---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 18:24:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Gregory A. Coolidge <gcoolidg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Look
H*LP!!!!!(excuse the spelling and grammar, I was in a rush)
I am currently writing a dissertation proposal, and one of my central
claims is that Foucualt, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Marx are all humanists,
but distinct humanists, each of which grounds their humanism in
decidedly distinct conceptions of human beings in their essential humanness
(socially constructed, Reason, Dionysian/Appolonian nature, being, Species
Essence)
Foucualt is the odd man out on this basis, because he denies any essential
humanness whatsoever, hence, his paradoxical and unsatisfying humanism. Each
are humanists ( a certain family resemblance) because each, including Foucualtaccepts the humanist impulse that human beings ought to live
as autuonmous and self-determining individuals who are not merely the
products of internal and external determinations. Each uses their distinct
conception
of man as a basis of comparison, in order to chraraterize the human condition
in the socirites that each was criticizing as a threat to humanity ( Kant was criticizing feudal/religious society, while the rest were criticizing liberal
society in different stages of its development). That is, each, except
Foucualt, was presenting an essential view of humanity in the best of all
possible circumstances, and each was using this essential view of man to argue that human beings now find themselves in societies that threaten, strip and
distort their natural humanity. That is, human beings in such societies no
longer act as truly autonomous and free beings, because they are denied that
aspect(s) of themselves that defines their humanity, and thus, acts as the
source of a truly aotuonmous, truly human life. Foucualt also offers a
humanist inspired critique of liberal society, yet he rejects any philosophy
which would ground a critique of the human condition in an essential depiction of human beings. What I am looking for are
secondary works which discuss the humanism of Heidegger, his conception of
human beings in their essential humanity (as depicted with great care in
'Being and Time'), his critique of liberal society and
its in-authenticating/ de-humanizing/ de-individualizing nature, and what
human beings can do to regain their lost humanity (that is, how do we act, once again, as authentic, self-determining beings, who have a proper relationship
to Being in our actions?). In his "Letter On Humanism', Heidegger does not
deny he is a humanist. He denies that he is the type of humanist that bases
his view of humanism on metaphysical grounds. That is, on the basis of a
human being who is depicted as the center of all things ( a Cartesian point),
and who acts as an automous agent without any regard to his or her proper
relationship to Being/Spirit). I sense in 'Being and Time' and 'A Letter
On Humanism' that Heidegger is, like Nietzsche, quite upset that human beings
in liberal societies are no longer allowed, or encouraged, to think and act
according to the fullness of their natural humanness. Human beings in liberal
societies are socialized to act by the mandates of reason and rationality, at
the exspsep[nse of all our other human attributes (emotion, passions,
instincts, etc.). Such attributes are characterized as animal, unworthy,
uncivilized, irrational, yet for Heidegger, and Nietzsche, such natural
human facalities are, along with reason, the source of human creativity,
genius, greatness, freedom, autonomy, and true indidivuialty and self-
determination. Is Heidegger suggesting that a humanism should be grounded in
such a full, and rich depiction of humanity, sense it must be it the unknown
project of Being, that human beings should think and act according to the
fullness of those attributes given to man by Being? Is the worship of
rational society, and reason a corruption of humanity, and thus, a corruption
of man's relationship to Being? I see a great affinity between Heidegger's
humanism and the humanism of Nietzsche, since both view liberal society, with
glorification of reason, rationality, mass norms, prudence, etc., as an
attack on the essential humanity of human beings. That is, as an attack
on human freedom and autonomy, because both believed that the Homeric/pre
-Socratic Greeks understood that true human autonomy and freedom requires the
use of all our human attributes, and that the vilification of such attributes
in liberal society has caused the de-humanization of man. Am I wrong in such a
reading of Heidegger's humanist aspirations?
Thanks,
Greg Coolidge, University of Calif.,
Riverside, Political Science Dept., gcoolidg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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