From: "Stuart Elden" <stuartelden-AT-btconnect.com>
Subject: Heidegger, Geist, etc.
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2003 16:13:33 +0100


Thanks Michael for spelling out in more detail what Derrida's remarkable
book does. It's a model of careful and close reading I think. There are some
good essays on it in a book edited by David Wood called somehting like
Derrida, Heidegger, Spirit

The other indispensible context, it seems to me, when talking of Geist, is
Hegel. Heidegger's lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit [Geistes] date
from 1930/31.

On a few comments made elsewhere, I don't think that missions have to be
spiritual... maybe we can't talk easily of a mental mission, but an
intellectual mission? Universities have mission statements of course...

Heidegger obviously intended this term to carry a range of references, but
yes, spirit in that particular sense is all over the Rectorial Address.

If I recall, one of Derrida's key points is that spirit is bracketted, kept
out in the early works, only to appear in detail around this time, and later
writings.

And, elsewhere, Jud said "there is no such thing as impartiality as far as
Heidegger is concerned". I don't agree, perhaps not surprisingly. This buys
into the worst Cold-war rhetoric (Zhdanov's two camps doctrine) or George W.
Bush's 'you're either with us or against us'. This kind of thinking should
be resisted. It is entirely possible to appreciate the questions Heidegger
asked without liking his answers; to have different positions on his earlier
and later work; to think he was a great thinker but deplore his politics,
etc. etc. Sure you can be on either extreme, but this list alone shows that
many more positions can be taken. For other examples, read Levinas, Sartre,
Arendt, Klein, Strauss, Foucault, Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, Janicaud.
Indeed, the very piece of mine you cite has as a key aim a going beyond such
binary ways of thinking this question.

And, finally to Rene. The reason I was interested in the von Herrmann
comment is that it seems to me too early to find the solution to the problem
Heidegger got into in 1927 (division III, etc.) in 1929 or 1932. To my mind
it's in 1935/36 with the Nietzsche Auseinandersetzung and the Beitraege that
the possibilities first become evident. But of course, seeds are sown
earlier, which is why the 1932 comment for the Beitraege is so interesting.
von Herrmann's site you mention merely makes the point, rather than
justifies it. I clearly need to read his book on the Beitraege. But I just
don't see the later work so clearly in What is Metaphysics, Essence of
Ground, Fundamental Concepts, etc. But I'm planning on going over all this
again soon.

Some scattered thoughts therefore...

Stuart



     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---