#david farrell krell

[maroonedoffvesta]

The change from ancient and medieval to modern science is one from "bodies" to "mass," "places" to "position," "motions" to "inertia," "tendencies" to "force." "Things" become aggregates of calculable mass located on the grid of space-time and ultimately a play of forces issuing in (partly) discernable and (variably) predictable jumps across that grid; even when new discoveries require a change in its design the grid remains a transparency laminated on the "things." Although it is undeniably "successful" the transparency remains mysterious: Newton's First Law applies to all things but no thing can behave the way it presupposes, and when Galileo searches for an inclined plane that all the real things in the world can roll along without resistance he can find it only in his head. Transparencies cloud. But to put them to question is not to deny their efficacy and to turn "anti-science."

-from David Farrell Krell's introduction to Martin Heidegger's "Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics", in Basic Writings

[zwischenstadt]

Only through magic does life remain awake

Stefan George, "The Human and the Wood Sprite," Trans. David Farrell Krell in Nietzsche V. III by Martin Heidegger

[zwischenstadt]

The fact that physiology and physiological chemistry can scientifically investigate man as an organism is not proof that in this 'organic' thing, that is, in the body scientifically explained, the essence of man consists. That has as little validity as the notion that the essence of nature has been discovered in atomic energy. It could even be that nature, in the face it turns toward man's technical mastery, is simply concealing its essence. Just as little as the essence of man consists in being an animal organism can this insufficient definition of man's essence be overcome or offset by outfitting man with an immortal soul, the power of reason, or the character of a person. In each instance essence is passed over, and passed over on the basis of the same metaphysical projection.

Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism, translated by David Farrell Krell

[unutterablyalone]

"Homelessness is coming to be the destiny of the world."

— Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism" (translated by Frank A. Capuzzi in collaboration with John Glenn Gray and David Farrell Krell), Basic Writings (edited by David Farrell Krell)

[doubtlr]

What about this nothing? The nothing is rejected precisely by science, given up as nullity. but when we give up the nothing in such a way don't we just concede nothing? But perhaps our confused talk already degenerates into an empty squabble over words. Against it science must now reassert its seriousness and soberness of mind, insisting that it is concerned solely with beings. The nothing-- what else can it be for science but an outrage and a phantasm? If science is right, then only one thing is sure: science wishes to know nothing of the nothing. Ultimately this is scientifically rigorous conception of the nothing. We know it, the nothing, in that we wish to know nothing about it.

Martin Heidegger: What Is Metaphysics? Based on his inaugural lecture at the U. of Freilburg in 1929 translated by David Farrell Krell

[gravellyrun]

The impossibility of finishing with death and dying, of ending the day, of finalizing the meaning of things.

David Farrell Krell from Lunar Voices