Heidegger, Humanism, Regionalism, and Nazism


>Bob,
>
>Well, I would tend to agree, provisionally, and in fact I said "a philosophy
>of authenticity", not "Heidegger", the Heidegger of the question of being, of
>the turning (which I don't claim to *properly* understand in terms of his own
>use of that term, but which I have some access to as non-humanistic, etc.).
>The question could be formulated as to whether the question of being is itself
>a regional ontology, but there would probably be no place for such a question
>in the later Heidegger, unless you can read being's fateful grasping of itself
>according to "fate" and "grasp" along the lines of "region", which I think has
>something to offer.

Tom:
Thanks so much for taking time to respond to my comments whatever
misunderstandings they may have concerning your reflections. Certainly the
Heidegger of _Being and Time_ does inspire a philosophy of authenticity
which Sartre embraces. Heidegger moves away from questioning the meaning of
being out of the horizon of the experience of Dasein, that is the "being
there" of man, perhaps because it is open to the objection of being
"regional". No doubt Heidegger took this path as provisional: the task of
Being and Time would need to be repeated again at "higher" level disvested
of the tinges of regionalism.
But my purpose was more so to comment that despite Heidegger's ideological
adherance to Nazism there is a truthfulness to his thought that goes beyond
ideology. Perhaps some may feel it is cruel to overlook Heidegger's
political affiliations. Still, it is crueler to ultimately blame Heidegger
for a political movement that went far beyond his control or intentions.
Cruelest however would be to neglect the value of the thought he set in
motion and that we can appropriate, reflect, and even transform. The key to
this understanding I believe to lie in its "anti-humanism". Because
Heidegger initiated, or at any rate radicalized, the question of being as
what is most worthy of thought, as a question that concerns being first and
man only secondarily, we can leave the carcass of the man from Messkirch
behind and feast on that which he pointed to as a distant constant star
throughout his career. We may passingly thank this quaint man and return to
him if only for the clarity of his vision, for the pointers he left us in
tracing the furrows of his quest, be it ours. But it is hardly him or his
ideosysncracies that we should focus on. To point fingers at Heidegger so as
to neglect the legacy of his thought is a grave mistake we should not allow
ourselves to indulge in.
No doubt to say so much is to say very little. But in today's climate they
bear magnification and insistance in opposition to an attitude that has
gained credibility, that would ultimately declare that Heidegger is debunk
and his philosophy nothing more than an outgrowth of fascism. Perhaps in a
merely humanist reading that would be justified: Heidegger's thought would
remain regional in a manner that neither Husserl nor you are expressing,
that is the very regional provincialism of a man whose thought never
transcended the localism of an ideology that fed peculiarly out of the dark
stirrings of a German peasant soul. That reading is worth challenging and it
is worth noting why it is vulnerable to challenge, even if we should move on
to other things.
Danke schein,
Bob
"'Heidegger', then will take the place here of a certain discursive regularity."
Reiner Schurmann, _Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy_



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