[lit-ideas] Re: Heidegger and the "Ideas of 1914"
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 17:30:20 -0800
Mike,
I do get questions like yours occasionally. The last time one was posed to
me, I was at church and one of the elders asked me why I was studying Paul
Tillich? He like you didn't need to read such people because he knew in
advance, without reading them, what they were all about. Where did his
knowledge about Tillich come from? He told me he had never read him; so he
must have read someone whose opinion he trusted, someone who told him that
Tillich ought not to be read.
But I'll ask you that question, Mike. Who have you read about Heidegger
that has convinced you that he is someone not to be read?
But back to me. The short answer to your question is that Robert Paul
posted the following note on 11-1:
Reached from Arts & Letters Daily.
http://chronicle.com/article/Heil-Heidegger-/48806/
Robert Paul,
stirring up trouble
Several of us read that note and "trouble" was successfully stirred up. It
strikes me as a provocative subject and I am pursuing it a bit.
But as to me personally, I have a mild interest in Heidegger. He is
purported by many to be the most influential philosopher of the 20th
century. That is reason enough for me to be curious about him. But I don't
think I am studying him "doggedly" -- at least no more doggedly than I am
studying several other subjects. To illustrate, I have several books going
at the same time. When I am not reading about Heidegger, I am reading
Roberto Bolano's 2666, or Freud's The Compete Introductory Lectures on
Psychology, or Gauchet's & Swain's Madness and Democracy, The Modern
Psychiatric Universe, or Dower's Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Wake of
World War II. I am reading all these and some others at least as doggedly
as I am presently reading Julian Young's Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism. I
am by the way only on page 56, but I have high hopes that I shall be dogged
enough to finish it.
Lawrence.
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Mike Geary
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 12:35 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Heidegger and the "Ideas of 1914"
I'm curious, Lawrence, as to what you find of value in Heidegger's
philosophy either before or after the so-called "Turning" that makes you
pursue so doggedly a Nihil obstat for his philosophy? What thoughts does he
espouse that speak to you so meaningfully?
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm <mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lawrenchelm1. post@blogger. com <mailto:post@blogger. com>
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 1:13 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Heidegger and the "Ideas of 1914"
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10315
The above is a review of Steffen Breundel's Die "Ideen von 1914" und die
Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg, 2003. Unfortunately it hasn't
been translated into English.
The "ideas of 1914" are important to understanding Heidegger's brand of
National Socialism. Breundel's book presents these ideas as embodying
Germany's motivation for entering World War One.
Julian Young in Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism, 1997 sees these Ideas of 1914
as being to some extent an ongoing climate of opinion growing out of the
unification of 1870. German unification was still fresh in peoples'
thinking. It was still important to many to exalt the "Volk." The Volkisch
ideal still had to be defended and worked at. What Heidegger did was to
apply the "ideas of 1914" almost intact to 1933. Young points out that
there is nothing original about Heidegger's thinking in 1933. These ideas
were not accepted by all Germans, but they were very common at the time.
Heidegger's brand of National Socialism isn't what it became under Hitler,
but it was reprehensible enough according to Young. Heidegger was an
anti-modernist; which in practical terms meant a rejection of Capitalism
along with Capitalistic industrialism. What Heidegger advocated was a
return to a preindustrial condition. (Think Theodore Kaczynski) Heidegger
advocate a Volkisch Totalitarianism and would have forcibly removed Germans
from cities and installed them in the countryside.
Heidegger's totalitarianism was very different from Hitler's. One of the
important ideas of 1914 was that Germany was spiritual and the nations that
opposed Germany were not. The ideas of 1914 especially demonized Britain
and Russia. Heidegger in 1933 substituted the U.S. for Britain. He thought
the U.S. and Russia indistinguishable.
Heidegger's ideas were naïve, but no more so, Young writes, than the British
belief that its empire was equivalent to Modern Rome or America's belief in
Manifest Destiny.
Heidegger's views in all these matters changed after the war. For example
the very matter Young finds most heinous, the relocating of Germans from
cities to the country, comes up in a disagreement Heidegger had with Herbert
Marcuse. Young on page 49 writes, "Curiously, Herbert Marcuse seems not to
recognize the appalling nature of 'ethnic cleansing'. In reply to
Heidegger's suggestion that, not just the Jews but, after the war, the
Germans expelled from Eastern Europe by Stalin had also been the victims of
criminal acts, Marcuse replies that conversation is impossible with a man
who fails to see the 'night and day' difference between the concentration
camps and the 'forcible relocation of population groups'"
Young said there were two anti-modern ideas. The more naïve idea was the
one Heidegger subscribed to. The more practical anti-modern idea was that
Modernism had created all sorts of evils but it was now impossible to
reverse the process. They could not do away with cities and factories, but
they could work to ameliorate their negative effects. The Islamists have
come to a similar conclusion.
As to the question of whether the brand of National Socialism Heidegger
evinced in 1933-1935 (the period in which Heidegger, according to Young, was
an active member of the Nazi Party) informed (or was informed by) his
philosophy, I can't at this point see a connection - especially since his
magnum opus, Being and Time was completed in 1927.
Lawrence Helm
www.lawrencehelm.com
Other related posts:
