Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 18:06:35 +0100
Subject: Re:  Heidegger in Germany
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 07 December 1998

h.vantuijl-AT-kub.nl schrieb:
> Heidegger's Dasein is in the world and is above all a zooion logon
> echon.

Henk, Dasein is not a zoion logon echon. Dasein is not an animal which has the 
logos. Dasein is being-in-the-world. All through the twenties Heidegger is at 
pains to show what Dasein means in contradistinction to the metaphysical 
determination of human being. These efforts at demarcation vis-à-vis the zoion 
logon echon is one of the reasons why, from very early on, Heidegger continually 
holds lectures with "Logik" in the title. This continues up to the forties, with 
the Heraclitus lectures -- and they are all phenomenological analyses. The aim 
is to shift the locus of the _logos_ from predication to the apophantic logos 
(the hermeneutic _as_) which in turn is located (after the turning) within the 
truth (openness) of being itself.

You continue: 
> As Eckhard Wolz-Gottwald points out, this changes radically in
> the thirties when Heidegger craves for a better world. In the early
> thirties he believes that Germany can realise this world under the rule
> of National Socialism. After the debacle Heidegger places his hopes in a
> very distant future. 
> The older Heidegger appeals to us in the ways of religion - by calling
> our attention to the hinting Greeks in the other world.

This kind of psycho-biographical treatment of Heidegger’s thinking is totally 
superficial. It is the same strategy that Habermas pursues: explaining the 
thinking in terms of biography and psychology instead of engaging with it 
critically. Such talking _about_ thinkers is the predominant mode of academic 
discourse, whether it be Heidegger or any other philosopher. Such a way of 
talking is at best scholarly, at worst disingenuous, strategic or plain stupid. 
Instead it would be better the think _of_ what the thinkers are thinking. 

> The young 
> Heidegger in Marburg calls the attention of his audience to the hinting
> Greeks in a text that he values as much as the text of the Bible. 
> Both Heideggers are fascinating. But the younger one is the better
> philosopher in my opinion because he is still a teacher. The older one
> is a prophet of doom, who preaches the eclipse and a future that has its
> roots in the past. 

I find that there is something to be learned from both the younger and the older 
thinker. One has to discriminate and make allowances for Heidegger’s blind spots 
and prejudices instead of making global judgements that tend to throw the baby 
out with the bath water. Heidegger’s thinking of language in the fifties, as 
just one example, is some of the most profound thinking on this topic to be 
found in this century which opens up an entirely new way of thinking about 
language.

A future that did not have its roots in the past would be a violent tabula rasa, 
would it not? Like the attempts to eradicate the old after the French revolution 
or during the Cultural Revolution in China i.e. terror. Although Heidegger may 
yearn for the bygone Black Forest world, he knows it will not return. He calls 
it a “gewesene Welt”, a “bygone world” .

Heidegger asks:
“Könnte nicht, wenn schon die alte Bodenständigkeit verloren geht, ein neuer 
Grund und Boden dem Menschen zurückgeschenkt werden...?” 'Gelassenheit' in: 
_Gelassenheit_ Neske Verlag, Pfullingen 1959 S.21.

“Even if the old rootedness in the soil is fading, could not a new ground and 
soil be given back to humans...?”

These are not the words of a prophet of doom but of someone questioning history 
and what is held in store for us.

Michael
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