Re: Freiburg inaugural


This view of Heidegger, a defense, on the side of my "generous
interpretation" of Heidegger, the one I lead with when first reading
Heidegger, has always been on the tip of my mind: When you get into the
close reading of his text and note the kinds of distinctions he is
making, the kind of "phenomenological" clarifications, deconstructions,
rethinkings, etc., in dialogue (largely posthumously) with various "great
thinkers", you get a sense of the kind of standards Heidegger set for
thinking, which was, presumable, his primary aim. The question is this:
if Heidegger would be inclined to take Kant to task in the ways he did,
for example, how should one have expected him to view the Nazi rhetoric
of his day? How would a Nazi youth fare in one of his classes? I've often
wondered if Heidegger was silent because he felt it should have been
overwhelmingly obvious that the standards he set were so far "above"
those of the Nazi rhetoric that it would have been foolishness to demand
of him a denounciation or disavowal. What if Heidegger were sitting on a
dissertation committee and the kind of rant one would expect of an
average Nazi were submitted for Heidegger's consideration, as a
"philosophical treatise"? How should one expect that Heidegger would have
judged Mein Kampf?

Heidegger referred to the Nazis who were placing themselves in the
universities as "the impossible people". Again, if Heidegger could take
Husserl to task for his metaphyisical commitments, in the manner of a
respectful and painstaking discourse, how on earth should one expect
Heidegger would have received people's views which were not simply wrong
(as one may imagine he felt about Nazi polemics and "philosophy") but
which owed their very "being there", their presentation, to the crude
placement according to a politcal program?

Wouldn't even responding to such brutality and stupidity dignify it with
a response? Now, of course, the Rectoral Address was itself a response.
That's the non-generous reading. But it seems very hard to deny this
point I'm making here.


______________________________________________________________________
"If you find me this evening speaking without reserve, pray
consider that you are only sharing the thoughts of a man who
allows himself to think audibly, and if you think that I seem
to transgress the limits that courtesy imposes upon me, pardon
me for the liberty I may be taking."

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, in a speech at the opening of the Hindu
University Central College, 1916
______________________________________________________________________

LA Times editorial, April 3,1995: "In fact, it is hard to
think of a coup or human rights outrage that has occurred in
[Latin America] in the past 40 years in which alumni of the
School of Americas were not involved."




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Re: Freiburg inaugural, Martin Weatherston
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