Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:08:14 -0800
From: Kenneth Johnson <beeso-AT-pop.charter.net>
Subject: Re: Nietzsche/Nazism - was Poopper Poop Jud's Ballon


>On Thursday, October 30, 2003, at 09:56  PM, GEVANS613-AT-aol.com wrote:
>
>> PS. I have reread the text above and can spot nothing which might be
>> considered to be even slightly ad ohm towards you personally, in spite
>> of the fact
>> that I deeply resent your remark that I don't have any grasp
>> whatsoever of his
>> philosophy. I believe I have a profound understanding of what is
>> presented as
>> his 'philosophy.'


malcolm, I'm very appreciative of your last two posts, they're cogently
written and construct insightful images of the chronology of events that
excited Heidegger toward high hopes for the inception of a new stage in the
"on the way" of the human race, an on the way that unfortunately lost its
way from gross incompetency by those of limited vision and ran off into the
groundless instead of elevation to a higher future - -

cogent: adj. Having the power to persuade or convince, persuasive,
convincing, suasive, influential, compelling, forceful, dynamic,
charismatic, winning, unpersuasive (antonym), unconvincing (antonym)

kenneth


you wrote:

>I wasn't trying to insult you, or cause you any pain, but that is my
>honest opinion of your (non) reading of Heidegger, obviously you don't
>have to agree with me. I just think it's kind of funny you refuse to
>read his philosophy yet claim to profoundly understand it. I think you
>probably have a profound understanding of your own non reading of
>Heidegger's philosophy but maybe I'm just being pedantic. But seeing as
>you are so interested in this topic, and I'm into re-reading sections
>of H's Nietzsche, lets keep going then shall we? I'll take that as a
>yes.
>
>So... in the context of a constructive confrontation with the 'great
>beginnings' of the German revolution of the early to mid 30's, for
>Heidegger, and in contrast to the Nazi's mythic appeal to the blood and
>earth of the German nation (volk) and its common destiny, "there is no
>longer any goal in and through which all the forces of the historical
>existence of peoples can cohere and in the direction of which they can
>develop" (Nietzsche vol1, p. 157). However, at this early point in the
>Nietzsche lectures Nietzsche's re-valuing, as "the metaphysical task of
>ordering beings as a whole" (p. 157), would be such a destining goal so
>long as it is grounded in a way which could "awaken and liberate those
>powers which lend the newly established goal its surpassing energy to
>inspire commitment" (p. 157). You need the commitment of the folk to a
>new re-valuing of all past values, and this re-valuing will only work
>if it can inspire the folk as a whole. Obviously you can take this
>notion of a 're-valuing' and just run with it as some sort of Nazi
>ideology, and that would spare you having to read any further or
>actually think about what 're-valuing' might mean for Heidegger. I
>assume you are of the opinion that he simply cedes all philosophical
>insight to the idiots that were responsible for the Nazi's ideological
>reading of Nietzsche. I think he was so convinced of his own unique
>insight that the ideology would have been too far beneath him to
>accept, in fact he seems to have held it in contempt. Ideology also
>must be 'destroyed' along with all other traditional thinking in order
>for a truly revolutionary re-valuing of all values to actually speak to
>and re-invigorate the folk, otherwise it's just the same old Platonic
>puppet masters and shadows on the wall. I'd say the re-valuing is yet
>to be accomplished for Heidegger, and even then it needs to
>re-accomplish itself constantly, keeping the valuation open and
>self-critical, just as history is always an openness to the future.
>
>Only with this authentic and genuine re-valuing, with this awakening
>into the metaphysical destiny of a people, can there be the "growth of
>forces which sustain and propel preparation of a new realm, the advance
>into it, and the cultivation of what unfolds within it, forces which
>induce it to undertake bold deeds" (p. 158). This notion of 'bold
>deeds' is also one you might want to run with, it's great for that
>automatic knee jerk reaction, i.e. the 'boldness' of operation Otto,
>Barbarossa etc. But these are all in the future, and while
>revolutionary talk like Heidegger's can include war as a consequence,
>as it did in the American and French revolutions for instance, I'm not
>at all sure that this is his sole intent. But we'll need to read on to
>see I guess, won't we?
>
>The goal or telos of this 'new realm' then, is still open, still a
>matter for struggle. Yet in a critique of insular nationalism this
>historical destiny cannot be limited to mere nations, "it must be
>European at least" (p. 158). For Heidegger (N vol3, p. 251) asserts
>that "Nietzsche's metaphysics is at its core never a specifically
>German philosophy. It is European, global". From Heidegger's
>perspective the historical destiny of Western civilization in the
>1930's necessarily involved the European nations as a whole locked into
>the metaphysical task of establishing Nietzsche's goal of an ordering
>and re-valuation of beings as a whole. This establishment would be:
>
>in itself confrontation, the initiation of struggle. But the genuine
>struggle
>is the one in which those who struggle excel, first the one then the
>other,
>and in which the power for such excelling unfolds within them (N1, p.
>158).
>
>Now of course your low brow reading of this would be in terms of the
>struggle against Fascist expansionism in WW2. But the confrontation
>here is about a European re-valuation of all traditional values, an
>internationalist struggle not defined by nationalist German values
>being imposed through wars of attrition or annihilation, but a struggle
>for Europe together in which European folk as a whole excel and surpass
>themselves. This surpassing is philosophical in nature, it has to do
>with the European relation to historical truth because Europe was/is
>for Heidegger the origin of the current global order. Not just Germany.
>This internationalist or European focus, and indeed the call for an
>ongoing revolution, was not in favour in the Nazi hierarchy after 1934,
>if ever. Once they had power the leaders were content with
>consolidating it for the future colonial wars of conquest in the east.
>No doubt you'll paper over this internationalist distinction and keep
>on ploughing your ideological non reading.
>
>On my reading however, I think that through these lectures Heidegger
>was attempting to engage in just such an excelling confrontation with
>the ideological leadership of his Nazi Party, in an attempt to awaken
>them to their metaphysical task. As a spiritual fuehrer, if he had been
>able "to direct everything, starting from its foundations, toward the
>good in 1933" ('Der Spiegel Interview', p. 19), perhaps the European
>peoples as a whole might have been directed along the path leading
>towards a confrontation with their own nihilism. This Heideggerean
>movement towards the 'good', a 'genuine struggle' between the nations
>of Europe, would presumably have been made possible by a
>philosophically informed Nazi leadership leading the German revolution
>towards the historical truth of the European origins of global order,
>or what in Heidegger's later texts will become the truth of a
>technological order, the enframing, Gestell. Heidegger was convinced
>that the German revolution offered a moment in history where this truly
>European destiny could disclose itself to the peoples of Europe and
>thus globally.
>
>Now since the Germans were supposedly the historical destiny of the
>West, does this not mean that for Heidegger, pragmatically speaking,
>Nazism alone stood on the threshold of a new beginning, a new positing
>of values which it had already 'naively' grounded in a virulently
>racist biologism of blood and earth? The assertion of German racial
>superiority would then only need to be awakened to its 'metaphysical
>essence and destiny' in order to do away with the illusion of
>compromise with the old order and its nihilism. Perhaps such a world
>historical possibility marks the limit of Heidegger's 'optimism' in the
>1930's: An optimism grounded in the absurd dream of a benign
>dictatorship of the Nazi will to power, on the threshold of, and open
>to, the historical truth of Being?
>
>As I keep saying on this list; Im Bann des Anfangs. It's an absurdity,
>an overweening naivety, but it's not Nazi ideology. What do you reckon
>Jud?
>
>Cheers,
>
>Malcolm
>
>
>
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