Comment Concerning the Status of Theoria in Heidegger as Concrete Sensing of the Speculative

The work on Leibniz’ uncovery of the Principle of Reason continues:

We would be thinking neither highly nor concretely enough if we were to understand these words as a pretension of the thinking person vis-a-vis the absolute. It is precisely the opposite: the preparedness to respond to the claim as that which being qua the absolute concept proffers to thinking and which in a decisive way molds in advance the epoch of the completion of Western metaphysics. Since the being of beings makes itself absolutely known to metaphysical-ontological thinking in the shape of the absolute concept, the most radical withdrawal conceals itself in this proffering of being. It will become clear how this is pertinent when, in what follows, we make a concluding characterization of an epoch of the history of being, the epoch of Kantian philosophy. 

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In a certain sense the absolute is identical to the rational. In the political sense rationality means that reasons can be given in such a way as to give an orientation. An argument can be made in such a way as to demonstrate, not the right way to live, but rather what the world wants of man as man. How it claims the human being from the essence of that being. If one thinks of the motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in verba, one has a statement of the repudiation of the logos. Science can no longer be a matter of the logos. This means nothing other than that theoria becomes the general rule which can be applied, rather than the orientation which itself is insight into what the world wants of man as man. In this sense we must inquire how it stands with the Geschick, specificly, when illumined by Ratio. Ratio is the absolute, and, therefore “the most radical withdrawal“. 

The repudiation of the logos means nothing other than the repudiation of thought, as Denken. Denken, in Kant, is transcendental. It is erkennen, or cognition, in so far as cognition is thought as a kind of ratio, i.e., a kind of cause, specificly, the condition of the possibility of experience. Nullius in verba, under the spell of Newton (as lived by Kant, and the so-called Kantian epoch), means that reason must “remain silent”, but what is crucial is, only because it is the condition for the possibility. This means that when space and time are thought as objectified objects, as the irreducible axioms of a non-metaphysical physics, non-metaphysical if the axiom is thought as what corresponds to “the most radical withdrawal”. In other words, the thinking called Heidegger wants to make an end of the Geschik, in such a way that the “withdrawal” can never be outstripped. In such a way that the utmost radicality is understood to rest in the End of Metaphysics, which is not a terminus, but a pooling up or gathering of what is utterly imminent. 

Husserl is the site of the first “overcoming” of this ratio. Thought phenomenologically space can not adduce a proof of its objectified perfectibility. For instance in the example Kant gives about a man who sleeps while traveling, but can be sure of having passed through n leagues of country. The enigmatic character of space is evident to the phenomenological science. Dostoevsky often speaks of a man taking quick steps on a crowded way, abstractedly. So much so abstractedly walking as not to be present. Yet, thought rightly what comes forward in the world as one is thrown upon it, is never without the play of what is present and what is concealed in openness of what in presence lies before one. Rousseau gives the wonderful example, which is more to the point, of a man watching, in a state of abstracted remove, the flowing of his own blood pouring from a wound. In such states space is not the mathematical-practical space of Kant. And therefore it is no condition for the possibility. If it is not the condition for the possibility, neither can the Nullius in verba hold. Therefore, we cite once more, the late Wittgenstein, who had come to this same point via another way: If I say something without a wholly definite sense of what I am saying, do I thereby say nothing? 

It is now: “being qua the absolute concept” which “proffers to thinking” the call. That is, not the world, but, rather being as the absolute. Which means the same thing as the “radically mysterious dispensation of Fate.” Because of the repudiation of the teleology, through the reception of this Fate. The “steadfast resolution” is the imminent theoria, i.e., it is the orientation that is not from ratio, but rather from the reception of what is brought forth in the Fate. Again, this is the site where Nietzsche is able to shake the resolution and wield the thunderbolt precisely as a denial of the bestowal. The thunderbolt and the aegis of Zeus are interpreted as the flash of the Opening and the Lighting of World. See the sayings of Hericlitus as read in Heidegger. If the so-called Kantian-epoch includes Hegel, one can not ask how it stands aside Husserl without knowing what manner of science Husserl believes his “flooring” to be concerned with. Is it theoria? Is it that which one can collect up and then apply? What is it in the light of that this “flooring” is supposed to be a knowledge? In fact nothing. In this sense Husserl is the most strange of all thinkers, he only says, one might go on looking at the “flooring” and wait to see what “the point of it” all is. Here one might ask how is it with Strauss? Strauss moves towards Husserl and Heidegger, but he is dissatisfied with the proof that theoria has been refuted. This means that in Strauss, one sees the path of the logos, but not necessarily the logos of Aristotle, in fact surely not!, rather a logos prior to the Laws of Thought, are still obliging human beings, i.e., they are drawing those with the gift of speach to speak about the highest things. 

In Heidegger, the contrast could not be more sharp, overcoming the rubric is what is everywhere dominating the path of the thinking. How is the logos to be overcome? is almost identical to the question: What is the meaning of Being?. The logos is always forcing, through its despotic and undemocratic rule, the life of man to rush forward in this and that manner. But the overthrow of logos leads to the dissolve of everything certain into the liquid which is without orientation, special meaning, or even self. Many arts require no logos, beekeeping for instance. That one makes a science of beekeeping doesn't mean that it needs a logos, or to become a beekeeping-ogy. But Socrates always wants to make this lower knowledge, of the nonverbal, into the higher knowledge, or truth, which is concerned with the ranking of things according to the world, and what it asks of man as man, its deepest demand. Therefore, in Heidegger, there is a demand to sense, rather than know what one is called to. The sense of what sense means is not to be mixed up with this or that concept of heteronomy, pathos, or affect. All that is inchoate and bizarre in thought must come to this sensing, this means exactly the thinking “highly” and “concretely enough”.