[lit-ideas] Re: Pinko Grice
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 09:53:04 -0700 (PDT)
Let me see... if it is maintained, as some have suggested, that Heidegger's
biography has no relevance to his philosophy, then I fail to see the point of
discussing his biography. (Any more than the biography of any other NSDP
member) AIf it has some relevance to it after it all, then it should be
discussed in connection to the philosophy.
O.K.
On Friday, March 28, 2014 5:11 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
It is difficult to trace Grice's political sympathies. Or not. By Grice, I
mean, H. P. Grice, the Oxford philosopher. I don't mean G. R. Grice, the
UEA/Norwich philosopher, nor I mean Herbert Grice, Grice's father.
Grice (H. P. Grice) became an American at some stage of his life. But in
"Conception of Value", the editor (J. Baker) refers to 'pinko Oxford', and I
guess I liked the phrase.
The point is to discuss philosophers and their political sympathies. Are
they relevant? It all started when Omar K. said a famous philosopher was a
Soviet spy and McEvoy responded that, "for that matter", Popper was
right-wing (or has a right-wing, rather than a left-wing).
C. B. in Kiel, o.t.o.h., is concerned with Heidegger, if concerned is the
word.
Omar thinks the matter unimportant, but Wikipedia seems to disagree and
has a full entry, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger_and_Nazism
to discuss the issue. So here below some running commentary.
Cheers,
Speranza
ps. For the record, Grice did write in 1967: "Heidegger is the greatest
living philosopher" (but Omar K. suggests the implicature is 'other than
myself' while McEvoy hints that he was overlooking Popper's "occasional health
problems", but who still displayed "continued existence" in that year of
Grace ('Grice'?).
------
The relationship between the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and
Nazism is a controversial subject.
Heidegger joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, ten days after
being elected Rector of the University of Freiburg.
He remained a member of the Party until its dismantling at the end of World
War II.
Heidegger had held high hopes of reforming the university system with the
help of Nazism as a Conservative Revolution.
The denazification hearings immediately after World War II led to
Heidegger's dismissal from Freiburg, banning him from teaching.
In 1949, after several years of investigation, the French military finally
classified Heidegger as a Mitläufer or "Nazi follower".
He was never allowed to resume his philosophy chair.
His involvement with Nazism and the relation between his philosophy and
National Socialism are controversial, especially because he never apologized.
Controversy over Heidegger's affiliation with Nazism was provoked by the
publication, in 1987, of V. Farias' book Heidegger and Nazism.
Farias had access to many documents, including some preserved in the STASI
archives.
Farias's essay, which tries to show that Heidegger supported Hitler and his
racial policies and also denounced or demoted colleagues, was starkly
criticised.
Farias was accused of sensationalism -- not in Diderot's 'sense'.
Gadamer, a former student of Heidegger, denounced Farias' "grotesque
superficiality" and historian Hugo Ott remarked that Farias' methodology was
unacceptable in historical research.
Derrida said that Farias's work was "sometimes so rough one wonders if the
investigator has read Heidegger for more than an hour".
François Fédier, one of Heidegger's friends and translators, claimed he
could falsify all Farias' allegations point by point.
Habermas notes that Heidegger's lack of explicit criticism against Nazism
is due to his unempowering turn (Kehre) towards Being as time and history.
"He detaches his actions and statements altogether from himself as an
empirical person and attributes them to a fate for which one cannot be held
responsible."
Critics, such as Anders, Habermas, Adorno, Jonas, Löwith, Bourdieu,
Blanchot, Levinas, Rorty, Ferry and Renaut claim that Heidegger's affiliation
with the Nazi Party derived from his philosophical conceptions and that it
revealed flaws inherent in his thought.
The controversy was renewed after Emmanuel Faye published an essay with
the provocative title "Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into
Philosophy".
Faye claims that Heidegger's philosophy inspires the Final Solution and
that fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of his thought that
it does not deserve to be called philosophy.
Instead, according to Faye, Heidegger's work should be classified as part
of the history of Nazism rather than as philosophy.
But then Faye was heavily criticized for his lack of competence in German.
Gordon, in a review of Faye's essay raises a handful of objections,
including the accusation that Faye lets his own philosophical leanings prevent
him from treating Heidegger fairly.
"The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age"?
Faye claims Heidegger criticized the "Judaization" ("Verjudung") of German
universities in 1916.
He favoured instead the promotion of the "German race" ("die deutsche
Rasse").
Faye also claims that Heidegger said of Spinoza that he was "ein
Fremdkörper in der Philosophie", a "foreign body in philosophy".
Faye notes that "Fremdkörper" was a term that belonged to Nazi vocabulary.
But this quote is not to be found in Heidegger's writings.
On the other hand, Safranski reports that Heidegger in the 30's defended
Spinoza during a lecture, arguing that if Spinoza's philosophy is Jewish,
then the whole of philosophy from Leibniz to Hegel is Jewish as well.
Farias tells that the widow of Ernst Cassirer claimed she had heard of
Heidegger's "inclination to anti-Semitism" by 1929.
Farias tells also that in June 1933, Karl Jaspers criticized The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, a propaganda book supporting anti-Semitic conspiracy
theories, and Jaspers recalled much later that Heidegger had responded:
"But there is a dangerous international alliance of Jews."
There were "rumors" that Heidegger was anti-Semitic already in 1932, and
Jaspers was aware of them.
In response to Arendt's concern about these rumors that he was becoming
anti-Semitic, Heidegger wrote ironically:
"This man who comes anyway and urgently wants to write a dissertation is a
Jew."
"The man who comes to see me every month to report on a large work in
progress is also a Jew."
"The man who sent me a substantial text for an urgent reading a few weeks
ago is a Jew."
"The two fellows whom I helped get accepted in the last three semesters are
Jews."
"The man who, with my help, got a stipend to go to Rome is a Jew."
Heidegger's spiritual concerns did not seem to conform to those of the “
Nordic race”, which cared little about Angst in the face of nothingness.
Conversely, Naumann does not hesitate to explain German mythology with the
help of concepts from Sein und Zeit, discovering “care” in Odin and the “
they” in Baldur.
Heidegger wrote: "Christianity ... is fundamentally of Jewish origin (cf.
Nietzsche's thought on the slave revolt with respect to morality),
Bolshevism is in fact Jewish; but then Christianity is also fundamentally
Bolshevist!"
"Heidegger was indeed captivated by Hitler in this first year."
Hans Sluga, who later became a Gricean, wrote: "Though as rector Heidegger
prevented students from displaying an anti-Semitic poster at the entrance
to the university and from holding a book burning, he kept in close contact
with the Nazi student leaders and clearly signaled to them his sympathy
with their activism."
(Sluga later went on to Oxford, where Grice taught him how to play --
properly -- cricket).
"a "mixture of scout camp and Platonic academy"".
In his inaugural lecture, Heidegger refers to Plato instead of Hitler (who
is not mentioned) and, above all, puts limits on the Nazi leader-principle
(Führerprinzip).
Grabtedm Heidegger links the concept of a people with "blood and soil" in a
way that would now be regarded as characteristic of Nazism:
"The spiritual world of a people is not the superstructure of a culture
any more than it is an armory filled with useful information and values; it is
the power that most deeply preserves the people’s earth- and blood-bound
strengths as the power that most deeply arouses and most profoundly shakes
the people’s existence."
This topic was not at that time specifically Nazi.
For instance, Buber said in 1911: "Blood is the deepest power stratum of
the soul" (Three addresses on Judaism).
The Catholic intellectual Max Müller was a member of the inner circle of
Heidegger's most gifted students from 1928 to 1933.
But Müller stopped attending Heidegger's lectures when Heidegger joined the
Nazi party in May 1933.
Seven months later, Heidegger fired Müller from his position as a student
leader because Müller was "not politically appropriate."
Then in 1938 Müller discovered that Heidegger had blocked him from getting
a teaching position at Freiburg by informing the university administration
that Müller was "unfavorably disposed" toward the regime.
After 1933, Heidegger declined to direct the doctoral dissertations of
Jewish students: he sent all those students to his Catholic colleague Professor
Martin Honecker.
Heidegger did not attend Hussel's cremation in 1938. He spoke of a "human
failure" and begged pardon in a letter to his wife.
In 1941, under pressure from publisher Max Niemeyer, Heidegger did agree to
remove the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time, but it could still
be found in a footnote on page 38, thanking Husserl for his guidance and
generosity.
Husserl, of course, had died several years earlier.
Heidegger wrote: "The German people has been summoned by the Führer to
vote; the Führer, however, is asking nothing from the people; rather, he is
giving the people the possibility of making, directly, the highest free
decision of all: whether it – the entire people – wants its own existence
(Dasein), or whether it does not want it. [...] On November 12, the German
people
as a whole will choose its future, and this future is bound to the Führer.
[...] There are not separate foreign and domestic policies. There is only
one will to the full existence (Dasein) of the State. The Führer has
awakened this will in the entire people and has welded it into a single
resolve."
And so on.
REFERENCES
Jacques Derrida, "Heidegger, l'enfer des philosophes", Le Nouvel
Observateur, Paris, 6-12 novembre 1987.
Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, Temple University Press (1989) ISBN
0-87722-640-7.
Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, l'introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie,
Albin Michel, 2005.
François Fédier, Heidegger. Anatomie d'un scandale, Robert Laffont, Paris,
1988. ISBN 2-221-05658-2.
François Fédier (ed.), Martin Heidegger, Écrits politiques 1933-1966,
Gallimard, Paris, 1995. ISBN 2-07-073277-0.
François Fédier (ed.), Heidegger, à plus forte raison, Paris: Fayard, 2007.
Luc Ferry & Alain Renaut (1988). Heidegger et les Modernes, Gallimard,
1988.
Luc Ferry & Alain Renaut, Système et critique, Ousia, Bruxelles, 1992.
Dominique Janicaud, L'ombre de cette pensée, Jerôme Millon, 1990.
Hans Jonas: "Heidegger and Theology", The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a
Philosophical Biology (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press,
2001) ISBN 0-8101-1749-5.
Hans Köchler, Politik und Theologie bei Heidegger. Politischer Aktionismus
und theologische Mystik nach "Sein und Zeit". Innsbruck: AWP, 1991. ISBN
3-900719-02-0.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, La fiction du politique, Bourgois, 1987
(translated as Heidegger, Art and Politics).
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe discusses Heidegger's Nazism at length in the
film, The Ister, 2004.
George Leaman, Heidegger im Kontext: Gesamtüberblick zum NS-Engagement der
Universitätsphilosophen, Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 1993. ISBN
3-88619-205-9.
Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and the Jews, 1990.
Günther Neske & Emil Kettering (eds.), Martin Heidegger and National
Socialism: Questions and Answers, 1990.
Ernst Nolte Martin Heidegger: Politik und Geschichte im Leben und Denken,
Propyläen, 1992
Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, transl. by A. Blunden, New
York: Basic, 1993.
Jean-Michel Palmier, Les Écrits politiques de Heidegger, Éditions de
l'Herne, Paris, 1968
Tom Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy, University of
California Press, 1992.
Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, transl. by E.
Osers, Harvard University Press, 1999.
Guido Schneeberger: Nachlese zu Heidegger: Dokumente zu seinem Leben und
Denken (Bern, 1962) OCLC 2086368.
Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany
Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, 1990 ISBN
0-262-73101-0.
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