To: Jeffrey Masson
Letters to Nowhere.

Monday, December 27, 1999

Heidegger, animal is man, dasein is nothing

New revelations in your Santarasa! Though it is indispensable (should it be?), was the person who constructed your index at any point in time sober? Here is a curious case either of double entendre or double bind. On p. 162 (you'll actually find it there), after listing the similarities between rasasvada and brahmasvada, you start the differences with a very curious quote from Abhinava, "The reason why aesthetic experience differs from all of the above (is 'aesthetic experience' here carvana <"personal aesthetic relish," i e., fleshy? related to Carvaka? or just rasa <"aesthetic experience" or santarasa <"the imaginative experience of tranquillity" or bliss? and "the above includes "the direct vision of a Yogin", ergo 'religious philosophy'), is because of the absence of beauty (ergo from religious experience) caused respectively by the appearance of distractions such as the desire to acquire (arjanadi) (which includes, amongst lesser things, moksa and god), the absence of participation (which in Advaita Vedanta would mean ritual and magic, i.e., an absence of drama!), the absence of clarity(asphutava) (ocular and aesthetic perception in their "apparent contradiction"), and being at the mercy of the object of contemplation." But then in the differences on the next page you say, "The drama is not expected to change one's life radically", yet you also say, in parenthesis, "Abhinava never says anything about this". (The first time I read King Lear and came to "Never, never, never, never, never", it made a radical change in me. And reciting "Kill! kill!, kill!, kill!, kill!" in bayonet practice has permanently left me with the explosive tendency to burst out with "Kill!" whenever some embarrassing or hurtful thought occurs to me.). Then you go on to say Abhinava uses the term ananda (bliss) instead of priti (pleasure) or vinoda

(entertainment) like most other aesthetic writers do, which all would seem to indicate for Abhinavagupta that aesthetics, religion, and philosophy (which unites the viewpoints of poet, philosopher, and devotion to god which Ananda supposedly returns to but Abhinavagupta seems to--keep a distance from? mix? complicate? In other words, is Abhinavagupta's (now that I've learned it I like saying it) poetics then the fundamental basis for his philosophy and religion, that one indulges in ritual as a drama Wouldn't this somewhat go along with the severe and plain Shankara? And is this all perfectly obvious to you so that you're laughing now? One shouldn't laugh at dogs you said. That is, Shankara's moksa and atman give Abhinavagupta a jivanmukta that is worthless whereas, like Heidegger, he wants playtime (Heidegger, "leeway", spielraum!) with the gods! I've got to read your other books. Another ending. (p. 337) "When we have answered these questions we will see how here too, as everywhere in philosophy, this trivial and elementary phenomenon (talk about "phenomenon", you finally summarized! What was rather helpful. Heidegger summarizes constantly, each time renewing and revising his terms to fit the advances

(blitzkrieg) of context so that you always have a good idea of where you are) of judgement and of the assertion--a phenomenon that has already exhaustively (!) pursued in every possible direction (but it gives you great facticity!)--returns us at a stroke to a dimension which is none other than that expanse and uncanniness (unheimlich) to which the interpretation of our fundamental attunement was initially to lead us", which means eventually, he is going to get back to the uselessness of the world and the nothingness of dasein in utter boredom. But unfortunately not now. He goes more into the 'as'-structure revealing being, and then starts a promising discussion of freedom which is "being free for . . .", openness, and "only where there is freedom do we find the possibility of something having a binding character". How is this different from the animal's captivation? Behaviour: comportment. But anyway, he is leading up to spielraum. Quickly now to the beginning. (p. 30) "PHUSIS, that which prevails (i. e., sucks the empty you into the world to make it indistinguishable from it), means not only that which itself prevails, but that which prevails in its prevailing or the prevailing of whatever prevails (double talk?) . . . That which prevails manifests itself in undecidedness . . . that which, in threatening and sustaining (man), prevails of its own accord without the assistance of man . . . as distinct from that which is of human making . . ." (p. 31).