Derrida's Nietzsche

Contrary to Heidegger's. Truth is a woman, not false, nor true. The binary is dissolved:

The question of the woman suspends the decidable opposition of true and non-true and inaugurates the epochal regime of quotation marks which is to be enforced for every concept belonging to the system of philosophical decidability...The question posed by the spurring-operation is more powerful than any content, thesis, or meaning.
--Spurs

Of course, the question, and perhaps it is the question (can you tell by this horrible style that I've been reading Derrida?) is: how do you keep from making the undecidable the decision? Or, in the terms of systems theory, how do you justify (or avoid) making contingency a foundation? How do you dissolve the duality of thought (where the absence of the duck represents the rabbit as much as the absence of the rabbit represents the duck)? How do we deal with this ridiculous duck/rabbit monster? Outside of Buddhism (and the redemptive terms of that faith) you can't really. (And here systems theory may have the edge on Derrida, since this failure is built in to the system itself. You can't observe yourself, ever. You can only create new blind spots. This may be implicit in Derrida though, so I shouldn't shoot my mouth off.)

Note: everyone should be aware that in this book Derrida coins a hilarious new word: phallologocentrism. I intend to stick this in my next academic paper even if it takes a crowbar. Easy A!

A New Volunteer in Defense of Marriage!

I now vow to dedicate myself fully to the defense of marriage. Why you may ask...because, my God, I too "want a wife!" http://www.cwluherstory.org/CWLUArchive/wantawife.html

More Nietzsche

Michael Tanner on Nietzsche's last year of sanity and Twilight of the Idols:

And this is Nietzsche bravely talking about the joys of heaven from a position in hell--for this last year he says No as never before. One might even say that his affirmations are only, and this is his tragedy, the negations of negations. His faith--and it is remarkable to find him talking of faith at all in a positive way--is that it is possible to be someone who does not need to negate first. But he could never be that person, and the more dialectical cartwheels he turns, with wonderful and entrancing dexterity, the further he is removed from that ideal. The only Dionysus we can identify him with is the one torn into innumerable agonized fragments.

I think this passage does a pretty good job summing up my own misgivings about Nietzsche, while still maintaining the respectful awe I feel towards the writings he left us. And if we accept Tanner's idea that Nietzsche wanted to be someone who didn't need to negate in the first place then we have to think that perhaps Nietzsche's philosophy becomes a relentless and agonizing self-criticism (of the pessimist inside, perhaps) that simply enacts, over and over (the tragic irony!), the problem it seeks to solve. If only philosophy had the power to do away with itself...if only it would perish forever in an instant of joy, of pure Yes-saying, that abolishes all the little no's we say in self-defense against the universe.

Nietzsche and the Pre-Platonic Philosophers

"The intellect must not only desire serreptitious delights; it must become completely free and celebrate Saturnalia. The free spirit surveys things, and now for the first time mundane existence appears to it worthy of contemplation as a problem. The is the true characteristic of the philosophical drive: wonderment at that which lies before everyone. The most mundane phenomenon is Becoming: with it Ionian philosophy begins. The problem returns infinitely intensified for the Eleatics: they observe, namely, that our intellect cannot grasp Becoming at all, and consequently they infer a metaphysical world. All later philosophy struggles against Eleaticism; that struggle ends with skepticism. Another problem is purposiveness in nature; with it the opposition of spirit and body will enter philosophy for the first time. A third problem is that concerning the value of knowledge. Becoming, purpose, knowledge-- the contents of pre-Platonic philosophy."

Nietzsche The Pre-Platonic Philosophers

Gelassenheit

A strange term of Heidegger's that derives, according to the note in my book, from German Mysticism, particularly Meister Eckhart. I haven't read Eckhart, though I certainly plan to soon. Here's the key passage in Discourse on Thinking:

But will not saying both yes and no this way to technical devices make our relation to technology ambivalent and insecure? On the contrary! Our relation to technology will become wonderfully simple and relaxed. We let technical devices enter our daily life, and at the same time leave them outside, that is, let them alone, as things which are nothin absolute but remain dependent upon something higher. I would call this comportment toward technology which expresses "yes" and at the same time "no," by an old word, releasement toward things.

"Releasement towards things" is the translation of Gelassenheit in my edition, but I'm undecided what I think of that meaning. Don't we also have to hold back? It's almost a passivity that occurs as result of a denial (which, as far as I know, is consistent with Eckhart). Later on in the essay, even Heideger speaks of the fact that Gelassenheit only happens through "persistent, courageous thinking." Yes and no. But what constitutes the Yes? (Will? even Schopenhauerian Will?) And what constitutes the No? (Nihilism? Being-Towards-Death? Vattimo's "twisting"?)

Heidegger, it seems to me, has become almost explicitly religious here, if not in the sense of speaking of God, but of a "higher mystery." My own inclination is to read this in classic existentialist terms, as a "nothing" or "the absurd" but Heidegger's meaning I think is something much more....peaceful I guess. Ego-less? I don't know Heidegger's feelings towards Schopenhauer, but from a few comments here and there I gather he didn't like him much, and even found him petty in his attacks on Hegel. (Petty? probably. Funny? absolutely. Maybe that's just my sense of humor though.) He prefers Eckhart's positive version of this I think. But is there a difference? Is the nothing of Being taken as something? Isn't the idea that Gelassenheit opens us, more or less, to an experience of God in the form of a "higher mystery"? (And wouldn't this, in the end, simply be a version of the great sin of philosophy that Heidegger harps about so often in Being and Time: taking Being as a being?) I know that Heidegger knows this. He even, for a time, wrote "Being" literally crossed out. So what is he up to here?

I wish I knew more about theology, but I wonder if direct experience of god in a Fallen existence is possible or, indeed, orthodox. And wouldn't it just as likely be something terrible and frightening? Is the endless deferral of something like Gelassenheit (and perhaps Deconstruction, but I'm not sure) a form of world deferral that turns toward God? Or the Nothing? (Take your pick.)