In a message dated 26/09/2004 04:09:31 GMT Standard Time, [email protected]_
(mailto:janstr@xxxxxxx) writes:
Hi Jud,
Thanks for this funny piece, but i am afraid the good man has a poor
understanding of Heidegger. Imho prosecutor Hughes' case against Heidegger contains
a lot rather flawed interpretations, so allow me briefly point to some
obvious misunderstandings on Hughes' part:
(1) Heidegger's denial of such a thing as *human nature*.
It is correct that Heidegger was very critical on the concept of human
nature as it was developed in the tradition of western philosophical thought and
scientific enquiry. His main criticism concerns the fact that the
elements/categories of human nature were all understood in terms of natural (i. e.
lifeless) artefacts. Plato and Aristotle f. i. thought human nature in terms of
ousia (substance), hule (matter) and eidos
(form); Descartes views human nature as the unity of a mathematically
organised body-machine and a divine spirit; Leibniz sees human nature as a
conglomerate of pre-programmed nomades; and in Nietzsche we find that human nature is
thought in terms of a Darwinistic biologism. And in contemporary philosophy,
like in Searle, Dennett and Damasio, human nature is conceptualised in terms
of computers and complex systems.)
Yet according to Heidegger all these ways of understanding human nature are
highly inadequate, because they all derive there concepts and analyses from a
limited (i. e. purely mathematical) scientific perspective, completely
overlooking and sidestepping the unique character of the human condition (cf.
Alltaeglichkeit). It is therefor that Heidegger in SuZ proposes a radically new
hermeneutic- phenomenological methodology for the study and understanding of
human nature, one that is clearly demarcated from antropology, psychology and
biology [SuZ: 45]. To accomplish this Heidegger invents a complete new set of
concepts, namely his terminology of the *existentialia*. Let me name some of
these, for us all to familiar, existentialia: Da-sein; In-der-Welt-sein;
Mit-Sein; Vorhanden-sein; Zuhanden-sein; Entwurf; Geworfenheit; Sorge; Stimmung;
das Man; Sein-zum-Tode; Eigentlichkeit usw. As said, the purpose of
Heidegger's existentialia is to provide philosophy
(and the human sciences) with a complete new conceptual frame for the study
of human nature. Thus to claim, as Hughes does, that Heidegger denies or
lacks any concept of human nature is utter nonsens.
Jud: Hi Jan.
Thank you for your detailed response. The concept of human nature is that of
mutually shared psychological attributes and typical responses of humankind
that are assumed to be held in common by all human beings. From my own
perspective as a nominalist lacking as I do the faith that there exists an
"ontological difference," "human nature" doesn't exist — only those human beings
exist who respond to and initiate actions in relation to certain stimuli in ways
that are perceived of as sharing certain attitudes and behaviours. But I do
not propose to approach this from a nominalist position, but rather that of
the generally perceived historical and current ideas of human nature as
perceived over the centuries and as it was and still is recognised by most of the
world's religions, as something much of which is basically base and animal —
something to be overcome with the assistance of and adherence to certain
rules of behaviour, such as the Christian version with its 10-Commandments or
the quoranic exhortations of Islam, etc. The suggestion that Being There/here
in the world is a part of some metaphysical existential schemata is risible,
for ANYTHING that a human being is affected by or effects has the ontological
prerequisite that the human being first exists in the world. If a human
being did NOT exist in the world then there would be no human to manifest what
are perceived by other humans to be actions or attitudes characteristic of the
nature of human beings.
To make a claim that in order to be jealous one must first exist in order to
be jealous is the same as saying that in order to collect stamps one must
first exist. It is a sine qua non which just about every human being who has
ever lived is quite aware of, and can hardly be classed as a radically new
hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology for the study and understanding of
human nature. The typical ways that human beings react to certain situations have
been noticed over the millennia and form part of human responses which are
considered to be characteristic of the human condition. These characteristic
attitudes and responses we label for convenience with the abstraction — "human
nature." For Heidegger to reinvent and provide neologisms under the heading
existentialia, which merely reflect, ape and re-jig and repackage aspects of
the human condition that have been experienced by human beings since the year
dot, and to claim that these aspects have either been ignored or ignored by
us silly 'ole humans before the Brain of Freiburg put in a timely appearance
in the twentieth century and drew back the curtains which had remained drawn
for aeons is utterly ridiculous. Aspects of all of the childish terminological
paraphernalia of Mit-Sein; Vorhanden-sein; Zuhanden-sein; Entwurf;
Geworfenheit; Sorge; Stimmung; dasMan; Sein-zum-Tode; Eigentlichkeit etc., have been
noticed [in other linguistic versions] by humanity over the ages and have
been discussed, written about, argued about, examined in the plastic arts,
literature, poetry, the theatre, jokes, folk-tales, religious teaching, political
doctrine and theory, correspondence, historical accounts under other more
familiar terms. To come along from the Black Forest boondocks and to re-label
these familiararities with inane simplicities and claim that he has produced,
created or discovered a new, fresh way of describing shared psychological
attributes and typical responses of humankind is breathtaking in its
impertinent arrogance.
In the passage that follows [from Basic Concepts] he publicly acknowledges
[in other words wrapped in the customary obfuscation] that human nature is an
actuality of human comportment and deportment - so why go to such a
ridiculous extent of investing new experiential categories for something that has
already been noticed and exhaustively commented upon for thousands of years?
The People's response to Heidegger is "Been there - Done it - bought the
tee-shirt."
Heidegger:
"From the time when the essential configuration of Western history (and not
the mere succession of events) begins to unfold, a saying is handed down to us
that goes "Take into care beings as a whole" [das Seiende im Ganzen]-that
means, consider that everything depends upon the whole of beings, upon what
addresses [anspricht] humanity from there. Always consider the essential, first
and last, and assume the attitude that matures us for such reflection. Like
everything essential, this attitude must be simple, and the suggestion that
intimates this attitude (which is a knowing) to us must be simple as well. It
suffices for this suggestion to distinguish what humanity, having come to
itself, must attend to.
c) The difference of claims upon man. d) The claim of requirements: Needing
We attend either to what we need or to what we can do without.
We measure what we need according to our requirements, according to desires
left to themselves and their cravings, according to what we count with and
count upon. Behind these desires and cravings stands the press of that unrest
for which every "enough" is just as soon a "never enough." This unrest of
continuously new needing, of self-increasing and expanding "interests," does not
originate from anything like an artificially cultivated avarice. Rather, this
avidity is already the result of that unrest within which the surge of mere
life, of the merely living, reveals itself. To remain thrust and forced into
its own craving belongs to the essence of the living. Indeed, "the living,"
which we know as plants and animals, always seems to find and maintain its
fixed shape precisely in this craving, whereas man can expressly elevate the livin
g and its cravings into a guiding measure and make of it the "principle" of
"progress." If we attend only to what we need, we are yoked into the
compulsive unrest of mere life. This form of life arouses the appearance of the moved
and the self-moving, and therefore of the free. Thus the appearance of
freedom exists precisely where man attends only to what he needs. For man's
calculating and planning move within a field of play whose limits he himself can
adjust to his particular wants."
Jud:
One doesn't need to be a hermenuetical genius to discern that when he talks
of (1) to (3) he is addressing what any other person would describe as aspects
of human nature. So why deny with on hand the very human shared
psychological attributes and typical responses of humankind on the other?
(1) to desires left to themselves and their cravings.
(2) this avidity is already the result of that unrest within which the surge
of mere life, of the merely living, reveals itself.
(3) elevate the living and its cravings into a guiding measure
Jan:
(2) There is nothing about purpose in Heidegger's Dasein.
To accuse Heidegger of commiting some a-teleological fallacy shows again a
deep misunderstanding. Anyone familiar with Heidegger's ideas about
temporality, as devloped in Suz, knows that Da-sein is Entwurf: i. e the potential and
actual creative design of the 'self' within the limits of the world, in all
its past, present and futural dimensions (cf. geworfenheit). Also in notions as
Fuersorge and Sorge (anticipated carefulness, caring for) we can easely
recognize the movement to a chosen destiny (bestimmung), the opening-up
(Erschlossenheit) of a futural mode of one own's being (eigenste Seinkoennen).
Furthermore if we look at titles of some of Heidegger's later essays/lectures, f. e.
"die Be-stimmung der Kuenste"; "die Bestimmung des Denkens"; "die Aufgabe
des Denkens"; "Unterwegs zur Sprache" it is obvious to descry a directionality
to Dasein's being-with-and-in-the-world.
It is true that Heidegger maintains to be ignorant of the existence of some
sort of a 'transcendent telos beyond' (an afterlife), but to say that man is
therefor purposeless and thus claim this as an argument for his Nazi
sympathies is pure idiocy. And besides, this would necessay imply that everybody who
is ignorant of, or denies such, a 'trancedence' is by definition commited to
some form of Nazism.
Jud:
I would guess {I may be wrong, for he doesn't spell it out] that Hughes is
NOT referring to a preoccupation with the selfish self-absorbed aspects of the
potential and actual creative design of the 'self' within the limits of the
world which is part and parcel of finding oneself thrown into the world, but
rather the neglect of any concern or deontological speculation regarding
life-behaviour and the afterlife. Of course, we know that any such concern would
be seen by Heidegger as a speculative concession to his abandoned Catholicism
- an abandonment which IMO flowed from his ejection from the seminary and
his failure to secure the academic position he so desired in the Catholic
University. In addition heidegger makes plain elsewher that Of course although the
subjective experience of being thrown into the world [expulsion from the
womb] is a physical reality, the finding ourselves in the world is a lifelong
experience which is continuous from the years of our initial discovery of the
world whereas and whereby we absorb the skills of cognition and of language
and inherited custom which enable us to proceed with our discovery of the
world. IT is NOT a SUDDEN recognition that we have arrived and have been "thrown,"
but an ongoing slow realisation — a long drawn-out period of familiarisation
with the world and NOT a sudden awakening like some newly-born Rip Van
Winkle complete with all his senses and understanding. By his exhortation that
Adolf Hitler himself and he alone is the German reality, present and future, and
its law, he is surely making it clear that all of his catalogue of
*existentialia* are rendered redundant as far as the population of Germany are
concerned anyway, for only the leader's *existentialia* are to be considered
authentic and dominant and to be obeyed.
Jan:
(3) Authenticity is (only) a morality in self-actualization.
Again this is a complete distortion and blurring of Heidegger's
understanding of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit). In an exchange with Anthony a while ago
(see my post 22-5-2004), i have already elaborated enough on this issue, so i
will not dwell too much on this subject. But let me repeat and emphasize that
for Dasein to be authentic means that he/she is a holistic unity of all
his/her possibilities; authenticity signifies the total ensemble of a communial
sharing and a natural ecological preserving of all the past, present and
futural modes of being-together-in-the- openness-of-the-world.
This perspective and its ethical consequences go well beyond a mere morality
of personal self-actualization, on the contrary it tries to get in view an
moral awareness of truely universal dimensions. Of course this is not a
morality that is based on or derived from some kind of transcendental entity or
instance. Heidegger's aim here is to uncover the ground-states of possible
conditions for a (futural but) strickly immanent milieu, one wherein man can -as
he would formulate later- live as mortals savely together, as dwellers of a
rich-bearing earth, under a fascinating sky in the presence of waiting the other
arrival of hidding divinities (cf. Das Ding).
Jud:
I haven't got the reference to hand, but somewhere Heidegger writes to the
effect that the individual is of no consequence and that only the state is of
import. How does this square with notions of a morality of personal
self-actualisation?
If a person can only be authentic within a framework of the state, [and we
are well aware of what kind of state Heidegger had in mind] and formulate and
later-live as mortals safely together, as dwellers of a rich-bearing earth,
under a fascinating sky in the presence of waiting the other arrival of hiding
divinities, how does this relate to the actuality, when what it amounted to
for millions was waiting the dreaded midnight knock at the door which
signalled the arrival of Godless helmeted goons who would throw you into the back of
a truck on route to the gas-chambers?
Jan:
(4) Nihilism: Heidegger's philosophy of death.
It is true that, and certainly in SuZ, Heidegger had a deep interest and
preoccupation with death and heroism. As said, Sein-zum-Tode, is one of the
existentialia with describes our being in the world. It would however be false
and misleading to understand his attention as some kind of morbid obsession
Jud:
The implication seems to be with Heidegger that it is only the daseinic
cognoscenti who are aware of the inevitability of death, when in fact the poetry
of every language is replete with references to "Gather ye rosebuds whilst ye
may — old time she is a'flying" etc. Additionally folk sayings abound with
references to the reality of death [you can't take it with you when you go,] ,
etc. To claim that only a certain number of aware illuminati are in
possession of this truth is nonsensical.
Jan: It is important to appreciate such a book as SuZ also as an account of
and place it in the 'Zeitgeist' of the early 20th C. Heidegger wrote SuZ in
the aftermath of WWI, the first true world war, with memories of unseen
destruction among an immense scale of dead soldiers and civilians. Yet to think, as
Hughes seems to imply, that Heidegger is somehow celebrating death and
destruction, is a highly misplaced exaggeration. One has only to remember all those
many other German, French and Russian authors wrote intense plays, novels
and essays on the subject of death. Thus to omit the issue of death in those
days, would render any intellectual to the realm of insignificance.
Jud: That only reinforces my assertion that an awareness of death and the
fact that life is a comportment towards it is not solely the preoccupation of a
Heideggerian elite. The difference is that most people try to forget it and
Heidegger wants it constantly in the front of people's minds This kind of
philosophical necrophilia is a bit weird, and smells of the cataclysmic "The end
is nigh" rhetoric which Michael finds so amusing. Maybe the fact that
Heidegger lived only a short distance from the church where his dad rang the bells,
and his constant exposure to the morbid atmosphere of funerals left him with
this death-fetish which runs like a ghoulish leitmotif through much of his
writing?
Jan:
(5) Heidegger is guilty.
Is Heidegger guilty? Well i guess he is. But what is he guilty of ?
Jud: The judgement of the De-nazification Tribunal is available somewhere —
it describes the crimes for which he was judged guilty by his peers. {who were
also products of the Zeitgeist BTW]
Jan: Of course he is guilty of some imo superficial flirting with the
Nazi-regime, but who wasn't in this inescapable totalitarian context.
Jud FLIRTING! FLIRTING!! c'mon Jan, the guy was a fanatic. Holding meetings
with guys who were later hung as war-criminals, tirelessly arranging
'educational camps' in his own hutte — giving up his spare time for that purpose.
Prancing around the corridors making sure everyone seig heiled everyone else,
insisting they sang the Horst Wessel Leid at his inauguration, making a damned
nuisance of himself, and becoming so rigid in his insistence that the Nazi
regulations be imposed that he became very unpopular which is said to have led
to his downfall Then there were the secret letters to the authorities, the
sly attempts to have people sacked from their jobs , etc. This was in no way
"FLIRTING" Jan - this was total commitment to the Nazi cause.
Jan: If Heidegger was guilty, he was first of all guilty of an engagement in
questioning: i. e. a questioning of the essence of human nature; a
questioning of the direction of human society; a questioning of the morality of a
"Volk" and its political regime; a questioning of our own place, task and
responsibility in thinking and feeling as human beings.
Jud: No Jan Heidegger was not about questioning at all — neither in his
philosophy nor in his politics. In his philosophy there was no questioning of
"Being" at all — it was taken as an UNQUESTIONABLE given [an a priori actuality]
and in his politics the whole emphasis was on an UNQUESTIONING acceptance of
Hitler's will as a way to be individually authentic.
Jan: We must not forget that Heidegger's sole philosophical aim was to ask
*the question of Being* - yet never giving any definite answers- as he once
said: "Questioning means, being able to wait, if necessary a life long." [EidM]
Jud: Precisely! To ask the question of "Being" but NOT to ask the question
"is there a reality that is equivalent to such a notion of "Being" that can
be questioned?
yours,
Jud
Personal Website: _http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
E-mail Discussion List: [email protected]_
(mailto:nominalism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Regards,
Jud
Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
E-mail Discussion List:
nominalism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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(mailto:janstr@xxxxxxx) writes:
Hi Jud,
Thanks for this funny piece, but i am afraid the good man has a poor
understanding of Heidegger. Imho prosecutor Hughes' case against Heidegger contains
a lot rather flawed interpretations, so allow me briefly point to some
obvious misunderstandings on Hughes' part:
(1) Heidegger's denial of such a thing as *human nature*.
It is correct that Heidegger was very critical on the concept of human
nature as it was developed in the tradition of western philosophical thought and
scientific enquiry. His main criticism concerns the fact that the
elements/categories of human nature were all understood in terms of natural (i. e.
lifeless) artefacts. Plato and Aristotle f. i. thought human nature in terms of
ousia (substance), hule (matter) and eidos
(form); Descartes views human nature as the unity of a mathematically
organised body-machine and a divine spirit; Leibniz sees human nature as a
conglomerate of pre-programmed nomades; and in Nietzsche we find that human nature is
thought in terms of a Darwinistic biologism. And in contemporary philosophy,
like in Searle, Dennett and Damasio, human nature is conceptualised in terms
of computers and complex systems.)
Yet according to Heidegger all these ways of understanding human nature are
highly inadequate, because they all derive there concepts and analyses from a
limited (i. e. purely mathematical) scientific perspective, completely
overlooking and sidestepping the unique character of the human condition (cf.
Alltaeglichkeit). It is therefor that Heidegger in SuZ proposes a radically new
hermeneutic- phenomenological methodology for the study and understanding of
human nature, one that is clearly demarcated from antropology, psychology and
biology [SuZ: 45]. To accomplish this Heidegger invents a complete new set of
concepts, namely his terminology of the *existentialia*. Let me name some of
these, for us all to familiar, existentialia: Da-sein; In-der-Welt-sein;
Mit-Sein; Vorhanden-sein; Zuhanden-sein; Entwurf; Geworfenheit; Sorge; Stimmung;
das Man; Sein-zum-Tode; Eigentlichkeit usw. As said, the purpose of
Heidegger's existentialia is to provide philosophy
(and the human sciences) with a complete new conceptual frame for the study
of human nature. Thus to claim, as Hughes does, that Heidegger denies or
lacks any concept of human nature is utter nonsens.
Jud: Hi Jan.
Thank you for your detailed response. The concept of human nature is that of
mutually shared psychological attributes and typical responses of humankind
that are assumed to be held in common by all human beings. From my own
perspective as a nominalist lacking as I do the faith that there exists an
"ontological difference," "human nature" doesn't exist — only those human beings
exist who respond to and initiate actions in relation to certain stimuli in ways
that are perceived of as sharing certain attitudes and behaviours. But I do
not propose to approach this from a nominalist position, but rather that of
the generally perceived historical and current ideas of human nature as
perceived over the centuries and as it was and still is recognised by most of the
world's religions, as something much of which is basically base and animal —
something to be overcome with the assistance of and adherence to certain
rules of behaviour, such as the Christian version with its 10-Commandments or
the quoranic exhortations of Islam, etc. The suggestion that Being There/here
in the world is a part of some metaphysical existential schemata is risible,
for ANYTHING that a human being is affected by or effects has the ontological
prerequisite that the human being first exists in the world. If a human
being did NOT exist in the world then there would be no human to manifest what
are perceived by other humans to be actions or attitudes characteristic of the
nature of human beings.
To make a claim that in order to be jealous one must first exist in order to
be jealous is the same as saying that in order to collect stamps one must
first exist. It is a sine qua non which just about every human being who has
ever lived is quite aware of, and can hardly be classed as a radically new
hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology for the study and understanding of
human nature. The typical ways that human beings react to certain situations have
been noticed over the millennia and form part of human responses which are
considered to be characteristic of the human condition. These characteristic
attitudes and responses we label for convenience with the abstraction — "human
nature." For Heidegger to reinvent and provide neologisms under the heading
existentialia, which merely reflect, ape and re-jig and repackage aspects of
the human condition that have been experienced by human beings since the year
dot, and to claim that these aspects have either been ignored or ignored by
us silly 'ole humans before the Brain of Freiburg put in a timely appearance
in the twentieth century and drew back the curtains which had remained drawn
for aeons is utterly ridiculous. Aspects of all of the childish terminological
paraphernalia of Mit-Sein; Vorhanden-sein; Zuhanden-sein; Entwurf;
Geworfenheit; Sorge; Stimmung; dasMan; Sein-zum-Tode; Eigentlichkeit etc., have been
noticed [in other linguistic versions] by humanity over the ages and have
been discussed, written about, argued about, examined in the plastic arts,
literature, poetry, the theatre, jokes, folk-tales, religious teaching, political
doctrine and theory, correspondence, historical accounts under other more
familiar terms. To come along from the Black Forest boondocks and to re-label
these familiararities with inane simplicities and claim that he has produced,
created or discovered a new, fresh way of describing shared psychological
attributes and typical responses of humankind is breathtaking in its
impertinent arrogance.
In the passage that follows [from Basic Concepts] he publicly acknowledges
[in other words wrapped in the customary obfuscation] that human nature is an
actuality of human comportment and deportment - so why go to such a
ridiculous extent of investing new experiential categories for something that has
already been noticed and exhaustively commented upon for thousands of years?
The People's response to Heidegger is "Been there - Done it - bought the
tee-shirt."
Heidegger:
"From the time when the essential configuration of Western history (and not
the mere succession of events) begins to unfold, a saying is handed down to us
that goes "Take into care beings as a whole" [das Seiende im Ganzen]-that
means, consider that everything depends upon the whole of beings, upon what
addresses [anspricht] humanity from there. Always consider the essential, first
and last, and assume the attitude that matures us for such reflection. Like
everything essential, this attitude must be simple, and the suggestion that
intimates this attitude (which is a knowing) to us must be simple as well. It
suffices for this suggestion to distinguish what humanity, having come to
itself, must attend to.
c) The difference of claims upon man. d) The claim of requirements: Needing
We attend either to what we need or to what we can do without.
We measure what we need according to our requirements, according to desires
left to themselves and their cravings, according to what we count with and
count upon. Behind these desires and cravings stands the press of that unrest
for which every "enough" is just as soon a "never enough." This unrest of
continuously new needing, of self-increasing and expanding "interests," does not
originate from anything like an artificially cultivated avarice. Rather, this
avidity is already the result of that unrest within which the surge of mere
life, of the merely living, reveals itself. To remain thrust and forced into
its own craving belongs to the essence of the living. Indeed, "the living,"
which we know as plants and animals, always seems to find and maintain its
fixed shape precisely in this craving, whereas man can expressly elevate the livin
g and its cravings into a guiding measure and make of it the "principle" of
"progress." If we attend only to what we need, we are yoked into the
compulsive unrest of mere life. This form of life arouses the appearance of the moved
and the self-moving, and therefore of the free. Thus the appearance of
freedom exists precisely where man attends only to what he needs. For man's
calculating and planning move within a field of play whose limits he himself can
adjust to his particular wants."
Jud:
One doesn't need to be a hermenuetical genius to discern that when he talks
of (1) to (3) he is addressing what any other person would describe as aspects
of human nature. So why deny with on hand the very human shared
psychological attributes and typical responses of humankind on the other?
(1) to desires left to themselves and their cravings.
(2) this avidity is already the result of that unrest within which the surge
of mere life, of the merely living, reveals itself.
(3) elevate the living and its cravings into a guiding measure
Jan:
(2) There is nothing about purpose in Heidegger's Dasein.
To accuse Heidegger of commiting some a-teleological fallacy shows again a
deep misunderstanding. Anyone familiar with Heidegger's ideas about
temporality, as devloped in Suz, knows that Da-sein is Entwurf: i. e the potential and
actual creative design of the 'self' within the limits of the world, in all
its past, present and futural dimensions (cf. geworfenheit). Also in notions as
Fuersorge and Sorge (anticipated carefulness, caring for) we can easely
recognize the movement to a chosen destiny (bestimmung), the opening-up
(Erschlossenheit) of a futural mode of one own's being (eigenste Seinkoennen).
Furthermore if we look at titles of some of Heidegger's later essays/lectures, f. e.
"die Be-stimmung der Kuenste"; "die Bestimmung des Denkens"; "die Aufgabe
des Denkens"; "Unterwegs zur Sprache" it is obvious to descry a directionality
to Dasein's being-with-and-in-the-world.
It is true that Heidegger maintains to be ignorant of the existence of some
sort of a 'transcendent telos beyond' (an afterlife), but to say that man is
therefor purposeless and thus claim this as an argument for his Nazi
sympathies is pure idiocy. And besides, this would necessay imply that everybody who
is ignorant of, or denies such, a 'trancedence' is by definition commited to
some form of Nazism.
Jud:
I would guess {I may be wrong, for he doesn't spell it out] that Hughes is
NOT referring to a preoccupation with the selfish self-absorbed aspects of the
potential and actual creative design of the 'self' within the limits of the
world which is part and parcel of finding oneself thrown into the world, but
rather the neglect of any concern or deontological speculation regarding
life-behaviour and the afterlife. Of course, we know that any such concern would
be seen by Heidegger as a speculative concession to his abandoned Catholicism
- an abandonment which IMO flowed from his ejection from the seminary and
his failure to secure the academic position he so desired in the Catholic
University. In addition heidegger makes plain elsewher that Of course although the
subjective experience of being thrown into the world [expulsion from the
womb] is a physical reality, the finding ourselves in the world is a lifelong
experience which is continuous from the years of our initial discovery of the
world whereas and whereby we absorb the skills of cognition and of language
and inherited custom which enable us to proceed with our discovery of the
world. IT is NOT a SUDDEN recognition that we have arrived and have been "thrown,"
but an ongoing slow realisation — a long drawn-out period of familiarisation
with the world and NOT a sudden awakening like some newly-born Rip Van
Winkle complete with all his senses and understanding. By his exhortation that
Adolf Hitler himself and he alone is the German reality, present and future, and
its law, he is surely making it clear that all of his catalogue of
*existentialia* are rendered redundant as far as the population of Germany are
concerned anyway, for only the leader's *existentialia* are to be considered
authentic and dominant and to be obeyed.
Jan:
(3) Authenticity is (only) a morality in self-actualization.
Again this is a complete distortion and blurring of Heidegger's
understanding of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit). In an exchange with Anthony a while ago
(see my post 22-5-2004), i have already elaborated enough on this issue, so i
will not dwell too much on this subject. But let me repeat and emphasize that
for Dasein to be authentic means that he/she is a holistic unity of all
his/her possibilities; authenticity signifies the total ensemble of a communial
sharing and a natural ecological preserving of all the past, present and
futural modes of being-together-in-the- openness-of-the-world.
This perspective and its ethical consequences go well beyond a mere morality
of personal self-actualization, on the contrary it tries to get in view an
moral awareness of truely universal dimensions. Of course this is not a
morality that is based on or derived from some kind of transcendental entity or
instance. Heidegger's aim here is to uncover the ground-states of possible
conditions for a (futural but) strickly immanent milieu, one wherein man can -as
he would formulate later- live as mortals savely together, as dwellers of a
rich-bearing earth, under a fascinating sky in the presence of waiting the other
arrival of hidding divinities (cf. Das Ding).
Jud:
I haven't got the reference to hand, but somewhere Heidegger writes to the
effect that the individual is of no consequence and that only the state is of
import. How does this square with notions of a morality of personal
self-actualisation?
If a person can only be authentic within a framework of the state, [and we
are well aware of what kind of state Heidegger had in mind] and formulate and
later-live as mortals safely together, as dwellers of a rich-bearing earth,
under a fascinating sky in the presence of waiting the other arrival of hiding
divinities, how does this relate to the actuality, when what it amounted to
for millions was waiting the dreaded midnight knock at the door which
signalled the arrival of Godless helmeted goons who would throw you into the back of
a truck on route to the gas-chambers?
Jan:
(4) Nihilism: Heidegger's philosophy of death.
It is true that, and certainly in SuZ, Heidegger had a deep interest and
preoccupation with death and heroism. As said, Sein-zum-Tode, is one of the
existentialia with describes our being in the world. It would however be false
and misleading to understand his attention as some kind of morbid obsession
Jud:
The implication seems to be with Heidegger that it is only the daseinic
cognoscenti who are aware of the inevitability of death, when in fact the poetry
of every language is replete with references to "Gather ye rosebuds whilst ye
may — old time she is a'flying" etc. Additionally folk sayings abound with
references to the reality of death [you can't take it with you when you go,] ,
etc. To claim that only a certain number of aware illuminati are in
possession of this truth is nonsensical.
Jan: It is important to appreciate such a book as SuZ also as an account of
and place it in the 'Zeitgeist' of the early 20th C. Heidegger wrote SuZ in
the aftermath of WWI, the first true world war, with memories of unseen
destruction among an immense scale of dead soldiers and civilians. Yet to think, as
Hughes seems to imply, that Heidegger is somehow celebrating death and
destruction, is a highly misplaced exaggeration. One has only to remember all those
many other German, French and Russian authors wrote intense plays, novels
and essays on the subject of death. Thus to omit the issue of death in those
days, would render any intellectual to the realm of insignificance.
Jud: That only reinforces my assertion that an awareness of death and the
fact that life is a comportment towards it is not solely the preoccupation of a
Heideggerian elite. The difference is that most people try to forget it and
Heidegger wants it constantly in the front of people's minds This kind of
philosophical necrophilia is a bit weird, and smells of the cataclysmic "The end
is nigh" rhetoric which Michael finds so amusing. Maybe the fact that
Heidegger lived only a short distance from the church where his dad rang the bells,
and his constant exposure to the morbid atmosphere of funerals left him with
this death-fetish which runs like a ghoulish leitmotif through much of his
writing?
Jan:
(5) Heidegger is guilty.
Is Heidegger guilty? Well i guess he is. But what is he guilty of ?
Jud: The judgement of the De-nazification Tribunal is available somewhere —
it describes the crimes for which he was judged guilty by his peers. {who were
also products of the Zeitgeist BTW]
Jan: Of course he is guilty of some imo superficial flirting with the
Nazi-regime, but who wasn't in this inescapable totalitarian context.
Jud FLIRTING! FLIRTING!! c'mon Jan, the guy was a fanatic. Holding meetings
with guys who were later hung as war-criminals, tirelessly arranging
'educational camps' in his own hutte — giving up his spare time for that purpose.
Prancing around the corridors making sure everyone seig heiled everyone else,
insisting they sang the Horst Wessel Leid at his inauguration, making a damned
nuisance of himself, and becoming so rigid in his insistence that the Nazi
regulations be imposed that he became very unpopular which is said to have led
to his downfall Then there were the secret letters to the authorities, the
sly attempts to have people sacked from their jobs , etc. This was in no way
"FLIRTING" Jan - this was total commitment to the Nazi cause.
Jan: If Heidegger was guilty, he was first of all guilty of an engagement in
questioning: i. e. a questioning of the essence of human nature; a
questioning of the direction of human society; a questioning of the morality of a
"Volk" and its political regime; a questioning of our own place, task and
responsibility in thinking and feeling as human beings.
Jud: No Jan Heidegger was not about questioning at all — neither in his
philosophy nor in his politics. In his philosophy there was no questioning of
"Being" at all — it was taken as an UNQUESTIONABLE given [an a priori actuality]
and in his politics the whole emphasis was on an UNQUESTIONING acceptance of
Hitler's will as a way to be individually authentic.
Jan: We must not forget that Heidegger's sole philosophical aim was to ask
*the question of Being* - yet never giving any definite answers- as he once
said: "Questioning means, being able to wait, if necessary a life long." [EidM]
Jud: Precisely! To ask the question of "Being" but NOT to ask the question
"is there a reality that is equivalent to such a notion of "Being" that can
be questioned?
yours,
Jud
Personal Website: _http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
E-mail Discussion List: [email protected]_
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Regards,
Jud
Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
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