A problem I have been dealing with in Heidegger is that In BEING AND TIME, Heidegger takes a very radical view of dasein's authentic appropriation of tradition which, by necessity, completely takes it apart and puts it back together again as dasein actually knows it instead of the 'everyday' passive acceptance of a vague theme of what tradition is that never examines it rationally in detail or judge even if it fits together coherently.

NOT EXACTLY SILENCE

Date: 22/03/2004 ARISTOTLE AND HEIDEGGER

MICHAEL P: Gary, do you mean that the speech of language is silent; that language speaks in a silent way (unlike the speech of man)? Is this not the same as saying the essence (essencing) of technology is nothing technological?

GCM: Yes, I liked Rene’s way of phrasing it.

We need to step back into the factical situation, to speak Heideggerese. This is where David Hume’s first book of A TREATISE ON HUMAN NATURE is so helpful. You should not read what people say about him or with preconceived ideas just like Heidegger says you should approach Aristotle. Try to see what the text literally says instead of trying to find ‘empiricism’. Hume breaks “being human” down to undifferentiated sense experience which, through repetition, you connect through the PASSIONS of the imagination (therefore it is literally ONLY YOUR idea) as being one idea. No words need even be involved, but you have in your imaginative manipulation of the flow of experience made something “presence” and created its identity just like Aristotle or Heidegger would have. Aristotle would have called this a “percept” (99b37). Retention of the percept is necessary to have memory (99b-100a6), and experience as a whole is “the whole universal that has come to rest in the soul” (100a7). Still no words. All knowledge comes about through perception (100a10-11), and Aristotle compares the creation of ideas from the comparisons of remembered experiences to standing firm in battle against the enemy (100a11-14). It is not only something you hold on to in memory but hold against the continuing flow of experience that would erase it. This is the “primitive universal” (100a16) where “perception is of the universal” (100a17). Then “again a stand is made in these, until what has no parts and is universal stands”

(100b1-2). Not only is this still wordless—we are not necessarily talking about silence—for instance think “loud colors” and “sensual shapes” and “threatening postures”—because we have not even left the state of being an animal, though superior animal (“in some animals retention of the percept comes about, but in others it does not come about” (99b36-38), yet (100b2-3). “Thus it is clear that it is necessary for us to become familiar with the primitives by induction; for perception too instills the universal in this way” (100b3-5).

Now, essentially this is the eidos and obviously possible by any intelligent animal without words. The mechanical advantage of words is obvious. What I also want to make obvious is that language forming perception as we moderns have become so accustomed to the point where even our vision is thoroughly media-ized, is goddamn perverted. We are animals first, physical foremost, and have ridiculously come to think that is a disability to the point most people would, in one way or another, prefer disembodiment, that it would “free” us from our limitations. But what Heidegger, Aristotle, and Hume all firmly say is that it is our limitations that make us exist AT ALL!!! Freedom is death, as Heidegger has at least implied. Hume has definitely said the idea of “freedom” in a real physical body is inherently ridiculous, but on the other hand we cannot possibly act without really “believing” (faith) we are free. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”? No, I don’t think so, unless the “truth” is the “nothing” Heidegger constantly talks about. Now, in nothing, by definition, there are no limitations, and by the “nothing” we are constantly liberated to act as if we were free.

Now, the most important thing stated in the Aristotle, possibly very relevant to Laurence Paul Hemming (Are you reading this, Dr. Elden?) is his statement, “And from experience, or from the whole universal that has come to rest in the soul (the one apart from the many, whatever is one and the same in all those things), there comes a principle of skill and of understanding—of skill if it deals with how things come about, of understanding if it deals with what is the case” (100a6-9). Aristotle is only talking about percepts, not concepts, remember. But when words are given too much importance, there is a unity that Aristotle describes here (“the whole universal that has come to rest in the soul”) that is destroyed by those words. The animal AS animal IS a continuous flow of experience as one unity.

Now, I have said nothing so far directly about Heidegger’s concept of “Rede”, that is, “discourse”. But I am running out of time, and, anyway, this is a good starting point. But, maybe Dr. Elden might relay this to Deacon Hemming, in C. S. Lewis’ CHRONICALS OF NARNIA, Lewis “presents a God capable of becoming a true lion” (Kathryn Lindskoog). In THE HORSE AND HIS BOY, most appropriate, Aslan the Lion says, “Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast” (169-170). Lindskoog compares this to the scene in JOHN with doubting Thomas being invited to believe through sensation, and I have noted a similar scene in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, my commentary. “To imagine a god expressing himself in speech is utterly meaningless” (Heidegger, FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF METAPHYSICS, 238 [346].

Do you want more? Etc.

Michael P: That for language to make possible the sounds and vocalizations (and Writings and symbolization, etc) of the speech of humankind, it itself, must be silent and invisible? Language speaks (says) by (en)languaging. Sorry about the neologisms

(it is so hard to put this silence of language into language.

‘Sincerely’

Gary C. Moore