>A Heidegger glossary:
>
>
>Inauthentic being: racial impurity
>
>Being-there: true German (Levinas joked that the problem with
>Heidegger's 'Being-there' was that it usually entailed being in someone
>else's country)
>
>Das Mann: The Jews/the urban masses (in a sideswipe at Georg Lukacs, H'
>says that it is unthinkable that Das Mann could be a subject, still less
>a collective subject).
>
>Destruction of ontology: book burning
>
>The stand in History: The third Reich
>
>Being-towards-death: the SS
>
>In message <002301bef6fb$b4c84300$d912fdd0 at chrisgroup>, christian a.
>gregory <pearl862 at earthlink.net> writes
>
>>Farias book didn't say
>>anything that anyone didn't know, but was received as it it made
>>groundbreaking factual revelations.
>
>This is a curious point, often made by Heidegger apologists. Oh yes, we
>all knew that he was a Nazi, that's so old hat. The effect is to say,
>all you ignoramuses ... didn't you know, everyone knew that. But of
>course everyone did not know that, because the Heidegger apologists
>minimised and played down H's actions (saying that he had lapsed his
>membership, or that he was a secret critic or that he left in 1943 - all
>untrue). The reason that Farias' book was _treated_ as if its
>revelations were groundbreaking was because for all but the in crowd who
>secretly guarded the knowledge, the extent of Heidegger's complicity,
>the letters to the Gestapo denouncing Nobel laureates, the anti-Jewish
>agitation - all these things had been so played down by H's apologists
>that Farias' book was indeed a revelation.
>
>After all, if these things were so well known, why was it only _after_
>Farias' book that Derrida, Lyotard, Lacoue-Labarthe felt the need to
>reflect upon the relationship between Heidegger's fascism and his
>philosophy? It was because Farias made it an issue in a way that they
>shied away from.
>
>Only two conclusions are available: either the replies to Farias were
>unworthy, shallow pugilism, whose only point was to shout him down, or,
>these authors, including Derrida were in Farias' debt. It was Farias who
>brought the issue to the public attention, while Heidegger's supporters,
>seemingly sleepwalking, thought it was not an issue - at least not until
>around 1980, when, after Farias wrote, it was the most pressing issue,
>the urgent issue the one that had to be addressed.
>
>>But at the same time, Farias really
>>wants to put Heidegger the philosopher, not Heidegger the citizen, on trial.
>
>This is a comically unHeideggerian approach. What would Heidegger make
>of the separation between citizen and philosopher, that Christian
>follows all the other Heidegger apologists in hiding behind? Is this an
>authentic approach, in the way that Heidegger would see authenticity? I
>don't think so. I would say that Heidegger would denounce such an
>approach. He would disdain the 'publicness' and 'idle chatter' of
>'citizenship'. He would surely decline to accept the bad conscience of
>bifurcating himself into citizen and philosopher.
>
>>(After all, if Heidegger weren't Heidegger, who would care . . .?) And on
>>that score, the book is a joke. Farias can't even get the plain grammatical
>>sense of _Being and Time_ right. He translates participles as past tense,
>>doesn't understand the basics about German word order, etc. My sophomores
>>can do better with that text.
>
>Terrible sin, to get the tense wrong. How much greater it stands than
>mistaking the holocaust for a renewal of the German spirit. Only someone
>who is on the defensive could make such a partisan judgement against
>Farias' book, which is very good indeed. You hope to smother with
>ridicule the book that made it clear that Heidegger's philosophy and his
>politics were not isolated or discrete compartments in his life, but, as
>he understood himself, wholly integrated.
>
>Heidegger's philosophy is an intellectual working up of the same base
>prejudices of German reaction that were the well-springs of Fascism.
>Heidegger rightly recognised the correlation between the two.
>
>
>>
>>None of that's to exonerate Heidegger,
>
>Yes, it is. You are aiming to exonerate Heidegger 'the philosopher',
>hoping that his philosophy can somehow be insulated against his actions
>and his goals. But that is absurd: the philosopher was the Nazi, the
>philosophy is Fascism.
>
>>or Derrida.I think Derrida is mostly
>>wrong in judging Heidegger's attachment to the Nazis, but I think he's right
>>to insist that we should continue to read him.
>
>I am not clear where you disagree with D.. Would it be unfair to say
>that you think D. is too harsh on H.?
>
>
>>Bourdieu's take on Heidegger
>...
>>: Heidegger is always
>>trying to talk about the political, but he doesn't want to do political or
>>social science. He wants to retrieve the privilege of philosophical language
>>without dirtying it with the empirical research or everyday perception.
>>Bourdieu's conclusion is that, although Heidegger is complicit with the
>>Nazis, he isn't simply an ideologue for them, since his conception of human
>>being is never tied to race--it's tied to language.
>
>Apologetics. More sophisticated than 'it wasn't me', but apologetics
>none the less. 'If Heidegger had only taken the time to do some
>sociology then he would have been ok.' (As it happens, a great deal of
>German sociology was complicit in the reaction, so there's no saving
>grace there.)
>
>Boudieu's solution, at least as you describe it, seems pretty weak to
>me. It is naive to accept the excuse that Heidegger was never taken in
>by Rosenberg's race theories - Heidegger's own excuse. It's naive
>because it is an unduly formal understanding of fascism. Fascism =
>naturalistic theory of race. Heidegger did not share in that, so
>Heidegger's not a Nazi. A case of the sillygism, I would say.
>
>First, racial ideology was only one aspect of reactionary thinking in
>Germany at that time. It didn't chime with Heidegger because it clashed
>with another aspect, the rejection of scientific reasoning. Second,
>anyone who does not hear the resounding echo of fascism in Heidegger's
>preoccupation with language is not listening. The quest for the Ur-
>language, was fundamental to German reaction at the turn of the century.
>Heidegger's interests here closely correlate with the crank theories of
>the German origins in the black forest and the original Aryan people.
>It's so cheesy, it's embarrassing to look at today, even more
>embarrassing to think anyone takes this Nordic Valhalla crap as a
>serious contribution to philosophy.
>
>>
>>Or maybe it's a recognition that stupidity and intelligence are, let's
>>guess, historically determined?
>
>Oh what, as in stupid is just an ideological construct. No. Stupid is
>stupid. Of course if you want to persuade people to read Heidegger and
>Derrida, I can see that you would want to make a case for stupidity, or
>at least pretend there was no difference between stupidity and
>intelligence. Shame that Heidegger did not think so when he welcomed the
>gassing of the mentally disabled.
>--
>Jim heartfield