/lit/ - Literature

>>13021744
>A German friend of Heidegger told me that one day when he visited Heidegger he found him reading one of Suzuki’s books; ‘If I understand this man correctly,’ Heidegger remarked, ‘this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings’” (Barrett, 1956, xi). The truth of this story is unverifiable and irrelevant, but Barrett considers its moral undeniable: For what is Heidegger’s final message but that Western philosophy is a great error, the result of the dichotomizing intellect that has cut man off from unity with Being itself and from his own being…. Heidegger repeatedly tells us that this tradition of the West has come to the end of its cycle; and as he says this, one can only gather that he himself has already stepped beyond that tradition. Into the tradition of the Orient? I should say he has come pretty close to Zen.

http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/martin-heidegger-talks-philosophy-with-a-buddhist-monk.html

>>13000167
i've heard him make these criticisms before, and he brought up a similar one in his debate with JBP: Himmler having a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in his pocket. i have a number of thoughts on this. it is of course an understandable argument, and he makes here it again with DT Suzuki and Zen. no doubt this is the case, that it is possible to derive a completely inhumane ethics of killing from impermanence in this way. but there are a couple of things that i would want to point out to him if we talked (more like when, amirite?).

the first would be: yes, Himmler carried a copy of this, but so did Gandhi. warrants mentioning. and the second would be: *who gives a fuck what books Himmler likes.* i'm not dismissing his point, but i am saying that just because Himmler likes a book doesn't mean we have to necessarily attach this to every subsequent interpretation of that text. no doubt Himmler likes the Gita and that Suzuki's Zen militarism are also aspects of these teachings that are worth bearing in mind. obviously this is the case. but i find it a kind of uninteresting and mildly under-handed point. i know why Zizek brings it up and i understand it, and i find his own readings of these things more interesting when he points out the even greater ironies in Third Reich psychology: that it takes a real hero to do something for your country that it obviously a lie, all of this stuff. i just think he's being uncharitable and provocative for the sake of being provocative. it's a mildly interesting point if you want to impress undergrads but i think it's kind of a gimmick.

the other thing i would want to talk about is the question of suffering. he's not wrong to say that in some sense we want to suffer, and the idea of doubling down on your suffering in this way is Lacanian through and through. the point i would want to make is *whether or not we have a choice in the manner of this suffering* and *how.* i don't think the Hegelian Itch necessarily has to be an a priori reality. more specifically, i would want to ask if Hegel is actually capable of distinguishing *negativity* from *emptiness* in this way, because i'm not sure that he is. i don't think Heidegger really can either, although he gets close (and is for this reason more impressed with Suzuki, and again, for reasons which are both complementary and damning.)

i understand Zizek's objections and i have a high regard for Lacanian stuff, i really do. but i think it would be possible to mount a fairly powerful counter-argument also and along Lacanian lines. the question would be: *are you sure you really do want to suffer?* because if you don't feel like you have a choice...right? ultimately these philosophies are so close as to be almost indistinguishable in some points, and i like SZ. he's an okay guy. but i think he's setting up a straw man at times. i can't even get mad, i would do! everybody's got kryptonite...

>>12375723
i am not a faggot, i am a super-faggot. i am the biggest fucking faggot on this board. i feast on male genitalia like it's the Mandarin purely out of self-loathing. seriously, try not to think about me getting pubic hairsin my teeth. please don't do this. don't think about these things. stop it

>>12375729
>Does he eventually offer a plan to do so or even what characteristics that new inception would have?
bear in mind that this was the man who said that cybernetics was the future and that only a god can save us. heidegger was not known for his optimism

>What would life be like for that? Do we still have democracies and elections? Or something else?
i think about what he meant when he said, 'thinking means thanking,' or 'the nothingness itself nothings.' also what he said about DT Suzuki and Zen:
>If I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings.
much like the Theosophists discovering Buddhism and Hinduism, i think Heidegger was probably okay with Zen. so was Ernst Junger, by the way (Spengler, bless his Teutonic heart, less so). Heidegger is wonderfully old-school for his And By Philosophy, I Mean Western Philosophy sensibilities...but i think he would have been okay with Zen.

and everything he says about 'openness to Being' still holds up for me as a good way to deal with this inception: namely, you *wait* for it. he makes that beautiful distinction between waiting and a-waiting. and maybe the jury's still out on whether or not Lacan's turning Heidegger's sensibilities into psychoanalytic practice (opting for Meaning or Truth rather than Being, which is what Heidegger came to settle on after being lightning-blasted by Nietzsche) was actually a good idea. psychoanalysis has one advantage that Heidegger did not have: an analysand, on a couch, in an office, in a controlled setting. in these circumstances Lacan could work his magic; Heidegger wouldn't have done that, i think. he would have said, Being is in the whole world, and it's up to you to let it out, or not. at least, that is how i read him.

fundamental ontology means fundamental humanism. it's complicated, of course; certainly we know what Heidgger felt about the Jews (or, for that matter, Levinas about the Chinese: the philosophers are rarely saints like this). but for you and I? i think being cognizant of the metaphysics of production is enough. cybernetics is the metastasization of no other thing, even Uncle Nick has come round to making nice with Heidegger of late. the gestell is basically teleoplexy, imho, and there is no way off that ride. that is why my sense is to a) recognize the need for consciously allowing out the metaphysics of production such that they enable humans to speak, and b) ditch the utopian state-building. even Heidegger bailed out on the fascists. the fact that he gave up on that dream should tell you exactly how much faith he had in realizing such an inception in a modernist political sense.