The Memory of Thought: An Essay on Heidegger and Adorno PDF
Preview The Memory of Thought: An Essay on Heidegger and Adorno
The Memory of Thought This page intentionally left blank The Memory of Thought An Essay on Heidegger and Adorno ALEXANDER GARCIA DUTTMANN Translated by NICHOLAS WALKER continuum LONDON • NEW YORK Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503 www.continuumbooks.com This English translation first published in 2002 English Translation © Continuum 2002 First published in German as Das Gedachtnis des Denkens: Versuch iiber Heidegger und Adorno © Suhrkamp Vcrlag 1991 Alexander Garcia Diittmann has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work Die Herausgabc dieses Werkes wurde aus Mittcln von INTER NATIONES, Bonn gefordert British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-8264-5900-5 HB 0-8264-5901-3 PB Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Garcia Diittmann, Alexander. [Gedachtnis des Deiikcns. English] The memory of thought : an essay on Heidegger and Adorno / Alexander Garcia Dtittmann ; translated by Nicholas Walker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8264-5900-5 - - ISBN 0-8264-5901-3 (pbk.) 1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. 2. Adorno, Thcodor W., 1903-1969. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) 4. Philosophy, German- -20th century. I. Title. B3279.H49 G28513 2002 193- -dc21 2001058296 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Acorn Bookwork, Salisbury, Wiltshire Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmm, Cornwall For Silvia Bovenschen and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe This page intentionally left blank Contents Abbreviations ix Introduction: Of (From) Germania - after (to) Auschwitz 1 PART I. GUILTS AND DEBTS 11 1 Fate and Sacrifice 13 Adorno's comparison — Guilt repeated — Recourse to Benjamin — Bare life — Originary guilt of law — Omens, presentiments, signals — The named head - Gift and oblivion - Rationality of cunning - Equality as inequality — Sacrifice and the principle of equivalence — Reconciliation postponed — Space and time — A rational overview — Nietzsche's 'spirit of vengeance' — Sacrifice as appropriation — The commanding name — Purifying rage — Dialectic of sacrifice, promise of happiness — Similarity to the animal — Image — The 'minimal meaninglessness' of language — Art and philosophy — Progress in the realm of spirit — The caesura of remembrance — Holding course 2 Dialectics and the Ban on Images 70 Selfhood — Determinate negation — Particularity of Judaism — Christian love — Negative dialectics — The origin of performative contradiction — Dialectics without dialectic: the vertiginous 3 Constellation and De-constitution 88 The non-identical speaks — Movement and difference — Double reading — Language as event — Undecidedness — The death of intention — Enigma and solution, question and answer — Falling — The cunning of the name — Stupidity of the subject — Too much talk: fatefulness of enlightenment — Mimesis — Constructing the totality - The new barbarism — Writing after Auschwitz — Jaspers on the question of guilt - The crisis of spirit — A telling historical sign — The question of guilt as an introduction to metaphysics — National consciousness and guilt — Double bind — You shall never be remembered viii Contents PART II. INAUGURATIONS 141 1 Counter-Turning of the Beginning 143 Storm — Beginning, greatness, stand — Imminence — Blindness of the philosopher — Genius of forgetting — Poetry and thought — The power and force of language, the truth of a people — Concepts and political determination - The incalculable - The most dangerous of gifts - On poetry: the over-poetic - What begins in and as language — 'Aestheticisation of polities' or 'politicisation of aesthetics'? — Having time — The 'Graeco-German mission' — Naming the name — Original language and 'the final solution' — The word 'being' — History and the multiplication of languages — Repetition 2 Rise and Downfall 184 Semblance of regression — Repudiation and celebration of destruction — Simplifications: learning from a 'national catastrophe' — A delaying pseudo-rational reasoning — Shock — Revolution and revolt — Commemoration — Experience, lived sensation, reflection — Angel of history — Political theology — De-cision — The thrust of thatness — The essence of the work of art — Preserving and offering 3 Keeping to the Names 227 The saying of words — Originary historical transmission — 'The midst of being' — Metaphysical neighbours — Dualism and duality — The essence of historical existence — The legitimising power of the name — Stability of sense — Given as endowment and given as task — The names of Dionysos — A key figure — 'Dionysian messianism'? — Remembrance: 'empty readiness for subjugation' or 'posture of resistance?' — Meaning, naming, saying — The soul's hoard of images — There is (need) Afterword: The Reeling Philosopher 270 Notes 273 Bibliography 323 Index 333 A proper name is without meaning. But there are many different ways of being without meaning. Jacques Derrida
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