[lit-ideas] Re: Why Heidegger?
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 15:20:35 -0700 (PDT)
It is not, I think, being doubted that Heidegger has had considerable influence
in Continental philosophy. Sartre and Derrida are noted among those who were
deeply influenced, and perhaps also Gadamer. On the other hand, I cannot take
Derrida seriously as a philosopher so it is just a statement about historical
influence and not about the objective value of either one. Also, I am not
saying that philosophers must have perfect lives to be appreciated;
Schopenhauer did not have a perfect life either, and did not live up to his own
ethics, but I still like his writings. I don't like Heidegger's writings
though.
I append some comments on Existentialism, with emphasis on Heidegger and
Sartre, by George Lukacs (a Marxist thinker):
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/1949/existentialism.htm
On Saturday, March 29, 2014 8:59 PM, "cblists@xxxxxxxx" <cblists@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:
A book I found interesting 'back then' (and further argument as to 'Why
Heidegger', despite his " failed personal and political judgments."):
HEIDEGGER AND THE GROUND OF ETHICS:
A STUDY OF MITSEIN, Frederick A. Olafson,
Cambridge U. Press, 1998
From Cambridge U Press's internet page about the book:
"Heidegger thought seriously about the implications of human coexistence, and
this book shows that conceptions of trust and responsibility that lie at the
very heart of morality are to be found in the sketch of Mitsein--our being
together with one another in the world--offered in Being and Time. Written by
one of the preeminent interpreters of Heidegger, this book is an important
statement about the basis of human sociality that is a major contribution to
the continuing debates about Heidegger in particular, and ethics in general.
"'Frederick Olafson makes the case sensibly and eloquently that, despite
Heidegger's failed personal and political judgments, "the profoundly original
constellation of ideas he introduced in BEING AND TIME can make and important
contribution to our understanding of the whole ethical side of our lives"
(p.6). His effort in the latter part of the book to build just such a more
complete ethical perspective on the "ground" of Heidegger's fundamental
ontology is thoughtful and interesting., if less compelling because so
syncretistic. Still, Olafson's philosophical project is an important one which
deserves the attention and efforts of others.' - Review of Metaphysics"
One reason I personally have sought an 'Auseinadersetzung' with Heidegger's
philosophy is that I find it helps me with some problems with ethics that I
have. I have a great deal of trouble believing in Human Rights (you can well
imagine the ways in which that statement can be misinterpreted; to avoid some
of such I will merely state that I am an ardent supporter of Amnesty
International). I am a firm believer, however, in Human Obligations (and not
only think I can interpret all talk of human rights into talk of human
obligations, I find it makes more sense).
On the face of it it seems ludicrous to look for help in Ethics to such a moral
failure. (I'm afraid the jury is now in about Heidegger as anti-Semite and
ardent Nazi; his SCHWARZE HEFTE - personal notebooks kept between the years
1931 to the beginning of the 70's - are currently being published and he is
condemned by his own words. More about this in a future post.) Yet I find
myself still agreeing with Olafson and that anonymous reviewer from Review of
Metaphysics.
I am also a firm believer in 'the conversation of humanity':
"As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about
ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a
conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more
articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both
in public and within each of ourselves. Of course there is argument and inquiry
and information, but wherever these are profitable they are to be recognized as
passages in this conversation, and perhaps they are not the most captivating of
the passages ... Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an
extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an activity
of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure ... Education,
properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this
conversation in which we learn to recognize the voices, to distinguish the
proper occasions of utterance, and in which we
acquire the intellectual and moral habits appropriate to conversation. And it
is this conversation which, in the end, gives place and character to every
human activity and utterance." - Michael Oakeshott
And I very much subscribe to Terence's dictum: "I am a human being, I consider
nothing that is human alien to me." ("Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum
puto").
The conversation of humanity gives place and character to EVERY human activity
and utterance (however noble or degraded). Certainly many of Heidegger's
activities were moral failures of an appalling magnitude. Yet many of his
utterances are profound. For me the conversation about this dissonance is also
of value, along with my 'Auseinandersetzung' with Heidegger's philosophy itself
(that's why I stay up late researching, writing and editing these posts).
Chris Bruce,
in Kiel, Germany
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