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#Post#: 23--------------------------------------------------
Presocratics
By: xavierhn Date: August 4, 2017, 2:31 am
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So for our first tutorial, after having a look on the question
and examples, I think we can say that we are asking to see what
relates early Greek poetry and the emergence of cosmological
questions; what is the link between mythos and question of
origins?
Second. The 'Milesians': Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes.
Aristotle tells us that they were interested in physus meaning
the arising of something from out of itself; an overabundant
emergence. How do they conceive this arising and overabundance?
#Post#: 29--------------------------------------------------
Re: Presocratics
By: xavierhn Date: August 20, 2017, 2:15 am
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Here are some thoughts of mine on fragment 64 of Heraclitus.
Lightning
The chief characteristic of lightning is its capacity for
bringing to appearance relations among beings. Lightning, in
this sense, allows beings to shine forth.
The crack of lightning is without pretension nor precedence. the
bolt of lightning doesn’t tell us how to think, it merely
enables us to think (essential freedom).
Pretension. Neither declares existence of beings, nor informs us
what beings are. Simply allows for beings to show themselves as
they are.
Precedence. Steering says nothing of ‘perspectivism’, nor
‘objectivity’ least of all arbitrariness. What is steered is
from the stroke of lightning opening a path from nowhere and
collapses back into nothing.
(road fragment).
Lightning at night.
Beings recede into ‘darkness’ - nothing can be said of them,
neither after nor before the flash of lightning. It is only with
the instant of the stroke of light that beings are brought from
out of such a receding, and are brought forward into appearance.
Lightning snatches beings from the possibility of not-being, as
darkness primarily means, and brings beings forward to be spoken
about.
Lightning and arche
Let's assume lightning, as a fleeting phenomenon, is not an
‘arche’ for it does not rule throughout beings as a whole.
However, Heraclitus states that lightning as a strike steers
everything through everything. So, the question now appears as
whether steer is the same as arche understood as the beginning
that rules, governs throughout. Can the flash of lightning rule
in this way?
Some oppositions within lightning.
The boom of lightning brings everything to a standstill. One
‘stands back in awe’ upon the sight of what is brought out in
the open. (correlation with wonder).
Somehow the instance of lightning brings ‘movement’ to a
standstill, through the moving flash of a single thunderbolt.
[list]
[li]Standing back in awe - as a spectating human we are stopped
from our everyday motions. [/li]
[li]Moves beings into the calm of presentation, the effect of
being in the midst of a storm.[/li]
[/list]
Lightning disrupts and overturns the state of things into a calm
gathering like being within the 'eye of the storm'.
#Post#: 30--------------------------------------------------
Re: Presocratics
By: pdrsn Date: August 22, 2017, 2:32 am
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Very interesting, you've given me a lot of think about. Would
you like to expand of what you think Heraclitus is "on about" as
a whole?
#Post#: 38--------------------------------------------------
Finding a translation of Parmenides
By: StircrazyReality Date: August 31, 2017, 3:58 am
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I was wondering if we could share the most accurate translations
of Parmenides that we could find.
Thus far:
HTML http://philoctetes.free.fr/parmenides.htm
P.S Section 44 of Being and Time interprets Parmenidies
[quote]Parmenides was the first to discover the Being of
entities, and he 'identified'
Being with the perceptive understanding of Being: ...
τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ
νοεῖν ἐστίν
τε καὶ
εἶναι.
(For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can
be.)[/quote]
#Post#: 42--------------------------------------------------
Finding a translation of Parmenides
By: StircrazyReality Date: September 5, 2017, 9:03 pm
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A collection of many translations, providing comment on the
purpose of each.
HTML https://www.ontology.co/biblio/parmenides-editions.htm
Xavier and I are both using a David Gallop Translation.
Here is a quote from the preface.
[quote]Richard Robinson, in the introduction to his translation
of Aristotle's Politics Ill-IV (Oxford 1962, p. XXX), has
characterized a translation as 'a shameful form of book.' For by
offering a translation of each sentence in his original, the
translator 'implies that he knows that this is what the original
sentence means. But sometimes he does not know what it means,
and is only guessing as well as he can.' In publishing a fresh
version of Parmenides' poem the present translator makes no
claim to know what every sentence in the original means. To
signal the worst uncertainties, alternative renderings have been
appended for passages whose meaning is disputed, or where major
questions of interpretation hinge upon the text or translation
adopted. In these places the reader will find it instructive to
compare alternatives. He will then quickly discover how
completely he puts himself at the translator's mercy, if he
relies entirely upon any single version. He may also find it
useful, especially if he is wholly dependent upon translation,
to consult the short glossary of terms that present special
problems of translation or interpretation.[/quote]
(Again, it seems like the gold standard translation,
Diels-Kranz, is in German)
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