From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:54:20 EST Subject: Biologism Two Biologism Two. Malcolm: However, given the context of our current reading, how proximal might this emphasis on the 'biological' essence of will to power as art - an essence never fully explicated by either Nietzsche or Heidegger - be to that of a fascist aesthetic of the body, especially given that Heidegger is obviously reinterpreting the Nazi emphasis on 'blood' and its animality of human being? Jud: Most people laugh at 'Nazi art' - those kitsch, butch, chunky, chiselled modernist concrete robots and thick-thighed wide-hipped baby machines bearing scythes. There is a surprising similarity in all totalitarian art, and if one removed the titles and giveaways signalling symbols and from Nazi statuary and paintings and stuck a few Cyrillic subject cards around the place you could easily fool someone into believing it was 'socialist realism. Look at the crap that the North Koreans call art and remove the beautiful and functional Han'gul alphabet [probably the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing writing system in the world] and if one ignores the epicanthic folds in the eyes of the subjects one could be at a Nuremberg Rally all over again. Are we to suppose that the 'aesthetic Heidegger admired such hideous bullshit? How come such an aesthete was not repelled from Nazism merely on the basis of viewing the clumsy ordure that passed for art in the parks and streets, which were soiled with such offensive rubbish? Malcolm: For the Nazi's their folk were human material, literally breeding stock, and a material human resource in the service of the state. I was introduced to one of Hans Frank's grandsons by my former supervisor while researching my thesis. His grandmother had been part of the Aryan eugenics program, living in a sort of Nazi pagan nunnery were they were visited by selected members of the Nazi hierarchy to be inseminated, just as you would run a cattle breeding program. This guy had a lot of issues to work through and my supervisor asked me to talk to him honestly about Heidegger's Nazism. I basically told him I thought it was an open-ended problem, although a philosophical one rather than a mundane political problem. He decided not to continue with his Heidegger research as it was all to close to the bone so to speak. Which is fair enough. Jud: Totalitarian, right wing forms of government love this game of treating women as objects in some sexual zoo. The Japanese perverts were up to the same game urging women to shag for their country Malcolm: I do think Heidegger is dealing with the Nazi ideology of 'biologism' here, and he is necessarily close to his subject, but it's in the context of a philosophical reinterpretation and retrieval of Nietzsche from the ideological misuse of his philosophy for the Nazi biological world view. Jud: Heidegger as an apologist for Nietzsche's notions of the Ubermenschen and racial superiority? It makes no sense to me as a theory for he had already made it quite plain the Hitler's racial theories were the right ones by ostentatiously joining the Nazi Party and characterising Hitler and thereby Hitlerism as the one true reality. In other words his public statements contradict and imagined NEED to de-biologise Nietzsche. HE believed in it, Hitler believed in it Heidegger believed in Hitler and to fillet Nietzsche of racialist notions was to do a disservice to his own announced beliefs as an extrapolation of the frenzied support he rendered to Herr Adolf Holocaust himself. Malcolm: For me this does not imply that Heidegger was party to the crude anti-Semitic racism of 'blood and earth', of German biological superiority, but on the contrary is attempting to rescue the will to power from its perversion in Nazi biologism. Jud: Blood and earth? Then what about: 'That is the power to preserve, in the deepest way, the strengths [of the Volk] which are rooted in soil and blood.' A discourse on May 1933. About the spirituality of the German people. Ibidem, p. 4.? And 'Needless to say, non-Aryans shall not appear on the signature page.' Written in the bottom of a letter - on December 13, 1933 - to a group of German academics, requesting financial support for a book of pro-Hitler speeches by professors that was to be circulated to intellectuals around the world.bidem, p. 5. And 'With reference to Dr. Baumgarten: 'After failing with me, he frequented, very actively, the Jew Frankel, who used to teach at Gottingen and just recently was fired from here [under Nazi racial laws].... According to Heidegger (N3, p. 46) "When Nietzsche thinks beings as a whole - and prior to that Being - as 'life', and when he defines man in particular as 'beast of prey', he is not thinking biologically. Rather, he grounds this apparently merely biological world view metaphysically". Nietzsche's apparent biologism gives rise to a "biological illusion" which explains for Heidegger (p. 46) "why Jud: I'm surprised at your naivety here Malcolm - the reason why so many writers consciously or unconsciously expound and copy Nietzsche's treatises, invariably fall prey to a variety of biologism". Is because the majority of them are drawn to Nietzsche because of his reputation as the originator of the 'Overman' idea and the 'God is Dead Battalion'. Social inadequates are always drawn towards polemicists who answer their existential need and who can transmogrify their spotty faces and weakling bodies. Nietzsche the syphilitic homosexual and Heidegger the undersized runt and asthmatic [or professional malingerer and post-office-soldier take your pick] into supermen, and provide a focus for the frustration of the failure to seize upon a Jew or a Black as a whipping boy or sacrificial goat to be driven over the edge into the abyss of their own insufficiency. Malcolm: What then, of this proximity of Heidegger's Nietzsche with Nazi biologism? Is it possible that there is a fascist progression from Nietzsche's metaphysical biologism to the Nazi's ideological misinterpretation and its virulently racist biologism, and on through to the threshold yet erasure of an openness to the historical truth of being? Jud: The fascists claim both Heidegger and Nietzsche as one of their own. Visit just about any Neo-Nazi site or White Supremacist website and you will see for yourself. N and H appear on their websites like the 'obligatory Black' appears on American soaps. BTW I sometimes look at those sights when I am conducting my Anti-Heidegger research. In case any comedians say that this parallels people who visit porn sites for 'research purposes' they are right and they are wrong for Nazi sites ARE porn sites. There is not one shred of doubt in my mind that Nietzsche's writings did influence the rise of Nazism - Hitler confirms this. 'Erasure of an openness to the historical truth of being?' It all depends on which 'beings' experience the clanging crash as the sliding doors of 'Being' meet in the middle and hide the world of 'disclosure from anxious eyes? The columns of defeated Nazi heads down staring at the mud in which the dead bodies of their comrades imitate the grinning corpses of the mountains of camp victims are perhaps excluded from an openness to the historical truth of being - for defeat does tend to blot out the reality of the world. For the shining-eyed Soviet soldiers climbing onto the top of the arch in the Brandenburger Tor in Pariser Platz in Berlin however life must have never seemed so wonderful, and there was a joy in being - in being alive. Shakespeare says something similar in the St Crispen's day speech. Malcolm: This would be a fascist fallacy that is nonetheless founded in the sensuous truth of the immediate physiological realm, the ecstatic realm of the here and now. How close did Heidegger initially think (hope) Hitler was to the truth of the will to power? Jud: If we judge him by his track record of optimism - very close I suspect. In fact I reckon he believe that Hitler was THE EMBODIMENT OF THE WILL TO POWER - THE WILL TO POWER INCARNATE! Malcolm: Already in 1934, Levinas (1990, 'Reflections on the philosophy of Hitlerism', Critical Inquiry, 17 (Autumn), p. 70) was warning about the "Germanic ideal of man", an ideal whose self-same truth is "anchored in his flesh and blood", where "truth is no longer for him the contemplation of a foreign spectacle; instead it consists in a drama in which man is himself the actor". The crisis of Nazism is thus a question of a subjective relation to truth concerning "the very humanity of man", and for Levinas this crisis is grounded in "Nietzsche's will to power, which modern Germany is rediscovering and glorifying" (p. 71). Like I keep saying, Heidegger is a dangerous thinker because of his proximity to Nazi ideology, but for all that it's a critical proximity and one that constantly undermines the ideology while travelling along with it, at least in this early optimistic phase. Jud: You still haven't produced any believable evidence of Heidegger's 'critical proximity and one that constantly undermines the ideology while travelling along with it?' A brave effort but insubstantial. Do you think that ANYBODY is dumb enough to believe a word he says after the defeat of the Fatherland? The growing Anti-H community are lying in wait for succulent apologists morsels like this. It needs stiffening with reported speech [though I doubt that any exists from NON- SYMPATHISERS like Jaspers or someone else who is respected for his straightforwardness - not some crave idolater like Petzet who had everything he wrote cleared by Heidegger in advance and was more of Heidegger's scrivener than a biographer. from others who heard him make anti-Nazi remarks BEFORE the allied victory became obvious. It is no longer possible to accept his own evidence as to his anti-Nazi feelings for the man is regarded nowadays as a ravenous and unrepentant liar. Malcolm: According to Heidegger (N3, p. 121), "Nietzsche's 'biologism', which although it does not constitute Nietzsche's fundamental position still belongs to it as a necessary ambiguity". That is, the question of Nietzsche's biologism, although necessarily ambiguous for Heidegger, is somehow relegated to a secondary position in relation to Nietzsche's more fundamental metaphysical thinking. Jud: We classify things in accordance with our own hierarchy of priorities - it suited Heidegger to magnify the other [less harmful] aspects of Nietzsche and to minimise the racialist content. Malcolm: Yet if the 'vitality of life' expresses itself as a volk (nationalist) relation to self-righteousness or self-justification (to what will become the essence of will to power as such), in which Heidegger stresses the historical destiny of the German-speaking peoples as the guiding destiny of the West, then is this not merely a metaphysical racism that, although dismissive of crude biologism, remains its bedfellow? As Derrida (1989, Of spirit: Heidegger and the question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 74) asks: "A metaphysics of race - is this more grave or less grave than a naturalism or a biologism of race?" It's still an open question as far as I'm concerned, and I think you really should give this some thought Jud as it would be a rich mine to excavate for a critically informed version of your otherwise bankrupt Nazi vilification of Heidegger. Jud: As I said a brave effort for an apologist. You may not acknowledge your role as an apologist, but that is the inevitable tenor of you piece. There is NO SUCH THING as 'a metaphysical racism' I have never heard such a preposterous excuse in my life. I can hear it all now: 'I'm only a meta-physical white-supremacist.' 'I'm only a meta-physical lover of pornography.' 'I'm only a meta-physical supporter of the death penalty.' 'I'm only a metaphysical believe in male dominance.' Malcolm: >From this essentially ambiguous notion of 'life', Heidegger's Nietzsche posits the necessity of a completion of nihilism in the sense of the devaluing of all values. Jud: Pan-moral iconoclasm. - and what replaces it? Chaos! Malcolm This completion is necessary because, although the older traditional values have been devalued through the project of modernity, this bourgeois modernity or 'incomplete nihilism' "still posits the [former values] always in the old position of authority that is, as it were, gratuitously maintained as the ideal realm of the suprasensory" (Overcoming Metaphysics, p. 69). Jud: And a good job too, for if there was a sudden and cataclysmic implosion of ALL bourgeois morality it would end up like some parts of the states which are 'no-go areas and people would be sacking warehouses and shagging in the streets and frightening the horses. Not all bourgeois values are valueless, as Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky screamed as he raced around Moscow in a car, protecting the art of the Romanov dynasty from destruction by the madding crowd of reds. Look at the way that the Iraqi's looted their own heritage of priceless Mesopotamian treasures in the aftermath of the Bush/Blair Blitz. It was the bourgeois-minded collectors who put together these treasures Malcolm: Completed nihilism distinguishes itself by doing "away with the place of value itself, with the suprasensory [uebersinnlich] as a realm, and accordingly must posit and revalue values differently" (p. 69). The notion of the 'death of god' reflects this devaluation of all the 'supersensuous' or 'transcendental' guarantees for our traditional value systems, while the meaningless concepts of god, or the transcendental, or the fundamentality of 'human rights' and democratic principles are still held onto as such a guarantee. So a new ground for truth must be conceived which has no recourse to themes of transcendental meaning or any authority 'beyond' its own positing. A belief in the supersensuous as an ideal realm, which structures the merely sensuous or apparent, a belief in 'Platonism', must be done away with. For the Platonic supersensuous is imaginary and projects attention away from an absorption in the moment, in the constant becoming of the sensuous or the 'rapture' of the 'supreme plenitude of life'. Thus it is that "Nietzsche, inverting Platonism, transposes Becoming to the 'vital' sphere, as the chaos that 'bodies forth'" (N3, p. 172). Jud: We each admire Nietzsche in our own way, his anti-Platonism warms the cockles of my heart, whilst the Ubermenschen ravings make my blood run cold. Malcolm: Completed nihilism is attained by constantly willing a return to the sensuous, to the 'vitality' of being 'alive', where "animality is the body bodying forth, that is, replete with its own overwhelming urges.... Jud: Which is precisely what the syphilitic slowly dying body and brain of Nietzsche could not do. Malcolm: Because animality lives only by bodying, it is as will to power" (p. 218). Here, the will to power is always becoming, in the sense of a continual circling back to self-presence and out of an immersion in ideation. Jud: I agree with that interpretation. Malcolm: The sensuous is embodied, and it must be constantly willed in an ongoing 'bodying forth', which in the constant return to willing, goes forward toward itself, towards the sensuous as the a-rational foundation for truth. Jud: I would say irrational but I am still with you here. Malcolm: In this way will to power consummates itself in an ecstatic tumescence. Jud: I suspect that Hitler and Heidegger may have orgasmed during their frenzied speeches. I wonder what Elfrida thought when see noticed the stains? 'Oh no - not ANOTHER female student?' Malcolm: This activity of willing a constant return to the sensuous realm of one's own body, a wilful return to 'life', is that which constitutes the subjectivity of will to power. Such a willed subjectivity does not ground its identity in bourgeois dreams because it is its own ground as a constant willing. Jud: And the constant willing is wishful thinking. And most of the Willing to power goes on behind the closed doors of the eye-lids and the will to powerer, who is often the only one who realises the will to powering that is taking place out of sight in the cupboard of the will to powerer's brain. Malcolm: This is the metaphysical essence of and Heidegger's hope for modern humanity, lost in the meaninglessness of its old traditional values but coming back to itself, back to 'life' as the origin of truth and the foundation for a revaluation of all values. What do you think of this philosophical notion of 'biologism' Jud? Jud: Not much - For me race hate is race hate - though I enjoyed the read. If Heidegger would have been a civil servant or a Post Office executive or a sexton like his dad, instead of a philosopher he would have gone far in the Nazi party and would have been 'up there' with Goebbels, Heydrich, and co. He would have made a fine enthusiastic delegate In January 1942 at the Wannesee Conference? regards, Jud. <A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A> Jud Evans - ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY. <A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A> --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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