[lit-ideas] The Monkey's Paw
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:39:37 EDT
Now I'm confused. Do monkeys masturbate? But as Jacobs notes, they have
paws, not hands. I suppose a monkey contradicts Heidegger.
The problem with monkeys is that they are not really domesticated. Witness
the chimp held as 'pet' by this Connecticut ladidah lady, who (the chimp)
murdered the visitor (to the lady's house, where the chimp was).
Scruton dealt with this. When the Minotaur's mother f*cked the bull, was
she being zoophiliac, or was the bull being anthropophiliac?
Note that Heidegger, in spite of all his flatulence, was wright about (as
in von Wright) the etymon of philosophia, the wisdom of love. If philosophy
meant love of wisdom, as some (Walter O) thing (think), then a pedophile
would be a child of love, not the love of children.
Atlas is following Habermas -- when we have thinging things to things, we
have instrumental rationality. Only when we conceive of the other as an end
in itself (or herself) do we acquire 'strategic rationality' -- we assume
that the 'other' can be more than a thing.
When Geary repairs an air conditioner, he treats the air conditioner as a
thing. "I've spent my life doing things to things", he prides himself of. If
he treated the air conditioner as more than a thing, then the thing would
strike back to him, and that would scare him.
As Heidegger notes, Lieben is huzzing (life is a hoot, in Ogden's
translation), but the last joke, who is it on?
---- Yes, still operating. Puccini called the opera lovers, operarii. The
pun is lost in English, but then it is an Italian pun. Opera is opra in
Italian (pronounced as in Winfrey, but without the final aspiration).
Operario,
is a worker, -- it's all so fun.
Jerkin' the gherkin is possibly something a monkey can do, but, again, not
really zuhanden, but as Heidegger notes, metaphorically, vorhanden. Before
the hand, to the hand. What about inhanden? In the hand. That's
masturbation, proper.
Monkeys and men, as Heidegger notes, are the only animals that masturbate
('masturbieren').
As Heidegger's child asked his father:
HEIDEGGER JUNIOR: What is the most human element?
HEIDEGGER. What d'you mean?
HEIDEGGER JUNIOR: The 'thing' that makes me a man.
HEIDEGGER: The penis, of course.
HEIDEGGER JUNIOR: Wrong on both counts. The hand!
Hold your hand out naughty boy!
-----
JL Speranza
Somewhere south of Lammermuir
In a message dated 9/22/2009 12:32:25 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Thank you, John. In fear of waking Palma, I dare say that Heidegger
distinguished between zuhanden and vorhanden as the two forms of beings.
Vorhanden being nature made, and simply put "there' for us as Oakland is
not. Zuhanden being being of human artifact, or THING BEING, or that
which
we relate to not as "being there" but being puposeful to us. Most
animals,
except humans, seem to spend most of their lives relating to vorhanden
being. Except domestic pets, of course, who in deference to us
acknowledge
such frivilous beinghoodness as zuhandenness and sometimes use a
litterbox.
Human life on the whole is zuhanden-engaged. Even such supposedly pure
vorhanden relations as sexuality have become zuhanden for many of us --
not
me, of course. Our human lives are so thoroughly immersed in zuhanden
that
we think of our thing-engaged lives as "natural". Anyone who's had more
than one course in Heiddegger will no doubt straighten me out, but I don't
care. Human culture is aesthetic, philosophic and technological. We
thing
the world every bit as much if not more than we think it or dream it.
Life
is a hoot.
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