.
.
.
At astronomygcse.co.uk (JPG of 5 cliches)
At spacestationinfo.com (GIF 2002 with 14 cliches)
Various 1910-1964 (JPG with 5 from distant/full & closer/crescent)
At apod.nasa.gov (JPG with 7 images (none of full phase)
.
.
Adumbration u. Abschattungen (v. Horizont, Phänomena, Erfahrungen, Wahrnehmung u. Anschauungen)
.
appearances of the maiden goddess (Apparat, Beachtung u. Anerkennung) in eigentlich Dunkelheit Aspekt
.
.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Google Books links for Hölderlin
Here are three links at Google Books for Hoelderlin in English with and without original German text:
Jeremy Adler and Michael Hamburger Selected poems and fragments
Richard Sieburth Hymns and fragments
James Mitchell Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin: the fire of the gods drives us to set forth
note: see also Michael Hamburger as Paul Celan translator
Jeremy Adler and Michael Hamburger Selected poems and fragments
Richard Sieburth Hymns and fragments
James Mitchell Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin: the fire of the gods drives us to set forth
note: see also Michael Hamburger as Paul Celan translator
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Heidegger Rector address: the Wolin variant of the Derrida quote
As found in Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy: a Critical Reader
Then there is the issue of whether Jaspers was being deceptive in his reception.
If we will the essence of science in the sense of {italic the question, unsheltered standing firm in the midst of the uncertainty of the totality of being}. then {italic this} will to essence will creat for our Volk a world of the innermost and most extreme danger, i.e., a truly {italic spiritual} world. For "spirit" is neither empty ecumen nor the noncommittal play of wit nor the busy practice of never-ending rational analysis nor even world reason; rather, spirit is the determined resolve to the essence of Being, a resolve that is attuned to origins and knowing. And the {italic spiritual world} of a Volk is not its cultural superstructure. just as little as it is its arsenal of useful knowledge [Kentnisse] and values; rather, it is the power that comes from preserving at the most profound level the forces that are rooted in the soil and blood of a Volk, the power to arouse most inwardly and to shake most extensively the Volk's existence. A spiritual world alone will guarantee our Volk greatness. For it will make the constant decision between the will to greatness and the toleration of decline the law that establishes the pace for the march upon which our Volk has embarked on the way to its future history.I will use Curl to compare the Derrida variant in Of Spirit and the challenge of presenting this singular text.
Then there is the issue of whether Jaspers was being deceptive in his reception.
Reflection and Polarization
One topic neglected in phenomenology is the polarization of light and the results for reflection on the surface of water.
Heidegger may have known how Etienne Louis Malus was caught up in history. It may be that prior to his experiments, Malus simply looked through the calcite and rotated it. [What did Heidegger know about setting a plow share? Sharpening a plow share?]
Is a simple crystal rotation and the unexpected result prey to the Heideggerian attack on numbers? [cf Groups and Category theory] Rotation here is not in number of degrees, but "turn on end in the same plane".
This might have been an example to put before Heidegger at Davos. He tells Elfride that he spoke for 90 minutes without notes. But his opponent, Cassirer, was known for his remarkable memory.
Malus does emerge with his law, but in his lifetime there will be no suitable glass manufactured. Did Heidegger know anything of the role of types of glass in the advance of astronomy? What if fine glass had been a Swabian speciality? Or would Heidegger have avoided this topic as coming to close to acknowledging Spinoza? But the problem with glass led to Malus being all but forgotten.
What are we to believe Heidegger knew about the history of science?
We do not mock Herschel for imagining the sun spots to be habitations or life on the sun. He contributed too much to be mocked - unless he suppressed contributions by his sister.
Mercury is best viewed with magification using a suitable filter - depending somewhat on the glass of the objective lens or the quality of the mirror. Was Heidegger aware that Mercury is somewhat different viewed in a refractor from Mercury viewed in a reflector? If asked if stars appear "larger" under 200x magnification than under 20x magnification would he have replied "If course! Mere boys know that!" Why does Mars not look like red Antares or red Betelgeuse or another large red star at 20x yet easily mistaken at 2x magnification? What are we to imagine his response might be compared to that of Husserl (who began in astronomy)?
To what extent was Heidegger's view of "calculating" science a result of simple ignorance (he never sat the science and math exams after leaving theology) ? Was it not the case with regard to the German Volk that he utterly discounted both liberalism and economics as much as he rejected civil law and precedent? Did he ever read any economics other than a little Marx?
More importantly: was his analysis of tools adequate to the rotating calcite example? Variant: is it adequate for using Iceland Spar for daytime navigation at sea or even for orienteering without compass in the South German Hills?
Q: which of Heidegger's favoured students had a background in science? Compare Reinach and law.
see: Iceland Spar
note: Recent Habermas on international law: compare post-1933 Gerhart Husserl and E.Cassirer
idle query: Heidegger's "fontane" was a hand water pump on a well - or was it in fact mounted on a "source" ? cf Leibniz and the mineshafts
Sameness and difference: Heraclitus and Heidegger on the daily sunrise: the rising of the sun or the return of daylight? And if the sun one day rose in the "west" - would the hiking Heidegger change his direction? If so, why so?
Heidegger may have known how Etienne Louis Malus was caught up in history. It may be that prior to his experiments, Malus simply looked through the calcite and rotated it. [What did Heidegger know about setting a plow share? Sharpening a plow share?]
Is a simple crystal rotation and the unexpected result prey to the Heideggerian attack on numbers? [cf Groups and Category theory] Rotation here is not in number of degrees, but "turn on end in the same plane".
This might have been an example to put before Heidegger at Davos. He tells Elfride that he spoke for 90 minutes without notes. But his opponent, Cassirer, was known for his remarkable memory.
Malus does emerge with his law, but in his lifetime there will be no suitable glass manufactured. Did Heidegger know anything of the role of types of glass in the advance of astronomy? What if fine glass had been a Swabian speciality? Or would Heidegger have avoided this topic as coming to close to acknowledging Spinoza? But the problem with glass led to Malus being all but forgotten.
What are we to believe Heidegger knew about the history of science?
We do not mock Herschel for imagining the sun spots to be habitations or life on the sun. He contributed too much to be mocked - unless he suppressed contributions by his sister.
Mercury is best viewed with magification using a suitable filter - depending somewhat on the glass of the objective lens or the quality of the mirror. Was Heidegger aware that Mercury is somewhat different viewed in a refractor from Mercury viewed in a reflector? If asked if stars appear "larger" under 200x magnification than under 20x magnification would he have replied "If course! Mere boys know that!" Why does Mars not look like red Antares or red Betelgeuse or another large red star at 20x yet easily mistaken at 2x magnification? What are we to imagine his response might be compared to that of Husserl (who began in astronomy)?
To what extent was Heidegger's view of "calculating" science a result of simple ignorance (he never sat the science and math exams after leaving theology) ? Was it not the case with regard to the German Volk that he utterly discounted both liberalism and economics as much as he rejected civil law and precedent? Did he ever read any economics other than a little Marx?
More importantly: was his analysis of tools adequate to the rotating calcite example? Variant: is it adequate for using Iceland Spar for daytime navigation at sea or even for orienteering without compass in the South German Hills?
Q: which of Heidegger's favoured students had a background in science? Compare Reinach and law.
see: Iceland Spar
note: Recent Habermas on international law: compare post-1933 Gerhart Husserl and E.Cassirer
idle query: Heidegger's "fontane" was a hand water pump on a well - or was it in fact mounted on a "source" ? cf Leibniz and the mineshafts
Sameness and difference: Heraclitus and Heidegger on the daily sunrise: the rising of the sun or the return of daylight? And if the sun one day rose in the "west" - would the hiking Heidegger change his direction? If so, why so?
Sources and viewpoint
I think it very likely that Heidegger repeated to Celan what he had put in writing to Marcuse.
It is now known that the inflated estimates of the Ost-Deutschen feared to have fallen victims to the Soviets were highly exaggerated by historians who themselves had been variously compromised during the war and who should have been barred from this important task of estimating the numbers of the dead.
Just as we now know that the loss of refugee lives in Dresden was not likely at all what had been feared, there is no longer any excuse of avoid the question of why the Würzburg bombing was permitted after Dresden. Numbers are not what is at issue now. The pracice of "total war" is at issue.
It is perhaps ironic that Heidegger who despised zealots armed with numbers, fell prey to improper estimates of the dead.
But would a statistical critique have changed his thinking on essentials? The Teutonic fate was clear: the cataclysm for south Germans would come regardless. The recent past could even be ignored if the immediate future were clearly utter devastation such as has never been witnessed.
Heidegger was never a witness to slaughter - Schlacht - in human Stoßen. There is no reason to think that his acquaintance was anything but second-hand. It is one thing about which he appears not to have lied.
In the current assessment of the sources used by Arendt for her books, it is essential to come back to her Plato, Augustine and her access to the Rahel correspondence. Just when is a letter to serve as "grounds"? The letters exchanged with Jaspers betray a confidence in insights which was quite foreign to, say, Husserl - regardless of his published writings, he, personally, remained very unsure [see Fink and Cairns]. He was anything but resolute, as Heidegger learned and exploited. Arendt had never gone through the confrontation of a Christian believer with the work of Bultmann. She had no such relationship with texts. Neither was she trained as an historian and certainly not as a political scientist. She writes as an intellectual - the artist crossed with the seer. Only when the occasion requires it of the speaker, does she speak as one of the Jews. Her Rahel is likely the key to how such grotesque misappropriations could occur as are now imputed. Her actual conversations with Heidegger appear not have left indications in notes jsut as her days spent with Jaspers in Basel are perhaps not revealed not in notes.
Where is the Heidegger-Arendt correspondence on the altruists who risked hanging for sheltering the sub-human? Were they unaware that acts of great heroism had occurred? Was not someone arriving at a door, an event? What greater moment for Sorge to envelope an irruption into daily life? A neighbour is phenomenologically first a neighbour and only secondarily, derivatively, a Jew let alone an orthodox Jew. Arriving first with a bucket of water at your burning cottage or barn, do you ask him to wait until all of the Christian neighbours have arrived and had their turn? Having been thrown from your horse, do you ask him to desist and leave you to your fate to drown in the ditch? How many variations are needed? Is your first fear that he will rob or murder you because he is other? Will he ruch to rape your mother, wife or daughter because he knows where to find your house? Or is he first their as your fellow, your nearest neighbour?
Jaspers persistent folly is to ask Arendt about the "German". As if he were asking Raymond Aron whether he were indeed first a Frenchman or first a Jew [see France and the double allegance hysteria.] It is essential to see what an utter fool Jaspers could be armed foremost with Max Weber and only secondarily by history and the historians. Arendt was absent from Germany during the decisive years; I am not aware of her working with Polish scholars. She did not live to see the unfolding of the trial of Klaus Barbie or the film, Shoah, of Claude Lanzmann. At the critical juncture for her work, Jaspers was in retreat in Basel.
Arendt's Men in Dark Times should have had a Heidegger chapter: instead it has two Jaspers chapters. Her remarks on his book of 1931 [letter Dec 2, 1931] appear to have been lost. By 1948 she appears anixious to see a new addition of his Die Geistige Situation der Zeit - as if the book were not as problematic as his response to the Freiburg address ( we have only his word for his response to the inflammatory Heidegger address at Heidelburg - and I believe he, Jaspers, has lied in that regard.) It is almost as if she failed to read entire passages - perhaps believing that she knew already what he was saying.
When I was twenty-one the importance of Arendt is difficult to convey today: not fundamental as was Heidegger, but rather essential. Today I consider them both to be fair-game: no holds barred.
Jaspers is held to be timeless by his sycophants. He would have found that rather sickening. But can there be a more troubling prospect than that of replacing Heidegger with Jaspers - as if the "Philosphy of Existenz" were thereby validated? As if Philosophical Anthropology were so easily to be side-stepped?
It is now known that the inflated estimates of the Ost-Deutschen feared to have fallen victims to the Soviets were highly exaggerated by historians who themselves had been variously compromised during the war and who should have been barred from this important task of estimating the numbers of the dead.
Just as we now know that the loss of refugee lives in Dresden was not likely at all what had been feared, there is no longer any excuse of avoid the question of why the Würzburg bombing was permitted after Dresden. Numbers are not what is at issue now. The pracice of "total war" is at issue.
It is perhaps ironic that Heidegger who despised zealots armed with numbers, fell prey to improper estimates of the dead.
But would a statistical critique have changed his thinking on essentials? The Teutonic fate was clear: the cataclysm for south Germans would come regardless. The recent past could even be ignored if the immediate future were clearly utter devastation such as has never been witnessed.
Heidegger was never a witness to slaughter - Schlacht - in human Stoßen. There is no reason to think that his acquaintance was anything but second-hand. It is one thing about which he appears not to have lied.
In the current assessment of the sources used by Arendt for her books, it is essential to come back to her Plato, Augustine and her access to the Rahel correspondence. Just when is a letter to serve as "grounds"? The letters exchanged with Jaspers betray a confidence in insights which was quite foreign to, say, Husserl - regardless of his published writings, he, personally, remained very unsure [see Fink and Cairns]. He was anything but resolute, as Heidegger learned and exploited. Arendt had never gone through the confrontation of a Christian believer with the work of Bultmann. She had no such relationship with texts. Neither was she trained as an historian and certainly not as a political scientist. She writes as an intellectual - the artist crossed with the seer. Only when the occasion requires it of the speaker, does she speak as one of the Jews. Her Rahel is likely the key to how such grotesque misappropriations could occur as are now imputed. Her actual conversations with Heidegger appear not have left indications in notes jsut as her days spent with Jaspers in Basel are perhaps not revealed not in notes.
Where is the Heidegger-Arendt correspondence on the altruists who risked hanging for sheltering the sub-human? Were they unaware that acts of great heroism had occurred? Was not someone arriving at a door, an event? What greater moment for Sorge to envelope an irruption into daily life? A neighbour is phenomenologically first a neighbour and only secondarily, derivatively, a Jew let alone an orthodox Jew. Arriving first with a bucket of water at your burning cottage or barn, do you ask him to wait until all of the Christian neighbours have arrived and had their turn? Having been thrown from your horse, do you ask him to desist and leave you to your fate to drown in the ditch? How many variations are needed? Is your first fear that he will rob or murder you because he is other? Will he ruch to rape your mother, wife or daughter because he knows where to find your house? Or is he first their as your fellow, your nearest neighbour?
Jaspers persistent folly is to ask Arendt about the "German". As if he were asking Raymond Aron whether he were indeed first a Frenchman or first a Jew [see France and the double allegance hysteria.] It is essential to see what an utter fool Jaspers could be armed foremost with Max Weber and only secondarily by history and the historians. Arendt was absent from Germany during the decisive years; I am not aware of her working with Polish scholars. She did not live to see the unfolding of the trial of Klaus Barbie or the film, Shoah, of Claude Lanzmann. At the critical juncture for her work, Jaspers was in retreat in Basel.
Arendt's Men in Dark Times should have had a Heidegger chapter: instead it has two Jaspers chapters. Her remarks on his book of 1931 [letter Dec 2, 1931] appear to have been lost. By 1948 she appears anixious to see a new addition of his Die Geistige Situation der Zeit - as if the book were not as problematic as his response to the Freiburg address ( we have only his word for his response to the inflammatory Heidegger address at Heidelburg - and I believe he, Jaspers, has lied in that regard.) It is almost as if she failed to read entire passages - perhaps believing that she knew already what he was saying.
When I was twenty-one the importance of Arendt is difficult to convey today: not fundamental as was Heidegger, but rather essential. Today I consider them both to be fair-game: no holds barred.
Jaspers is held to be timeless by his sycophants. He would have found that rather sickening. But can there be a more troubling prospect than that of replacing Heidegger with Jaspers - as if the "Philosphy of Existenz" were thereby validated? As if Philosophical Anthropology were so easily to be side-stepped?
Marburg or Bennington
One thing that I admire about Bennington College in Vermont is the lack of a chapel. One thing that worries me is the occasional Heideggerian tone and the recent firing of an Arendt critic.
Jaspers could not conceive of a university without a Faculty of Theology. Perhaps he was right: better to have theologians in the open than disguised as philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, social commentators, journalists, feminists or literary critics.
Consider the Jonathan Miller interview with Denys Turner. Turner need not be troubled by the loss of the Ontological Argument to scrutiny by philosophers - he has the really big question enshrined by Heidegger. He may not talk freely of Satan as a peripatetic, but he is very free to talk about Nothing. He follows certain steps. The chorus is dispersed.
Suppose we follow Turner's lead to consider the "gift". This theme comes validated by both Gabriel Marcel and Heidegger.
We do not consider the world as given. We encounter the world as "gifted" to us.
We are but one step from the "gift of the Son"? His only begotten Son?
And from there it is but a few steps to squash the Arian and other inevitable heresies. We come full circle, common in many folk dances.
But was the great gift not Mary devoid of sin - and the physical assumption to heaven - this may be the judgment of Hispanic Catholicism in the New World (and how much is this a reaction to the fact of the Magdalen?)
Were Bolzano alive in 2002 when America went to war on the grounds of lies and suspicions, we can imagine what he might have said. Were Brentano alive when the physical ascension of Mary became dogma, we can imagine what he might have said. And Heidegger on this new dogma - this incontrovertible thesis, true for all time and ever, hidden, unspoken, true since the event?
Here is Heidegger's trinity from "What is Metaphysics?" [Krell]
Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein end with a Catholic burial. Heidegger only asks that we follow the train of his thought. Wittgenstein asks us to stop thinking as we tend to [conatus ? Treib?] and to listen to pluralities of speech instead [not singular, eidetic reflection or Wesenschauung]. We talk around and spare the listener our positive theses. Unlike judgement, there is no end to it, and still there is no end to it, no result: mere polemos. But the theologians have been able to keep talking - unlike those asserting a flat-earth but rather like those asserting a recent Earth -say, 5000 years old or so. They need not assert it, but only remind that the Word says it is so. True historicity. Embrace your faith. In speakings such was and ever is given unto you.
Are we to "follow" a "way of thinking" that brings us to the physical ascension [1950]? As Lutherans? As Anglicans? As Orthodox? Had She first died? Must She not have first come to her death?
What have the philosophers laid at theology's threshold? Serious questions about omnipotence. Serious questions about omniscience. Serious questions about prayer. Serious questions about evil. Serious questions about prophetic revelation. The theologian in the West stands at one remove, out of reach, the simple side-step of faith. But what is fide without credo - or failing those asertions, at least doxa?
Would Bultmann have chided Denys Turner for making of Heidegger a new myth? Why embrace Heidegger? Why not Mohamet? Why not Buddha? Because of who we are as a people.
Habermas' followers may yet sell this Tao to China as a post-Confucian discursive-action tonality. But who could sell this in a Souk? The text of the Koran, for all its commentaries, is what it is. The divisions of that faith need no lesson in historicity, bound as they are to nephews and sons-in-law. "Paul" was not another name for a brother named "John of Jerusalem".
see: Hans Jonas, Memoirs with Christian Wiese and Krishna Winston
see Hans Jonas on Heidegger and the theologians in The Phenomenon of Life.
Jaspers could not conceive of a university without a Faculty of Theology. Perhaps he was right: better to have theologians in the open than disguised as philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, social commentators, journalists, feminists or literary critics.
Consider the Jonathan Miller interview with Denys Turner. Turner need not be troubled by the loss of the Ontological Argument to scrutiny by philosophers - he has the really big question enshrined by Heidegger. He may not talk freely of Satan as a peripatetic, but he is very free to talk about Nothing. He follows certain steps. The chorus is dispersed.
Suppose we follow Turner's lead to consider the "gift". This theme comes validated by both Gabriel Marcel and Heidegger.
We do not consider the world as given. We encounter the world as "gifted" to us.
We are but one step from the "gift of the Son"? His only begotten Son?
And from there it is but a few steps to squash the Arian and other inevitable heresies. We come full circle, common in many folk dances.
But was the great gift not Mary devoid of sin - and the physical assumption to heaven - this may be the judgment of Hispanic Catholicism in the New World (and how much is this a reaction to the fact of the Magdalen?)
Were Bolzano alive in 2002 when America went to war on the grounds of lies and suspicions, we can imagine what he might have said. Were Brentano alive when the physical ascension of Mary became dogma, we can imagine what he might have said. And Heidegger on this new dogma - this incontrovertible thesis, true for all time and ever, hidden, unspoken, true since the event?
Here is Heidegger's trinity from "What is Metaphysics?" [Krell]
- relation to the world
- stance
- irruption
Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein end with a Catholic burial. Heidegger only asks that we follow the train of his thought. Wittgenstein asks us to stop thinking as we tend to [conatus ? Treib?] and to listen to pluralities of speech instead [not singular, eidetic reflection or Wesenschauung]. We talk around and spare the listener our positive theses. Unlike judgement, there is no end to it, and still there is no end to it, no result: mere polemos. But the theologians have been able to keep talking - unlike those asserting a flat-earth but rather like those asserting a recent Earth -say, 5000 years old or so. They need not assert it, but only remind that the Word says it is so. True historicity. Embrace your faith. In speakings such was and ever is given unto you.
Are we to "follow" a "way of thinking" that brings us to the physical ascension [1950]? As Lutherans? As Anglicans? As Orthodox? Had She first died? Must She not have first come to her death?
What have the philosophers laid at theology's threshold? Serious questions about omnipotence. Serious questions about omniscience. Serious questions about prayer. Serious questions about evil. Serious questions about prophetic revelation. The theologian in the West stands at one remove, out of reach, the simple side-step of faith. But what is fide without credo - or failing those asertions, at least doxa?
Would Bultmann have chided Denys Turner for making of Heidegger a new myth? Why embrace Heidegger? Why not Mohamet? Why not Buddha? Because of who we are as a people.
Habermas' followers may yet sell this Tao to China as a post-Confucian discursive-action tonality. But who could sell this in a Souk? The text of the Koran, for all its commentaries, is what it is. The divisions of that faith need no lesson in historicity, bound as they are to nephews and sons-in-law. "Paul" was not another name for a brother named "John of Jerusalem".
see: Hans Jonas, Memoirs with Christian Wiese and Krishna Winston
see Hans Jonas on Heidegger and the theologians in The Phenomenon of Life.
Pythagorus: Hesperus and Phosphorus (Evening and Morning Star)
Pythagorus is believed to have established (grounded ?) the belief (assertion ?) that Hesperus is Phosphorus and Phosphorus is Hesperus.
This is not to say that "Evening star" means "bearing the dawn" [Φωσφόρος, "bearer of light"].
First note that this is astronomy prior to experiment (Galileo) and astronomy prior to enhanced observation through instrument (Galileo's telescope or Newton's reflector telescope.)
To what extent can the Pythagorean "thetic" achievement be derided by Heidegger as more counting by a zealot? Indeed, Heidegger's opposition to number is astonishing given the early work of Husserl.
Heidegger affirmed the value of "orienteering" for the hiker in the hills. His Lage of Germany in geo-politics is in a pincers that is East and West (but not clearly so - see my notes on Heidegger and Taoism and the possibility that Heidegger envisaged the Chinese embracing his thought as an alternative to the trinity of Marxism, Buddhism and Confucianism.)
Consider the model of the telescope used by Herschel to discover Uranus. Removed the telescope. What remains is a device for taking line of sight: it depends on properties of triangles. But need it be numeric?
Consider the use of "Wegmarken" - say, notched sticks to mark the height of the planet Venus on successive days. With the season, such a row of markers would lie along different lines of sight. Those lines of site require marking a standpoint - a viewpoint.
The Entdeckung which provides the "thetic" insight into the identity of the two stellar objects is not trivial even today. In Australia, for some Aborigines, the appearance of Venus in the sky is as significant as the first glimpse of the new moon to Moslems. In Canada, it has emerged that there is a confluence between the views of Christian aboriginal natives and traditionalist natives that the First People reject Darwinian evolution in favor of creation.
The critical objection to Darwin had been the age of the earth and the critical defense in that regard was that the sun could not have been "burning" for millenia. We come back to Heraclitus and fire.
Venus is not blazing. Gazing on Venus in a telescope will not blind you within seconds. This is not mere practical knowledge with regard to the use of equipment.
What was not available to Pythagorus were the phases of Venus. Would these have been mere "phenomena" for mention rather than grounds for assertoric thesis and a spur, a goad, to theoria?
While pondering my project on Mercury and Anschauung, I happened to return to one of my personal discoveries: the lovely blue "snowball" nebula classified as NGC 7662. On the night that I could not resist observing that single object - happened upon by chance, I was with others at an organized "dark sky" site. I do not now recall if I was using an 8" SCT or a 6" refractor (I was not keeping a logbook of observations and achievements.) With a 24" telescope such as my daughter may use at college, this would not be a lovely blue circular haze among more-or-less pin-point stars: it would have a visible structure. With the Hubble photograph it was "unveiled" and with the LBT on Mount Graham there may be an even finer image.
The distance to NGC 7662 has been problematic - not that the distance could be given in more than orders of magnitude with a theory of error - and expressed as Parsec or as AU.
How long would a student persist in looking to identify the moons of Venus? How many repeat observations over what period of time? What would be the responsibility of the teacher? What are our values in this regard?
What Heidegger could not envisage was the poet astronomer. The poet with an axe, chopping wood, yes. The poet who laboured as a forester, yes.
Herschel was a musician, perhaps not so unlike Pythagorus. The music he composed is now utterly neglected, forgotten. His sister is forgotten where Nietzsche's sister is remembered.
note: observation, asterism, constellation
note: the future of Ursa Maj. for observers on earth.
note: Heidegger on Greek portrayals of female goddess
note: Herschel's lively imagination
note: Heidegger's scorn for differentiating and classifying versus the achievement of Edwin Hubble
This is not to say that "Evening star" means "bearing the dawn" [Φωσφόρος, "bearer of light"].
First note that this is astronomy prior to experiment (Galileo) and astronomy prior to enhanced observation through instrument (Galileo's telescope or Newton's reflector telescope.)
To what extent can the Pythagorean "thetic" achievement be derided by Heidegger as more counting by a zealot? Indeed, Heidegger's opposition to number is astonishing given the early work of Husserl.
Heidegger affirmed the value of "orienteering" for the hiker in the hills. His Lage of Germany in geo-politics is in a pincers that is East and West (but not clearly so - see my notes on Heidegger and Taoism and the possibility that Heidegger envisaged the Chinese embracing his thought as an alternative to the trinity of Marxism, Buddhism and Confucianism.)
Consider the model of the telescope used by Herschel to discover Uranus. Removed the telescope. What remains is a device for taking line of sight: it depends on properties of triangles. But need it be numeric?
Consider the use of "Wegmarken" - say, notched sticks to mark the height of the planet Venus on successive days. With the season, such a row of markers would lie along different lines of sight. Those lines of site require marking a standpoint - a viewpoint.
The Entdeckung which provides the "thetic" insight into the identity of the two stellar objects is not trivial even today. In Australia, for some Aborigines, the appearance of Venus in the sky is as significant as the first glimpse of the new moon to Moslems. In Canada, it has emerged that there is a confluence between the views of Christian aboriginal natives and traditionalist natives that the First People reject Darwinian evolution in favor of creation.
The critical objection to Darwin had been the age of the earth and the critical defense in that regard was that the sun could not have been "burning" for millenia. We come back to Heraclitus and fire.
Venus is not blazing. Gazing on Venus in a telescope will not blind you within seconds. This is not mere practical knowledge with regard to the use of equipment.
What was not available to Pythagorus were the phases of Venus. Would these have been mere "phenomena" for mention rather than grounds for assertoric thesis and a spur, a goad, to theoria?
While pondering my project on Mercury and Anschauung, I happened to return to one of my personal discoveries: the lovely blue "snowball" nebula classified as NGC 7662. On the night that I could not resist observing that single object - happened upon by chance, I was with others at an organized "dark sky" site. I do not now recall if I was using an 8" SCT or a 6" refractor (I was not keeping a logbook of observations and achievements.) With a 24" telescope such as my daughter may use at college, this would not be a lovely blue circular haze among more-or-less pin-point stars: it would have a visible structure. With the Hubble photograph it was "unveiled" and with the LBT on Mount Graham there may be an even finer image.
The distance to NGC 7662 has been problematic - not that the distance could be given in more than orders of magnitude with a theory of error - and expressed as Parsec or as AU.
How long would a student persist in looking to identify the moons of Venus? How many repeat observations over what period of time? What would be the responsibility of the teacher? What are our values in this regard?
What Heidegger could not envisage was the poet astronomer. The poet with an axe, chopping wood, yes. The poet who laboured as a forester, yes.
Herschel was a musician, perhaps not so unlike Pythagorus. The music he composed is now utterly neglected, forgotten. His sister is forgotten where Nietzsche's sister is remembered.
note: observation, asterism, constellation
note: the future of Ursa Maj. for observers on earth.
note: Heidegger on Greek portrayals of female goddess
note: Herschel's lively imagination
note: Heidegger's scorn for differentiating and classifying versus the achievement of Edwin Hubble
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Heidegger and Heraklit (Heraclitus)
While my interest in philosophy internet resources is focussed on non-PDF and non-HTML options such as Curl from http://www.curl.com/ I do applaud the work at the perseus project of tufts.edu
One useful Herclitus link is closely tied to the perseus project and that is here at philocetes.
As you can see from their Heraclitus page, they offer a few options for viewing original Greek text.
At the Tufts Perseus project, once you go to a text, say of Virgil, there will be an option towards the upper-right corner to "load" or to "focus". Think of "focus" as a "flip" to one language or the other in the main left window: the "load" option can bring up multiple translations to the right in drop-down panes.
What is missing here - and, granted, can be added - is the sort of annotation options easily available to a site-specific browser. This would be even moreso for a browser written using a web content language such as Curl and wrapping a library such as the Apple WebKit.
My best hunch is to generate that Curl framework using a smart language such as Oz or a web language such as Rebol or a text-savvy goal-directed language such as ObjectIcon. But we'll see.
I have various notes on this over at aule-browser.com and the aule-browser blog.
One useful Herclitus link is closely tied to the perseus project and that is here at philocetes.
As you can see from their Heraclitus page, they offer a few options for viewing original Greek text.
At the Tufts Perseus project, once you go to a text, say of Virgil, there will be an option towards the upper-right corner to "load" or to "focus". Think of "focus" as a "flip" to one language or the other in the main left window: the "load" option can bring up multiple translations to the right in drop-down panes.
What is missing here - and, granted, can be added - is the sort of annotation options easily available to a site-specific browser. This would be even moreso for a browser written using a web content language such as Curl and wrapping a library such as the Apple WebKit.
My best hunch is to generate that Curl framework using a smart language such as Oz or a web language such as Rebol or a text-savvy goal-directed language such as ObjectIcon. But we'll see.
I have various notes on this over at aule-browser.com and the aule-browser blog.
Günther Stern, Günther Anders and the first marriage
What Heidegger says about Günther Stern in the letter to Hannah Arendt of Oct 18, 1925, makes it hard to believe that she later becomes Hannah Stern. As she says in her letter of 1929, Heidegger might understand least of anyone. The letter is undated, and it is not clear to me if it is before or after the wedding.
In the next letter in 1930 she is placing Stern beside Heidegger - one can imagine the "Heideggerian" prattle that she must have been listening to from his sycophant.
But in the 1929 letter, already with Stern, she is telling Heidegger that her love for her Martin will always be the love of her life.
Once divorced, Stern would later help her to escape from France to America with her new husband, the political activist, Heinrich Blücher.
Stern would later be known as Günther Anders and would continue to write on the themes from the Marburg lectures.
The first marriage surely shows what harm has been done to the young student by the predatory professor whose wife was so often absent from Marburg. And yet Blücher goes on to establish some sort of friendship with Heidegger in the post-war years. Or was he just making things bearable - normalizing the bizarre -refusing to be bourgeois, possessive, jealous or protective. So it had not been exploitation of an impressionable young woman, alone in Marburg. Or had he not read the letters?
In the next letter in 1930 she is placing Stern beside Heidegger - one can imagine the "Heideggerian" prattle that she must have been listening to from his sycophant.
But in the 1929 letter, already with Stern, she is telling Heidegger that her love for her Martin will always be the love of her life.
Once divorced, Stern would later help her to escape from France to America with her new husband, the political activist, Heinrich Blücher.
Stern would later be known as Günther Anders and would continue to write on the themes from the Marburg lectures.
The first marriage surely shows what harm has been done to the young student by the predatory professor whose wife was so often absent from Marburg. And yet Blücher goes on to establish some sort of friendship with Heidegger in the post-war years. Or was he just making things bearable - normalizing the bizarre -refusing to be bourgeois, possessive, jealous or protective. So it had not been exploitation of an impressionable young woman, alone in Marburg. Or had he not read the letters?
Kristeva on Heidegger: colours
In his Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Heidegger invites the students in his Marburg lecture to consider what it is to think on the wall. He cannot tell them how, when she first entered his office, that he asked her to removed her hat, her raincoat - or did not. Husserl insists that when the thing is present, the backside is present in consciousness in the horizon, a phenomenon well-known in the worldwide demand for denim.
Colour. Denim was originally colored using Newton's absent shade (just as the sun and the moon with the known planets numbered seven, so must his colours of the prism) - indigo - and not Genoa blue.
Kristeva draws our attention to the turn from green to brown in his thought of his saucy wood nymph. Here is a possible clue: Trakl "Die Raben".
In Die Raben we find the Schatten, the doe, the braune Stille and the furrowed acre.
Colour. Denim was originally colored using Newton's absent shade (just as the sun and the moon with the known planets numbered seven, so must his colours of the prism) - indigo - and not Genoa blue.
Kristeva draws our attention to the turn from green to brown in his thought of his saucy wood nymph. Here is a possible clue: Trakl "Die Raben".
In Die Raben we find the Schatten, the doe, the braune Stille and the furrowed acre.
Über den schwarzen Winkel hastenOr not. But what awaits the doe (hind), if not the buck (stag, Hirsch) in rut (Brunst, Hirschbrunst)?
Am Mittag die Raben mit hartem Schrei
Ihr Schatten streift an die Hirschkuh vorbei
Und manchal mal sieht man sie mürrisch rasten.
O wie sie die braune Stille stören,
In der ein Acker sich verzückt,
Wie ein Weib, das schwer Ahnung berückt,
Und manchmal kann man sie keifen hören.
Und ein Aas, die sie irgenwo wittern,
Und plötzlich richten nach Nord sie den Flug
Und schwinden wie ein Leichenzug
in Luften, die von Wollust zittern.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
lowbrow Heidegger
From the published letter of Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, May 4, 1950
Andrew Shields English transl: "... the woman is hidden in the girl, the girl in the woman. And the essential thing is: this concealment itself growing bright."
The eroticism of Heidegger on concealment and Ereignis could not be clearer: it is addressed to his "saucy wood nymph".
He here speaks of "Time gathered in to the fourth dimension of intimacy, as if we had stepped directly out of eternity -- and returned into it." In merely alluding to the past intimacy he is able to validate his early insight on the occasion of her first entering his office: "only then do I know that life is history." [Mar 21, 1925]
These need to be set side-by-side with the originals and with other of his pronouncements.
Andrew Shields English transl: "... the woman is hidden in the girl, the girl in the woman. And the essential thing is: this concealment itself growing bright."
The eroticism of Heidegger on concealment and Ereignis could not be clearer: it is addressed to his "saucy wood nymph".
He here speaks of "Time gathered in to the fourth dimension of intimacy, as if we had stepped directly out of eternity -- and returned into it." In merely alluding to the past intimacy he is able to validate his early insight on the occasion of her first entering his office: "only then do I know that life is history." [Mar 21, 1925]
These need to be set side-by-side with the originals and with other of his pronouncements.
Arendt and the Two Escapes
I have been able to find no mention of any documentation of the reports that Arendt escaped Gestapo custody twice: first in Berlin in 1933 and then in France in 1939 (the camp of the Gurs.)
Once is miraculous. Twice should have invited someone to look for some documentation. Are we to believe that the captors wanted no record of their bungling?
There is a document said to be the list of deportees to round up which we are told bears Karl Jaspers name and that of his wife Gertrud (what is the explanation of how she escaped so long - who did Jaspers know who provided this protection or this exception? Jaspers had not served in WWI. What was her exemption?)
Once is miraculous. Twice should have invited someone to look for some documentation. Are we to believe that the captors wanted no record of their bungling?
There is a document said to be the list of deportees to round up which we are told bears Karl Jaspers name and that of his wife Gertrud (what is the explanation of how she escaped so long - who did Jaspers know who provided this protection or this exception? Jaspers had not served in WWI. What was her exemption?)
re-readig Karl Jaspers: 1930 - 1937
I had intended to cotnrast Jaspers post-1945 on the idea of the university and Liz Coleman on her plan for Bennington College (while noting the seeming collapse of the FNCU in Saskatchewan.)
But I cannot reconcile Heidegger's letter to Elfride of March 19, 1933. The Reichstag fire had been on Feb 27 of that year. Granted, the next act in the consolidation of Hitler's power is March 23. So I look to the letters of Jaspers to Heidegger and Arendt for some sign that he grasps what is happening. It is more than sad and disillusioning.
One reason that I work on site-specific research browsers and the Curl web content language at aule-browser.com is to be able to place side-by-side such texts as these with and without combinations of links and annotations - and to let the reader or researcher determine that quotations are not out of context or poorly translated.
Start with the letter to Elfride. We seem to learn from the assessment of Heidegger which Jaspers held back from the 1st Ed. of the Schilpp "Jaspers" collection that Jaspers found a kindred spirit in Heidegger. Their first meeting is so telling: it is an "occasion" at the Husserl home. We have only Jaspers word that he confronted Husserl on the matter of Afra Geiger. What I take from my reading is that Jaspers and Heidegger were given to mocking Husserl, Cassirer and the like (see Jaspers 1930 on "The Sophist".)
In the letter to Elfride, Heidegger makes one of his unkind references to Jaspers wife. Gertrud, a Jew. Jaspers is portrayed by Heidegger as open to the possibilities that are opening up. Now comes the name of Kriek. Then Baumgarten. This latter is key. Why would Heidegger lie to Elfride about Jaspers' views?
I flip to the Jaspers letters to Hannah Arendt of this period: full of "the German character" and his doubts about what roots a Jew could have in sharing the fate of Europe's Jews (he is imagining assimilation here, not annihilation - the focus is the Arendt book on Rahel.)
I then flip to the Jaspers letters to Heidegger (these are noa vailable in German in Minnesota colleges and universities, so I am reduced to an incomplete "preview" on Google Books.)
One possibility is that Jaspers now fears Heidegger and is bilking him for information - deceiving the ever mendatious Heidegger (one could take this impression from the post-war letters between Arendt and Jaspers - but we now know how much she deliberately misrepresented her role in rehabilitating Heidegger in those very letters to her "most Honoured"). I see no sign to indicate this.
Here is what I am able to read in "Briefwechsel 1920-1963" by Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Walter Biemel, Hans Saner. Jaspers would have us believe that it was only in 1934 that he learned of Heidegger's deunciation by letter (Dec. 1933). What they were they discussing in early 1933 - Baumgarten and American pragmatism? The Heidegger letter to Elfride suggests that there was an issue of "funds" that needed to be brought to the attention of Max Weber's widow. Baungarten joined the NSDAP in 1937 and was later linked with Konrad Lorenz in Koenigsberg. What is essential to know is whether Baungarten's opposition in Freiburg was to the SA (Rohm's SturmAbteilung was Heidegger's preferred movement.)
It is almost impossible to form a clear opinion of where Jaspers stood without being able to lay side-by-side the original 1930 text of "Die Geistige Situation der Zeit" and the sanitized 1946 version.
In the letter to Elfride, Heidegger asserts that it was Jaspers who ensured the career of Ernst Krieck!. (task: look for the connection of Kriek and Elisabeth Blochmann.) Kriek had already been censured in 1931 for his use of the Hitler salute (which we now know Heidegger retained even after 1936.)
Jaspers to Arendt: that Heidegger spoke like an anti-Semite when with an anti-Semite, spoke like a radical conservative when with him; spoke like a Lutheran when with Husserl; spoke very carefully while first at Catholic Frieburg and later with often wirh caution at Protestant Marburg (see Husserl's letter to Natorp; see Heidegger to Elfride on "debate" at Marburg.)
From reading the letters to Elfride where so much is not said:
My suspicion: that a DNA test would show that Hermann was in fact Heidegger's biological son - and not the son of Friedel Caesar.
My second suspicion: that Erike Birle was compromised by Heidegger: in 1945 her first son is named Martin. She was 14 at the time she became a foster daughter.
But I cannot reconcile Heidegger's letter to Elfride of March 19, 1933. The Reichstag fire had been on Feb 27 of that year. Granted, the next act in the consolidation of Hitler's power is March 23. So I look to the letters of Jaspers to Heidegger and Arendt for some sign that he grasps what is happening. It is more than sad and disillusioning.
One reason that I work on site-specific research browsers and the Curl web content language at aule-browser.com is to be able to place side-by-side such texts as these with and without combinations of links and annotations - and to let the reader or researcher determine that quotations are not out of context or poorly translated.
Start with the letter to Elfride. We seem to learn from the assessment of Heidegger which Jaspers held back from the 1st Ed. of the Schilpp "Jaspers" collection that Jaspers found a kindred spirit in Heidegger. Their first meeting is so telling: it is an "occasion" at the Husserl home. We have only Jaspers word that he confronted Husserl on the matter of Afra Geiger. What I take from my reading is that Jaspers and Heidegger were given to mocking Husserl, Cassirer and the like (see Jaspers 1930 on "The Sophist".)
In the letter to Elfride, Heidegger makes one of his unkind references to Jaspers wife. Gertrud, a Jew. Jaspers is portrayed by Heidegger as open to the possibilities that are opening up. Now comes the name of Kriek. Then Baumgarten. This latter is key. Why would Heidegger lie to Elfride about Jaspers' views?
I flip to the Jaspers letters to Hannah Arendt of this period: full of "the German character" and his doubts about what roots a Jew could have in sharing the fate of Europe's Jews (he is imagining assimilation here, not annihilation - the focus is the Arendt book on Rahel.)
I then flip to the Jaspers letters to Heidegger (these are noa vailable in German in Minnesota colleges and universities, so I am reduced to an incomplete "preview" on Google Books.)
One possibility is that Jaspers now fears Heidegger and is bilking him for information - deceiving the ever mendatious Heidegger (one could take this impression from the post-war letters between Arendt and Jaspers - but we now know how much she deliberately misrepresented her role in rehabilitating Heidegger in those very letters to her "most Honoured"). I see no sign to indicate this.
Here is what I am able to read in "Briefwechsel 1920-1963" by Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Walter Biemel, Hans Saner. Jaspers would have us believe that it was only in 1934 that he learned of Heidegger's deunciation by letter (Dec. 1933). What they were they discussing in early 1933 - Baumgarten and American pragmatism? The Heidegger letter to Elfride suggests that there was an issue of "funds" that needed to be brought to the attention of Max Weber's widow. Baungarten joined the NSDAP in 1937 and was later linked with Konrad Lorenz in Koenigsberg. What is essential to know is whether Baungarten's opposition in Freiburg was to the SA (Rohm's SturmAbteilung was Heidegger's preferred movement.)
It is almost impossible to form a clear opinion of where Jaspers stood without being able to lay side-by-side the original 1930 text of "Die Geistige Situation der Zeit" and the sanitized 1946 version.
In the letter to Elfride, Heidegger asserts that it was Jaspers who ensured the career of Ernst Krieck!. (task: look for the connection of Kriek and Elisabeth Blochmann.) Kriek had already been censured in 1931 for his use of the Hitler salute (which we now know Heidegger retained even after 1936.)
Jaspers to Arendt: that Heidegger spoke like an anti-Semite when with an anti-Semite, spoke like a radical conservative when with him; spoke like a Lutheran when with Husserl; spoke very carefully while first at Catholic Frieburg and later with often wirh caution at Protestant Marburg (see Husserl's letter to Natorp; see Heidegger to Elfride on "debate" at Marburg.)
From reading the letters to Elfride where so much is not said:
My suspicion: that a DNA test would show that Hermann was in fact Heidegger's biological son - and not the son of Friedel Caesar.
My second suspicion: that Erike Birle was compromised by Heidegger: in 1945 her first son is named Martin. She was 14 at the time she became a foster daughter.
Jacques Taminiaux on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty
Yesterday I had the misfortune of learning of Taminiaux and the Wallon movement (as if they were somehow oppressed or wronged - a frequent view of the Wallons among Quebeckers in the 80's.)
The political positions of Searle and Ricoeur in 1968: who could be further apart? (see his interviews with Marcel in that year); Hilary Putnam - rather extreme - but not as consistently so as Chomsky.
The great contrast: Bernard Bolzano. A century ahead of his time.
Today re-reading the 1930-31 "Geistige Situation" of Jaspers - without acess to a pre-1946 edition. But it has not been so very sanitized: very sobering reading - another radical conservative - and the mocking of the likes of Cassirer in which he indulged with Heidegger.
In 1968 the Protestant philosopher Ricoeur uses a military metaphor - the advancing frontlines - to introduce the interviews with the Catholic Marcel. Ricoeur: a real fool, no matter how revered for his balancing acts - all performed on a more a hawser than a cable - and over a rather shallow pit.
Latest moment to gag: Denys Turner on the "Atheism Tapes" invoking Heidegger without mention but as the ultimate ground for religious faith. Jonathon Miller chooses to be polite and almost deferential to the buffoon - or even in 2003 too ignorant to object - (that interview was suppressed in the PBS broadcast.)
The political positions of Searle and Ricoeur in 1968: who could be further apart? (see his interviews with Marcel in that year); Hilary Putnam - rather extreme - but not as consistently so as Chomsky.
The great contrast: Bernard Bolzano. A century ahead of his time.
Today re-reading the 1930-31 "Geistige Situation" of Jaspers - without acess to a pre-1946 edition. But it has not been so very sanitized: very sobering reading - another radical conservative - and the mocking of the likes of Cassirer in which he indulged with Heidegger.
In 1968 the Protestant philosopher Ricoeur uses a military metaphor - the advancing frontlines - to introduce the interviews with the Catholic Marcel. Ricoeur: a real fool, no matter how revered for his balancing acts - all performed on a more a hawser than a cable - and over a rather shallow pit.
Latest moment to gag: Denys Turner on the "Atheism Tapes" invoking Heidegger without mention but as the ultimate ground for religious faith. Jonathon Miller chooses to be polite and almost deferential to the buffoon - or even in 2003 too ignorant to object - (that interview was suppressed in the PBS broadcast.)
Monday, April 26, 2010
Written in 1929; published in 1930: Heidegger and Langer
The last chapter of Suzanne Langer's, Tthe Practice of Philosphy" (it's preface by Whitehead is dated 1929) concerns wisdom and appears in print in 1930. It would appear to be a forgotten book - even among women in philosophy interested in the topic of woman philosophers.
The last chapter - an Epilogue - provides a striking contrast to the Heidegger of 1927-1939 (and his Davos confrontation with Cassirer.)
Of note is Chapter VII, "Insight", which is said to have influenced Bernard Lonergan.
The last chapter - an Epilogue - provides a striking contrast to the Heidegger of 1927-1939 (and his Davos confrontation with Cassirer.)
Of note is Chapter VII, "Insight", which is said to have influenced Bernard Lonergan.
Mercury - and Mercury, again.
I take it as a given that most western Europeans have never paused to see Mercury in the sky.
If asked, most could not tell you where to look for Mercury (some would now start on the internet.)
If offered a clue: "What about sunrise and sunset?"
Or even more explicit: "What about sunrise and sunset? Before which or after which?"
Some very few might suggest a deep, shallow mineshaft in daylight - or a full solar eclipse.
Simply: look for Mercury sometimes after sunset in the west or at other times before sunrise in the east.
But why named for Hermes, the messenger? What are these comings and goings of Mercury while Venus and Apollo's sun-chariot are so much more regular and steady?
And what of the appearance of Mercury? IF you were to see Mercury with the aid of a telescope, of what might you become aware? [here, see Epictetus]
Suppose that I show you Mercury in a telescope ... here are the variants for this Anschaung that come to mind (and arise if I set up more than one telescope along the road for neighbours and passers-by.)
Subjective: (holding the subjective lens)
1) 45deg mirror (or 90deg prism)
2) Amici prism
3) straight tube extender
Objective
1) mirror (various overall designs and configurations from simple Newtonian to highly modified)
2) lens (as in the typical "Galilean" telescope)
Mount
free-moving (likely a reflector, but also a small refractor on a ball-head mount)
altitude-azimuth
German equatorial
computerized variants of any of the above three
star-gazer
a digital identifier of the stars, planets and or asterisms at which it is aimed
activity
hand tracking
motor-tracking
the above in combination
variants: monocular or binocular options apply in the above to objective, subjective and star-gazer device.
What will be seen: (general characterization)
reflector - a little fuzzy but with good colour (expecially the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn)
refractor - may be quite sharp image, but may have violet fringe if not using hydrogen filter
What will be seen: (shape)
The two inner planets, Venus and Mercury, are subject to what might be described as "lunar" phases: they are moon-like in appearance.
Sceptic: how do you know it is not a star?
Answer: under magnification it increases in size as a disk: many stars under magnification do not change their "aspect" notably or else may even reveal themselves to be double or even triple stars (and if the tube is tapped lightly, trace clear distinct sinusoidal paths in which each star is clearly distinguished by a fine "parallel" path with the others - a case of movement in observation)
Richer answer: it will visibly have moved against the starry background by tomorrow
Jupiter answer: watch the weather change and moons appear and shadows pass over its face.
But not Veuns and Mercury. Every 16 years Mars displays its ice caps. But not Venus and Mercury.
Where in lies the scientific/social division-of-labor in the apperception of Mercury.
The observer tends to need to be coached: "Yes, bigger in the view than the star I just showed you - but how would you describe that shape? What does it remind you of?"
Next task: explain away the violet halo.
Next task: explain why the image is inverted up-side down or mirror-reversed.
"See, in this telescope the crescent of Mercury is 'looking down' towards where the sun has set - see?"
"Notice that in this telescope Mercury is 'looking up to the right' but the sun has set down to the left... Let's look at the cresent moon up there in each telecope ... and compare what you see in the scope to what you see with these binoculars ..."
And where is the cresent moon if it is just after sunset? I hope you do not look up, or worse, east ... And which way is it facing ...
Any introductory course in college astronomy should be paired with a course in philosophy. Ditto for botany. Chemistry. Any introductory college course in physics should require one evening learning to look at the night sky. Otherwise how shall we reply to the attacks on reason, Galileo, naturalism and modernity? How else shall we defend observation over prejudice if there is no "foundation" in the actual experience of the student? Next topic: the lunar illusion and the rising full moon.
a note on mathesis in praxis: even the use of the alt-azimuth and the equatorial mounts do not - in use - require mathematics or measurements or numbers or compass points (although the equiatorial mount will be easier to use of faced north and with an angle approximately that of the latitiude of the observer's location.
If asked, most could not tell you where to look for Mercury (some would now start on the internet.)
If offered a clue: "What about sunrise and sunset?"
Or even more explicit: "What about sunrise and sunset? Before which or after which?"
Some very few might suggest a deep, shallow mineshaft in daylight - or a full solar eclipse.
Simply: look for Mercury sometimes after sunset in the west or at other times before sunrise in the east.
But why named for Hermes, the messenger? What are these comings and goings of Mercury while Venus and Apollo's sun-chariot are so much more regular and steady?
And what of the appearance of Mercury? IF you were to see Mercury with the aid of a telescope, of what might you become aware? [here, see Epictetus]
Suppose that I show you Mercury in a telescope ... here are the variants for this Anschaung that come to mind (and arise if I set up more than one telescope along the road for neighbours and passers-by.)
Subjective: (holding the subjective lens)
1) 45deg mirror (or 90deg prism)
2) Amici prism
3) straight tube extender
Objective
1) mirror (various overall designs and configurations from simple Newtonian to highly modified)
2) lens (as in the typical "Galilean" telescope)
Mount
free-moving (likely a reflector, but also a small refractor on a ball-head mount)
altitude-azimuth
German equatorial
computerized variants of any of the above three
star-gazer
a digital identifier of the stars, planets and or asterisms at which it is aimed
activity
hand tracking
motor-tracking
the above in combination
variants: monocular or binocular options apply in the above to objective, subjective and star-gazer device.
What will be seen: (general characterization)
reflector - a little fuzzy but with good colour (expecially the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn)
refractor - may be quite sharp image, but may have violet fringe if not using hydrogen filter
What will be seen: (shape)
The two inner planets, Venus and Mercury, are subject to what might be described as "lunar" phases: they are moon-like in appearance.
Sceptic: how do you know it is not a star?
Answer: under magnification it increases in size as a disk: many stars under magnification do not change their "aspect" notably or else may even reveal themselves to be double or even triple stars (and if the tube is tapped lightly, trace clear distinct sinusoidal paths in which each star is clearly distinguished by a fine "parallel" path with the others - a case of movement in observation)
Richer answer: it will visibly have moved against the starry background by tomorrow
Jupiter answer: watch the weather change and moons appear and shadows pass over its face.
But not Veuns and Mercury. Every 16 years Mars displays its ice caps. But not Venus and Mercury.
Where in lies the scientific/social division-of-labor in the apperception of Mercury.
The observer tends to need to be coached: "Yes, bigger in the view than the star I just showed you - but how would you describe that shape? What does it remind you of?"
Next task: explain away the violet halo.
Next task: explain why the image is inverted up-side down or mirror-reversed.
"See, in this telescope the crescent of Mercury is 'looking down' towards where the sun has set - see?"
"Notice that in this telescope Mercury is 'looking up to the right' but the sun has set down to the left... Let's look at the cresent moon up there in each telecope ... and compare what you see in the scope to what you see with these binoculars ..."
And where is the cresent moon if it is just after sunset? I hope you do not look up, or worse, east ... And which way is it facing ...
Any introductory course in college astronomy should be paired with a course in philosophy. Ditto for botany. Chemistry. Any introductory college course in physics should require one evening learning to look at the night sky. Otherwise how shall we reply to the attacks on reason, Galileo, naturalism and modernity? How else shall we defend observation over prejudice if there is no "foundation" in the actual experience of the student? Next topic: the lunar illusion and the rising full moon.
a note on mathesis in praxis: even the use of the alt-azimuth and the equatorial mounts do not - in use - require mathematics or measurements or numbers or compass points (although the equiatorial mount will be easier to use of faced north and with an angle approximately that of the latitiude of the observer's location.
The other funeral
In February, 1969, Hannah Arendt is in Germany for Karl Jaspers funeral. She uses the occasion to arrange a meeting with Heidegger: he wants Wednesday morning for his work, but he can see he in the afternoon. After all his many train trips to Heidelberg to meet with Jaspers, he does not attend the funeral.
Arendt using this occasion to meet with the Master - the funeral of her "most honoured" - deeply offends my sensibilities. I may be alone in this.
That Jaspers failed to grasp who Heidegger was - as evidenced in Jasper's most explicit letter to Arendt - but that Arendt did not - I find I am quite sure of the former and unsure of the latter - in spite of what she wrote to Jaspers in her most explicit letter.
Even more disturbing for a reader of philosphy, is her letter to Heidegger of 1972 which reveals that only now is she reading Merleau-Ponty. This is the author of the human condition who had spent a term as a student of Husserl.
As boggling - if true - is her assertion in another letter to Heidegger that she does not understand the Jaspers "attack" on Bultmann when any reading of the alter Jaspers makes clear theology must not fog into philosophy or philosophy cloud itself with theology. His reply to Ricoeur in the Schilpp volume is very incisive (Ricoeur, in so many ways riding on the coattails of Bultmann and then drawing back in the Gospel as "narative".)
Jaspers saw clearly what theology would be tempted by in Heidegger - Loewith saw it very clearly - and yet the non-religious Arendt cannot see it. And yet she had spent daya and days with Jaspers in Basel - communing and arguing.
Jaspers never had his open dialogue with Heidegger or his Heidegger book. Women in philosphy also cannot look back to an open exchange between Susanne Langer and Hannah Arendt - perhaps at Bard instead of Davos.
And then the shadows: what we know now that suggests that Heidegger may have been abused as a boy - can we ignore what may have befallen Hannah at the hands of the step-father (especially if he saw her as divided from her mother, said to be close to his daughters?) Surely any feminist reading of Arendt should ask: where her book on the victims whom she knew personally as women - such as Afra Geiger? All that we have is Hannah and the great men ... one chapter on Rosa L. and one chapter on Isak D. Was she unaware of Edith Stein's fate and it's parallel with that of Afra Geiger? Did Heidegger never speak of Stein?
note: for the critical year of 1918, in addition to Ott see Martin Heidegger: between good and evil by Rüdiger Safranski
The Shadows quotes:
Arendt using this occasion to meet with the Master - the funeral of her "most honoured" - deeply offends my sensibilities. I may be alone in this.
That Jaspers failed to grasp who Heidegger was - as evidenced in Jasper's most explicit letter to Arendt - but that Arendt did not - I find I am quite sure of the former and unsure of the latter - in spite of what she wrote to Jaspers in her most explicit letter.
Even more disturbing for a reader of philosphy, is her letter to Heidegger of 1972 which reveals that only now is she reading Merleau-Ponty. This is the author of the human condition who had spent a term as a student of Husserl.
As boggling - if true - is her assertion in another letter to Heidegger that she does not understand the Jaspers "attack" on Bultmann when any reading of the alter Jaspers makes clear theology must not fog into philosophy or philosophy cloud itself with theology. His reply to Ricoeur in the Schilpp volume is very incisive (Ricoeur, in so many ways riding on the coattails of Bultmann and then drawing back in the Gospel as "narative".)
Jaspers saw clearly what theology would be tempted by in Heidegger - Loewith saw it very clearly - and yet the non-religious Arendt cannot see it. And yet she had spent daya and days with Jaspers in Basel - communing and arguing.
Jaspers never had his open dialogue with Heidegger or his Heidegger book. Women in philosphy also cannot look back to an open exchange between Susanne Langer and Hannah Arendt - perhaps at Bard instead of Davos.
And then the shadows: what we know now that suggests that Heidegger may have been abused as a boy - can we ignore what may have befallen Hannah at the hands of the step-father (especially if he saw her as divided from her mother, said to be close to his daughters?) Surely any feminist reading of Arendt should ask: where her book on the victims whom she knew personally as women - such as Afra Geiger? All that we have is Hannah and the great men ... one chapter on Rosa L. and one chapter on Isak D. Was she unaware of Edith Stein's fate and it's parallel with that of Afra Geiger? Did Heidegger never speak of Stein?
note: for the critical year of 1918, in addition to Ott see Martin Heidegger: between good and evil by Rüdiger Safranski
The Shadows quotes:
helpless, betrayed youthThis reading is suggested if only out of respect for the victim of molestation and her "fastasies" at the hands of Freud and the others who came to Daseinanalyse as "weak" in the eyes of that master and magician.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger
I have put up a page here on Bergson in German translation as "Einführung in die Metaphysik". There are striking parallels of that German version of Bergson to Heidegger's own text of the same name.
You might not see this if you do not have Heidegger in the original to compare to that translation from the Eugen Diederich Verlag, Jena 1909.
Husserl was of course very much aware of Bergson on time and time was an early topic for Heidegger as an assistant to Husserl. And then there is all of Heidegger's work on Aristotle as relates to motion, space and other related topics especially just before 1927 in his effort to secure the chair at Freiburg.
It is so striking to think that Heidegger saw himself as overcoming the dominant French philosopher - a Jew - and then to consider the sad fate of Bergson in occupied France in 1941. Heidegger, through Jean Beaufret and others, would triumph in spite of - or even because of - the misappropriations of Heidegger's thinking and his very thoughts by the crypto-Hegelian and Cartesian J-P Sartre. A territory reclaimed. A Bereich dominated (but a Beriech was to remain in the air ...)
It will be a happy irony if renewed interest in Schopenhauer is accompanied by renewed interest in Aristotle and Bergson: the texts of all three should be laid out on your desk when making sense of Heidegger's peculiarities as the Fuehrer - the oddities of what is Gestell - in the Heideggerian Einfuehrung and its particular Bestimmung from which Derrida says Heidegger was never to distance himself.
I will post a reconstruction at aule-browser.com (the text I have is in Fraktur) once I have a text and tie it to the Heidegger text using the Curl web content language for text from http://www.curl.com/
You might not see this if you do not have Heidegger in the original to compare to that translation from the Eugen Diederich Verlag, Jena 1909.
Husserl was of course very much aware of Bergson on time and time was an early topic for Heidegger as an assistant to Husserl. And then there is all of Heidegger's work on Aristotle as relates to motion, space and other related topics especially just before 1927 in his effort to secure the chair at Freiburg.
It is so striking to think that Heidegger saw himself as overcoming the dominant French philosopher - a Jew - and then to consider the sad fate of Bergson in occupied France in 1941. Heidegger, through Jean Beaufret and others, would triumph in spite of - or even because of - the misappropriations of Heidegger's thinking and his very thoughts by the crypto-Hegelian and Cartesian J-P Sartre. A territory reclaimed. A Bereich dominated (but a Beriech was to remain in the air ...)
It will be a happy irony if renewed interest in Schopenhauer is accompanied by renewed interest in Aristotle and Bergson: the texts of all three should be laid out on your desk when making sense of Heidegger's peculiarities as the Fuehrer - the oddities of what is Gestell - in the Heideggerian Einfuehrung and its particular Bestimmung from which Derrida says Heidegger was never to distance himself.
I will post a reconstruction at aule-browser.com (the text I have is in Fraktur) once I have a text and tie it to the Heidegger text using the Curl web content language for text from http://www.curl.com/
Heidegger and the Tao
I recall that at about the time of his breakdown Heidegger began a translation of the Dao De Jing (German sometimes Tao Te King): while paths in the forest played a key role in his clandestine encounters with Hannah Arendt, "Dao" is often translated as "the path" or "the way". Taoism was not originally a religion: its pantheon of gods came later. Taoism has no one clear author, but many Taoists advocated a quietism rather like that of the Heidegger who was waiting for the inevitable clash between Amerika and Russia.
I have begun some notes on Tony Kline's translation which should appear at aule-browser.com
I have begun some notes on Tony Kline's translation which should appear at aule-browser.com
Die Sonne in "Einfuehrung in die Metaphysik"
Seite 80 of the Max Niemeyer Verlag 1953 edition of Einführung in die Metaphysik is worth citing in full. I say this only days after spending 2 nights watching the lunar terminator expose the shadows of the Apennines and then the early dark center of the Copernicus crater. I say this about 10 days after showing young people Venus and Mercury in the western sky in a 6" refractor so that their differing phases could be recognized and named by each surprised child.
But noticing this is not enough. Start with the fallacy. The relation of orbiting planet to single central massive star is not an appearance. One Sachverhalt is that twice a year we experience equinox and another that we have mapped the two tropics against the points where the sun is overhead at noon on each solstice. A more important, decisive, state of affairs is that the moon in the southern hemisphere rises "upside down" and that above the arctic circle generally is not visible at night when the sun is not visible in the day. Yet another is the identification of Hesperus with Phosphorus. Above 60deg latitude there is not truly dark night sky in summer (not a concern to a Swabian peasant.) He does not mention the apparent retrograde motions of Mars or the Einstein correction for the actual orbit of Mercury.
Einstellung. I recently looked at a Plakat by an artist with a matrix of eight images of the moon in apparently sequential phases. Something was wrong. It was moments before I could see that I could not recognize this moon. The fallacy: a single image of the full moon had been "sliced" 8 different ways. This Scheibenkreis of replications do no appearances make. Bergson would have known better, or Valéry. Without the galilean views, the artist was ignorant of the radically different appearance of each phase of the moon due to incident light, elevations and immense shadows, albedo and the libration of the moon.
Venus never rises to the zenith. Not at the poles. Not at the equator. Venus can appear full, when Mercury appears in "quarter phase".
Husserl's loss of Reinach and his lovely son Wolfgang in WWI left him vulnerable to the approaches of Heidegger. How he came to inherit Oscar Becker later, I have not yet researched. What seems clear to me from his Prag lecture, is that he did not imagine the use Heidegger would make of the notions of lived experience.
America is not only notable for how few accept evolution of species as a fact: it is notable for light pollution at night and how few use a telescope or can distinguish a planet from a star. When Heidegger laments the passing of the gods, there is more that is "wahr" about Venus and Mercury that is not being preserved among us: in almost every American public library, books on astrology out-number books on philosophy (although not in the notable virtual libraries which our librarians so often lament.)
Der Schein in dem Sonne und Erde stehen is presented by the example of die Morgenfrühe der Landschaft, but nothing in descriptive phenomenology as practiced by, say, Karl Jaspers in his psychopathology, necessitates the Heideggerian "swing": contrary to the eco-Heideggerians, the "Boden" for Heidegger was not the planet, Terra. He was ignorant of the deforestation which had occurred due to peasants with axes. Simple pumps and simple shovels had been used to drain the bogs and marches of Europe long before the steam engines arrived.
The next fallacy: no rising of the sun is Geschichte. Not even on the day of Waterloo. That the morning was foggy and cold is not a matter of astronomy and is only an historical fact if documented or otherwise provable and standing in relation to some event or subject to which it has some relevance. The time at which the sun rose may be decisive - but that time is not historical (it is not as if its rising were unexpected, avoidable or not predicted.) More common are considerations of whether there was moonlight. Or whether there was an error in navigation at sea. But Heidegger knew hill country orientation and not high seas or even coastal navigation.
Few non-Islamic artists are able to sensibly discuss the evening appearance of the moon during the first 10 days after new moon and fewer still how the appearance of the waxing crescent moon varies with the seasons in our northern hemisphere. The full moon illusion - an important chapter in the subjectivity and science - is almost a mythical matter in the educated American suburbs.
Gratitude. It is not merely that I am so grateful to live on a planet with a single stable moon. The accident which gave rise to the moon and later events that helped clear debris from our orbit have all contributed to the the unique history of the appearance of mamalian, avian and cephalopod species on this planet.
How Aristotle would have coveted such ideas as we now cherish!
πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει.
The dawn predates poetry. The morning light predates warfare in the name of the arising Volk. Those true ancients, pre-histroical, they too were human who were, oh, so modest, and marked with pigment on their bare but darkly tanned skin.
The dawn is also the elephant dawn. The evening finds the gorilla padding a new nest and the clever crows at roost. The morning light will dapple the coral in which the cuttle fish will hide today from the leaping dolphin, experienced at play in the Morgenfrühe. And above them all, the unsung moon.
Denken wir an die Sonne. Sie geht uns täglich auf und unter. Nur die wenigsten Astronomen, Physiker, Philosophen - und auch diese nur auf Grund einer besonderen, mehr oder minder, geläufigen Einstellung - erfahren diesen Sachverhalt unmittelbar anders, nämlich als Bewegung der Erde um die Sonne. Der Schein jedoch, in dem Sonne und Erde stehen, z.B. die Morgenfrühe der Landschaft, das Meer am Abend, die Nacht, ist ein Erscheinen. Dieser Schein ist nicht nichts. Es ist auch nicht unwahr. Es ist auch keine bloße Erscheinung eigentlich anders gearteter Verhältnisse in der Natur. Diese Schein ist geschichtlich und Geschichte, entdeckt und gegründet in der Dichtung und Sage und so ein wesenlicher Bereich unserer Welt.It is hard to know where to begin. Husserl began his studies in astronomy, Heidegger his in theology. Here we have the themes of Heidegger against Husserl's Lebenswelt and Husserl's revision of Galileo on experience.
But noticing this is not enough. Start with the fallacy. The relation of orbiting planet to single central massive star is not an appearance. One Sachverhalt is that twice a year we experience equinox and another that we have mapped the two tropics against the points where the sun is overhead at noon on each solstice. A more important, decisive, state of affairs is that the moon in the southern hemisphere rises "upside down" and that above the arctic circle generally is not visible at night when the sun is not visible in the day. Yet another is the identification of Hesperus with Phosphorus. Above 60deg latitude there is not truly dark night sky in summer (not a concern to a Swabian peasant.) He does not mention the apparent retrograde motions of Mars or the Einstein correction for the actual orbit of Mercury.
Einstellung. I recently looked at a Plakat by an artist with a matrix of eight images of the moon in apparently sequential phases. Something was wrong. It was moments before I could see that I could not recognize this moon. The fallacy: a single image of the full moon had been "sliced" 8 different ways. This Scheibenkreis of replications do no appearances make. Bergson would have known better, or Valéry. Without the galilean views, the artist was ignorant of the radically different appearance of each phase of the moon due to incident light, elevations and immense shadows, albedo and the libration of the moon.
Venus never rises to the zenith. Not at the poles. Not at the equator. Venus can appear full, when Mercury appears in "quarter phase".
Husserl's loss of Reinach and his lovely son Wolfgang in WWI left him vulnerable to the approaches of Heidegger. How he came to inherit Oscar Becker later, I have not yet researched. What seems clear to me from his Prag lecture, is that he did not imagine the use Heidegger would make of the notions of lived experience.
America is not only notable for how few accept evolution of species as a fact: it is notable for light pollution at night and how few use a telescope or can distinguish a planet from a star. When Heidegger laments the passing of the gods, there is more that is "wahr" about Venus and Mercury that is not being preserved among us: in almost every American public library, books on astrology out-number books on philosophy (although not in the notable virtual libraries which our librarians so often lament.)
Der Schein in dem Sonne und Erde stehen is presented by the example of die Morgenfrühe der Landschaft, but nothing in descriptive phenomenology as practiced by, say, Karl Jaspers in his psychopathology, necessitates the Heideggerian "swing": contrary to the eco-Heideggerians, the "Boden" for Heidegger was not the planet, Terra. He was ignorant of the deforestation which had occurred due to peasants with axes. Simple pumps and simple shovels had been used to drain the bogs and marches of Europe long before the steam engines arrived.
The next fallacy: no rising of the sun is Geschichte. Not even on the day of Waterloo. That the morning was foggy and cold is not a matter of astronomy and is only an historical fact if documented or otherwise provable and standing in relation to some event or subject to which it has some relevance. The time at which the sun rose may be decisive - but that time is not historical (it is not as if its rising were unexpected, avoidable or not predicted.) More common are considerations of whether there was moonlight. Or whether there was an error in navigation at sea. But Heidegger knew hill country orientation and not high seas or even coastal navigation.
Few non-Islamic artists are able to sensibly discuss the evening appearance of the moon during the first 10 days after new moon and fewer still how the appearance of the waxing crescent moon varies with the seasons in our northern hemisphere. The full moon illusion - an important chapter in the subjectivity and science - is almost a mythical matter in the educated American suburbs.
Gratitude. It is not merely that I am so grateful to live on a planet with a single stable moon. The accident which gave rise to the moon and later events that helped clear debris from our orbit have all contributed to the the unique history of the appearance of mamalian, avian and cephalopod species on this planet.
How Aristotle would have coveted such ideas as we now cherish!
πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει.
The dawn predates poetry. The morning light predates warfare in the name of the arising Volk. Those true ancients, pre-histroical, they too were human who were, oh, so modest, and marked with pigment on their bare but darkly tanned skin.
The dawn is also the elephant dawn. The evening finds the gorilla padding a new nest and the clever crows at roost. The morning light will dapple the coral in which the cuttle fish will hide today from the leaping dolphin, experienced at play in the Morgenfrühe. And above them all, the unsung moon.
Three topics
Stephen A. Erickson opens his "Language and Being" with three questions.
I propose 3 topics, each with an exemplar:
Additional topic: we are not the "naked ape" but the hominid who hides his pigment markings under mats and hides. Pigmented marks on the skin are the beginning of the human.
These topics seem to be more in the spirit of Jaspers and science than Heidegger and oracular obscurantism.
The fundamental question in instance 1) is whether we have only an observed object (the calf) and mere causally explained behavior (and not an emotion of distress and then loss and grief.)
The fundamental question in 2) is whether we are looking into an evolutionary appendix, a mere dead-end, and not a stage on the way towards culture.
The fundamental question in 3) is whether dolphins understand that some coral is in fact a cuttlefish disguised as coral (and only secondarily whether they are noting a mental representation of coral by the unlucky cephalopod - or if they are observing an inadequate misrepresentation - or if they are merely forming a belief - or merely handling inputs and producing output behavior? Can our understanding complement a causal explanation without undermining the marine science? [this as a response to Heidegger on the merely clever heliocentrism of the few astronomers]
I propose 3 topics, each with an exemplar:
- The elephant and her fallen calf (Q: does she later avoid that spot?)
- The macaque "aunties" and the fallen "old alpha" (Q: what was their behavior when the young tyrant died?)
- The bottle-nose dolphin and the camouflaged cuttlefish (Q: Do the dolphins look for "coral" which is not coral? Do they co-ordiante this search (lead and wingman) to detect cuttlefish fleeing/escaping the "deceived" predator? )
Additional topic: we are not the "naked ape" but the hominid who hides his pigment markings under mats and hides. Pigmented marks on the skin are the beginning of the human.
These topics seem to be more in the spirit of Jaspers and science than Heidegger and oracular obscurantism.
The fundamental question in instance 1) is whether we have only an observed object (the calf) and mere causally explained behavior (and not an emotion of distress and then loss and grief.)
The fundamental question in 2) is whether we are looking into an evolutionary appendix, a mere dead-end, and not a stage on the way towards culture.
The fundamental question in 3) is whether dolphins understand that some coral is in fact a cuttlefish disguised as coral (and only secondarily whether they are noting a mental representation of coral by the unlucky cephalopod - or if they are observing an inadequate misrepresentation - or if they are merely forming a belief - or merely handling inputs and producing output behavior? Can our understanding complement a causal explanation without undermining the marine science? [this as a response to Heidegger on the merely clever heliocentrism of the few astronomers]
Derrida quoting Heidegger
In the paragraph of the Einführung in der Metaphysik which follows upon his treatment of heliocentrism, Heidegger makes one of his little puns: "nur der überkluge Witz" - he means of course the Spirit of the Enlightenment - reduced to a clever joke.
The problem in quoting from Heidegger is demonstrated in the Derrida text: two views are required - one with the mere text and another with the text adumbrated.
I will post the Derrida quotation over at aule-browser.com with 2 variants using the Curl web content language.
An alternative presentation of the 1953 Tübingen Max Niemeyer Verlag edition would begin with a quote from the first line of what we deem to be Aristotle's "post-physics"
The problem in quoting from Heidegger is demonstrated in the Derrida text: two views are required - one with the mere text and another with the text adumbrated.
I will post the Derrida quotation over at aule-browser.com with 2 variants using the Curl web content language.
An alternative presentation of the 1953 Tübingen Max Niemeyer Verlag edition would begin with a quote from the first line of what we deem to be Aristotle's "post-physics"
πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει.Aristotle does not say "cleverness" or "obscurity" or "oracular" or "prophetic" or "dythrambic" but
τοῦ εἰδέναιPan + anthropoi -- not Das Volk and their "guide" -- and Eidos -- and then our very nature: physei and then a word with which Heidegger could never be comfortable in the open: oregon
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Ralph Mannheim as Heidegger translator
compare Findlay as Husserl translator
One of the worst translations: the Einfuehrung in die Metaphysik
As texts, compare Schopenhauer, Bergson, Aristotle
In 1935 time frame, compare "Experience and its Modes" by Michael Oakeshott, "Reason and Existence" by Karl Jaspers and "The Practice of Philosophy" by Susanne K. Langer
Cf: Dilthey's presentation of Schleiermacher
One of the worst translations: the Einfuehrung in die Metaphysik
As texts, compare Schopenhauer, Bergson, Aristotle
In 1935 time frame, compare "Experience and its Modes" by Michael Oakeshott, "Reason and Existence" by Karl Jaspers and "The Practice of Philosophy" by Susanne K. Langer
Cf: Dilthey's presentation of Schleiermacher
Heidegger and his student Jews: Löwith, Arendt and Brock
Japan had made Heidegger a remarkably lucrative offer: his remarks on things Asiatic never impuned LaoTzu or the Japanese nobility of Heidegger's acquaintance (for a peasant, he quite liked the nobility and the end of WWII found him sheltered by nobility.)
When Löwith made it to Japan, Heidegger could not have been more pleased with the outcome (perhaps spoiled by America declaring war on Germany.). Werner Brock's introduction to English translations of some of Heidegger's essays from his days as a Nazi party member could not be more adequate. Repeatedly he was well-served by his connection with Hannah Arendt beyond the sexual intimacy and romance.
He was after all, utterly duplicitious in his "handling" of everyone with whom he had dealings (if only he had learned Russian!)
compare Husserl's assistant 1923: Oscar Becker, later a devoted Nazi.
compare Husserl's statements on former assistant Edith Stein becomng a Catholic
When Löwith made it to Japan, Heidegger could not have been more pleased with the outcome (perhaps spoiled by America declaring war on Germany.). Werner Brock's introduction to English translations of some of Heidegger's essays from his days as a Nazi party member could not be more adequate. Repeatedly he was well-served by his connection with Hannah Arendt beyond the sexual intimacy and romance.
He was after all, utterly duplicitious in his "handling" of everyone with whom he had dealings (if only he had learned Russian!)
compare Husserl's assistant 1923: Oscar Becker, later a devoted Nazi.
compare Husserl's statements on former assistant Edith Stein becomng a Catholic
Heidegger's Outhouse
With regard to that other "peasnt", Lyndon B. Johnson: a one-holer or a two-holer?
Mitsein und Entdeckung u. Verdeckung and what is not spoken coming to Aussprache.
Mitsein und Entdeckung u. Verdeckung and what is not spoken coming to Aussprache.
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Physiology of Grief: the absent body in Heidegger
notes: macaques and the old fellow
notes: the elephant and her exhausted calf
notes: grief, closure and the physical remains
Heidegger on "lebendige"
Evasive Heidegger: avoidance and lies
notes: the elephant and her exhausted calf
notes: grief, closure and the physical remains
Heidegger on "lebendige"
Evasive Heidegger: avoidance and lies
Husserl the bigot: more on the case of Edith Stein
One of the most painful passages in Hugo Ott's book on Heidegger and politics is surely the quote from Husserl on Edith Stein.
Ott appears not to have had access to the material quoted by Alasdair MAcINtyre or to have failed to see its relevance.
see: notes on the fate of Afra Geiger
see: notes on Husserl and Heidegger, 1918, after the loss of Wolfgang Husserl and Adolf Reinach and the Luther connection; Husserl on God and the transcendental ego.
On Heidegger and Weyl, see "Mind and nature: selected writings on philosophy, mathematics, and physics" by Hermann Weyl.
Ott appears not to have had access to the material quoted by Alasdair MAcINtyre or to have failed to see its relevance.
see: notes on the fate of Afra Geiger
see: notes on Husserl and Heidegger, 1918, after the loss of Wolfgang Husserl and Adolf Reinach and the Luther connection; Husserl on God and the transcendental ego.
On Heidegger and Weyl, see "Mind and nature: selected writings on philosophy, mathematics, and physics" by Hermann Weyl.
Heidegger and Physics: space and Time
Hugo Ott reports on Heidegger's study in natural sciences and his pretentious claims with regard to philosophy, physics and relativity theory: most striking his Ott's confirmation that Heidegger sat no exams for these lectures.
I suggest that Heidegger had no grasp of either the relevant mathematics or the physics: when Heidegger states later in life that the theory of electromagnetic wave propagation is only understood by a handful of experts he repeats an old cliché about relativity theory: but he is talking about Maxwell, not Einstein and Planck, for his example for his listners is radio and television. Even the most rudimentary knowledge of the actual history of late 19th Century science reveals the importance of Maxwell's simplifications and the hyptheses drawn from them which were confirmed as wireless telegraphs emerged as a technique (Maxwell of 1864 predates such relevant patent applications as those of 1872 and 1896.)
Heidegger seems to have believed that he would provide a correction to physics: whether he intended to correct Weyl or Einstein is not clear, for Heidegger was never a guest of von Neumann at Princetion. When Heidegger gave lectures later in Munich, he lectured in the Fine Arts and not as a guest of mathematics or physics departments.
In stark contrast, Heidegger's opponent at Davos, polymath Ernst Cassirer, understood Special and General Relativity as well as did his contemporaries Russell and Whitehead.
Nowhere does Heidegger insist on the requirement to be based in science as emphasized by his interlocutor of the 1920's, Karl Jaspers. It is very likely that Heidegger truly believed that Aristotle on motion had been left unscathed by Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
Heidegger certainly believed that his Zeit-raum was the philosphical alternative to Einstein Raum-zeit.
For another view, see Catherine Chevalley "Heidegger and the physical sciences"in "Martin Heidegger: critical assessments, Volume 1" edited by Christopher E. Macann
I suggest that Heidegger had no grasp of either the relevant mathematics or the physics: when Heidegger states later in life that the theory of electromagnetic wave propagation is only understood by a handful of experts he repeats an old cliché about relativity theory: but he is talking about Maxwell, not Einstein and Planck, for his example for his listners is radio and television. Even the most rudimentary knowledge of the actual history of late 19th Century science reveals the importance of Maxwell's simplifications and the hyptheses drawn from them which were confirmed as wireless telegraphs emerged as a technique (Maxwell of 1864 predates such relevant patent applications as those of 1872 and 1896.)
Heidegger seems to have believed that he would provide a correction to physics: whether he intended to correct Weyl or Einstein is not clear, for Heidegger was never a guest of von Neumann at Princetion. When Heidegger gave lectures later in Munich, he lectured in the Fine Arts and not as a guest of mathematics or physics departments.
In stark contrast, Heidegger's opponent at Davos, polymath Ernst Cassirer, understood Special and General Relativity as well as did his contemporaries Russell and Whitehead.
Nowhere does Heidegger insist on the requirement to be based in science as emphasized by his interlocutor of the 1920's, Karl Jaspers. It is very likely that Heidegger truly believed that Aristotle on motion had been left unscathed by Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
Heidegger certainly believed that his Zeit-raum was the philosphical alternative to Einstein Raum-zeit.
For another view, see Catherine Chevalley "Heidegger and the physical sciences"in "Martin Heidegger: critical assessments, Volume 1" edited by Christopher E. Macann
The inconsistencies between Hugo Ott and the Heidegger letters
In a letter to Hannah Arendt, Heidegger posts of his being in fine hill-climbing form. Yet only a decade earlier he was physically too weak for reserve army duty other than work as a postal censor. Even earlier he blamed his "heart" problems on too much sport as a boy.
Ott characterized the boy Heidegger as athletic but provides no reference. The hike with the Jesuits was to prove to be his complete undoing. Yet later Heidegger will be initiating young Nazis from a nearby youth hostel through hiking - some of those hikes to the height of local passes. No such thing can be imagined of Karl Jaspers, a man with a genuinely weak heart and frail constitution.
Ott refers to "nervous asthma" but provieds no reference.
I suggest that a simpler explanation would be hypoglycemia. When he presented for military service, if Heidegger had merely not slept well the night before and opted for coffee or tea instead of breakfast, even a brisk walk to the recruiting office could leave him weak, breathless and with an irregular heart-beat.
Heidegger was characterized as frail, but compared to images of the young Jaspers, appears robust enough. What is more likely is that his metabolism was slightly higher than the norm for someone of his size and frame.
It should be noted that Heidegger outlived his parents by many years and his not succumb to congestive heart failure: he would first have a stroke and much later died in his sleep.
To my knowledge it has never been substantiated that Heidegger suffered from asthma. Pictures show him arriving at his hut on skiis: I have been there, and that is an implausible achievement for an asthmatic with a weak heart.
At the time Heidegger was prescribed complete rest, rest cures were a common prescription for neurasthenia. Glucose tolerance tests were then unknown - it was only after WWI that medical science moved forward at all in the area of blood sugars and not until the 1940's that tachycardia with hypoglycemia was noted in symptomatology.
The greater puzzle is that Jaspers failed to take more note of Heidegger's duplicity in personal matters to which I will return later in my psychological speculation on the probability that this boy of impoverished means was a victim of priestly pederasty and that this pathology is indicated by his doctine of Ereignis and concealment.
see: notes on Eros and the Symposium in connection with Heidegger
see: notes on Brentano and papal infallibilty
see: notes on Husserl's bigotry and the fate of Edith Stein
Ott characterized the boy Heidegger as athletic but provides no reference. The hike with the Jesuits was to prove to be his complete undoing. Yet later Heidegger will be initiating young Nazis from a nearby youth hostel through hiking - some of those hikes to the height of local passes. No such thing can be imagined of Karl Jaspers, a man with a genuinely weak heart and frail constitution.
Ott refers to "nervous asthma" but provieds no reference.
I suggest that a simpler explanation would be hypoglycemia. When he presented for military service, if Heidegger had merely not slept well the night before and opted for coffee or tea instead of breakfast, even a brisk walk to the recruiting office could leave him weak, breathless and with an irregular heart-beat.
Heidegger was characterized as frail, but compared to images of the young Jaspers, appears robust enough. What is more likely is that his metabolism was slightly higher than the norm for someone of his size and frame.
It should be noted that Heidegger outlived his parents by many years and his not succumb to congestive heart failure: he would first have a stroke and much later died in his sleep.
To my knowledge it has never been substantiated that Heidegger suffered from asthma. Pictures show him arriving at his hut on skiis: I have been there, and that is an implausible achievement for an asthmatic with a weak heart.
At the time Heidegger was prescribed complete rest, rest cures were a common prescription for neurasthenia. Glucose tolerance tests were then unknown - it was only after WWI that medical science moved forward at all in the area of blood sugars and not until the 1940's that tachycardia with hypoglycemia was noted in symptomatology.
The greater puzzle is that Jaspers failed to take more note of Heidegger's duplicity in personal matters to which I will return later in my psychological speculation on the probability that this boy of impoverished means was a victim of priestly pederasty and that this pathology is indicated by his doctine of Ereignis and concealment.
see: notes on Eros and the Symposium in connection with Heidegger
see: notes on Brentano and papal infallibilty
see: notes on Husserl's bigotry and the fate of Edith Stein
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