Nik. You're right, the "children of a lesser god" thing was Colin's and
not yours. I think the problem with the music analogy, though, is that
it seems to long for a purity of forms, a place where the notes are the
same whether Mozart is a Nazi or a Communist. And this may not be the
best way to imagine the political aspects of the work. The movie you
referenced about Mozart's life is full of politics, by the way --
competition for patronage, national ideologies, and so forth. It is a
fairly recent idea that works or art should exist as pure forms, apart
from the context in which they were created. The things you want to
"shine through" -- I'm quoting you from memory -- Heidegger's
work may be there waiting to be seen, so don't foreclose on the project yet.
Another way to come at this might be to amplify Eric's remarks about
Sartre in another post today. If I'm remembering right, the main
critique of Sartre is that he tries to use Heidegger's work as an
ontological foundation of political action, and that he smuggles back
into Heidegger a notion of a subject, who must then choose authenticity.
This, the criticism runs, returns philosophy to the metaphysical
difference and to repositing the very agenda Heidegger wanted to open up
and interrogate.
The vexed question that many Heideggerians have been kicking around for a
while now, including pretty involved threads on this list a while back,
is: Where does Heidegger ever develop a philosophy of Community or
political action? Different guys have come up with different ways of
answering this question. Jean Luc Nancy tries to raise the issue of
community out of the Ready to Hand and the stuff about language; Jacques
Taminiaux reads Heidegger's interest in praxis, beginning with the Kant
book, as an attempt to come up with an account of community and of Dasein
as being something that is basically "being with." But then he finds
that Heidegger's own notion of praxis and of community finally falls back
on a model of authenticity based on being-towards-death, which he finds
to be too introverted and "self-centered" to be used as a basis for a
model of community.
Anyway, this may be a way to come back to the question of Heidegger's own
politics by way of looking at his texts. It would also be a good way of
keeping the question open long enough to see what comes shining through.
(By the way, you keep using the term Heidegger's "socialism." Do you
mean National Socialism?)
Michael Harrawood
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
not yours. I think the problem with the music analogy, though, is that
it seems to long for a purity of forms, a place where the notes are the
same whether Mozart is a Nazi or a Communist. And this may not be the
best way to imagine the political aspects of the work. The movie you
referenced about Mozart's life is full of politics, by the way --
competition for patronage, national ideologies, and so forth. It is a
fairly recent idea that works or art should exist as pure forms, apart
from the context in which they were created. The things you want to
"shine through" -- I'm quoting you from memory -- Heidegger's
work may be there waiting to be seen, so don't foreclose on the project yet.
Another way to come at this might be to amplify Eric's remarks about
Sartre in another post today. If I'm remembering right, the main
critique of Sartre is that he tries to use Heidegger's work as an
ontological foundation of political action, and that he smuggles back
into Heidegger a notion of a subject, who must then choose authenticity.
This, the criticism runs, returns philosophy to the metaphysical
difference and to repositing the very agenda Heidegger wanted to open up
and interrogate.
The vexed question that many Heideggerians have been kicking around for a
while now, including pretty involved threads on this list a while back,
is: Where does Heidegger ever develop a philosophy of Community or
political action? Different guys have come up with different ways of
answering this question. Jean Luc Nancy tries to raise the issue of
community out of the Ready to Hand and the stuff about language; Jacques
Taminiaux reads Heidegger's interest in praxis, beginning with the Kant
book, as an attempt to come up with an account of community and of Dasein
as being something that is basically "being with." But then he finds
that Heidegger's own notion of praxis and of community finally falls back
on a model of authenticity based on being-towards-death, which he finds
to be too introverted and "self-centered" to be used as a basis for a
model of community.
Anyway, this may be a way to come back to the question of Heidegger's own
politics by way of looking at his texts. It would also be a good way of
keeping the question open long enough to see what comes shining through.
(By the way, you keep using the term Heidegger's "socialism." Do you
mean National Socialism?)
Michael Harrawood
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------