RE: MD Nihilism and DQ

From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jun 02 2004 - 00:52:42 BST

  • Next message: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com: "MD Patterns (and consciousness)"

    Hi Dave,

    >Johnny M,
    >Overjoyed to hear you're reading Heidegger on Nietzsche, I'm meaning to get
    >to
    >that this summer.

    Cool, it's in the collection "The Question Concerning Technology" which is a
    really good essay as well.

    >As I understand it so far, nihilism is the belief in
    >nothingness, that the universe is, as it were, a tale of sound and fury
    >signifying nothing.

    I see "nothing" as all things that are not, ie, all the possible changes
    from what is, synonymous with the future. From the theory that all static
    patterns are constantly changing or being changed, then "nothing", future
    possibility, is what is "befalling being" and changing it. It is just like
    DQ in this regard, DQ is nothing, and yet it is what is changing what is
    into what it is not. But Neitzsche and Heidegger do not imply that nothing
    befalls being randomly and change happens randomly and valuelessly, they say
    it is from out of being that nothing befalls being, according to being and
    how being values.

    >One more point: nothingness is "bad" for the West. Nihilism is viewed as
    >purely negative, only because "nothingness" is percieved as lack,
    >deprivation,
    >disease, death, vacancy (and femininity!).

    Yeah, well, he picked a pretty bleak word for it. That's my point about how
    DQ is such a better term for what is actually going on. It is still the
    de-valueing of the values, but instead of saying "nothing" is happening to
    being, now we say "Dynamic Quality" is happening to being. It stops seeming
    like a tearing down and dying (which your right, isn't at all what he meant)
    and seems like change for the better.

    >IN the East, however, nothingness
    >is "no-THINGness", specifically, it means no limitations, demarcations, or
    >separations, no borders, walls, no concrete. No-thing is everything.
    >Everythign is no-thing, in the sense that all we take as stable (ex, as
    >ontologically stable, as essence, as things), is at bottom empty.

    Right, just a moral pattern of consciousness, immediately giving way to
    itself, now changed, never able to grasp itself as what it is.

    > in the
    >language of Being and Time, everything is ready to hand...things are TAKEN
    >as
    >present at hand for pragmatic purposes. it's not that the ego isn't real,
    >just that it is partial. as Heidgger says, the "I" is a "non-committal
    >formal
    >indicator", not the seat of all certainty (Descartes); this is the great
    >irony
    >of Sartre...his inconsistency reflects the incommensurability of the
    >Cartesian
    >and the Hiedeggerian paradigms, and on my watch, that gulf is the same
    >fundamental point of disagreement between the East and the West.

    and SOM and MoQ

    > Finally, I
    >want to raise a curious thought for you: Nietzsche frequently denounces
    >Buddhism in the same breath that he castigates nihilism (this criticism is
    >likewise boudn up with his eventual rejection of Schopenhauer and
    >asceticism)...

    He rejected Schop? I like Schopenhauer. But I guess for these guys, you
    can't just "like" someone, you have to eventually reject them or else what
    good are you?

    >however, did the Buddha preach ascetism, flight from the world?
    >Not at all. Nor did any of the non-dual sages...so is Nietzsche a Buddhist
    >at
    >heart? Perhaps. I certainly think so, and I would throw Heidegger in
    >there
    >as well.

    Is everyone who gets out of SOM a Buddhist at heart?

    >Regardless, there is much to be dug up here, but i'll leave you with
    >that for now.
    >Peace, water, and shade,
    >-Dave S

    Peace

    PS, I was confused by you "cc-ing" both me and the list, and didn't realize
    that I only replied to you the first time, until I got the same reply again
    from the list. I don't need to be "cc-ed", personally. I don't know how
    others feel about it, but it needlessly confuses me. Thanks

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