Description
Book SynopsisSpeaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility of Being Human is an unprecedented study of the ideas and methods developed by the thinker Werner Erhard. In this book, those ideas and methods are revealed by presenting in full an innovative program he developed in the 1980s called The Forumavailable in this book as a transcript of an actual course led by Erhard in San Francisco in December of 1989. Since its inception, Erhard's work has impacted the lives of millions of people throughout the world. Central to this study is a comparative analysis of Erhard's rhetorical project, The Forum, and the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger. Through this comparative analysis, the authors demonstrate how each thinker's work sometimes parallels and often illuminates the other. The dialogue at work in The Forum functions to generate a language which speaks being. That is, The Forum is an instance of what the authors call ontological rhetoric: a technology of communicating what cannot be said in language. Nevertheless, what does get said allows those participating in the dialogue to discover previously unseen aspects of what it currently means to be human. As a primary outcome of such discovery, access to creating a new possibility of what it is to be human is made available. The purpose of this book is to show how communication of the unspoken realm of languagespeaking beingis actually accomplished in The Forum, and to demonstrate how Erhard did it in 1989. Through placing Erhard's language use next to Heidegger's thinkingpresented in a series of Sidebars and Intervals alongside The Forum transcriptthe authors have made two contributions. They have illuminated the work of two thinkers, who independently developed similar forms of ontological rhetoric while working from very different times and places. Hyde and Kopp have also for the first time made Erhard's extraordinary form of ontological rhetoric available for a wide range of audiences, from scholars at work within a variety of academic disciplines to anyone interested in exploring the possibility of being for human beings. From the Afterword: I regard Speaking Being as an enormously important contribution to understanding Heidegger and Erhard. The latter has received far too little serious academic attention, and this book begins to make up for that lack. Moreover, the book's analysis of Heidegger's thought is among the best that I have ever read. I commend this book to all readers without reservation. Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder
Table of ContentsAbout the Authors ix
Introduction 1
Day One: Session One 7
Talking about Being 8
Dasein 12
Two Theses 14
Ontological Dialogue 16
Being-in-the-World: Being-in 20
Mood 24
Interval: Hints: Ontological Distinctions 32
Day One: Session Two 34
Philosophy as Rhetorical Evocation 35
Getting It and Losing It 44
Authenticity 54
Interval: Dasein: Meaning and Mineness 58
Day One: Session Three 60
Interval: Yankelovich Study Results 62
Day One: Session Four 68
Concern 73
Already Always Listening 75
Interval: Jargon 78
Day One: Session Five 80
End of Day One Interval: Reflexion: The Cartesian Deficiency 86
Day Two: Session One 89
Being-in-the-World: Being-With 92
Giving and Reflexion 103
The They-Self 107
Interval: Hermeneutic Phenomenology 116
Day Two: Session Two 120
Thinking 121
Heidegger’s Pedagogy 127
Solicitude of a Forum Leader 132
Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part One of Eight: Getting and Losing 136
Day Two: Session Three 138
Social Moods 156
Thrownness 159
Day Two: Session Four 166
End of Day Two Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part Two of Eight: Questioning 168
Day Three: Session One 171
In-Order-To 172
Awakening Attunements 185
Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part Three of Eight: Heidegger’s Etymologies 196
Day Three: Session Two 198
Danger: Attunements and Moods 200
Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part Four of Eight: The Pre-Socratics 208
Day Three: Session Three 212
Choice 217
The Violence of Meaning 226
The Same 237
God 259
Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part Five of Eight: Physis 264
Day Three: Session Four 268
Waiting for the Leap 284
A Violent Way 292
End of Day Three Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part Six of Eight: Saying Nothing 308
Day Four: Session One 311
Being-in-the-World: World 312
The Uncanny 319
The Call of Conscience 332
What is Said When Conscience Calls? 342
Nothing: Beyond Nihilism 358
Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part Seven of Eight: Logos 372
Day Four: Session Two 376
The Three Levels of Truth 377
Primordial Metaphor: Clearing 397
The Drift 409
“Way of Being” and the “Nature of Being for Human Beings” 418
Interval: The Forgetting of Being, Part Eight of Eight: The Heart of the Matter 448
Day Four: Session Three 450
A Substance Ontology 472
Event Ontology 479
Technology 484
Techne 492
Enframing 499
The Oblivion of Oblivion 510
Transformation as Technology 519
End of Day Four Interval: Technology of Transformation 530
Afterword 532
by Michael E. Zimmerman
References 543
Index 547
