Gary Moore <gottlos752004@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 10:11:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gary Moore
Subject: Re: [nominalism] Re: [analytical-indicant-theory] Was Hitler a Christian?
To: nominalism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Jud:
Dear Gary:
I agree with all that you say, however it is worth remembering that I didn't write the article nor did I have any part in the original discussion on the atheist list of which I am a member. I am interested primarily in how Heidegger reconciled himself to Hitler's 1933 outburst: when he said, 'It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood.'" The Catholic League also quoted Hitler, in a 4/23/99 Op-Ed ad in the New York Times, as saying, "Antiquity was better than modern times, because it didn't know Christianity and syphilis."
Of course the sources are unclear as to whether this was a public tirade or part of a private conversation, or indeed whether Heidegger was even aware of the attitude [both public and covert] towards the Catholic Church - a church with which Heidegger had been emotionally associated for a considerable time in his early youth, indeed was even involved for years studying with presumably an intention to enter the priesthood? Mind you, having said that, Stalin also studied for the priesthood too â?? and look how he turned out.
GCM2: To quote Trotsky, "King Louis the XIVth can say, 'L'estate, c'est moi, the pope can say, 'I am the Church, but only Stalin can say, 'I am society.'
JUD: However at that time [1933] Heidegger was very much in favour with the hierarchy and was sharing discussion tables with criminals who were later hanged or were issued with heavy sentences. Is it possible that being so close to the levers of Nazi power that he WASN'T aware of the Nazi attitudes towards Catholicism?
GCM2: NO! He persecuted Catholics himself when he was Rector of Freiburg per Schneeburger who in the sixties was ridiculed because he insisted Heidegger was a real, true, full-blown Nazi!
Jud: After all, at the time he was described by one leading Nazi as: The philosopher of National Socialism?
Gary:
Do Hitler's fundamental, consistently and continuously carried out fundamental doctrines accord TO ANY FUNDAMENTAL DEGREE with the teachings and even ideological motivated actions [not temporary political or purely local of which always instances can be found] of either the Protestant or Catholic churches?
Jud:
Do Blair's and those of Bush? Do Ariel Sharon's? Do Osama bin Laden's?
GCM2: No they don't, and I would touch on that generally in my Hans Jonas article if my head would clear up. Also the Fabio Paulo Barbieri review: It is true . . . but irrevelant. He speaks as if Gnosticism was a worth while phenomenon in itself whereas Jonas is only interested -- and says so -- because A) it reflects his applied philosophical interests, and B) it so clearly and ruthlessly defines a certain kind of world-view, very natural in a certain intellectual climate, i.e., late antiquity which, from Jonas point of view, would include Plotinus quite appropriately which Barieri rejects, but every 'Platonic' type thinker at that time desperately desired a REAL magical transformation of the soul into a divine sphere, even some Aristotleans, which defines an EXACT opposite of how 'beliefs' and practical concerns, and also Hans Jonas himself who wanted to philosophize about "organisms" and the very finite limitations of inherently various DIFFERENT phenomenologies which were simply
world-views applied to 'reality' and not at all what his 'teacher' Heidegger wanted (when he had to leave Germany the only teacher he thought worth-while to say goodbye to was the anti-Nazi Bultmann -- NOT Heidegger emphatically! no sentimental hanging on like Hannah Arendt!).
Gary:
The answer is a resounding NO! This is NOT a DEFENSE of ANY PART of Christianity, merely a stating of facts obvious to everyone through common sense and therefore to some degree overcoming all possible resistance and is compulsory knowledge. These are methodological statements which I hope to clarify in my article on Hans Jonas versus Gnosticism, a very practical matter indeed, and very possibly a fundamental issue of the 21st century.
Jud:
That is certainly something which I can look forward to reading. had the Gnostic teachings prevailed do you think the *church* would have acted any differently?
GCM2: Probably no church structive. Most heresies tried to imitate Catholic and Orthodox Church structure, both in antiquity and in German and Swedish Lutheranism as well as Anglicanism. Gnostics each made up their own stories and went their separate pathways of almost certainly self-conscious fictionalizing. No discipline from any 'above' whatsoever! Each man for himself!
JUD: I mean to things similar to the Albigensian *Crusade* and the subsequent massacres that followed, the Inquisition, the profligate wealth of the papacy, the venery of priests, the sale of bits of bones, the selling of indulgences, the burning of old women as witches etc? At base are not all trannies tarred with the same brush?
GCM2: The same Christian brush. Nothing is as loathsome as a Nazi.
JUD: OK there have been exceptions like Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa [now undergoing fierce criticism] and I suppose that the average mum and dad taking their kids to church on a sunday morning can hardly be described as power-seeking theological manipulators, but at a higher level it seems to attract people with sexual problems, the press is full of priests as child pornographers and such. Boccaccio really blew the whistle on fornicating nuns and priests. Do you think that the Gnostic aparatchiks would have behaved differently?
GCM2: Not behave differently at all since possessing true gnosis operated like Baptist 'being born again' and unable to sin no matter what you do. But aparatchiks? I do not think so but that may just be a historical accident, i.e., they did not get a good chance, the poor things. I'm sure Barieri would have given it to them. Obvious disagreement of texts never stopped the NEW TESTAMENT from being formed so radical individuality in belief does not rule out a Gnostic trying to impose a Church authority on everyone.
JUD: The Cathari the heretics, called themselves Christians, arguing that they were the only true practitioners of the faith. To others, however, they were known as Cathars, a word whose origin is not clear, but you may have come across it in your studies of Gnosticism, for I believe there is a definite connection?
GCM2: VERY! Two gods, one creating an evil world, the other a good, and purification of some sort [catharsis], though I think the Cathar did it through practice and Manichean avoidance of impurity whereas Gnostics always emphasized a SPECIAL AND UNIQUE KNOWLEDGE. Both of these tendancies can be found in the initiations into antique religious cults that got worse as antiquity declined, i.e., the Ptolemaic devotion to Isis for example.
Gary:
The 'phenomenological'/ tradition-'choice' issue [but what 'choice' does a child have?] of common sense "compulsory knowledge", sometimes intruding only in the edge of a fanatic's consciousness, I find absolutely necessary in properly judging the philosophy of David Hume, Karl Marx, and -- Jud Evans!!!
Jud:
I like to think that my own world outlook is based upon common-sense. Also I find that in some quarters of the philosophical community *commonsense* is frowned upon. I can't remember any actual instances off hand though at the moment.
GCM2: Modern thinkers have either a tendancy to reject "common sense" for some strange form of metaphysics or, in rejecting metaphysics, reject common sense also. Few seem to live in the common ground inbetween, the world of hard experience.
JUD: I find it commonsensical for example to dismiss the notion that *Love* exists, though I know many human entities [including myself] whose ACTIONS of body and brain qualify them for the descriptive tag â?? *LOVER .* For the *erectoral rectoral imminence* of Freiburg to borrow a little diddy-man â?? call it *Mr Being There,* then proceed with the erection of a whole *philosophy* based upon the to-ings and fro-ings of such a ubiquitous universalistic mannikin seems to me definitely and uncommonly non-commonsensical.
GCM2: "Love" simply denotes an area of confusion of many very different things that needs to be investigated. I think Marx is better in this regard -- economics -- than Freud even.
Gary:
The idea is, if there is any point in making statements about facts, there must be a level of truth [ambiguous overall, and partially admitted only] that everyone is compelled to acknowledge, i.e., the self-knowledge that one is in pain, though everyone else doubts it, is one such compulsory knowledge. Another point is, even though the existential stance of common sense is determined by the phenomenological grasp of what one has been taught as a child and accepted blindly then, from that moment onward, if brought into philosophical consciousness, is seen to be repetitively consistent and thoroughly usable in daily life. WHEREAS, of course, Gnosticism, Nazism, Christianity, and Catholicism are not -- but each of them for completely different reasons OTHER THAN the basic one of wanting to ESCAPE the results of common sense.
Jud:
Some people distort facts for their own purposes [the cover-up of Heidegger's true involment with Nazism for example].
GCM2: I think everyone distorts facts to their own purposes especially me. What I need to do is balance that tendancy with thorough-going awareness I do so.
JUD: In this case there is a level of *truth* which apparently is either ignored or not considered of such import that the message [whatever it was?] that Heidegger was pushing was worth damaging with such trivialities. Like for the cigarette-smoker or the alchoholic the unpleasant reality the addiction is always deflected.
GCM2: Not always. One can drink oneself to death quite deliberately. It is not as unpleasant a death as lung cancer or emphasyma.
JUD: One of my greatest entertainments on this list has been to witness the intellectual sommersaults performed by certain aery-faeralists as they seek to excuse and justify this Nazi monster. If only their mental gymnastics could be converted to the physical they could earn themselves a fortune in Billy Smart's Circus.
It seems to be some sort of internalised rhetorical processing of their own brains â?? they actually *brainwash themselves.* This, if anything I find to be the most fascinating phenomena of studying the cult. Do you think if by some strange cosmic joke Heideggerianism ever reached such a success in its brainwashing of the hapless students in its academic clutches, and its hierarchy were to accede to positions of political power (like the strange [uneasy] partnership of the Christian Fundamentalists and Jews have done in America) that they would act any differently to anybody else?
GCM2: Would one even notice the change? Has it already happened? Is this all post-modern politics now? I think so. It cannot be rationally argued against fundamentally can it? Everyone takesa off from common presuppositions and never questions them as Marx did.
JUD: Do you think [even more fanciful] that if Nominalists became the leading brokers of power in the land that they would remain *above it all?* I think not, for the way human beings are hardwired, they are usually swayed by what's good for THEM rather than what's good for *SOCIETY.* Sometimes it is advantageous to align your own desires with that of what *society* or a certain section of that society percieves to be good [for them] and sometimes it isn't. Hitler ably assisted by Goebbels, who I read somewhere attended Heidegger's lectures on some occassion/occassions] was supremely aware of how to juggle these two balls in the air to his maximum advantage.
Gary:
Are Hitler's statements favorable to Christianity momentarily and politically advantageous? AN OVERWHELMING YES! Hitler was in fact trying to steal Christian German co-operation instead of outright opposition. There was nothing ideological in Nazism a Christian could possibly accept except for exactly the same reasons [the archbishop of Vienna ending his radio speech on the Anschluss with "Heil Hitler!" The Primate of Croatia photographed giving the Croatian Waffen SS the Nazi salute].
Jud:
No doubt this applied the self-styled *theologian* Heidegger - he was a great exponent of *Heil Hitlering* too wasn't he. When he marched down the corridors of shame at Freiburg his right-arm was up and down like a whore's drawers. I don't know whether any transcripts of his radio speeches are extant â?? it would be a coup for me to have an audio-snip of Heidegger's voice on Evans Experientialism shouting *Heil Hitler. * What a gas! I wonder why the guys who made the Ister Film look into this?
Gary:
What he got was a compromise: except for the official state Lutheran Church, silence -- Rudolph Bultmann -- with occasional violent rejection -- Dietrich Bonhoffer, Count Klaus von Staffenburg, the White Rose. If the German General Staff had operated on Christian principles binding them together instead of vague 'national interests' covering over what many of them perceived as a possibly great and selfish personal political advantage -- such as Himmler and Goring tried to attempt at the end of the war -- Hitler would have been dead, dead, dead by July 1944.
Jud:
I'm not sure that Christian *principles* entail a binding together? Christ apparently said some HORRIBLE things to/about his opponents.
GCM2: I didn't say the binding would result in generally nice things, just that their competitor for power, Hitler, would be dead. This was quite clear in most of Hitler's opponents minds, though, maybe through ignorrence, I excuse Bonhoffer and Stauffenburg.
JUD: I was brought up in a working-class Liverpool where protestants threw pepper in the eyes of little Catholic girls as they marched along in the streets in their *confirmation* [or some such brainwashing ritual] and after the protestant procession had marched by his church it was customary for the parish priest to swill the ground on which they had marched with buckets of cleansing water.
Gary:
This does NOT condone Christianity or narrow minded selfishness, but these motives DID operate AGAINST Hitler. Not even the most fanatical Nazi could selfishly benefit from dying with Hitler in the Bunker -- for instance, Martin Borman who may even still be alive!
Jud:
True. But many Nazi fanatics DID die in the bunker {the whole Goebbels family and others] and many others fanatics CONTINUED to damage their reputation by not rejecting Hitlerism or apologising for their involvement during that time. One such fanatic by the name of Martin Heidegger damaged his reputation FOR ALL TIME by not saying sorry or EVEN ACKNOWLEGING the Nazi crimes at all â?? except in the circumstances of a tasteless remark that the camps could be compared with farms.
Gary:
Thunder. I've got to go. The article below is actually fairly well balanced and very informative, and I hope to take up again all these issues in the Hans Jonas article.
Jud:
I look forward to reading your article in due course. Whilst I am not particularly drawn to the occult writings of Hermetic literature, I am interested in reading their writings on the sciences, and any writings on philosophy, which present the Hermetic doctrine and view of the world.
Are there any texts available on the net do you know?
GCM2: Barieri would object to combining Hermeticism and Gnosticism but I think, along with Jonas, they reflect a common world view. As to science, only if you consider magic and astrology sciences. I could not read much of the stuff. I think it would thoroughly nauseate you. Proclus and Plotinus are the best you can get and THEY are not worth the effort. But, if you must, yes, you can find it, look up 'Pomander' [various spellings], Hermes Trigemestis, and Frances Yates' THE ART OF MEMORY -- the last actually not all that bad but then not all that good either, certainly more digestable. THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS [or something like that] by Eleine Pagels, readable, but since then it seems her scholastic objectivity has been lost and she has become . . . a convert. But that is what I mean, Gnosticism is spreading like wildfire in this 21st centrury world and I think we are in for some deep shit. It will appeal very much to Post-Modernists and Deconstructionists and Heideggerians. Jonas, I
think, is an exception because basically Heidegger's Nazi stance -- he was there, he saw -- so disgusted him he began questioning everything else about Heidegger's philosophy and ended up being much more like Sartre, though that still may be disagreable to you. But which would you prefer? An existential Communist or an existential Nazi? That these very different 'phenomenologies' can, supposedly, be equally justified is what I would like to attack with 'common sense' while realizing all the distinct problems of that term. 'Compulsory knowledge' that all must at least partiallky realize while suppressing it: it is very problematic but something somewhat solid to work with.
'Sincerely'
Gary C. Moore
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