{"id":12719,"date":"2009-03-27T13:25:08","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T13:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/27\/idle-talk-3\/"},"modified":"2009-03-27T13:25:08","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T13:25:08","slug":"idle-talk-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/27\/idle-talk-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Idle Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"firstinpost\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">From <strong>Franz Kafka: The Diaries 1910-1923<\/strong>, ed. Max Brod, Schocken 1948, p. 199:<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"post\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">In the next room my mother is entertaining the L. couple. They are talking about vermin and corns. (Mrs. L. has six corns on each toe.) It is easy to see that there is no real progress made in conversations of this sort. It is information that will be forgotten again by both and that even now proceeds along in self-forgetfulness without any sense of responsibility.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"post\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">I have read this passage many times, and what delights me each time is the droll understatement of it: &quot;there is no real progress made in conversations of this sort.&quot; No indeed. There is no progress because the conversations are not seriously about anything worth talking about. There is no <em>Verantwortlichkeit<\/em> (responsibility): the talk does not answer (<em>antworten<\/em>) to anything real in the world or anything real in the interlocutors. It is jaw-flapping for its own sake, mere linguistic behavior which, if it conveys anything, conveys: \u2018I like you, you like me, and everything\u2019s fine.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n<p class=\"post\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">The interlocutors float along in the inauthenticity (<em>Uneigentlichkeit<\/em>) of what Heidegger calls <em>das Man<\/em>, the \u2018they self.\u2019 Compare Heidegger\u2019s analysis of idle talk (<em>Gerede<\/em>) in <strong>Sein und Zeit<\/strong> (1927), sec. 35.<\/font><\/p>\n<p class=\"post\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Am I suggesting that one should absolutely avoid idle talk?&#0160; That would be to take things to an unnecessary and perhaps imprudent extreme.&#0160; It is prudent to get yourself perceived as a regular guy &#8212; especially if you are an &#39;irregular guy.&#39;<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Franz Kafka: The Diaries 1910-1923, ed. Max Brod, Schocken 1948, p. 199: In the next room my mother is entertaining the L. couple. They are talking about vermin and corns. (Mrs. L. has six corns on each toe.) It is easy to see that there is no real progress made in conversations of this &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/27\/idle-talk-3\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Idle Talk&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-predicament","category-virtues-and-vices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}