Anti-Heidegger

'Do not let doctrines and ideas be the rules of your Being... the Fuhrer himself and he alone is the present and future German reality and its rule.'

Heidegger's rectorial address, 'Self-determination of the German University', May 1933, (see also Heidegger's address to colleagues and students at the occasion of the layalty oath pledged to the new regime in March 1933; his declaration of support for the referendum of 12 November 1933 in which Hitler called on Germany to ratify his exit from the League of Nations; Heidegger's commemoration, on 1 June 1933, of the death of Albert Leo Schlageter, a nationalist martyr executed by the occupying French forces in the Ruhr; the speech on 'Labour-Service and University' of 20 June 1933, and the closely related 'Ruf zum Arbeitsdienst' ('Summons to Labour Battalions') of 23 January 1934, also a photograph of Rektor Heidegger surrounded by uniformed Nazi officials and thugs at a celebration of refusal and vengence on Armistice Day 1933).

Given Heidegger's clear alignment with Nazism, and the fact that he was banned from teaching by the Allied powers from 1945 until 1951 how can we explain his continued influence on western thought ?

We shall begin by outlining Heidegger's thought, giving an assessment of it, then attempting to draw some conclusions from what we have learnt.

Heidegger's thought can be divided into two parts, pre-war and post-war. The pre-war thought, and indeed a general flavour of all Heidegger's thought is revealed in 'Being and Time', published in 1927. In it, Heidegger begins by posing the question of 'Being': any thought, any philosophy, must contain the pre-supposition of what it means for something to 'be', however since the pre-socratics no-one has actually attempted to deal with the question of what we mean by 'Being'. Early on in 'Being and Time' Heidegger claims that the being of man (which he called 'Dasein', or 'being-there') has a privilaged access to Being, and hence a study of Dasein will help us to discover the meaning of Being, the rest of the book is then devoted to a study of Dasein.

Heidegger's basic presentation of Dasein is of it being essentially involved in the world, as opposed to being essentially a consciousness which we must then attempt to 'hook-onto' the world. Any problems about knowledge of the world or of the self are condemned by Heidegger as self-contradictory: by definition man is a part of the world, we become conscious of ourselves by acting in the world. Having established that Dasein is a unity of world and consciousness, Heidegger then points out that man is not one thing among many things, but relates to the world in a particular way, 'concern' - we care about the way things are, we are interested in what will happen. He then attempts to characterise our general activities in the world: our practical activities encounter things as just 'there', as being 'present-at hand' and the tools that we use as things 'ready-at-hand'. Similarly, our original encounter with space is not north-south but near-far/up-down. However when we encounter other people, it is not generally as another Dasein, concerned with the world, but as just another thing, another object, this objectification of the world Heidegger calls an inauthentic existence. Our experience of the world is of not being at home in the world, we have a fundamental anxiety in that unlike things we have a responsibility as to how we will live in the world, and the certainity of death makes this an individual responsibility. The rest of the book deals with further elaborations about guilt, conscience, authenticity, living in time etc and the book ends with Heidegger promising that having characterised Dasein, Being itself would be examined in the next book. It seems that Heidegger was unable to do this, his attempt to come to terms with the problems he faced gave rise to his post-war thought.

Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism', published in 1947, is still concerned with Being, but two very noticable changes have occurred, which characterise Heidegger's post-war thinking: instead of acting, it is thought and poetry that are primary, and instead of attempting to answer the question 'what is Being', Heidegger is more concerned about becoming a 'custodian' of Being.

'Language is the house of Being. Man dwells in this house. Those who think and those who create poetry are the custodians of the dwelling.'

The letter is an attack on French existentialism, it is anti-humanist in the sense that man is not primary: it is not man who determines Being, but Being which, via language, discloses itself to and in man. 'Thrown into the truth of Being by Being', man is now watchman over this truth. He is the sentinel in the 'clearing', 'the shepherd of Being'.

In later writings such as 'Building Dwelling Thinking' and 'What Thinking Signifies' Heidegger continues to emphasise conservation instead of domination; he calls 'logic' an ingathering, a harvesting, a collecting and re-membering of the dispersed vestiges of Being; to 'think' is to tend on Being; the artist's work is a literal 'drawing up to light from the well of Being'; to create is to bring to light, and to guard what is brought to light as man ought to guard the earth from which he draws sustenance and on which he builds. Technology has ravaged the earth and degraded natural forms to mere utility, since Roman engineering and seventeenth century rationalism, Western technology has not been a vocation but a provocation and an imperialism.

When dealing with Heidegger's work we invariably run up against time/history. This can be demonstrated from a number of directions:

In his general understanding of philosophic history Heidegger makes the distinction between the pre-socratic philosophers and the philosophic tradition from Socrates and Plato up to the present day. This distinction is made on the basis of a an attitude to Being: to the pre-socratics, Heidegger claims, Being was approached as a question still to be answered, the rest of the philosophical tradition made the assumption that Being was intuitively understandable, they denied the question of Being.

There is a chain made by Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, each claiming the end of metaphysics and that their thought is post- philosophic.

We can construct a series of philosophical epochs, the original enlightenment concern with problems of the self, knowledge of the external world, political and moral philosophy, religion and the existence of God etc. (Descartes, Berkley, Hume, Locke etc); this would then be followed by Kant attempting to solve the traditional problems by a more rigorous logical construction of the arguments, and finally the nineteenth century in which the problem of philosophy to come to a body of scientific knowledge results in much broader philosophies, taking very big steps back from the data in order to gather it all up again: Schopenhauer rejecting the evidence of the world as caused by the will, which is evil, and advocating the eastern path of no-self; Hegel who attempts to introduce time/process/history into the attempt to make sense of philosophy - all the triads, negation of the negations etc are simply attempting to relate the different philosophies as containing certain truths under certain circumstances; Nietzsche who also (like Schopenhauer) rejected philosophy but not together with the world, rather together with the christian west. He attempted to return to the pre-christian west (rather than to the east)

Although Time seems so important when understanding Heidegger, he in makes little effort to relate theory to practise, thus showing the essential error in idealism, the failure to dialectically relate theory and practise, simultaneously abstracting the experience of the world and applying that abstract theory back into social-historical practise.

But as Derrida shows in 'Spurs', with the example of Nietzsche's note "I have forgotten my umbrella", at what point can we finish an assessment ? Suppose we explain Heidegger's petit-bourgeois failings, his philosophical blind-spots that failed to warn him about fascism, the reactionary nature of his value-judgements and artistic taste, is there some list of incorrect things that we can mark off against Heidegger, and conclude by saying "this is your grade" ? Sartre's attempts to theorise an individual, ironically assumed an essence to the individual independent of other factors. While is it a fact that Heidegger was a nazi, the meaning of that act is historically variable.

Examine Heidegger's use of Time. History is seen as hiding the Truth since a pre-socratic Golden Age - a primal scene when the truth was present and the meaning of Being was struggled for. The change from the use of either Nature or the Individual as explanatory subjects for phenomena - as practised by Descartes-Locke-Berkley-Hume-Kant between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - towards the philosophies of Hegel - Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - is the cultural process which was still at work in Heidegger.

From the metaphysics of Plato and medieval philosophy - the rising bourgeoise could find no answers to the problems that they faced. Hence the essentially practical nature of the early thought of modern philosophy. questions about the state - morality - perception - knowledge - which by the ninteenth century has served their purpose of defeating the world view of feudalism - and hence became problematic as a coherent world view themselves. It is in reponse to the phenomena of modern philosophy that the ninteenth century thinkers gain their essential characteristics. For Hegel - the various contradictions of philosophy are not seen as a fatal flaw in philosophy - but as the promise of a more certain truth - given enough intellectual effort. Hegel develops not just a philosophy - must one which encompasses all philosophy - a metaphilosophy - a huge machine explaining the variations between different philosophies with an awsome array of connections: processes - triads - Being - Spirit - the negation of the negation etc. Schopenhauer sees philosophy as being part of the world of the will - an evil chimera whose promises of happiness - satisfaction - truth are a deception - leading only to suffering. Schopenhauer sees the West itself as in error - requiring the Eastern remedy of non-action - no- self - to escape from the world of desire. Nietzsche also sees the problem of philosophy as being a part of a general error in the western world view - but sees this error has having a specific history in the west - a fight between the resentful - cowardly weak and the noble - cultured strong - which was won by the weak with the rise of Christianity - which corrupted the Roman Empire and has corrupted and weakened western culture and the western mind ever since.

Given this historical setting - where does Heidegger fit in ? Like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - he finds philosophy as containing a basic flaw - yet where Nietzsche places the source of this failing in ideological struggle - and Schopenhauer in the human condition - Heidegger seems to have no explanation for this 'fall' (lack of Will to Thought ?) He has no conception of ideological closure - historical epochs - archaeology of knowledge etc - hence he does not know the meaning of his own thought - like many bourgeois thinkers he has only a 'natural' conception of the individual and the ontological - a hazy conception of the historical - and no conception of the sociological and material dimensions of the subject. Additionally he has no role to play in the pre-ninteenth century debates - as the historical necessity for the debates has long since passed - yet he has not the strength to face the post-modern horizon, except in an act of refusal and horror.

What was Heidegger's relation to modernisn ? He often seems to be seen as a radical modern thinker - questioning the very foundations of industrial - secular society - yet were his analyses of the west and of modern technology meaningful ?

Heidegger saw the rise of modern technology as de-humanising man - a rather generalising luddite view - but repeated with much insistance - so we assume that was the effect it had on him - at least (obviously he didn't actually do any experiments - research or empirical studies to attempt to validate any of his generalisations). What did he actually want to do about the situation ? Now this is really the crux of both the appeal and the emptiness of Heidegger - because he didn't actually want to do anything particularly practical - but his poetic language - calling to mind a time of farmers - shepherds - greek gods - nature - community - yet used to describe anthropological/ontological structures rather than sociological ones - is his great appeal. Is it possible to cover the world - this harsh - industrial - unhuman world - with a language of nature - of high culture - of artistic beauty ? Or - perhaps if we start thinking like Heidegger suggests (seeing ourselves as guardians - not exploiters etc) the world will begin to change too. Rather like hoping that the pin-ups with their enormous soft breasts - that the workers cover their hard, oily machinary with will somehow change the nature of the machine.

Post-modernisn uses the power of the consumer image - and the technology that reproduces that image - to create a different subjectivity. Heidegger cannot remain part of the old culture and has not the strength of vision to become part of the new. He is the compost of philosophy, thought that has rotted.

What does Heidegger desire ? The understanding of derire in Heidegger is itself best understood as the desire for truth being the sublimation of a repressed desire for a forbidden object. His later views, rejecting the will, concern with letting Being be etc, may similarly be seen as (1) an expression of a contradiction in rejecting and exhibiting desire for truth, the existence of a contradiction itself being a cypher for desire, and (2) loss of an essential part of listening to Being - Heidegger is ignorant of ecstacy, frenzy, hallucination, punishment, fear etc as the mouth of the oracle of Being, and his frigidness is punished with ignorance.

One strand of Heidegger's religious attitude is that of the importance of the religious tone of his work - his influence on Lacan can be seen in Lacan's identification of atheism with the parricidal desire - which itself ties in with Heidegger's description of 'theyness'.

A world-view must be able to match the other world views with which it is competing, it must have a culture, a philosophy, a morality, etc and be sufficiently deep enough to satisfy the intellectual. Marxism's success is not its truth, but because it comes near this ideal; similarly Heidegger has appeal, albeit limited, because he seems to contain the kernal of a whole world view.

Note that the media/establishment provides the primal structure with which all world views must currently match. They must provide a response to the news and current affairs, to opinion (morality, taste, social policy), response to the establishment apologists, as well as matching the consumerist practise of capitalism which is a simultaneous act of worship and obedience to the law.

Can there be a right-wing radicalism ? What are the rightist roots within radicalism ? A distaste for the masses (or at least an ambiguous relationship to them - a desire not to listen to their wishes, but yet to do what it best for them), the conception of the enlightened dictator, the superman, the progressive few against the dull and dangerous many, the wish to hibernate against technology instead of technology of the people, by the people, for the people.

Waterhouse, in his criticism of Heidegger, explains his thought by his psychology - that he is a romantic - but this fails to deal with his popularity. Steiner sees his thought as challanging our conceptions of the world, even if we don't agree with him. This fails to take account of what Heidegger didn't say, and hence what we have to 'fill in' even before we can confront him - science, democracy, freedom etc. Similarly Steiner fails to include the philosophical background within which Heidegger's philosophy was written. The positivist arguments against it fail in that today we don't accept positivist understandings of truth as representation, but rather of truth as effect: the truth of Heidegger is the truth of the image of Heidegger, that which we imagine of Heidegger, and that which we can't imagine: sex, morals, love, happiness etc.