[lit-ideas] Re: Why Heidegger?
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- Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:15:50 +0100
Geregory Fried: HEIDEGGER'S POLEMOS. The full text of the Introduction and
first chapter is to be found at:
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/pdf/0300080387.pdf
"The continuing fascination with the Heidegger case serves as a window onto
what may be designated as the problem of identity and difference. Identity and
difference—not simply as the subject matter for abstract metaphysical
investigations, but also as a designation for perhaps our most pressing
political prob-
lem: How do “we” understand ourselves? How do we—but also how can we, how will
we, and how should we understand ourselves? At issue when we examine
Heidegger’s politics is the enduring question of political and cultural
identity and difference, of the scope of inclusion and the exigencies of
exclusion, from the so-called ethnic cleansings of the former Yugoslavia and
the genocide of Rwanda to the “identity politics” and the battles over
multiculturalism and immigration policy raging in the United States and Europe.
"The continuing fascination with Heidegger’s philosophy and politics points to
the unresolved problem of how human beings can or will cope with the tension
between an exclusive belonging to a particular group (identity) and a
universalizing respect for diversity and otherness (recognition of difference).
Heidegger’s thought has become a staging ground (one among many) for attempts
to work through this question in the epoch of globalization. This goes well
beyond the shock at discovering that a supposedly “great” philosopher could
have been a Nazi and the subsequent need to explain (or perhaps to explain
away) this disturbing fact. What was at issue for Heidegger in politics remains
so for us, and, as a problem and a question, it is one of the few things that
can be truly said to unite “us”: the process of identification and
differentiation at work in any assertion of community, of any belonging-to.
This is what we face: at issue is the Being of our politics.
"In this study I shall attempt to confront, through Heidegger, the Being of our
politics with respect to belonging and shall do so through a confrontation with
Heidegger’s thinking. In this sense, I shall be doing no more than what
Heidegger at his best would have asked of us: to address a thinker’s work as an
occasion, an avenue, to respond to what genuinely calls for thinking. In any
serious engagement with the relation between Heidegger’s thought and his
politics, not only response is called for, but also responsibility. I do not
seek to excuse Heidegger, but if I err, it will be on the side of generosity
toward his thinking, not as an attempt to save Heidegger’s thought from his
biography, but rather to preserve his thinking for a productive confrontation.
To treat Heidegger neither as hero nor as villain, nor as a mere scholar, but
rather as a thinker and a human being whose legacy we may fruitfully explore in
asking questions that still demand response, will be my
goal."------------------------------------------------------------------
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