HStanley recently wrote in connection with Heidegger-Nazi debate:
>Personally, it
>fills me with boredom...
Having lightly followed this eternally recurring theme it seems that those
whose arguments centre around the notion that H has something to account
for (not yet accounted for) his involvement with the nasty nazis are
largely basing their desire for settling accounts on feeling uncomfortable,
uneasy, on being disturbed.
My point as a bystander to this (for me now tedious topic) is that
Heidegger's thinking is unsettling all the way, unsettling-unsettled in an
un-canny world: a world of world-wars auschwitzes, hiroshimas and
unfettered technological global flattening.
Heidegger is a thinking krisis in an ongoing apocalypse.
You should be disturbed. Perhaps the debate might change to one concerned
with 'disturbance' rather than just continue with the narrower issue of a
man's political blunder (however disturbing). This (once important) issue
has been endlessly debated especially in the highly concrete sense of
blame/shame and in the more interesting sense of the relation of
fundamental ontology to concrete history. It seems to me that the most
subtle and worthwhile thinking about these issues has been achieved in the
work of Derrida (especially his profoundly gently disturbing 'Of Spirit')
and Stanley Rosen's 'Nihilism: a philosophical essay', 1969, Yale U.P.
The question of what is criminal/just/responsible etc will allow no simple
or simplistic solutions (precisely the nazis prescribed simple/final
solutions). Surely we have learnt _with Heidegger_ that they are
co-terminous with our existence, with our being mortal, as the strangers on
the earth?
Let us think.
MP
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>Personally, it
>fills me with boredom...
Having lightly followed this eternally recurring theme it seems that those
whose arguments centre around the notion that H has something to account
for (not yet accounted for) his involvement with the nasty nazis are
largely basing their desire for settling accounts on feeling uncomfortable,
uneasy, on being disturbed.
My point as a bystander to this (for me now tedious topic) is that
Heidegger's thinking is unsettling all the way, unsettling-unsettled in an
un-canny world: a world of world-wars auschwitzes, hiroshimas and
unfettered technological global flattening.
Heidegger is a thinking krisis in an ongoing apocalypse.
You should be disturbed. Perhaps the debate might change to one concerned
with 'disturbance' rather than just continue with the narrower issue of a
man's political blunder (however disturbing). This (once important) issue
has been endlessly debated especially in the highly concrete sense of
blame/shame and in the more interesting sense of the relation of
fundamental ontology to concrete history. It seems to me that the most
subtle and worthwhile thinking about these issues has been achieved in the
work of Derrida (especially his profoundly gently disturbing 'Of Spirit')
and Stanley Rosen's 'Nihilism: a philosophical essay', 1969, Yale U.P.
The question of what is criminal/just/responsible etc will allow no simple
or simplistic solutions (precisely the nazis prescribed simple/final
solutions). Surely we have learnt _with Heidegger_ that they are
co-terminous with our existence, with our being mortal, as the strangers on
the earth?
Let us think.
MP
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---