Something you're not likely to see from me again soon

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sun Jun 3 18:16:40 PDT 2001


Hey, Peter, I'm a lawyer, not an academic (though I am an ex-academic), and I have to work for a living too. But then, I did when I was a professor as well. I don't read Heidegger in German (or at all) anymore: I restrict my German excursions in philosophy to Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, a bit of Kant. Time's winged chariot, vita brevis, and all that. And I prefer to exercise my German on poetry and fiction, including those people have mentioned, Buechner, Rilke, Brecht--no one mentioned Goethe, for some reason, Kafka, Mann.

ANyway: I don't think that B is fair to Heidegger. S&Z is social criticism. A lot of it is about the inauthenticity and shallowness of the sotys of livesa available in capitalism. H pays express tribute to Marx on alienation, matter of fact. In addition, he touches Marx in other ways: in his rejection to traditional metphysical philosophy, in his emphasis on practice as a criterion of knowledge, even in his interest in technology. What he lacks is class analysis, which,a s everyone knows, helped him go down the wrongest possible path.

--jks


>
>Actually, Bourdieu's point isn't that Heidegger
>doesn't write good "poetic prose" or ever have
>anything potentially interesting to say, but that
>his philosophy does not make a good groundwork for
>social analysis, since it eschews that realm
>altogether, while H. continues to imply that he is
>something of a social oracle, say, on issue of
>technology -- on the grounds of metaphysics.
>
>Actually, I did once read German, as an undergrad
>and in graduate school, and translated Peter
>Handke's "Die Gallistl'sch Krankheit" as my
>project. I have nothing against Germans or the
>German language. Unfortunately, like anyone else
>who doesn't make it into academia and has to get
>other work for a living, and never has the money
>to travel, I haven't been sitting around reading
>German a lot in many years.
>
>However, Bourdieu reads German and his
>translations of Heidegger and elicitation of the
>implications of his Hiedegger's language are not
>stupid.
>
>He would probably say go ahead and read Heidegger,
>but don't presume that you're getting anything
>like strong social analysis.
>
>Habermas? Haven't read a lot, but I do see a
>clearer relationship between his writing and
>social thought.
>
>Peter
>
>Gordon Fitch wrote:
> >
> > Justin Schwartz:
> > > You should have learned German anyway: Heidegger is actually beautiful
>in
> > > German. The comparison to Habermas' turgid, social-sciency prose is
> > > insulting to a writer is is the most poetic of German philosophers of
>the
> > > last century. I do not consider myself a Heideggerian of any sort, but
>I do
> > > think the old Nazi creep has a lot to offer, although I frankly
>haven't
> > > studied his work for a decade. You can get a lot of the same thing
>from
> > > Lukacs as far as romantic anticapitalism goes; Lucian Goldman has a
>little
> > > book on this. --jks
> >
> > So maybe Heidegger should be considered as a poet _rather_than_ a
>philosopher.
> > But in that case, Rilke would be the reason to learn German.
>
>--
>=============================================================
>Peter Kosenko
>Email: mailto:kosenko at netwood.net
>URL: http://www.netwood.net/~kosenko
>=============================================================
>"Man is a rational animal. He can think up a
>reason for anything he wants to
>believe."--Benjamin Franklin

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