What is humanism? If Foucault
>denies any essential humanness whatsoever
perhaps it is because for him 'Heidegger was the most important
philosopher'. The question of 'essentialism' seems to me to come out of H's
deconstruction of metaphysics and the 'Letter' merely underlines that.
=46oucault's career starts out with a humanistic (non)reading of *B&T* in
Binswanger's supposedly 'Heideggerean' psychoanalysis (cf. 'Dream
imagination and existence'). But how can Heidegger's analytic of Dasein be
utilized in such a humanism without completely overlooking the central
critique of *Being and Time* in which the meaning of Being in general is
radically called into question? For Heidegger's problematic expressly
problematizes the notion of being 'human', to the degree that any humanism
which uncritically posits a self-evident notion of the subjectivity of man,
"is opposed because it does not set the humanitas of man high enough"
('Letter on Humanism', p. 233-234). Within the opening of the questioning
of the meaning of Being, this questioning itself is a "humanism in which
not man but man's historical essence is at stake" (p. 245). That is, the
problematic of *Being and Time* is a humanism only in the sense that it
questions the essence of being-human in a radical refusal to ground itself
in the unquestioned self-certainty of metaphysical belief etc.
Heidegger's conception of
> human beings in their essential humanity (as depicted with great care in
>'Being and Time')
starts with the question of being, moves through the essential nullity of
the 'self', and ends up with the temporalizing movement of projective
interpretation in the 'ahead-of-itself' of care, where being is already
thought as difference.
But if you want to call
>his critique of liberal society and
> its in-authenticating/ de-humanizing/ de-individualizing nature,
a liberating mode of humanism in a 'non-essentialist' sense, then this
humanism also approaches everything 'totalitarian' in H's texts; his
rejection of liberal democracy, his 'metaphysical racism' (cf. Derrida),
decisionism, and his own proximity to the calculative re-presentational
essence of will to power as it falls into the will to will of technologism
i.e., Nazism.
Could there be such a creature as a liberal humanist Nazi?
************************************************
The F=FChrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law....
Heil Hitler!
Martin Heidegger, c. 1934
************************************************
Malcolm Riddoch
Murdoch University
Western Australia
Email: riddoch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>denies any essential humanness whatsoever
perhaps it is because for him 'Heidegger was the most important
philosopher'. The question of 'essentialism' seems to me to come out of H's
deconstruction of metaphysics and the 'Letter' merely underlines that.
=46oucault's career starts out with a humanistic (non)reading of *B&T* in
Binswanger's supposedly 'Heideggerean' psychoanalysis (cf. 'Dream
imagination and existence'). But how can Heidegger's analytic of Dasein be
utilized in such a humanism without completely overlooking the central
critique of *Being and Time* in which the meaning of Being in general is
radically called into question? For Heidegger's problematic expressly
problematizes the notion of being 'human', to the degree that any humanism
which uncritically posits a self-evident notion of the subjectivity of man,
"is opposed because it does not set the humanitas of man high enough"
('Letter on Humanism', p. 233-234). Within the opening of the questioning
of the meaning of Being, this questioning itself is a "humanism in which
not man but man's historical essence is at stake" (p. 245). That is, the
problematic of *Being and Time* is a humanism only in the sense that it
questions the essence of being-human in a radical refusal to ground itself
in the unquestioned self-certainty of metaphysical belief etc.
Heidegger's conception of
> human beings in their essential humanity (as depicted with great care in
>'Being and Time')
starts with the question of being, moves through the essential nullity of
the 'self', and ends up with the temporalizing movement of projective
interpretation in the 'ahead-of-itself' of care, where being is already
thought as difference.
But if you want to call
>his critique of liberal society and
> its in-authenticating/ de-humanizing/ de-individualizing nature,
a liberating mode of humanism in a 'non-essentialist' sense, then this
humanism also approaches everything 'totalitarian' in H's texts; his
rejection of liberal democracy, his 'metaphysical racism' (cf. Derrida),
decisionism, and his own proximity to the calculative re-presentational
essence of will to power as it falls into the will to will of technologism
i.e., Nazism.
Could there be such a creature as a liberal humanist Nazi?
************************************************
The F=FChrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law....
Heil Hitler!
Martin Heidegger, c. 1934
************************************************
Malcolm Riddoch
Murdoch University
Western Australia
Email: riddoch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---