File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9812, message 147


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




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