Aletheia LO25903

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 01/16/01


Replying to LO25878 --

Dear Organlearners.

Andrew "Campnona" < ACampnona@aol.com > quotes
Martin Heidegger with

>- -The world is a self disclosing openness of the
>broad paths of the simple and essential decisions
>in the destiny of an historical people. The earth
>is the spontaneous forthcoming of that which is
>continually self secluding and to that extent is
>sheltering and concealing. World and earth are
>essentially different from one another and yet
>are never separated.

Greetings Andrew,

Thank you for making the topic "Aletheia" (truth). The apostel John makes
several of the most profoundest claims ever using this word like a road
which is truth and a spirit which is truth. The first name of my dear wife
is Alicia, the Irish form of "Aletheia". The Dutch and Afrikaans version
of it would be Aletta. It is strange that exept for such personal names,
this Greek word for "truth" have not entered the Englsih language.

I am presently thinking a lot on the word "world". The Greeks had several
words to express different meanings like "aion", "ge", "kosmos" and
"oikoumene". For example, should we create a word like "musaion", we will
refer to a space where we can make all sorts of music and listen to it --
where we can live a "world of music". Since "gramma" refers to writings,
we may call our LO list a "grammaion" -- a "world of writings" ;-)

Whereas the Greeks and the Romans made all these seemingly unconnected
distinctions, the Germanic tribes north-east of them migrating towards
western Europe did almost the opposite. They called the 'world' in its
widest sense something close to "weoreld". The English word for world
comes from via its Anglo-Saxon roots from this word. They called work in
its widest sense something close to "weorcan". The English word to refer
to 'word', is also derived from something close to "weordan". English now
has the word 'become' since the word "weordan" had also been used for
'becoming' rather than only 'word'. But in my mother tongue Afrikaans the
common origin is still suggested by "woord"=word and "word"=become.
Perhaps even the word 'war" comes from "weorra" and 'weather" from
"weorder". However, interesting is the word "weorda". It was a question,
asked during darkness: "which man goes there". Perhaps even more
interesting is the word 'werewolf". It evolved from a combination of two
words -- again "weor" for (hu)man and "wulf" for wolf.
  
Is it not strange that the same root "weor"=(hu)man has been used by
suffix modifications to create so many different meanings? Did they use
the same root "weor" because they were too uncreative to think of new
words with different phonetics? The Greek Heredotus, perhaps the first
ever explorer-historian, did not think so since he found these Germanic
tribes most interesting because of their stranges ways of speaking and
doing -- the Greeks liked to question the kosmos and could go on forever
doing so. However, the Romans a couple of centuries later found them
rather barbaric with little respect for the Roman creations -- the Romans
liked to make war and subject other nations to them, but did not like
others to respond with like actions and strong resistance.

I think the ancient Germanic tribes had the tacit knowledge that humans
are connected to everything on the earth in which they also were living so
that the whole of it all became a world=weoreld" for them. They used the
suffix "-eld" to refer to an emergent outcome. In other words,
"weor"=(hu)man in the holistic sense (i.e. wholeness or increasing wholes)
became a "weoreld" to them.

Your timely quote of Heidegger was a welcome spice to my digestive
learning. What curious "weors" were these ancients not? Do we not self
become curious to others when we think holistic, i.e in terms of
wholeness.

I find myself more and more on the other side of the fence, thinking how
curious humans have become because of "decreasing wholes", i.e.
fragmentarism rather than holism. In the front line are my own people (the
Afrikaners and not Africans) with their former ideology and policy of
apartheid. They now have to unlearn their once Romanic way of doing and
this is not familiar to them. Perhaps it will help them when they also
have a look in the evolution of their language.

With care and best wishes,

-- 

At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa

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