Daniel Bell wrote:In the primitive world-view—and in such sophisticated primitivism as Zen Buddhism—the world was presented in its immediacy and concreteness. Greek cosmogony gave us a vocabulary of first-level abstraction. The pre-Socratics introduced metaphor; Plato, with the idea of the Demiurge, the symbol; and Aristotle, the idea of analogy. (Our traditional modes of thought employ all three. Imagery can be visual, aural, or tactile, but it employs the techniques of metaphor, symbol, or analogy in "picturing" the world.)
Theological speech, as derived from Christian thought, is deeply soaked in symbols—the Cross, the Messiah, the Epiphanies, the Sacraments—and the language emphasizes mystery and personal- ity: grace, charisma, kairos, passion or suffering, ritual. The break- down of theological beliefs and the rise of a scientific world-view, leading to the enthronement of physics and the natural sciences, gave us in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a mechanical cosmology—the image of the world as a machine, or as a celestial clock. This ordered world reached its apogee in two images: the beauty and precision of Laplace's Mecanique celeste, in which the universe functioned as a jewel; and the idea of the "great chain of being," in which all creatures were united in one perfect strand. In Alexander Pope's words:
Vast chain of Being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee . . .
The language of analysis, once derived from theology, was now wrested from the early physical sciences. (Poetry, driven, as White- head put it, from the world of fact by science, resorted to ambiguity as its mode of expression, while modern existentialist theology finds its mode in paradox.) In the social sciences the key terms were Force, Motion, Energy, Power (and while these terms have specific referents in physics, they have few operational specificities in social analysis). But as the natural sciences progressed, the social sciences added new biological analogies to the metaphors derived from physics: evolution, growth, organic structure and function, and these terms, until very recently, were the language of sociology.
Even when, in the nineteenth century, social science sought to find a language of its own—"economic man," "psychological man," "capitalism," and so forth—this led to a conceptual realism or what Whitehead called "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness." The search for "a language of one's own" in order to avoid the trap of reification has led (as exemplified in Talcott Parsons' Structure of Social Action) to "analytical abstraction." Thus, theory construc- tion in sociology, for o n e , has become a highly deductive system derived from a few basic axioms or really analytical concepts, such as the patterned variables in the action schema of Parsons, in which the empirical referents no longer stand for concrete entities—the individual, society, and the like.
But in the more general sweep of knowledge, the dominant mode of intellectual language today is mathematical, and especially in our new "intellectual technology" (linear programming, decision theory, simulation) we have the "new" language of variables, parameters, models, stochastic processes, algorithms, heuristics, minimax, and other terms which are being adopted by the social sciences. Yet the type of mathematics that is influential here is not the deterministic calculus of classical mechanics, but a calculus of probabilities. Life is a "game"—a game against nature, a game of man against man—and one follows rational strategies that can pro- vide maximum payoffs at maximum risks, minimax payoffs at mini- max risks, and that most lovely of terms in utility preference theory, a payoff that is provided by a "criterion of regret."
But all of this leads to a paradox: the modern vocabulary is purely rational, with no referent other than its self-contained mathematical formulas. In a modern cosmology (as in physics, and now in the other sciences as well), pictures have gone, words have gone, and what remain—apart from elegance, but even here it is the elegance of formal ingenuity—are abstract formulas. And underneath these formulas there is no law of nature as we knew it before, eternal, universal, immutable, and readily discernible. Underneath are uncertainty and the breakup of temporal and spatial sequence.
Thus our vocabulary reinforces the emergence of an abstract, if not mystical, world conception. And this is the penultimate disjunction between the everyday world of fact and experience, and the world of concepts and matter." [Capitalism]
Bible wrote:In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Spengler, Otto wrote: This mathematics of ours was bound in due course to reach the point at which not merely the limits of artificial geometrical form but the limits of the visual itself were felt by theory and by the soul alike as limits indeed, as obstacles to the unreserved expression of inward possibilities — in other words, the point at which the ideal of transcendent extension came into fundamental conflict with the limitations of immediate perception. The Classical soul, with the entire abdication of Platonic and Stoic ἀταραξία, submitted to the sensuous and (as the erotic under-meaning of the Pythagorean numbers shows) it rather felt than emitted its great symbols. Of transcending the corporeal here and now it was quite incapable. But whereas number, as conceived by a Pythagorean, exhibited the essence of individual and discrete data in “Nature” Descartes and his successors looked upon number as something to be conquered, to be wrung out, an abstract relation royally indifferent to all phenomenal support and capable of holding its own against “Nature” on all occasions. The will to-power (to use Nietzsche’s great formula) that from the earliest Gothic of the Eddas, the Cathedrals and Crusades, and even from the old conquering Goths and Vikings, has distinguished the attitude of the Northern soul to its world, appears also in the sense transcending energy, the dynamic of Western number. In the Apollinian mathematic the intellect is the servant of the eye, in the Faustian its master.
Mathematical, “absolute” space, we see then, is utterly un-Classical, and from the first, although mathematicians with their reverence for the Hellenic tradition did not dare to observe the fact, it was something different from the indefinite spaciousness of daily experience and customary painting, the a priori space of Kant which seemed so unambiguous and sure a concept. It is a pure abstract, an ideal and unfulfillable postulate of a soul which is ever less and less satisfied with sensuous means of expression and in the end passionately brushes them aside. The inner eye has awakened.
Decline of the West
Heidegger, Martin wrote: With regard to the Latin name for the true, verum, we shall keep two incidents in mind:
1. Verum, ver-, meant originally enclosing, covering.
The Latin verum belongs to the same realm of meaning as the Greek αληθες, the uncovered – precisely by signifying the exact opposite of αληθες: the closed off.
2. But now because verum is counter to falsum, and because the essential domain of the imperium is decisive for verum and falsum and their opposites, the sense of ver-, namely enclosed and cover, becomes basically that of covering for security against. Ver is now the maintaining-oneself, the being-above; ver becomes the opposite of falling.
Verum is the remaining constant, the upright that which is directed to what is superior because it is directing from above. Verum is rectum (regere, ‘the regime’), the right, iustum.
For the Romans the realm of concealment and disconcealment does not at all come to be, although it strives in that direction in ver, the essential realm determining the essence of truth. Under the influence of the imperial, verum becomes forthwith ‘being-above,’ directive for what is right; veritas is then rectitude, ‘correctness,’ we would say.
The originally Roman stamp given to the essence of truth, which solidly establishes the all-pervading basic character of the essence of truth in the Occident, rejoins an unfolding of the essence of truth that begin already with the Greeks and that at the same time marks the inception of Western metaphysics.
Vidal, Gore wrote: As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Vidal, Gore wrote: A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.
Reinhard, May wrote: Finally, Petzet draws our attention to two other informative remarks of Heidegger’s. First, in conversation with a Buddhist monk from Bangkok in September 1964, Heidegger said that ‘he himself would often hold to Laozi—but that he knew him only through the German intermediaries, such as Richard
Wilhelm’.9 Second, Petzet reports that on hearing the Buddhist monk say that ‘nothingness is not “nothing”, but rather the completely other: fullness. No one can name it. But it—nothing and everything—is fulfillment’, Heidegger responded with the words, ‘That is what I have been saying, my whole life long’ (P 180/190). Heidegger apparently said something similar in connection with one of D.T.Suzuki’s books.
Heidegger's Hidden Sources
Corresponding noun of Ancient Greek ἀγείρω (ageírō, “to gather”), with later senses from ἄγω (ágō, “to lead”). Confer Sanskrit गण (gaṇa, “troop, gang, flock, tribe, assembly, company”); Ancient Greek ᾰ̓γορᾱ́ (agorā́, “assembly”), Sanskrit ग्राम (grāma, “multitude, troop, assembly, collective”); Sanskrit आजि (ājí, “race, competition, battle”).
From Koine Greek γῦρος (gûros, “rounding, circle”), substantivized from Ancient Greek γῡρός (gūrós, “round”)[1], from Proto-Hellenic *gūrós[2], possibly from Proto-Indo-European *guH-ró-s, from *geHu- (“to bend, curve”) + *-rós.[3][4] Possible cognate with Sanskrit गोल (gola, “circle”).
Etymology. Greek χάος means "emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss", from the verb χαίνω, "gape, be wide open, etc.", from Proto-Indo-European *ǵheh2n-, cognate to Old English geanian, "to gape", whence English yawn. ... 6th century BC) interprets chaos as water, like something formless which can be differentiated.
Reinhard, May wrote: In the following passages Heidegger puts ‘presencing’ [Anwesen] in place of ‘Being’ [Sein] and ‘unconcealedness’ [Unverborgenheit] in place of ‘Nothing’ [Nichts] (and vice versa), thereby elucidating the new ‘sense’ of the old ‘housing’:
The enigma is…‘Being’. For that reason ‘Being’ remains simply the provisional word. Let us see to it that our thinking does not simply follow it blindly. Let us first ponder the fact that ‘Being’ is originally called ‘presencing’, and ‘presencing’ means: to come to and endure in unconcealedness’.63y
In each case Heidegger substitutes one for the other, ‘Nothing’ for ‘Being’ (and, for ‘Being’, ‘presence’) and vice versa, and thereby effects permanent translations: for ‘Nothing’ now also ‘unconcealedness’, the ‘Open’, and the ‘clearing’. Another term that belongs to this sequence of correspondences is ‘truth’ in the sense of ‘Being’, ‘Nothing’, and ‘unconcealedness’. In Being and Time Heidegger writes, ‘Being and truth “are” equiprimordial’ (SZ 230); while he later also takes ‘Nothing’ and ‘Being’ to be equiprimordial in the formulation:
‘to think that Nothing that is equiprimordially the Same as Being’.65
These kinds of obvious correspondences, which are easily to be found throughout Heidegger’s work and represent essential factors in its design, always concern his major thought, namely ‘Nothing’, which constitutes unmistakably (as we have seen already in the case of Being and Time) the ‘meaning of Being’.
Thus Heidegger makes a clear distinction between this idea and what he calls ‘empty nothing’66 or also nugatory nothing [das nichtige Nichts]. By contrast:
‘This [true] Nothing…is nothing nugatory [nichts Nichtiges]. It belongs to presencing [Being]. Being and Nothing are not given beside one another. Each uses itself on behalf of the other in a relationship whose essential richness we have hardly begun to ponder’ (QB 97/Wm 247).
These interpretations of ‘Nothing’ have, for Heidegger, nothing to do with nihilism as it has been understood so far (since Nietzsche); their aim is rather the overcoming of nihilism.
Reinhard, May wrote: Being and Nothing are not given beside one another. Each uses itself on behalf of the other…(QB 97/Wm 247).d
Second:
Being is none other than nothing,/Nothing is none other than being.80
Nothing as ‘Being’ (Heidegger, ‘WM?’ [GA 9] 106, note b).
Nothing and Being the Same (‘WM?’ [GA 9] 115, note c).
Being: Nothing: Same (‘SLT’ 101).
Reinhard, May wrote:Heidegger nevertheless attempts with his elucidation a new beginning from an unaccustomed perspective, one that can find an appropriate starting-point only outside Western philosophical thinking. ‘The question of the thing comes from its origin into motion [Bewegung] again’ (WT? 48/36). His (non-Western)
answer corresponds almost verbatim to the following expression:
What gives things their thingness is not itself a thing (Zhuangzi, 22).87
And according to Heidegger:
[The] thingness of the thing…cannot itself be a thing again (WT? 9/7, cf.
36).
Compare with the well-known formulation in Being and Time:
The Being of beings ‘is’ not itself a being (SZ 6).g