Re: Heidegger and Marx

Chris wrote:
communism as

exemplified by the Soviet Union was the most advanced form of the

technological frenzy of modern nihilism.

As confirmation of Chris's astute observations, one could consult
Volume 15 of the Gesamptausgabe, pp. 387-394. Taken from
transcripts of a 1973 seminar, Heidegger attempts to supplement the
underdeveloped remarks on Marx from the "Letter on Humanism." There
are some interesting twists and turns in Heidegger's interpretation.
Based mainly on Marx's "Contributions to a critique of Hegel's
_Philosophy of Right_," Heidegger claims that his reading is "not
political,' but is rather read against the background of the history
of being. Here Heidegger makes a perhaps startling claim: "The
position of the most extreme nihilism is reached with Marx" (393).
Marx's subjectivist ontology of man as worker consumates
metaphysically the Ge-stell confirmed in atomic energy (391).

Interestingly, it is after the sustained critique of Marx that
Heidegger launches his final return to Parmenides (as providing
access to being). On a superficial level this supports the idea
that Heidegger has replaced Nietzsche with Marx in the history of
being (in the twenty years since _What is Called Thinking_).

I take this as a sign that Heidegger recognized, by the end of his
life, the shortcomings of his Nietzsche interpretation.

Iain Thomson
UCSD Philosophy



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