I.D. Orient 00007

Jeffrey Masson.

Sunday, December 26, 1999

Heidegger, animal is man, dasein is nothing

To start with endings again. I have come to the "conclusion" of the Santarasa, p. 154-6. I may have understood 25% of what was going on so far, but hard headed persistence has paid off and I have come to the beautiful passage, (Dhvanyaloka, III) "The new and wondrous (kacit) vision (drsti) of poets which concerns itself ( vyaparavati) with turning permanent emotional states (rasas, i.e., sthayibhavas) into aesthetic experiences, and that philosophic (or analytic, vaipasciti) vision that reveals the realm of already existing (i.e., not depending on the poet's creative imagination) objects--we have employed both of these constantly to examine and describe the world (we live in). We have become weary in so doing, but have not found happiness therein, in any sense comparable to the joy we feel in our devotion to you, who sleep on the ocean. In this verse, there is a mixture of arthantarasankramitavacya and the figure of speech known as apparent contradiction (virodha)." At first, the last sentence was absolutely incomprehensible, but relating it to what follows, I think it means the mixture of 'vision' as a metaphor for understanding with physical, ocular vision which is like the mixture in Aristotle's concept of the contemplation of reality itself which is both episteme (absolute knowledge) and phronesis (experiential knowledge), but I may have that dead wrong.

The oceanic feeling you, at least at one time, believed was a running away from the 'real' world is a more compelling motive than that drab 'real' world, whose motives, and goals, come apart so easily, can give. For one thing, since, like the 'authentic self', it is imaginary as episteme but real as phronesis, it can 'seem' like the authentic self or moksa to endure, and rise above the shattering, scattering, distracting world. It reminds me of Tolstoy's favourite saying, from Aesop's fable, "The fox knows many things, and the hedgehog knows one thing, one important thing." It's like looking in the eye of the crow, that one-sided eye that has you encompassed while the rest of the world is held by the other eye, and it seems to know so much more than you know simply by knowing that one thing. Your translation goes on, (Locana III) "VYAPARAVATI: For we have already said that rasa is identical with the process of conveyance itself (nispadanaprano hi rasah)

(note 2: This refers to Abhinava's doctrine that rasa is the process of perception itself, i.e., it is not an object of cognition in much the same way that the saksin (the subject) in Advaita can never be the object of cognition. In this sense, rasa is purely subjective, and is not amenable to ordinary means of cognition.). (Poetic vision is) constantly engaged in that activity (vyapara) (a cat is yelling at me), i.e., that action which begins with a description consisting in the combination (presentation) of the vibhavas, and ending with sentence structure. Rasan refers to the sthayibhavas, the essence of which consists in the state of being enjoyed aesthetically (rasyamanata). Rasayitum means to make the sthayibhavas fit for attaining this status of being aesthetically enjoyed. Kacid ("wondrous") means revealing itself (unmilanti) by abandoning (and becoming superior to) the state of cognition of ordinary worldly things. And so (because they are endowed with such a vision), they are poets by virtue of their power to describe (things in an extraordinary way).

Nava means it reveals (asutrayanti) worlds at every instant in ever new and variegated forms. DRSTIH (The vision) is the form of poetic imagination (pratibha). Since "vision" refers primarily to knowledge we derive from our eyes and since it is here said to enable one to enjoy such beverages and edibles as sadava (like soma? mana?), there is the figure of speech known as apparent contradiction (virodha). And so this vision is called "new" (i.e., marvellous) (the footnote 5 here about drstih is fascinating but extremely difficult. It is a deliberate "contradiction, something illogical and queer, (which) is the reason for calling the vision nava (novel, out of the ordinary)." The contradiction can be removed by making it into a metaphor, but that defeats the whole purpose, and "the 'novelty' or 'marvellousness' also disappears."). And the (arthantarasankramitavacya)dhvani is helped by this figure of speech. For actually eyesight (the literal sense of the word drsti) is not here altogether unintended (footnote 6,". . . the literal meaning of 'sight' is slightly retained . . .", since it is not totally impossible (to think of physical eyesight being of use to the poet in observing the world before describing it). Nor is actual eyesight wholly unintended and subservient to some other suggested sense. Rather the literal meaning of sight passes over into the meaning of "poetic vision" that is the result of the repetition of the "sensual" (ocular) perception of the world (aindriyakavijnana). This passing over (into another meaning) is helped by the figure of speech known as "contradiction" (footnote 2, though obviously important, is utterly beyond me)". Though extremely tantalizing, the Sanskrit words completely throw me, and the index is of little help. Arthantatasankramitavacya is completely lost to me though very important. Sthayibhava at one time seem to mean 'consciousness arising through remembrance from unconsciousness' but seems to greatly change from context to context. Vibhava I thought at one time meant 'cause' (or effect? and the effect is always already in the cause as in Shankara?) but that doesn't cover its various uses. None the less, there is a great concept here of vision as comprehensive understanding that is at the same time vision as comprehensive sight that provides the physical 'idea' through the field of vision of contextuality, a wholeness of sight that is important to Aristotle and Heidegger. In my continuing trial of finishing The Fundamental Concepts, I have finally crossed the logical desert of the propositional 'as' and demonstrative 'is', and have finally stumbled on the fruits of knowledge awaiting me. (p. 332) "None of the theories that have arisen concerning the 'is' and being in the proposition are correct, because they are one-sided. Yet why are they one-sided? Because they fail to see and to take account of the multiplicity of the meanings pertaining to the 'is'." Several studies I have read have noted Heidegger's interest in Aristotle's account of the many different meanings of being but never explained why so that I could comprehend it. But here Heidegger lays it all out very clearly. "It is not a matter of seeing that all these meanings--what-being, that-being, and being true--are to be found and may be found in the 'is', but rather the fact that they all must be found in it and why they must be found in it, at first and for the most part in an unarticulated and undifferentiated way. It is a matter of comprehending this peculiar undifferentiatedness and universality of the 'is' as the originary and primary essence of the copula . . .

What is originary and primary is, and constantly remains, the full undeferentiated manifold out of which, from time to time and in particular cases and discursive tendencies of the assertion, only one meaning or one predominant meaning is referred to. The originary yet unarticulated and unaccentuated multiplicity of what being already means in advance in each case becomes a particular meaning via limitation . . . Limitation is always subsequent to the originary whole (p. 333). "Being' and its multiplicity, as well as the 'as', are accordingly also grounded in this enigmatic SYNTHESIS and DIAIRESIS (putting together and taking apart). Or, to put it more cautiously, 'being' and the 'as' point to the same origin (putting together and taking apart)." Heidegger is like a mountain climber, not cautious or he wouldn't be here, but sure-footed and attentive in seeking danger. This seems to be far from the everyday 'Theyness' of Nazism, and yet, as Shankara would say, must they not somehow be one? Because you cannot be ordinary just part of the time or you couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. Somehow I've got to irritate you (one of the primary signs of life), tease you, or royally piss you off. Blankness is too much like god. "We are inquiring back into the ground of the inner possibility of the LOGOS. We are thereby inquiring into the demension of what makes it intrinsically possible, the demension of its essential origin (but doesn't Derrida say something like there are no originary origins? and Derrida is a Heideggerian through and 'through'?). We must therefore already be acquainted (then how could we find such an origin, or are we meant to?) with this originary demension in advance . . . Accordingly, we are asking where the LOGOS in general stands. We have to say that it is an essential manner of comportment (but remember pg. 237 where 'comportment' and 'behaviour' are reversible!) belonging to man . . .

All we know is that we must proceed from the unitary structure of the LOGOS back into the essence of man. Nothing has been decided concerning this essence. All we have is the thesis: man is world forming, a thesis we appeal to as a statement of essence, of the same character as the thesis that the animal is poor in world (!!!). This thesis, however, must not be applied at this stage; rather it is precisely a matter of unfolding it and grounding it as a problem (!!!!!!)(p. 335). Then there is no thesis, there is no essence to distinguish, fundamentally, man from dog!! Plato said, "Man is a featherless biped", and I thought it was a joke! And now? I know I skip pass numerous things either I barely understand, as in your book, or do not think are important, as in the Heidegger book. And going back to the beginning on the Heidegger book is helping immensely, while with your book I think I'm going to read your other books on Abhinavagupta first. There is an Indian endoscopist that comes to where I work who is and a follower of Shankara. But he never read the Brahmasutrabasya until I accidentally received a duplicate copy and gave it to him. I assume his approach is primarily religious, but to a serious Advaita Vedantist like the one you mentioned in My Father's Guru wouldn't the religious stuff be essentially crap? Obviously there is much missing to my education. He reads it very slowly, two or three pages at a time, trying to intensely get the meaning, whereas I tell him to read in great stretches, noting what you don't understand, and either going back when you have the big picture or, better still, all the oddly cut blocks will suddenly fall into a clear cut structure. It's like blitzkrieg, you bypass the enemy's strongpoints (dense obscurity) and tear into the open belly of his rear echelons. Which worked well in France and North Africa, but failed at Kursk precisely because those bypassed strongpoints were the seeds of Nazi destruction, a lesson they did not learn from Poltava and the destruction of the Swedish army from a very similar tactic by Peter the Great (Grozny as with Ivan the Awesome, the Terrible?). So I may be bypassing the seeds of my own destruction, proceeding full speed forward with sometimes no connection whatsoever to any kind of base, trusting in a soldier's two best weapons: surprise and luck. The endoscopist talked about a doctrine he called "deluge" which seemed similar to the monist Shaivist doctrine of vibration, but it was very vague to me. Are they related? A book he gave me was a commentary on Gaudapada's commentary on the Manduka Upanishad, and Gaudapada is regarded by some as the godfather of Kashmiri Shaivism. Back to the beginning. (p. 26) "b) LOGOS as taking the revealing of beings as a whole out of concealment . . . for to exist as man already means: to make whatever prevails come to be spoken out . . . what is spoken out is already necessarily within PHUSIS, otherwise it would not be spoken out of it. To PHUSIS, to the prevailing of beings as a whole, there belongs this LOGOS . . . What occurs in the LOGOS? It is only a matter of the fact that what beings as a whole are is brought to a word, formulated, comes to a word? To come to word--what does that mean? What the Greeks early on assigned to LEGEIN, to the 'bringing to word' as its fundamental function, we can take with irrefutable clarity from the opposite concept (sound familiar?), which the most ancient philosophers already opposed to LEGEIN. What is the opposite of LEGEIN? A 'not letting come to word’. . 'The master, whose oracle is at Delphi, neither speaks out, nor does he conceal, but gives a sign (signifies)", Heraclitus. . . . The fundamental function of LEGEIN is to take whatever prevails from concealment . . .'The prevailing of things has in itself a striving to conceal itself' (p. 27) . . . ALETHEIA (truth) as something stolen, something that must be torn from concealment . . . Truth is the innermost confrontation of the essence (?) of man with the whole of beings themselves . . . Truth itself is something stolen. It is not simply there; rather, as a revealing, it ultimately demands the engagement of man as a whole" (p. 29). In my notes I was to put somewhere, "Nietzsche: revenge is the root of morality, revenge is the root of all evil." Although poorly placed, it is relevant.