grgr: overcoming of metaphysics

[David Morris]

>From: "Otto Sell" From: David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
>
>>I don't think I agree with your characterization "mocking them all."   If 
>>this were so then Michel's scenario for Pynchon's use of Heidegger would 
>>be very close to yours: "Pynchon, sitting at his desk and having read (an 
>>article on) Heidegger, thinks: 'Let's put a bit of the man's ideas in it. 
>>It will confuse them further and confusion is my game.'<<

>No, it`s precisely the other way round as in Michel scenario, which leaves 
>much too much place for random. And you know: "Random (...) Another 
>fairy-tale word." (395)<

I don't think that randomness is the issue.  Intent is the point.  Are all 
these mappings merely a game, or do they embody messages?  I think the 
latter.  The messages are often conflicting or paradoxical, which is also 
the point, but that doesn't make them frivolous.

>>If you go to the context of the passage you quote above, you'll find its 
>>Leni defending the concept of the astrology, which Pokler scoffs as not 
>>"cause-and-effect" oriented, and thus illogical.  If this kind of mapping 
>>is also the structure of GR, it is presumptuous to assume they are all 
>>only a game, and that in his heart Pynchon really sides with Franz over 
>>Leni. Rather than mocking, I'd call his use of them an hommage. <<

>Of course, because in the binary opposition of Science versus Superstition, 
>Science claims to be the higher, the privileged pole saying that all 
>astrology is hocus-pocus. We always tend to symphesize with this preterite 
>pole and know today (with or without having read GR), that the promise of 
>science and technology to make the world a better place "automatically" is 
>at least as much hocus-pocus as astrology (if you don`t believe in the 
>stars).<

>But I did not include that "cause and effect" because I don`t wanted to 
>bring in another philosopher (Nietzsche).<

Thank you for NOT doing that.

>"Cause and Effect" is the center of that what Derrida calls Logocentrism, 
>which I would call the metaphysics of the Western, rationalized world. GR 
>is an assault on this, but that doesn`t make it a religious text claiming 
>the truth like astrology, which, btw is, in a way, logocentric too and , 
>given its karmic aspects, includes even cause and effect on a higher level 
>too....<

Although you say you like to include text, we seem to have lost the quote.  
Here it is again:  "It all goes along together. Parallel, not series. 
Metaphor. Signs and symptoms. Mapping on to different coordinate system 
(...)." (GR, p. 159)  I agree that GR doesn't attempt to be a religious 
text.  It is an exploration on the condition of being human (shades of 
Heidegger again).  And as such it includes MANY ways of looking at the 
world.  If it indicts Logocentrism, it also acknowledges its inevitability, 
as Paul Mackin implies.  But it also opens itself to the possibility of 
other ways of knowing.  "Synchonicity," which seems the implication of the 
quote above, is one of those ways.

David Morris

________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com