Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 13:59:56 +0100
Subject: Re: questions


Cologne, 28 January 1999

JSteppling-AT-aol.com schrieb:
> I've been trying to follow some of this discussion, and am finding it quite
> good although I would take it as a great favor if anyone wanted to give me a
> capsule update on Henk's agument that Greg (is it?) and rafael are responding
> to. i am by no means a Heidegger expert (hence my desire to join this group
> and learn) but if I am understanding some of this correctly I find the
> argument that H's philosophy to be inherently fascistic a little difficult to
> accept. But maybe someone will help here. Bear with my ignorance of this on-
> going debate and thanks. js 

js,
yes, there is a vast number of published texts (I haven't read them all myself), 
Heidegger is a complex, multi-faceted thinker, and also a simple thinker, and 
it is especially the simplicity which is hard not to overlook and brush off as 
"trivial".

Henk's thesis is that Heidegger's thinking (not just the man, the professor, 
cirizen, etc.) "went wrong". So there would be an inherent fascistoid tendency 
in the thinking itself. 

That's why it is important that Henk not provide misleading paraphrases of 
Heidegger's text (to which I objected yesterday) or suggest that we don't know 
what Heidegger was thinking during the war because his son, Hermann, is 
suppressing publication of texts (which could show perhaps that Heidegger was 
indeed an outright fascist). A lot can be done by way of (dishonest character)
assassination through innuendo.

If one accepted Henk's paraphrase of "leadership is necessary in these horrible 
times", that could be taken as meaning that Heidegger indeed accepted the 
necessity of the Fuehrer "in these horrible times" (a sentiment which certainly 
held by very many in the NS period). And that would be "fascistoid", wouldn't 
it? But Heidegger is saying nothing of the kind in the disputed passage.

Then Henk is flanked by a constant stream of ironical and not so ironical 
innuendo from Bob Scheetz to the effect that Heidegger was a very nasty 
character indeed, morally reprehensible, etc. (This is an easy role to play.)

Rafael's latest post quotes a text written during the war (i.e. not as post-war 
apologetics) that shows just how far H. had distanced himself from regarding NS 
as a movement offering the potential of an overcoming of nihilism. On the 
contrary, NS has realized total nihilism on an everyday level, according to H. 
H. is living in the midst of this nihilism-cum-reality as he writes this text 
and he is able to relate his experience of the war and NS to his thinking in a 
convincing way (to my mind), which of course does and should leave philosophical 
questions open.

Habermas criticizes Heidegger's thinking after 1929 as "Verweltanschaulichung 
der Theorie" (= turning theory into a Weltanschauung; Foreword to Farias' book, 
S.18) and as "seinsgeschichtlicher Fatalismus" (=fatalism with respect to the 
history of being; S.27). Habermas accuses Heidegger of "Abstraktion durch 
Verwesentlichung" under the "nivellierenden Blick des Seinsphilosophen" (= 
turning things into essences by way of abstraction under the levelling gaze of 
the philosopher of being; S.32). The accusation of "Verweltanschaulichung" seems 
to mean that Heidegger conveniently incorporated his personal experiences during 
the thirties and forties into his thinking, thus providing them with some sort 
of world-historical justification, i.e. that Heidegger makes up a sort of 
self-serving apology for his actions as he goes along. (But any thinker thinks 
his existence!) Habermas' psychobiographical approach to Heidegger has appeal 
because it is easy to follow and cogent. Habermas repeats continually the 
assertion that Heidegger claims a "privileged access to truth" (S.33) for 
himself (citing appropriate passages in Heidegger which suggest this), not only 
in this Foreword, but also in the lecture on Heidegger's "subversion of 
occidental rationalism". To my mind, this is merely a rhetorical ruse on 
Habermas' part: the paths in thinking are _there_ for anyone at all to try to 
follow, and _there are_ the "rare few" more dedicated readers who can indeed 
make something of them.

Heidegger was confronted again and again with the experience that his thinking 
was thoroughly misunderstood, despite all efforts on his own part to avoid or 
clear up these misunderstandings. These misunderstandings are repeated almost 
verbatim to the present day (e.g. Habermas; cf. my last long post to Antti). It 
is clear to me from my reading of Heidegger that he regarded his thinking of 
being an opening up of, or at least, the transition to an Other Beginning in 
western history. Heidegger stuck _unerringly_ to this conviction. It is the 
greatness of this claim that irks people (really gets up their noses) and calls 
his detractors onto the scene in the attempt to show, by any means available, 
that Heidegger's unerring conviction about his own thinking is only a petty 
conceit and megalomania.

The attacks come from all sides and angles, some are worth taking seriously and 
some are not. It is completely justified that Heidegger's thinking be subject to 
the closest of scrutiny and that it has to withstand the strongest and harshest 
of objections. If it withstands these tests, or undergoes modifications and 
elaborations, that is all to the good. 

Habermas and many others fight tooth and claw against surrendering (some version 
of) the metaphysics of subjectivity. Habermas, in particular, has a vital 
interest in repudiating Heidegger's thinking because it is life-threatening to 
his own Theory of Communicative Action. He cannot afford to see the dimension of 
_alaetheia_ because that would mean that truth is not located originarily in the 
communication between subjects, but in a more fundamental, prior dimension which 
has to be thought in its own right and would be beyond the reach of Habermas' 
theory. So when Habermas talks of Heidegger "undermining", he means in the first 
place implicitly his own theory. My bet is that Habermas' theory will indeed be 
swept aside and forgotten in time, not only because it is such a thrown-together 
cut-and-paste job but because the uncovering of the dimension of _alaetheia_ 
could well gain in historical credence as we learn to live in it.

In ny view, Heidegger is a kind of touchstone against which a thinker can test 
their mettle and prove whether they are worthy of the title "thinker". I find 
that Heidegger's texts speak very directly to us in our times.

The "loving dispute" of philosophy will continue, flanked by any number of minor 
skirmishes, some of them ugly.

Michael
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