ER as weltanschauung/Truth and Poetry
Ingrid Markhardt (IMARK@macc.wisc.edu)
Thu, 12 Jun 97 12:27 CST
Something to throw into the pot, partially in response to George's request for a
contemporary example, partially to Leonardo Raggo's post of June 7, and the
current discussion of the being/becoming continuum, the implication that truth
has no being, there is only becoming, "fictioning" . . .
from Heidegger's _Introduction to Metaphysics_:
"A painting by Van Gogh. A pair of rough peasant shoes, nothing else. Actually
the painting represents nothing. But as to what _is_ in that picture, you are
immediately alone with it as though you yourself were making your way wearily
homeward with your hoe on an evening in late fall after the last potato fires
have died down. What _is_ here? The canvas? The brush strokes? The spots of
color?
"What in all these things we have just mentioned is the being of the essent? We
run (or stand) around in the world with our silly subtleties and conceit. But
where in all this is being?
"All the things we have named _are_ and yet--when we wish to apprehend being,
it is always as though we were reaching into the void. The bring after which
we inquire is almost like nothing, and yet we have always rejected the
contention that the essent _is not_.
"But being remains unfindable, almost like nothing, or ultimately _quite so_.
Then, in the end, the word 'being' is no more than an empty word. It means
nothing real, tangible, material. Its meaning is an unreal vapor. Thus in the
last analysis Nietzsche was perfectly right in calling such 'highest concepts'
as being 'the last cloudy streak of evaporating reality.' Who would want to
chase after such a vapor, when the very term is merely a name for a great
fallacy! 'Nothing indeed has exercised a more simple power of persuasion
hitherto than the error of being. . .'" [_The Twilight of the Idols_ 19, 22]
(IM, 29)
--- from list nietzsche@jefferson.village.virginia.edu ---