From: "Stuart Elden" <Stuart.Elden-AT-clara.co.uk> Subject: Re: Rethinking the Polis Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 20:51:03 -0000 Christopher >> >>Thanks for the response, and the positioning of those in your seminar. I >>think it's good (and interesting) that politics PhD students are reading >>Heidegger. There are very few people in politics depts in the UK reading him >>(I'm one of them!). > >Gee, and there are about six in my department alone, including myself, who >wrote my dissertation on Heidegger's political philosophy. > I guess you must be in the States then? >>The Jaspers' letter is interesting, given the H-Jaspers correspondence. I >>read this very recently, and was surprised with how apolitical it was before >>1933. The whole discussion they have in the early 30s is about the crisis of >>the German University, not the crisis of the Republic. What's interesting is >>that H's means to the end of its Reassertion (something he had discussed >>with J) is through the Nazi party; a path on which J cannot join him. I >>haven't thought this through entirely; but I think it might be interesting >>in understanding J's attitude to H after 1933. > >You are assuming that Heidegger and Jaspers distinguished between the health >of the universities and the health of the republic. Heidegger certainly >thought that the German people was a spiritual matter, and that its health >could only be addressed spiritually, which is to say, through a reformation >of the universities. > >The difference between Jaspers and Heidegger on the role of the Nazis in >healing the German spirit can be put quite succintly: while both oppose the >technicization of the university, Jaspers is a cosmopolitan humanist, >whereas Heidegger thought that spirit is always particularized in a >historical community, i.e., a nation. The Nazis were a nationalist party. >It's not surprising that their different takes on what the health of the >spirit meant would lead them to vastly different political attitudes. > I'll give this some thought. I've been away for a couple of days and returned to a mountain of e-mail, etc. I'll have a think and try to respond - particularly to Rafael and Henk. Thanks Stuart --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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