Evans Experientialism
Evans Experientialism
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[The Scorpion, Issue 23, 2004] | ||||
Heidegger grew up in a committed Catholic
family in Baden, a strongly Catholic
part
of Southern Germany near the Swiss
border.
His father was the Sexton of the Catholic
parish of Messkirsch, and young Martin
was
educated at grammar schools in Constance
and Freiburg which, though not strictly
Jesuit
since the abolition of the Society
of Jesus
in 1773, were nevertheless strongly
influenced
by Jesuitism. It was at Constance that
his
interest in philosophy first developed,
having
been given a copy of Brentano's 'On
the Manifold
Meaning of Being according to Aristotle'
by Conrad Grober, later Archbishop
of Freiburg.
In 1909 Heidegger applied to join the
Jesuit
order in Austria but was rejected on
health
grounds and switched instead to the
theological
seminary in Freiburg. This trajectory
was
also ended by health problems and Heidegger
changed first to the study of mathematics
and logic, and then philosophy. Ott
attaches
great importance to Heidegger's Catholic
origins as he believes that it was
the wrestling
with the faith of his birth which set
up
a series of conflicts in Heidegger's
deepest
soul, this having various manifestations
in his thought and actions over the
decades.
Having married a Lutheran Heidegger
distanced
himself from Catholicism to the point
where
he came to be regarded by many as a
Protestant
thinker, or at least as a link man
between
philosophy and Protestant theology,
though
Heidegger himself later claimed to
have remained
a Catholic all of his life. The real
relevance
of this in Ott's contention is that
the break
with the system of Catholicism allowed
Heidegger
to pursue a style of philosophy not
ultimately
Protestant so much as a style in which
"ethical
and theological questions were deliberarely
not asked."
Having been made a full professor of philosophy
at Freiburg to succeed his former mentor
Husserl in 1929, Heidegger went on
to become
Rector in 1933, making the notorious
pro-Hitler
remarks in his inaugural address. Taking
issue with the 'official' Heideggerian
line
expressed in Facts and Thoughts and
elsewhere
regarding the Freiburg Rectorship,
Ott argues
persuasively that Heidegger became
Rector
as a result of a carefully conducted
plan
executed by a cadre of National Socialist
lecturers. Ott further claims that
Heidegger
used his position as Rector to carry
out
the Gleichschatung (restructuring along
National
Socialist lines) of Freiburg University,
thereby lending the authority of one
of Germany's
foremost thinkers to the whole nationwide
process. At this point Heidegger was
clearly
committed to the pushing through of
a radically
authoritarian reformation of German
academic
policy, and with himself as the leading
figure
in this process. This, together with
the
fact that he declared in favour of
Hitler
in the vote of 12th November 1933 would
appear
to argue against the claim before the
denazification
committee in 1945 that he had realized
by
the summer of 1933 that events were
moving
in a direction contrary to his own
political
values. Ott also reveals that Heidegger
had
a part in the removal and attempted
removal
of several academics from their posts
due
to their 'political unreliability'.
Nevertheless,
Heidegger had powerful enemies within
National
Socialist institutions, notably Erich
Jaensch,
who regarded Heidegger as representative
of the previous, decadent order. With
the
passage of time it became clear that
his
own interpretation of National Socialism
was not going to predominate; that,
as Ott
puts it, "1933 was the crucial
event,
the moment of truth - but the Germans
failed
to recognize it. They turned their
backs
on the interpreter of the event. So
the essence
of Truth remained veiled, fleeing from
the
'unique and unrepeatable time-space'
to seek
refuge in 'the immemorial incipience
of the
beginning' ".This attitude, born
of
Heidegger's philosophy also helps to
explain
why he continued to hold out hope for
an
eventual German rebirth, even amongst
the
ruins of 1945.
As further examples of the congruity of Heidegger's
thought and National Socialism Ott
cites
the use of militaristic language -
words
and phrases such as 'struggle', 'fighting
front', and 'combat' litter the works
of
this period. and the organisation of
the
academic summer camps at which Heidegger
intended to inculcate within a generation
of students an understanding of his
philosophical
principles. These camps took place
in an
SA-like military atmosphere, and it
was here
that a conflict arose with the representatives
of the more down to earth National
Socialism,
apparently over Heidegger's failure
to give
prominence to the Party's racial doctrine.
Later, this issue re-emerged as Heidegger
challenged the Party-line interpretation
of Nietzsche as promoted by Alfred
Baumler.
Heidegger's attitude towards the Jews was
ambivalent. On the one hand he was
capable
of writing "...what is at stake
here
is nothing less than the need to recognize
without delay that we face a choice
between
sustaining our German intellectual
life through
a renewed infusion of genuine native
teachers
and educators, or abandoning it once
and
for all to the growing Jewish influence
-
in both the wider and narrower sense.
We
shall get back on the right track only
if
we are able to promote the careers
of a new
generation of teachers without harassment
and unhelpful confrontation."
(Letter
to Victor Schwoerer, 2.10.1929). On
the other
hand his assistant Werner Brock was
Jewish,
as was a substantial group of his students,
including, at different times, Hannah
Arendt
and Herbert Marcuse. This ambivalence
was
reflected in the National Socialist
attitude
towards Heidegger, with many regarding
him
as a loyal, if idiosyncratic, party
member,
while others argued that his thought
had
a particular appeal for Jews because
of its
supposed "hairsplitting sophistries",
which was held to be similar to Talmudic
thought.
Ott details the career of Heidegger's post-war
tribulations and eventual rehabilitation
- the part occupation of his house,
the threats
to confiscate his library, the teachng
ban,
and then later the triumphant return
to public
lecturing on such subjects as 'The
arts in
the age of technology', and 'What does
it
mean to think? Heidegger's thought
was taken
up by the circle around Jean-Paul Sartre
and had a significant influence on
French
existentialism and beyond, reaching
into
such diverse areas as interpretations
of
Nietzsche, the sociology of everyday
life,
the conservative critique of technology
and
linguistics.
So where does this leave Ott's contention
that Heidegger was plagued by his difficult
relationship with the faith of his
birth?
It seems clear enough that Heidegger
hankered
after a rebirth of German intellectual
life
drawing on the pre-Socratics, particularly
Parmenides and Heraclitus. It seems
that
he came to see Christian philosophy
as untenable
since it assumes the answers before
the questions
are asked, and for Heidegger the philosopher's
duty is to question the very ground
upon
which he stands. However, this is not
the
same as an outright rejection of Christianity,
and indeed Ott describes how Heidegger
was
buried as a Catholic. Perhaps the answer
lies in Guillaume Faye's idea regarding
the
surpassing of Christianity (see The
Scorpion,
issue 13), in which the German and
European
rebirth will not appear out of nowhere
as
a totally new culture, nor will it
be a recreation
of a largely unknowable past, but rather
it will integrate the higher elements
of
the various periods of our past in
a questioning
but confident and invigorating new
synthesis. [The Scorpion, Issue 23, 2004] | ||||
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