>And I very much subscribe to Terence's dictum: "I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." ("Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto").> Terence was writing before we had Elton John at number 1 in Canada for several years with a reworked "Candle in the Wind." Had he known, I suspect this would have been alien to him. Dnl Ldn On Saturday, 29 March 2014, 19:59, "cblists@xxxxxxxx" <cblists@xxxxxxxx> wrote: A book I found interesting 'back then' (and further argument as to 'Why Heidegger', despite his " failed personal and political judgments."): HEIDEGGER AND THE GROUND OF ETHICS: A STUDY OF MITSEIN, Frederick A. Olafson, Cambridge U. Press, 1998 From Cambridge U Press's internet page about the book: "Heidegger thought seriously about the implications of human coexistence, and this book shows that conceptions of trust and responsibility that lie at the very heart of morality are to be found in the sketch of Mitsein--our being together with one another in the world--offered in Being and Time. Written by one of the preeminent interpreters of Heidegger, this book is an important statement about the basis of human sociality that is a major contribution to the continuing debates about Heidegger in particular, and ethics in general. "'Frederick Olafson makes the case sensibly and eloquently that, despite Heidegger's failed personal and political judgments, "the profoundly original constellation of ideas he introduced in BEING AND TIME can make and important contribution to our understanding of the whole ethical side of our lives" (p.6). His effort in the latter part of the book to build just such a more complete ethical perspective on the "ground" of Heidegger's fundamental ontology is thoughtful and interesting., if less compelling because so syncretistic. Still, Olafson's philosophical project is an important one which deserves the attention and efforts of others.' - Review of Metaphysics" One reason I personally have sought an 'Auseinadersetzung' with Heidegger's philosophy is that I find it helps me with some problems with ethics that I have. I have a great deal of trouble believing in Human Rights (you can well imagine the ways in which that statement can be misinterpreted; to avoid some of such I will merely state that I am an ardent supporter of Amnesty International). I am a firm believer, however, in Human Obligations (and not only think I can interpret all talk of human rights into talk of human obligations, I find it makes more sense). On the face of it it seems ludicrous to look for help in Ethics to such a moral failure. (I'm afraid the jury is now in about Heidegger as anti-Semite and ardent Nazi; his SCHWARZE HEFTE - personal notebooks kept between the years 1931 to the beginning of the 70's - are currently being published and he is condemned by his own words. More about this in a future post.) Yet I find myself still agreeing with Olafson and that anonymous reviewer from Review of Metaphysics. I am also a firm believer in 'the conversation of humanity': "As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves. Of course there is argument and inquiry and information, but wherever these are profitable they are to be recognized as passages in this conversation, and perhaps they are not the most captivating of the passages ... Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure ... Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this conversation in which we learn to recognize the voices, to distinguish the proper occasions of utterance, and in which we acquire the intellectual and moral habits appropriate to conversation. And it is this conversation which, in the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance." - Michael Oakeshott And I very much subscribe to Terence's dictum: "I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." ("Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto"). The conversation of humanity gives place and character to EVERY human activity and utterance (however noble or degraded). Certainly many of Heidegger's activities were moral failures of an appalling magnitude. Yet many of his utterances are profound. For me the conversation about this dissonance is also of value, along with my 'Auseinandersetzung' with Heidegger's philosophy itself (that's why I stay up late researching, writing and editing these posts). Chris Bruce, in Kiel, Germany -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html