Month: November 2010

A Heidegger Poem??

who knew equipmentality was so lyrical

I came across a short poem that I apparently wrote, I don’t exactly remember when. Presumably it was after the summer of 2002 or 2003 which I think was when I read Heidegger’s Being and Time. Relevant excerpt followed by poem:

the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is–as equipment (Heidegger, Being and Time p. 98).

You simply must spend less time just staring at that hammer-Thing. Really, it’s ghastly
the way you just waste your time watching it,
as if waiting for it to move.
Let me assure you, that hammer-Thing
isn’t going to animate itself and build us a new deck;
it’s not going to just pick itself up and start hammering in those nails:
me into better living,
and you out of a job!

I’m not really sure what I was thinking when I wrote this, nor what it exactly means to hammer oneself out of a job.

I recall writing some poetry based on Leibniz and possibly also Malebranche at one point. If I find it I will share.

Some Philosophical Chuck Norris Facts

(The original)

Chuck Norris can imagine a chiliagon.

Chuck Norris has intellectual intuition.

Chuck Norris threatened Alexandre Kojeve into conceding that history wasn’t over until Chuck Norris said it was.

After watching one episode of Walker: Texas Ranger, Nietzsche changed his concept of “the will to power” to simply “Chuck Norris”. A lost revision to Thus Spoke Zarathustra has the progression camel, lion, baby, Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris can get outside of language and the text.

Hobbes had to rewrite Leviathan after Chuck Norris roundhoused him until he promised to remove the line “No man is so strong that he cannot be killed by the cunning of one man or the strength of many in alliance”. The new edition had an image of Chuck Norris on the cover.

Everything you know only by description, Chuck Norris knows by acquaintance.

Chuck Norris can stand in the same river twice.

Chuck Norris overtook Zeno’s tortoise no problem, then roundhoused the turtle into Zeno’s face.

Chuck Norris can stop an infinite regress with his beard.

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite abandoned negative theology because he just couldn’t bring himself to write that the Godhead “is not Chuck Norris.”

After Heidegger met Chuck Norris, he agreed that Chuck isn’t thrown: he throws.

When Levinas published Totality and Infinity, Chuck Norris sued him for infringing on the names of his left and right fists. He sued Foucault for Discipline and Punish cuz that’s what Chuck’s legs are called.

It is a little known fact that Lacan occasionally used “Chuck Norris” as a synonym for the Name of the Father.

When Chuck Norris tells a meta-narrative, everyone believes it.

Chuck Norris can conceive of bare matter without any properties.

When Nietzsche’s demon told Chuck Norris he would live his life over again and again, innumerably, he roundhoused the demon in the face for interrupting him in his loneliest loneliness. The demon called off the eternal recurrence to avoid eternal roundhousing.

Chuck Norris can dispute about taste, and win.

When Parmenides said “ex nihilo nihil fit”, Chuck Norris roundhoused him out of nowhere. Parmenides took it back.

Empedocles developed his concept of atoms “swerving” after he saw Chuck Norris on a motorcycle.

Solon attended Chuck Norris’ baptism, and agreed baby Chuck had achieved eudaimonia at the age of three weeks.

Deleuze and Guatarri actually got the inspiration for the “body without organs” not from Artaud but from watching Chuck Norris kick the crap out General Trau in Missing in Action.

Leibniz recanted his arguments for ours being the “best of all possible worlds” after he learned Chuck Norris wasn’t going to be in Delta Force 3.