[lit-ideas] Re: Heil Heidegger?

McE:
Am I so enmeshed I am completely determined by an outside world and, if so, how?<<
That's a philosophical question. I don't deal in philosophy, Speranza's objections notwithstanding. Nevertheless or nonetheless, as maybe the case may be, I'll sell you the down home answer: "I'll be dadgummed if I know." Certainly (I use that term with little certitude) we are all determined to some extent. "But to what extent?" you harangue me. To the extent that we are determined is all I can assure you of. Writing always fascinates me because I never know what word will follow the previous until it appears in my mind a split second before my fingers find themselves typing it. Are my words determined or the product of a free will willing its way through the willy-nilly of a quantum wildness. Dunno.
Who denied we are (at all) enmeshed in the world? Not even Descartes (whose "cogito" is not completely unmoored from the world) or Berkley (who just denies the world is 'matter').<<
Unam, sanctam, catholicam, et apopostolicam ecclesiam, that's who. Born and bred am I into the notion that I am a free agent willfully tromping on God's clean white cassock. Decartes put de cart before de horse with his big cogito. I won't even lend him my handkerchief if he doesn't notice the snot dribbling out of his nose without thinking it. As for Barkeley, I too deny that the world is matter. The world is slow energy. But what the hell is energy? Not even God knows.
But does Martin (not the one in "Abraham, Martin and John") mean we are completely and determinedly a reflection of the time and culture? That we have no agency, however small, to change these?<<
Actually, the Martin in "Abraham, Martin, and John" is a better example. The time was ripe and and he was ripe and ripeness is all as the bard so succintly said. That said, you ask whence change? That's the responsibility of the Bureau of Small Changes in The Capitol. It regulates these things. Sometimes concepts get misunderstood, especially when the words that explain the concepts take on slightly different meanings, beginning connotatively perhaps, and so the meaning or at least the emphasis of the concept gets misaligned. The BSC is responsible for certifying a "New" thought when the misalignment has become so embarrassing that to insist that the "Old Thought" is still tenable marks one as a moron. At such time (Zeit) the BSC approves the new the concept, and voila, we have change.
If all Marty (not to be confused with Marti di Berg) did was offer such sweeping statements, without unpacking them into some more careful analysis...but his achievement must be much greater than that?<<
My Cambridge Dictionary of Air Conditioning does not address this question. Sorry. 

Mike Geary
Memphis






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