings. Die Seinsverlassenheit ist der Grund der Seinsvergessenheit. Can we say that we need to make beings at home with being; we need to let beings Be through Being? A harmony that is lacking between beings and Being. Poor Being - forgotten and abandoned; and no one noticed (lack of distress over this situation). I know this does not sound like Heidegger. Can we "say" what Heidegger is up to without re-saying Heidegger in Heideggerian speaks? Heidegger summarize at the end of 55 with the remark: Der Anklang des Seyns will das Seyn in seiner vollen Wesung als Ereignis durch die Enthüllung der Seinsverlassenheit zurückholen, was nur so geschieht, dass das Seiende durch die Gründung des Da-seins in das im Sprung eröffnete Seyn zurückgestellt wird. And I think the key expression here is the Gründung des Da-seins (grounding of Da-sein). This allows for the leap to a new beginning or at least that is one place for us to leap to. a new beginning (which includes a lot).

Section 56. Some of the next section goes over the Introduction in "Being and Time" again - Being as forgotten, general, familiar, empty, etc. But and now come the 16 points about the Seinsverlassenheit
(abandonment of Being) announces itself. This needs more than a few remarks to go into detail, but I find these 16 points to be one of the fascinating parts of the whole text. This is a list of the philosophical issues that Heidegger wants to say are in some sense "bad". Some sounds like cultural issues, some personal, I think the one #15 is a little over board, "darkening of the world and the destruction of the earth". Sounds like "apocalyptic language . the cosmic drama, the mystical metaphors, the Teutonic bombast" (Sheehan 2001). This would be on the one hand, whereas reading Heidegger carefully requires a more thoughtful approach. Number 10 speaks to me more than the others: "10. Alle Ruhe und Verhaltenheit erscheint als Untätigkeit und Gehenlassen und Verzicht und ist vielleicht der weiteste Überschwung zurück in das Seinlassen des Seins als Ereignis." I think the Seinlassen and Gehenlassen speaks to the notion of Gelassenheit, but my German is on thin ice here. And I am not sure when Heidegger started to stress this notion (not sure even what to called it - expression). Section 57 leads into 58 and three concealments of the abandonment, which in fact leads to six. The extra three are thrown in for free. Well in fact, the first three lead to the fourth. But the 5 and 6 are added. Heidegger makes a clear summarizing point in section 5. "Zeitalters der gänzlichen Fraglosigkeit aller Dinge und aller Machenschaften." The lack of questioning leads again to section 59 with a similar title. Section 60 some people have called this a constant refrain through the entire text. "die Notlosigkeit als die höchste Not" since Heidegger sees no distress over these issues, this then becomes his highest or utmost distress. NO ONE IS WORRIED ABOUT the abandonment of the Being of beings and Da-sein ground has been lost. Nietzsche said something that comes to mind: "Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? And backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? "(1882 Die fröhliche Wissenschaft:
("la gaya scienza" Book three, section 125).

I am not sure this has helped bring about a better reading of these sections, but the Beiträge is a difficult text to get our hands, eyes, ears, and our nose; and to get a sense of where Heidegger is leading us. Martin Heidegger's Contributions to philosophy (from enowning) (1936-1939) Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) Remarks on sections GA 65, 61-67. Following Timothy Bagley remarks.

When I read this perhaps I wanted the seas to be more open and clear for our sailing forth. Heidegger is developing his concepts here and making us come to clearer understanding of Machenschaft and Erlebnis.

How are we as philosophers to proceed with "concepts"?
(begriff, inbegriff, Begrifflichkeit, Inbegrifflichkeit)

What are we really doing with our concepts? Do we want to make them: riper, clearer, stronger, deeper, more complete, under or over determined them? Nietzsche said in 1885 (Will to Power, #409), "What dawns on philosophers last of all: they must no longer accept concepts as gifts, nor merely purify and polish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them convincing."

Or, "Even the palest of the pale were able to master him-our honorable metaphysicians, those concept-albinos. They spun their webs around him until, hypnotized by their motions, he himself became a spider, another metaphysician." Twilight of the Idols.

For Nietzsche concepts are just gifts from on high from the old times and of course most of them are the metaphysical concepts - which are no good. Nothing is given for us without re-thinking the concepts. Re- thinking, re-working, or re-transformed as it were. Non-historical concepts are gone.

Heidegger talks about Reinigung, section 110, subsection 26. "(What unfolds as "destruction" in Sein und Zeit does not mean dismantling as demolishing but as purifying..." (Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1939), GA 65, German pp. 220-221). Reinigung= cleaning, Nettoyage?

Earlier Heidegger said, "These three basic components of phenomenological method - reduction, construction, destruction - belong together in their content and must receive grounding in their mutual pertinence. Construction in philosophy is necessarily destruction, that is to say, a de-constructing of traditional concepts carried out in a historical recursion to the tradition. And this not a negation of the tradition or a condemnation of it as worthless; quite the reverse, it signifies precisely a positive appropriation of tradition." (Summer Semester 1927 Basic Problems in Phenomenology, E. T. p. 23). (Perhaps, Hegel's aufgehoben comes to mind).

Heidegger asks the question and answers it: "Was meint Machenschaft? Das in die eigene Fesselung Losgelassene. Welche Fesseln? Das Schema der durchgängigen berechenbaren Erklärbarkeit, wodurch jegliches mit jedem gleichmäßig zusammenrückt und sich vollends fremd, ja ganz anders als noch fremd wird. Der Bezug der Unbezüglichkeit." (GA 65, #67). The last part in English is "The relation of non-relationality". What is relationality, and hence what is non-relationality?

About Machination and Lived-Experience, Heidegger said: "The strength for preserving and sheltering is farthest from them" (Section 66). The important point to all of this is not to try to conceive of these remarks from an ontic thinking, but rather, ontological. The difficult speaks. (See also section number 2 in GA 65, #18).

In on of the interviews Heidegger says he is not against technology per se, it is rather a question of understanding where technology comes from and in a sense there is "more" than just technology. I think the "more" is the question for Heidegger. Man was defined as "animal rationale" but now this has to be transformed to Da-Sein.

One of Tim's points is that Heidegger is short on "solutions". I always think of the fly in the bottle example. This is where philosophers paint us into the corner or being a fly in the bottle with seemingly no way until we decide on following them out. They give us the "solution". Kant's critical path alone is open. Kant said, "The critical path alone is still open. If the reader has had the courtesy and patience to accompany me along this path, he may now judge for himself whether, if he cares to lend his aid in making this path into a high-road, it may not be possible to achieve before the end of the present century what many centuries have not been able to accomplish; namely, to secure for human reason complete satisfaction in regard to that with which it has all along so eagerly occupied itself, though hitherto in vain." (very end of CPR).

The question for understanding Nietzsche is that there are few nuggets in Nietzsche's published writings that give us a "solution" after pages of critical remarks about every
-ism and every one under the sun, and then Nietzsche gives us a few crumbs. Heidegger also does not give us many "solutions". One of my favorite quotes from Heidegger which is "I write all of this in the form of questions; for, as far as I can see, thinking can today do more than to continually ponder what evoked in the said questions." (On The Question of Being, Letter to Ernst Jünger, "Zur Seinsfrage (1955) / Über die Linie" in GA 9 Pathmarks et. p. 306). ("Ich schreibe dies alles in der Form von Fragen; denn mehr vermag heute, soweit ich sehe, ein Denken nicht, als unablässig eig das zu bedenken, was die angeführten Fragen hervorruft.").

The questioning nature of philosophy, it is only "what if". The seeking itself is the goal. "The grandeur of man is measured according to what he seeks and according to the urgency by which he remains a seeker (Suchende)." (Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewählte 'Probleme' der 'Logik', GA 45 g. p. 5, et. p. 7).

Perhaps we can say that Machenschaft stands in our way. End of remarks about the text GA 65.

Question: how much sense does this make without you reading the text first? I think this is a general question when reading any philosophical thinking "about" some text. Otherwise, you need setup the context as much as possible. I have tried to do with in some of my work with quoting Heidegger with both the English and the German; and engaging Heidegger sometimes in a free fore all and sometimes just re-thinking through what Heidegger has thought. How can we give the context for some aphorisms - all of life can be included.

97 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as "Fundamental principle: in the entire history of mankind until now no purpose, no secret rational leading, no instinct, but rather accident, accident, accident-and some beneficial ones." (KGW V-1 p. 349). You see mankind is not the goal, and has no goal. At one point, Nietzsche even says that mankind does not even exist. Beside mankind the only goal is to lead us to the overman.
98 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as " When I speak of Plato, Pascal, Spinoza, and Goethe, then I know that their blood rolls in mine-I am proud, if I tell the truth about them-that this family is well enough that it has nothing to hold in or to conceal; and in such a way I have always been proud of its humanity, and proud especially of its absolute truthfulness." Notebooks: Summer 1882 21 [2]. Although he would not like the thought, Nietzsche should have included Kant in this group as least on the scale of telling the truth and honesty. Of course, we can wonder about the truthfulness of what was done to the thought of Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

99 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as "One forgets, to give an example, how European culture hitherto and our recent culture itself approaches a state of philosophical disintegration [Mürbigkeit], out of which the emergence of a Buddhism becomes understandable." Notebooks: November 1887-March 1888 11 [413]. Heidegger talks about the opposite of Buddhism (GA section 83). For Nietzsche it seems like Buddhism is a late form of nihilism and shows the lack of will and spirit. When we can no longer give birth to a new god or even thought of dancing god - with fatalism, Buddhism becomes the last gasp of earthly breath.
100 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as "We believe in reason: it is however the philosophy of gray concepts, language is built upon the most naive prejudices ... Rational thought is an interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off." (KGW VIII-1 p. 197, KSA XII p. 193f). For Nietzsche reason is an interesting process of thinking, which is linked to all of our thoughts just being an interpretation and not based on hard data or hard thinking. Language is thought through the process of grammar. Language for Heidegger is the house of Being (Seyn) with lots of open doors and let in the wind and let our pathways into the house be seen on clear blue sky day.

101 Is Heidegger notion of Being (Sein, Seyn) singular or plural? Can we say Being(s) without using the expression "Beings" to mean things or beings? Our singularity can be changed into a transhumanity or posthumans without metaphysical grammar behind the veil of our language. Can we speak of the The Dyson Scenario now? Irregular grammar for Being, so that is neither singular or plural or connected to just the grammar of the word, which we use the expression "Being" to mean more than what fits into grammatical construction.
102 Nietzsche said, remarked, thought, wrote down, and it was translated into English and comes to us as "After the vision of the overman, in a gruesome way the doctrine of the recurrence: now bearable!
(MGW, XIV, 110). You see we need the vision of the overman and how it must now feel to hear the word of the eternal return of the same, some how goes from gruesome to bearable for us mere humans. Can we handle the tension and the awful dread in the air as we now hear without our third ear the dreadful truth of being human? Existentialism must be heard in some form, but can we handle it and still be able to bound in the air with the joyful science - yes, of course. Nietzsche said, "Thereupon Zarathustra related, out of the joy of the übermensch, the secret that all recurs." (MGW, XIV, 180). The übermensch is the overman. Therefore, we now know the whole story of the real joy of secret that Nietzsche has finally taught us.

103 Nietzsche said, "Well then! Such men alone are my readers, my right readers, my predestined readers: what matter the rest? The rest-that is merely mankind. One must be above mankind in strength..." (The Antichrist: Revaluation of All Values or later changed to Curse Upon Christianity. Written 1888-Published 1894). Who does Nietzsche really think was going to read his books? Only for a few of those who were destined to read his books and to be ready to read just his books.

104

Kant said, "There are scholarly men, to whom the history of philosophy (both ancient and modern) is philosophy itself; for these the present Prolegomena are not written. They just wait till those who endeavor to draw from the fountain of reason itself have completed their work; it will then be the historian's turn to inform the world of what has been done. Unfortunately, nothing can be said, which in their opinion has not been said before, and truly the same prophecy applies to all future time; for since the human reason has for many centuries speculated upon innumerable objects in various ways, it is hardly to be expected that we should not be able to discover analogies for every new idea among the old sayings of past ages." (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). With this Kant philosophical methodology comes forth. Skip the past and dig into reason. Kant understood history and historical thought, but he was unable to keep this in forefront and make the turn toward historical thinking and a true philosophy of history that was part of his three critiques. We had to wait for Hegel to dictate that whole notion to philosophy, but it was Nietzsche who knew it from beginning to the end of his philosophy. Can we find places where Nietzsche did not tow the line - yes, but he knew philosophers and their errors.
105 Being is breathing in the openness that becomes unhidden by the truth.
106 Ontology is some mixed between henology and the manyness. What is Greek for the manyness of existence?
107 Are we known or unknown to ourselves? Answer: re-think the question.
108 Oh - how fortunate we are to know many things we do not need know and only a few things that we really need to know. These important things are..
109 Is the word "good" too big a concept for us thinkers? Can we handle the whole of the conceptual world like the concept of "good"? Answer: tough question.
110 Are Heidegger and Nietzsche really inhuman or superhuman compared to the lesser group?
111 Can we ever have a tabula rasa (clean slate) for philosophy or even thought in general? Answer: no, we are embedded in history. What does nitimur in vetitum really mean for us thinkers?
112 The hidden history of philosophy is still hidden, since we all know that it was done for theology. Let me speak as a theologian for a moment. Ok, that does not work now.
113 Seek for yourself - do not let these words confused you.
114 I am the thinker par excellence, for this is my goal, so much for scholars. To speak Latin, I am as summa summarum a thinker- really.
115 I have one foot in life and no feet in the great beyond.

116 Can I speak metaphorically for a change? Ok, it is not a change, I have been speaking metaphorically, since you open this text and begin to read. Is that ok with you? Please delete the previous text. Or, at least you can re-read it the whole aphorism.

117 Why do we need any kind of fatalism at all? Stand-up and take it - please.
118 Are you waiting for other people to rate this book highly? Do you want the review to say that this book was worth reading? Why wait?
119 Perhaps I am too questionable. Perhaps you ask too many questions and all you wanted was answers to the "what if" of life. Keep waiting, your time has not yet come for me.

120 Being is sui generis - now that is the truth. Are you waiting for the imprimatur?
121 How can we have love of fate without either love or fate? Read: amor fati as the final hope for Nietzsche (think positively). What can we be with or without our love and our fate on earth? Tricky question that can not be answer for all, perhaps only a few will ever know the question.
122 Paper work - well we should all suffer more and let it all happen.

123 I am enjoying the feast of thinking - you should too.

123 Ok, just checking to see if you are reading the numbers.

124 Deep ecology sounds like depth psychology, nothing from nothing equals something is that the right logic. In other words, deep ecology is about man's relationship to the meaning of the earth without the eternal ideas and values; and without the foundation of rationality. Ecology is really man's relationship to the world without religion and metaphysics - in this new age.
125 We know, therefore we are.
126 Nature is not transparent to itself.

127 Words are the cloths of Being. Language is the house/home of Being without metaphysical doors and perhaps without Kant's foundations as the basement.
128 Time moves forward and never backward, but what about a movement to the side. Time moves sideway and fills up all of the space of experience.
129 Kant, Schelling, and Hegel were the last group of philosophers, who all assumed God as given. Although they wrote about proofs for the Dasein of God, nevertheless, in actuality their systems assumed God without reservations. Just like we assume metaphysics to be a bad thing there we need to remove - if we can.
130 Can food be a metaphor for Being?
131 If the house of Being is language and that means Being is no longer singular (that there are multiple doors), then the meaning of Being, the truth of Being, the essential sway of Being, and the typology of Being is wrapped up with language. Is the typology of Being (Sein, Seyn) based on function? Answer: no, I do not think so.
132 "It gives" is too ontic of a metaphor for Heidegger. Self-consciousness is too subjective. Worldview is too much psychology. All modern metaphysics has that itch of being way too anthropomorphic - for us. The itch is only skin deep. Underneath metaphysics is our need to go back behind or to have that one step in the beyond of something. Science fiction is most likely our need to create something more than our meaning of the earth.
133 Truthfulness is the abstraction of a process. How can truth be a process? Or, how can truth not be a process?
134 Truth is not a circle or triangle. Can we have truth without reason? Answer: yes, I think so.
135 Please re-read Aristotle's Physics IV for the concept of time.
136 Is inapparent the same meaning as hidden? Phenomenology rightly understood is only after hidden phenomenon. Unconcealmentness-ing, I think had the right meaning.
137 Can we say that entelecheia is an accomplished reality? Answer: no, it has more the sense of power within. Does to kata tas ptoseis on lead to ousia and symbebekota? Answer: yes. Roughly translated this means: Being according to the categories leads to substance and accidents.
138 How can our destiny talk to us? Can we no longer read the signs and the whole sense of which direction should we go is lost?
139 Are you known or un-known to ourselves? How much do understand of our own nature? Man has a problem. No goal, no answer, no final anything. Telos is at no end.
140 Overthrowing the truth and metaphysics - that for me would be a good day. We have lost the truth, now we must lose metaphysics. Goodbye.
141 The hidden history of mankind is that we are unknown to ourselves and we shall remain so with or without Heidegger and Nietzsche.
142 Even with all that is no longer forbidden to us, we still know so little.
143 If you keep looking for me and read my truths, then how will you find your selves? Are you learning anything from me or is this an image of you? First find yourselves - only then can you return to me and enjoy all things afresh again.
144 Are we going up or are we going down? Look around and do not ask these questions again.
145 Behind the shadow of God is still the meaning of the earth, so look for the meaning of the earth or planet within you and in the world as well.
146 Just remember you have one foot in beyond, one foot here, and one foot there - now you are talking about having a few extra feet just for fun.
147 Nietzsche talked about being 6000 feet above Bayreuth - he should get on plane and he could have seen what life looks like at 30,000 feet above it all.
148 Should we speak metaphorically again, ok everything you read is a metaphor. Just in case you missed it, here it is again -- ok everything you read is a metaphor.
149 Fatalism is both the will to no longer react and the will to understand that reacting is no longer needed.
150 Heidegger has given us one step to question Being, but in fact, everything - everywhere is way too questionable for even Heidegger. Open up the question and see all of the questions that those questions presuppose and it that box there are even more questions waiting in your face to get those questions. This is the kind of fatalism of too many questions, which take up too much mind-space. Can you handle it? Gnôthi seauton (know your self).
151

Is Being sui generis or not? Yes, I think so.
152 My formula for philosophy is two cups honey and then a little a beer for good measure. Ok, what were you expecting me to say, what did you hear in your head? You are just drunk with too many riddles. In which direction are you seeking me or yourselves? Think about it again.
153 Can you still deduce the truth related to philosophy? How would you even go about doing that? Yes, I think you have a problem.
154 Joyous cosmology of life and the worm in us is still in the earth and mud. How much of us is still worm in the mud? Our antipodically nature is contra to the great Hegel. Just say "yes" unconditionally to the opposition of all that is before and after us. Can I say one word now - terror.
155 Now that we can speak like crypto-priests and the crypto-philosophers - what do we really want to say to everyone? Listen with your third ear and sense the sound approaching from afar.
156 Nietzsche wants to a revaluation of all values - well, I say with Heidegger trash all of the previous value metaphysics (period).
157 Are there higher mountains to climb - let us climb them now.
158 What is really modern? Should we not offer our own critique of all things of modernity? Answer: no, I think that it has no ground and no foundation.
159 If Marx stood Hegel on his head, and Nietzsche stood Platonism and Metaphysics on its head, then Heidegger never stood on his head; but rather, he developed the nature of philosophy as interrogative.
160 Are we finished with the old truths or are they going to come back again and again? No, I think old truths are on their way out. So long!!
161 I am sorry if these aphorisms and this so call "book" is not deep enough for you, but perhaps you need to go to your own depths first.
162 Can we know our fate? I still want to ponder this for a time.
163 We have seen world-historical politics, but so far no world-historical philosophy has appeared.
164 Should philosophers be annihilators par excellence or should they create a new vision of the earth? Speak of the Utopia.
165 Should I be shorter and brief for you? Perhaps you would like to read some "silence" again. Listen up.
166 Spinoza speaks of amor intellectualis dei (intellectual love of God). Should we speak of the real love of fate on earth? How about practical love of God - does that sound better to you?
167 Can speak of our culture as having symptomatological characteristics? We have so much of our symptoms to tell each other.
168 Who is responsible for mankind being here on the planet? No one. Who knows the purpose? No one. The why and goal is lacking. In short, to speak the truth - lost in the wilderness again.
169 Can we say there is not now nor has there been a really world class philosopher that lived in America? Why is that? Is it a matter of culture or something more subtle? We know our dangers? Do we have enough culture and history for a philosopher to be born?
170 Can we speak unphilosophical for a moment? Under what rock can we find the truth? Philosopher as rock hound. The history of philosophy in America has not yet been written, perhaps it too early or just too late (what practical use is philosophy?). Historians have no philosophy; they lack all of the necessary ingredients for the recipe.
171 Raphael idealized the philosophers. Did he get right?
172 What would anti-Heidegger mean for Heideggerians? Base on his life or based on his philosophy. Should we all be inside as anti-Heideggerians looking for our differences with Heidegger?
173 What is the highest philosopher for American's service industry worker? This shows the problem right off of the bat. Kant thought the thing-in-itself would save the civil servant.
174 To put it metaphorically: means to put it at all. The good is known to all mankind.
175 Has there been a master of the aphorisms yet? What is the methodology used for, since for philosophy there are only paths.
176 Consequently Wittgenstein did not understand the Greeks and perhaps very few Germans for that matter. Wittgenstein was born posthumously, and then he died as well. What culture produced Wittgenstein and what are the pre-conditions for this lost of history? Even Hegel "had" history at some level.
177 What matters that we have no courage for the forbidden and no ability for riddles? We are dead in the water without a paddle or direction, lost on an open sea.
178 How much solitude is required to produce one philosopher? Is it just numbers?
179 Can we be above mankind? Certainly, not beyond mankind metaphysically if that is what you were thinking. A few philosophers are all that we need. Our factum, our final truth - is still missing from our world. There is no end, no telos, and no final end to anything. Why would you want and will a final end to anything? The story of mankind's history has no end. Read a book without an end and you will get the idea. The will to an end is some kind of nihilistic will, since we are without goals and purposes.
180 My formula for philosophy: is to actively engage in philosophizing with historical figures as a new way of seeing. In other words, read between the lines and all over the margins. Produce your own marginalia of direct contact with philosophers. Can our marginalia grow into a systematic philosophy? Silly question, now step back and laugh at your self for a minute.
181 How can philosophers have presuppositions they are just grammar. Can we avoid presuppositions? Answer: no. We need to try and always be in the process of the clarification of our presuppositions. Backward thinking in this case is good.
182 Why no new gods? The will, the power, and the spirit are all gone. Now all we have is the figure of the last god face is just a glimmer and the hint of something we know is missing. The last god may or may not return for Heidegger. All of these concepts of god have been denatured and lost. The spirit world is long gone for modern man. Perhaps the man of the future may yet find the last god who may save us. Man and god are matchless.
183 Where is the moral order to the world? What would we do if we found it? Answer: nothing.
184 Was Francis of Assisi to much of realist for the Church? Realism and religion - now there is a match.
185 Who is the greatest symbolist? The symbols of the church speak to many.
186 Hegel still wants us to provoke the contradiction. The system and the anit-system are in one location and place. Who should the philosopher provoke now? Those who are unfree?
187 What does our age, our period in history, our time - know with regard to itself? I think not much. Does this produce some nausea for you or are you left high and dry by yourself?
188 With the famous saying, "ego cogito, ergo sum" (Descartes) nothing was really said, since Protagoras said the same years before. Man is the measure of all things, man is in relationship to the Being of beings (all things too). Man is man and that is all there is to everything. Man! Nothing more need be said at this point. Overman will be the replacement.
189 Common sense is lost to the world of T. V. and the media. No practical reason to be involved in common sense, since everyone knows it. The counter punch to Hegel lead to positivism and even that position is above/beyond/behind common sense. But how can we even rank these worldviews, witch are in fact not even philosophy.
190 What is the fulfillment of philosophy and the end of philosophy as a subject matter for thought? Philosophy as a subject (not philosophy as philosophizing and thinking) is to be lost to the modern world.
191 Language is the on one hand, the words as lexical artifacts, but on the other hand (or tongue) produces communications between two or more people. Where is the meaning of words and language to be found? Any questions about language always remain interrogative for us as human beings involved with the riddle of language. How can we produce the non-contradiction about language as the house of Being?
192 Metaphysics must first be understood in its very nature, second it must be confronted, third it must be fulfilled, fourth it must be overcome, and then final if possible it must be put outside and behind our philosophical thinking. One case: metaphysics thinks Being as will. Metaphysics thought as metaphysica generalis as cosmology, theology, and ontology or ontotheological. Split between essentia and existentia with eternal ideas re-baked in the mix. The need for the first philosophy is wanting without a will.
193 Philology (wordology) needs to include the study of just reading and reading well.
194 Do we need to start studying unpractical reasons for doing things? Everything comes back to the survival of mankind or just our way of life. We do not need moral education for such things, since most already know it. We all have a built in sense for facts and truths in the moral order.
195 Philosophy has been trampled down by many feet, so there is a little left.
196 Can we still find a few honorable metaphysicians who are still spinning out those concept-albinos of Nietzsche's? Those conceptual webs of confusions - I confess to those needs as well. Grasping the conceptual is well known. Thinking these are absolute and eternal ideas - that is Hegel's story.
197 Nietzsche wants new values, whereas Heidegger stands outside of metaphysics and metaphysics of values. If the world has no value, then what? Valuelessness-ing seems strange, since values do not exist, then no process of losing them. If we lost God and we have lost morality, plus we now have lost values, then I repeat: what is left for us mere mortals on this earth?

198 Do you see the signs and the lost of spirit that is nihilisms? Ok, re-think or en-think or be-think it all again and see what is on the horizon of your thought.

199 How weary is weary nihilism that leads to Buddhism? Very!

200 All of life is joy with or without the opening that is the Being of beings.

201 Who was Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843)? Hegel first meet at Hölderlin at the Tübingen Protestant Seminary called the Stift in October 1788. In 1790, Hegel, F. J. W. Schelling, and Hölderlin are roommates. They are reading F. H. Jacobi's works and are in the web of the so called Pantheism Controversy. At the same time, they are reading the Greeks in this connection (Hen kai Pan). Schelling and Hölderlin are in a reading group about Kant, but Hegel does not join. Together they talked of the Kantian notion of the "invisible church". However, Hegel is already more distance from Kant than Hölderlin and Schelling. They shared a keen interest in the French Revolution 1789. Hölderlin in 1794 and 1795 attends classes by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). He talks to Hegel about Fichte. Hegel writes a poem (Eleusis) to Hölderlin in August 1796. During 1797, Hegel takes on Hofmeister in Frankfurt that Hölderlin had arranged for him and lives near Hölderlin. Hölderlin increasingly is doing more poetry and has published a novel
(Hyperion). Hegel acts the middle man between Hölderlin and his beloved Susette Gontard. Hölderlin is working on translations of the Greeks. By 1798 Hölderlin has moved and by early 1801 Hegel moves to Jena to be close to Schelling and his first philosophical writings are published in the Critical Journal of Philosophy edited by Hegel and Schelling. Hegel helped get new editions of Hölderlin works published, and Hyperion in 1822 and poems in 1826. In the mean time, Hölderlin has a mental break down in 1807 and lives the next 36 years in a tower over looking the Neckar River near Tübingen. In March 1830, Hegel speaks of the glowing time of his youth and Hölderlin at a dinner party with the princess Marianne of Hessen-Homburg. Since that time Hölderlin has become even more famous as a poet and is connected to the philosophical world through Heidegger's elucidations of Hölderlin. These details about his life do not help us understand where Hölderlin stands in our future. For that issue you need to re-read Heidegger and go ahead into the future.

202 Philosophy's essential nature is opera citato.

203

Besides being assiduous what else can we say about scholars? I think Nietzsche would have more to say about these "lost ones".

204 Can we ever exonerate any philosopher? Kant did and is doing more damage to philosophers, then Heidegger being silent on his one time attempt at the political.

205 Are university philosophy professors anything more than just simple proponents of philosophy? For sure, the lesser role in philosophy needs to be filled by someone.

206 Are we just aficionado of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger? We need to more than cheerleaders for philosophers.

207 Who still believes in joie de vivre? This is now an outdated notion of reality.

208 Have you decided to quit reading and thinking about philosophy, then nolo contendere to turning to clear truth about life. Things go better without philosophy. There is no doubt about that idea. What do you find that surprising? Think again. Oh, a non sequitur or just humor. Philosophy is something you can not make a decision about. The sine qua non of philosophy is to reject philosophy. You must question the base and foundation of all thinking, namely, the roots of philosophy.

209 Kant should be de rigueur for the first years of any philosophy student.

210 Extermination maybe the best one can do against terrorism. Absolute war maybe when there is only one side left standing.

211 Warfare is a complex interplay between applied engineering and human (individuals, groups, cultures, nations, groups of groups) engineering.

212 If ants engage in war, then can we say that ants have a will? War defined as a conflict of wills. F. Nietzsche talks of will to power. M. Heidegger's analysis points to the will to Will at the end of western metaphysics. In this case, the word 'will' is both a verb and with Heidegger the second part of the phrase the word 'Will' is a noun. How can we have the will to dominate others? Why not leave them alone? No, we can not do that. Our will drives us to another course of action.

213 Civilization based on peace would define certain values. These kinds of values might not lead to long term survival of humanity. Peace-values have the wrong rank. I. Kant wrote an essay on Perpetual Peace in the late 1700s. This supposedly lead to the creation of the League of Nations (which Heidegger was against in the 1930s) and then on to the United Nations. However, think of the counterexample of Frank Herbert's Dune series. What is the tension between very long term peace and war? By some super management method and a long time from if there was control over all of the nations could we come up with long term peace - could the UN be a way of bring peace to the world. Instead of some ideal of peace on earth should we think of trying to reduce warfare and come up with a real objective - for example, less than a thousand people die per year in warfare. A systematic architectonics of concepts is a general problem of ancient Aristotelian problem in metaphysics. Kant had a solution. The One and the Many is an essential issue in Plato's dialogue Sophist, but the issue of metawar is more precisely determined as a regional ontology. N. Hartmann and E. Husserl took up this general problem in the early 20th century. The problem of henology of how the One become Many is not an issue here, but how to create a system for metawar needs to have the roots and foundation based in a regional ontology. How to do that?

214 War is the clash of worldviews. We want you to enjoin our worldview and do what we want you to do, namely, to bend to our will. We can kill you because you think slavery is way of the world. My worldview includes freedom of newspapers, but I will not kill you that. But if enough of your worldview is different than mine and you threaten me. If I sense danger, then I might at least damage you so you quit threatening me.

215 Why does war beget more war? Nations are in a kind of balance and during and after war then balance changes, once that balance is changed, then the new balance creates the opening for more conflict and war. The balance involves groups of Nations. Nations feel danger and are threaten. Hence, the possibility of war increases.

216 What are the essential parts to a worldview? How can worldviews be in conflict? There are links to values and ranks of those values. Civilizations have ranked values concretely in them. This is what is meant partial by our way of life. Civilizations decline and fall because of wars, but these also come apart by themselves.

What dangers are apparent or hidden in our civilization? What can we do about them? How many dangers for us reside in other nations? These dangers are not simply that other nations would make war against us, but what materials they may have or had that can be used against us by terrorist. There are other kinds of dangers. Some of which we can not know at this point. Some things remain hidden for possible weapons in the future.

Aphorisms: Heidegger on Zarathustra

1 At the center of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for Everyone and No One, is the figure Zarathustra. Heidegger asks the question: who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? We can follow along with the questions: Who is Heidegger's Nietzsche? Who is Zarathustra for Heidegger?

Both of these questions will become more apparent during our critical dialogue with Heidegger.

2 Is Heidegger's Being of Time a book for everyone and no one? Heidegger was pushed into publishing his work ahead of time, but who was the book really written for.? Heidegger dedicated it to Edmund Husserl. In the context, he discussed the third unpublished division with Karl Jaspers and decided it was not yet ready. Heidegger wrote the book for philosophers, perhaps specifically for phenomenologists.

Heidegger seems to be upset with the "idle curious" who get intoxicated with a particular aphorisms. He juxtaposes this approach with what appears to be Heidegger's own method which is "proceeding along the path of thought that here seeks its expression" ("Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra," second paragraph). Of course, Nietzsche himself used both the aphorism method and poetry. Nietzsche also gave us an example of unpacking aphorisms in the Genealogy of Morals. Aphorisms can point toward the path of thought, perhaps better than a novel format like Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The novel format may have confused people more than it helped. Why did Nietzsche decided to use the novel format as a methodology of doing philosophy and communicating with us? What is the philosophical methodology, the path of thought that Nietzsche decided to use in Thus Spoke Zarathustra? Heidegger has written dialogues, but so far nothing that Heidegger has written would be what he calls an aphorism. Why only one novel from Nietzsche? Especially, since there are so many notebooks, but still no sketches for other novels, one has to wonder how the novel came to Nietzsche. What really happen there?

4 Can we find the philosophical truths without a method? Do we need an absolute method which is Hegel's main philosophical claim? The how pushes us toward a theory of knowledge that assumes too much. If the world is flat in appearance, then there is no depth. This means no "foundation" moves. Kant goes home. Nietzsche goes to the front of the classroom. Heidegger is still the teacher. Hegel remains the thinker. Hegel through Marx has made the largest impact. Perhaps Hegel's method is the closest we can come to the world. Nietzsche's method is no-method (contra method); it is rather Nietzsche's content and his anti-metaphysical stance and even more critical is his anti-value system that has overturned past philosophical schools. Nietzsche's hammer hit the nail on the head and released the flood that has washed over the shores of western culture. Just think: a sick philology professor (who left the university for health reasons) from Switzerland turned everything upside down and western civilization is still attempting to recovery from his awesome hammer.

5 Nietzsche said in Will to Power # 419 (1885), "German philosophy as a whole - Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to name the greatest." Who would we name as the greatest: Christian Wolff (1679-1754), Kant Hegel, Schelling, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger? What happened to Fichte, Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817-1881), Wilhelm Dilthey, or Husserl? British - only David Hume. India - Nagarjuna, Sankaracarya, and perhaps the great Panini. Also, China - only Lao Tsu and Chung-Tsu (Zhuangzi), and perhaps just a quick mention of the greatest infamous Confucius. Who of these philosophers are alive in the current flow of thought? Or are those some just dead dusty old books in libraries? Living thought. This is not a matter of scholarship but a dialogue with thinkers over the matter themselves. The greatest of only a few are the final measure of life on earth.

6 Heidegger has a balance between scholarship and philosophizing. What about Hegel and Nietzsche? Nietzsche certainly not - even with the philological background.

7 What does it mean: metaphysical concept of revenge?

8 Methodology - is this Heidegger or Nietzsche? There is no question about Hegel and Schelling. Kant tried to confuse the point, but he could not help himself.

9 Does Heidegger seek to be profound? My sense is that Heidegger was not interested in being profound - it does not seem to fit. Perhaps Nietzsche had some sense of being profound. Say something profound - a scholar or a philosopher or a thinker?

10 Nietzsche often tried to write very loud, but Heidegger's voice was always grounded.

11 Thinkers make things easier or more difficult, more complex, deeper, darker, more.? Or, do you want the simple version of a story (Hegel said that stories need a purpose and an end - hence, human history is driven by reason and purpose)?

12 Kant tried to make "room for faith." Nietzsche contra Kant. But what about Heidegger? Heidegger is contra simple reason as the defining characteristics of humanity and faith is for theology. Was there room for faith in Heidegger's world?

13 Can you hear questions that have no answers? Why do we have the interrogative? Who? When? How? Why? What? The questions are questionable. Ok, what are the questions? What you seek only answers - rather seek only questions. Seek your self and perhaps you will find only the very act of seeking and questioning.

14 Turenne knew what fearlessness meant. Maybe too much exuberance which is overcoming all of our fear or should we say "fearlessnessing" as the primary mode of being in our world - who has the power for this?

15 Do ad hominem arguments really work? Why do we hear them so much? When it came to publishing his lectures Heidegger often took them out before he published them. Why do we want to put them back in his writings - why do we enjoy his remarks so much? Right on - since his aim always hit the mark. Keep them in the ten-ring.

16 Nietzsche was contra all apart, beyond, outside, trans, above, and meta. How did this stand with Heidegger?

17 Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) was read and deeply understood by Nietzsche, but if he was read by Heidegger - no influence. Aphorisms are perhaps the greatest philosophical methodology possible - why is it that others do not see the light and the truth of this fundament thought. Why is the essay or a book the best possible way to do philosophy? What is a collection of aphorisms - can we speak of philosophical work? What is the nature of philosophy that it can be expressed as aphorisms, essays, articles, poems, and books? Can we do philosophy without a structural argument? Answer: yes, that is part of the nature of aphorisms. Even Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951) understood this in his Philosophical Investigations. Is this perspectivism or just plain old realism or does this really mean relativism? How are there isolated fragments in the middle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra? Nietzsche methodology is obviously not Heidegger's methodology. How does Heidegger's methodology stayed within the Hermeneutic tradition? Somewhere in the 1930s Heidegger has left this behind.

18 Through the figure and image of Zarathustra, Nietzsche has a voice as an advocate. What does Heidegger advocate? The questioning of the relationship (the opening) between Da-sein (human being) and the Being of beings in a non-metaphysical way. He also points the distress over the loss of the Being of beings. Heidegger points us toward a decision. Plus, Heidegger is not against technology but wants us to strive toward a deeper understanding of technology and its place for humans. Humans for Heidegger are more than the rational animal. Thinking is more than just reason. Nietzsche's thinking is more than just reason - in fact, Nietzsche has a strong counter push to simple minded rationality. This is not the typical understanding of irrationalism that the French got caught up in and then formally rejected. Heidegger shows us pathways through the forest and woods of philosophy. He is a teacher and a guide, but he is not looking for disciples (even his close students were confused on this point).

19

Nietzsche is the advocate for: overman will power eternal return of the same life suffering circle of time meaning of the earth become who you are amor fati Dionysos innocence of becoming wants to give birth to a dancing star revaluation of all values.

Which of these can we take up with passion as our own? Some of these will lead us beyond the last western metaphysician - beyond Nietzsche's entanglement with metaphysics. Heidegger's encounter with Nietzsche often pushes him back into metaphysics, but on some rare occasions Heidegger points toward Nietzsche as a transition point. I think the meaning of the earth as the true world become the history of an error and just simply a fable will lead us out of the dark water of metaphysics to an open sea. Why was Zarathustra in the mountains and not on the sea? Those open seas afford Nietzsche to see even farther than on the peaks of mountains. There has never been such open sea for the non-metaphysics made since the time of Kant. Answer: we are trying to kill if off our openness to the open sea of life. The lament for metaphysics has yet to begin, but it is coming toward us.

20 We can shred every metaphysical book on the planet and still metaphysics will be with us for our historical epoch.

21 Why would Nietzsche use the concept of "eternal" in the eternal return of the same? The use of "eternal" seems to stand against everything else in Nietzsche's thinking.

22 Why does Nietzsche speak of "whispering of eternal things"? (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, section "On the Vision and the Riddle"). The riddle will be found on unexplored seas, since we cannot yet know the riddles within riddles. The alpha and omega of our own Da-sein is this riddle within riddles. Heidegger is un-riddling the riddle, but even he can not see all the mountain peaks. But do we see all of the peaks? Those 14 - 8000 meter peaks have called to humans - climb me.

23 How does Heidegger transform the whole image of Nietzsche's Zarathustra so that we might see the true nature of humanity? After reading more of Heidegger, he seem more interested in Da-sein. How has Heidegger transformed Nietzsche's vision of humanity to his own? You want the short answer: he has not taken over Nietzsche. Heidegger is Heidegger - is this clear? It is becoming clear to me as least - looking endless for who influenced Heidegger (Lask, Fichte, Husserl, Eastern thought, Hegel, Kant, Schelling, and Nietzsche) is a deadend project. All of these philosophers influenced Heidegger that is not the point. Did they greatly influence him? No - not really. Everything he read and talked with people about was transformed by Heidegger to be Heidegger. Remember what Heidegger said about Hegel, ".to place Hegel's system in the commanding view and then to think in a totally opposite direction". (Beiträge zur Philosophie. (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1939) English translation: Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) GA 65, p. 176. "Hegels Systematik in den beherrschenden Blick bringen und doch ganz entgegengesetzt denken." So, Hegel's influenced on Heidegger is going in the opposite direction.

24 In today's world it is hard to really remember the reality of teacher. A teacher is an employee of the school district or an employee of a university system - somehow the concept of "teacher" like Zarathustra has been lost to us. Heidegger tried to maintain a balance between being a university professor as a teacher and his own philosophical development as he wrote in his monographs (note: not a book or "werke'). If Zarathustra was a teacher then where are his students? Where is the classroom? Zarathustra spoke to the people. Even though Zarathustra was a teacher, he still needed to go down and under. Nietzsche and Heidegger both are trying to express the concept of teacher and more closely to their intent - a guide for the summit team and mountaineering expedition. We need to fix new kernmantle rope so that we may go higher and higher.

25 Why didn't Nietzsche just write an essay about the overman? Why did he use the methodology of a novel to show us the teacher of Zarathustra? Nietzsche wanted to show the way with images.