[lit-ideas] Was Ist Dong? (Was: Geary, "Was Ist Ding?")
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:35:45 EDT
What Geary lacks, charming as he is, is a ken of the Romance languages. In
Italian, as Palma may witness, 'thing' is cosa, which is Latin causa, only
undipthonged. In French, chose fait la meme chose. Spanish causa. One is
surprised that Geary, who knows so many Hispanicks in restaurant kitchens
never heard of the 'cosa'.
In Latin, 'causa' was NOT a 'thing'. The 'thing' for the Romans was the
res, hence 'reality'. The Anglos overuse the word, 'really' (especially Valley
Girls).
I married an Irishman
O really
No, o Reilly.
----
The Philosophical Lexicon is Graeco-Roman in nature and there's no way
Heidegger, who rimmed a friend, could turn GERMAN into one! Ding-Dong, the
Witch is dead. Andreas may contradict me, as he was Heidelberg educated. But
on
the whole, no philosophy without the Greeks.
Now, did the Greeks have a concept of 'thing', or ding-dong? Pragma is the
closest thing. E.g. Man is the measure of all THINGS. Pragmata.
But pragma is more thing done than thing itself.
The Ding an sich is, as Wager notes, a human construction. The noumenon is
possibly the worst Kantian neologism. For 'nous' is indeed the realm of the
spirit, not of the 'thing'.
Perhaps when we reflect on monkeys who masturbate (as Stone notes, a monkey
may masturbate, but an ape cannot be domesticated -- hence adultery among
humans) we will note that Kant was better in chosing OBJEKT as the
philosophical technicism. For the objekt is indeed the apokheimenon of
Empedocles.
Empedocles, who lived in Ionia many years ago, distinguished between the
Sub-Ject, or Hypokheimenon
and the
Ob-Ject.
When we use a dill-do, we objectify the penis of a man into an object. We
assume, or those who use a dilldo do, that the thing is an object, but we
personalise the dilldo. Some people name their dilldos after Christian names,
etc. (Dick, Harry, or Ike).
Ditto for inflatable women. These are said to be objects, but in sexual
perversions they are felt as human.
The paradoxical retroflection of the phenomenon is the prostitution where
objectifying the object is the subject. An orgasm cannot be faked by a male,
but yes by a woman (Derrida). You cannot BUY an orgasm; hence the idea of
objectual sexual relations is a misnomer. This Judy Butler knows.
She blows.
JL Speranza
Bordighera
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