From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Popper Pops Heidegger's Balloon
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:21:15 +0000


Jud wrote:

>(Popper did not, however, mention another of Heidegger's sycophantic
>misdemeanour: when Heidegger accepted the Rectorate of the University of 
>Freiburg
>during Hitler's ascendancy, he actually praised Hitler in his inaugural 
>address.)
>Not only did Popper find fault with Heidegger's moral character, but also 
>with
>his philosophy. As he put it bluntly, "One has to read Heidegger in the
>original to see what a swindler he was." For him, Heidegger's philosophy is 
>merely
>"empty verbiage put together in statements which are absolutely empty."

First of all, Popper is already ancient history even in the specific field 
of philosophy of science. His criterion of "falsification" has long been 
tossed aside by philosophers of science in favor of Kuhn's paradigm theory 
and Feyerebend's "anything goes" view. Secondly, the reason Popper thought 
Heidegger's philosophy was "empty verbiage" is the same as the reason every 
philosopher of SCIENCE thinks Heidegger's philosophy is empty verbiage - 
what Heidegger is doing is precisely subordinating science, thereby 
necessitating non-scientific verbiage, which will of course be received by 
scientists as empty, precisely because it is non-scientific. So citing 
Popper in opposition to Heidegger is a bit like Jimmy Carter citing his 5 
year old daughter on the matter of nuclear arms when he debated Ronald 
Reagan in 1980.

Anthony Crifasi

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