Heidegger's rectorial address, 'Self-determination
of the German University', May 1933, (see
also Heidegger's address to colleagues and
students at the occasion of the layalty oath
pledged to the new regime in March 1933;
his declaration of support for the referendum
of 12 November 1933 in which Hitler called
on Germany to ratify his exit from the League
of Nations; Heidegger's commemoration, on
1 June 1933, of the death of Albert Leo Schlageter,
a nationalist martyr executed by the occupying
French forces in the Ruhr; the speech on
'Labour-Service and University' of 20 June
1933, and the closely related 'Ruf zum Arbeitsdienst'
('Summons to Labour Battalions') of 23 January
1934, also a photograph of Rektor Heidegger
surrounded by uniformed Nazi officials and
thugs at a celebration of refusal and vengence
on Armistice Day 1933).
Given Heidegger's clear alignment with Nazism,
and the fact that he was banned from teaching
by the Allied powers from 1945 until 1951
how can we explain his continued influence
on western thought ?
We shall begin by outlining Heidegger's thought,
giving an assessment of it, then attempting
to draw some conclusions from what we have
learnt.
Heidegger's thought can be divided into two
parts, pre-war and post-war. The pre-war
thought, and indeed a general flavour of
all Heidegger's thought is revealed in 'Being
and Time', published in 1927. In it, Heidegger
begins by posing the question of 'Being':
any thought, any philosophy, must contain
the pre-supposition of what it means for
something to 'be', however since the pre-socratics
no-one has actually attempted to deal with
the question of what we mean by 'Being'.
Early on in 'Being and Time' Heidegger claims
that the being of man (which he called 'Dasein',
or 'being-there') has a privilaged access
to Being, and hence a study of Dasein will
help us to discover the meaning of Being,
the rest of the book is then devoted to a
study of Dasein.
Heidegger's basic presentation of Dasein
is of it being essentially involved in the
world, as opposed to being essentially a
consciousness which we must then attempt
to 'hook-onto' the world. Any problems about
knowledge of the world or of the self are
condemned by Heidegger as self-contradictory:
by definition man is a part of the world,
we become conscious of ourselves by acting
in the world. Having established that Dasein
is a unity of world and consciousness, Heidegger
then points out that man is not one thing
among many things, but relates to the world
in a particular way, 'concern' - we care
about the way things are, we are interested
in what will happen. He then attempts to
characterise our general activities in the
world: our practical activities encounter
things as just 'there', as being 'present-at
hand' and the tools that we use as things
'ready-at-hand'. Similarly, our original
encounter with space is not north-south but
near-far/up-down. However when we encounter
other people, it is not generally as another
Dasein, concerned with the world, but as
just another thing, another object, this
objectification of the world Heidegger calls
an inauthentic existence. Our experience
of the world is of not being at home in the
world, we have a fundamental anxiety in that
unlike things we have a responsibility as
to how we will live in the world, and the
certainity of death makes this an individual
responsibility. The rest of the book deals
with further elaborations about guilt, conscience,
authenticity, living in time etc and the
book ends with Heidegger promising that having
characterised Dasein, Being itself would
be examined in the next book. It seems that
Heidegger was unable to do this, his attempt
to come to terms with the problems he faced
gave rise to his post-war thought.
Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism', published
in 1947, is still concerned with Being, but
two very noticable changes have occurred,
which characterise Heidegger's post-war thinking:
instead of acting, it is thought and poetry
that are primary, and instead of attempting
to answer the question 'what is Being', Heidegger
is more concerned about becoming a 'custodian'
of Being.
'Language is the house of Being. Man dwells
in this house. Those who think and those
who create poetry are the custodians of the
dwelling.'
The letter is an attack on French existentialism,
it is anti-humanist in the sense that man
is not primary: it is not man who determines
Being, but Being which, via language, discloses
itself to and in man. 'Thrown into the truth
of Being by Being', man is now watchman over
this truth. He is the sentinel in the 'clearing',
'the shepherd of Being'.
In later writings such as 'Building Dwelling
Thinking' and 'Whahinking Signifies' Heidegger
continues to emphasise conservation instead
of domination; he calls 'logic' an ingathering,
a harvesting, a collecting and re-membering
of the dispersed vestiges of Being; to 'think'
is to tend on Being; the artist's work is
a literal 'drawing up to light from the well
of Being'; to create is to bring to light,
and to guard what is brought to light as
man ought to guard the earth from which he
draws sustenance and on which he builds.
Technology has ravaged the earth and degraded
natural forms to mere utility, since Roman
engineering and seventeenth century rationalism,
Western technology has not been a vocation
but a provocation and an imperialism.
When dealing with Heidegger's work we invariably
run up against time/history. This can be
demonstrated from a number of directions:
In his general understanding of philosophic
history Heidegger makes the distinction between
the pre-socratic philosophers and the philosophic
tradition from Socrates and Plato up to the
present day. This distinction is made on
the basis of a an attitude to Being: to the
pre-socratics, Heidegger claims, Being was
approached as a question still to be answered,
the rest of the philosophical tradition made
the assumption that Being was intuitively
understandable, they denied the question
of Being.
There is a chain made by Nietzsche, Heidegger
and Derrida, each claiming the end of physics
and that their thought is post- philosophic.
We can construct a series of philosophical
epochs, the original enlightenment concern
with problems of the self, knowledge of the
external world, political and moral philosophy,
religion and the existence of God etc. (Descartes,
Berkley, Hume, Locke etc); this would then
be followed by Kant attempting to solve the
traditional problems by a more rigorous logical
construction of the arguments, and finally
the nineteenth century in which the problem
of philosophy to come to a body of scientific
knowledge results in much broader philosophies,
taking very big steps back from the data
in order to gather it all up again: Schopenhauer
rejecting the evidence of the world as caused
by the will, which is evil, and advocating
the eastern path of no-self; Hegel who attempts
to introduce time/process/history into the
attempt to make sense of philosophy - all
the triads, negation of the negations etc
are simply attempting to relate the different
philosophies as containing certain truths
under certain circumstances; Nietzsche who
also (like Schopenhauer) rejected philosophy
but noogether with the world, rather together
with the christian west. He attempted to
return to the pre-christian west (rather
than to the east)
Although Time seems so important when understanding
Heidegger, he in makes little effort to relate
theory to practise, thus showing the essential
error in idealism, the failure to dialectically
relate theory and practise, simultaneously
abstracting the experience of the world and
applying that abstracheory back into social-historical
practise.
But as Derrida shows in 'Spurs', with the
example of Nietzsche's note "I have
forgotten my umbrella", at what point
can we finish an assessment ? Suppose we
explain Heidegger's petit-bourgeois failings,
his philosophical blind-spots that failed
to warn him about fascism, the reactionary
nature of his value-judgements and artistic
taste, is there some list of incorrechings
that we can mark off against Heidegger, and
conclude by saying "this is your grade"
? Sartre's attempts to theorise an individual,
ironically assumed an essence to the individual
independent of other factors. While is it
a fact that Heidegger was a nazi, the meaning
of that act is historically variable.
Examine Heidegger's use of Time. History
is seen as hiding the Truth since a pre-socratic
Golden Age - a primal scene when the truth
was present and the meaning of Being was
struggled for. The change from the use of
either Nature or the Individual as explanatory
subjects for phenomena - as practised by
Descartes-Locke-Berkley-Hume-Kant between
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- towards the philosophies of Hegel - Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche - is the cultural process which
was still at work in Heidegger.
From the physics of Plato and medieval philosophy
- the rising bourgeoise could find no answers
to the problems that they faced. Hence the
essentially practical nature of the early
thought of modern philosophy. questions about
the state - morality - perception - knowledge
- which by the ninteenth century has served
their purpose of defeating the world view
of feudalism - and hence became problematic
as a coherent world view themselves. It is
in reponse to the phenomena of modern philosophy
that the ninteenth century thinkers gain
their essential characteristics. For Hegel
- the various contradictions of philosophy
are not seen as a fatal flaw in philosophy
- but as the promise of a more certain truth
- given enough intellectual effort. Hegel
develops not just a philosophy - must one
which encompasses all philosophy - a philosophy
- a huge machine explaining the variations
between different philosophies with an awsome
array of connections: processes - triads
- Being - Spirit - the negation of the negation
etc. Schopenhauer sees philosophy as being
part of the world of the will - an evil chimera
whose promises of happiness - satisfaction
- truth are a deception - leading only to
suffering. Schopenhauer sees the West itself
as in error - requiring the Eastern remedy
of non-action - no- self - to escape from
the world of desire. Nietzsche also sees
the problem of philosophy as being a part
of a general error in the western world view
- but sees this error has having a specific
history in the west - a fight between the
resentful
- cowardly weak and the noble - cultured
strong - which was won by the weak with the
rise of Christianity - which corrupted the
Roman Empire and has corrupted and weakened
western culture and the western mind ever
since.
Given this historical setting - where does
Heidegger fit in ? Like Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche - he finds philosophy as containing
a basic flaw - yet where Nietzsche places
the source of this failing in ideological
struggle - and Schopenhauer in the human
condition - Heidegger seems to have no explanation
for this 'fall' (lack of Will to Thought
?) He has no conception of ideological closure
- historical epochs - archaeology of knowledge
etc - hence he does not know the meaning
of his own thought - like many bourgeois
thinkers he has only a 'natural' conception
of the individual and the ontological - a
hazy conception of the historical - and no
conception of the sociological and material
dimensions of the subject. Additionally he
has no role to play in the pre-ninteenth
century debates - as the historical necessity
for the debates has long since passed - yet
he has not the strength to face the post-modern
horizon, except in an act of refusal and
horror.
What was Heidegger's relation to modernisn
? He often seems to be seen as a radical
modern thinker - questioning the very foundations
of industrial - secular society - yet were
his analyses of the west and of modern technology
meaningful ?
Heidegger saw the rise of modern technology
as de-humanising man - a rather generalising
luddite view - but repeated with much insistance
- so we assume that was the effect it had
on him - at least (obviously he didn't actually
do any experiments - research or empirical
studies to attempt to validate any of his
generalisations). What did he actually want
to do about the situation ? Now this is really
the crux of both the appeal and the emptiness
of Heidegger - because he didn't actually
want to do anything particularly practical
- but his poetic language - calling to mind
a time of farmers - shepherds - greek gods
- nature - community - yet used to describe
anthropological/ontological structures rather
than sociological ones - is his great appeal.
Is it possible to cover the world - this
harsh - industrial - unhuman world - with
a language of nature - of high culture -
of artistic beauty ? Or - perhaps if we starhinking
like Heidegger suggests (seeing ourselves
as guardians - not exploiters etc) the world
will begin to change too. Rather like hoping
that the pin-ups with their enormous soft
breasts - that the workers cover their hard,
oily machinary with will somehow change the
nature of the machine.
Post-modernisn uses the power of the consumer
image - and the technology that reproduces
that image - to create a different subjectivity.
Heidegger cannot remain part of the old culture
and has not the strength of vision to become
part of the new. He is the compost of philosophy,
thought that has rotted.
What does Heidegger desire ? The understanding
of derire in Heidegger is itself best understood
as the desire for truth being the sublimation
of a repressed desire for a forbidden object.
His later views, rejecting the will, concern
with letting Being be etc, may similarly
be seen as (1) an expression of a contradiction
in rejecting and exhibiting desire for truth,
the existence of a contradiction itself being
a cypher for desire, and (2) loss of an essential
part of listening to Being - Heidegger is
ignorant of ecstacy, frenzy, hallucination,
punishment, fear etc as the mouth of the
oracle of Being, and his frigidness is punished
with ignorance.
One strand of Heidegger's religious attitude
is that of the importance of the religious
tone of his work - his influence on Lacan
can be seen in Lacan's identification of
atheism with the parricidal desire - which
itself ties in with Heidegger's description
of 'theyness'.
A world-view must be able to match the other
world views with which it is competing, it
must have a culture, a philosophy, a morality,
etc and be sufficiently deep enough to satisfy
the intellectual. Marxism's success is not
its truth, but because it comes near this
ideal; similarly Heidegger has appeal, albeit
limited, because he seems to contain the
kernal of a whole world view.
Note that the media/establishment provides
the primal structure with which all world
views must currently match. They must provide
a response to the news and current affairs,
to opinion (morality, taste, social policy),
response to the establishment apologists,
as well as matching the consumerist practise
of capitalism which is a simultaneous act
of worship and obedience to the law.
Can there be a right-wing radicalism ? What
are the rightist roots within radicalism
? A distaste for the masses (or at least
an ambiguous relationship to them - a desire
not to listen to their wishes, but yet to
do what it best for them), the conception
of the enlightened dictator, the superman,
the progressive few against the dull and
dangerous many, the wish to hibernate againsechnology
instead of technology of the people, by the
people, for the people.
Waterhouse, in his criticism of Heidegger,
explains his thought by his psychology -
that he is a romantic - but this fails to
deal with his popularity. Steiner sees his
thought as challanging our conceptions of
the world, even if we don't agree with him.
This fails to take account of what Heidegger
didn't say, and hence what we have to 'fill
in' even before we can confront him - science,
democracy, freedom etc. Similarly Steiner
fails to include the philosophical background
within which Heidegger's philosophy was written.
The positivist arguments against it fail
in that today we don't accept positivist
understandings of truth as representation,
but rather of truth as effect: the truth
of Heidegger is the truth of the image of
Heidegger, that which we imagine of Heidegger,
and that which we can't imagine: sex, morals,
love, happiness etc.
© John Mann 1984
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