[lit-ideas] Re: Heidegger's philosophy and Christianity
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2009 07:58:29 -0800
Donal,
Thanks for the response. I can see why no one responded earlier, and won’t any
longer ask for detail I see now cannot exist.
I’ll move away, then, from my question as I conceived it to your response;
which seems psychological in nature. If I could rephrase what I take to be
your argument (in order to see if I understand it) it would be as follows:
Philosophers will have developed their thoughts to a much greater degree of
consistency than ordinary people.
Since Heidegger sought consistency throughout his life in his philosophy, he is
bound to have been consistent in the rest of his life, including his politics.
Therefore there must be consistency between Heidegger’s philosophy and his
politics.
Two objections occur to me (assuming I understand you). The first has to do
with psychology. I have been slowly working my way through Freud’s The
Complete Introductory Lectures on Psychology. Freud might object that we
(including philosophers) don’t understand ourselves well enough to know whether
we are being consistent or not. So while Heidegger might have striven for
consistency, the inconsistencies buried in his subconscious may have rendered
them contradictory.
The second objection has to do with Heidegger’s history, at least the history
provided us in Hugo Ott’s book on Heidegger. Heidegger was indeed attracted to
a form of Fascism, but it was a form of his own conception and Ott doesn’t
explain what it was. Heidegger thought he was influential enough to sway
Hitler’s Fascists to his way of thinking (whatever that was). But as it
developed, Hitler’s Fascists were never impressed with Heidegger. They used
him for his publicity value only, but when he insisted on thinking for himself
about important matters, they shunted him aside and ignored him. The wearing
of the brown shirt, etc. was his way of going along with the Nazis on
unimportant matters in order to sway them to his thinking on important ones.
Since Heidegger’s plan never worked, we don’t know what form of Fascism
Heidegger’s politics might have taken. What we do know with a good deal of
certainty, is that it did not correspond well enough with Nazi thinking to
cause the Nazis to want to accept Heidegger as their philosopher.
Assuming your consistency-argument, I agree that there was a form of Fascism
(or something of that approximation) that Heidegger believed, but what it was
isn’t known (as far as I know), and how Heidegger’s later philosophy may have
related to it isn’t known either. But this doesn’t seem a useful argument to
suggest that Heidegger was consistently in favor of Hitler’s form of Fascism.
By secular existentialism, I have in mind the philosophies of Sartre and others
in his circle. While Fascism might correspond to one element of this
philosophy in its rejection of traditional principles, or the rejection of the
idea that these principles might apply to them, the two hallmarks of Sartre’s
Philosophy, anxiety and depression were absent from Nazi thinking – at least
before they began their wars.
But maybe I don’t understand what you mean when you say there was “a secular
and existentialist ethic at the core of much Fascist thinking.”
I didn’t intend to separate Secular and Existentialist elements. I used to
term “secular existentialism” to distinguish it from Christian Existentialism
from Kierkegaard onward.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Donal McEvoy
--- On Sat, 7/11/09, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> While there might
> be in some cases a connection between a
> philosopher's politics
> and his philosophy, and while several writers have assumed
> that there is a connection between
> Heidegger's
> philosophy and his politics, I
> can't visualize
> what that connection might be.
[It'll be abstract a connection and not therefore easily visible.] What is
meant by saying there is a connection between his "politics and his
philosophy"? Well, that there is a _logical_ connection, for example? But what
kind of logic? Clearly a person can have inconsistent beliefs: so we cannot
ever _deduce_ that because a person believes X they also believe what follows
from X. Also most 'thoughts' we believe are logically distinct in that one does
not follow, by logical necessity, from the other. At the same time many
persons, including philosophers, aim for consistency and what underpins their
thought in one respect may likely underpin their thought in other respects: for
these reasons alone it would be very surprising if there were no connection
between a philosopher's "philosophy" and their political outlook. To say there
was no connection would be tantamount to saying they were obtuse as to the
political implications of their "philosophical"
thought, or to claim that their "philosophy" pertains to a realm hermetically
sealed from political or social life.
So, it is not a logical necessity or inescapable deduction that someone with
H's "philosophy" would be a Nazi anymore than it is impossible that someone
with a Poppn. "conjectural" view of knowledge could espouse totalitarianism [as
the most effective system for eliminating "mistakes" within the political and
social sphere]. But this is not anything like an strong argument in favour of
the view that there is no connection between their philosophy and their
politics or even that there is no strong underlying connection.
What we have here is another example, perhaps, where the analytic attempt to
examine _logical_ connections, may distract or blind us to the strong
underlying or intrinsic connections that nevertheless fall short of being
matters of strict inference.
>�Surely nothing can
> be further from the
> triumphalist, ethnic oriented Fascism than secular
> existentialism.
Actually I can think of a lot of things, especially since there is a secular
and existentialist ethic at the core of much Fascist thinking.
And let's not forget here that much Christian theologising is clearly
anti-Christian [unless we suppose inconsistent theologies can both be properly
Christian, but this only renders the epithet "Christian" vacuous], going
against the tendency of Christ's ethics whose great strength lay, surely, in
their practical appeal to alleviate suffering without needing to offer a
philosophy or theology or even an institutionalised church authority.
Donal
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