>X-From_: LeoCasey at aol.com Wed Jun 6 12:19:19 2001
>From: LeoCasey at aol.com
>Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 12:18:39 EDT
>Subject: Re: Heidegger
>To: lbo-talk-digest <owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com>
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>
>As a political theorist/philosopher by training, I know Schmitt a whole
>better than Heidegger, and I would cede to Justin's opinion on Heidegger's
>thought as better informed than my own. I once wrote an essay on Schmitt to
>which a Telos-Schmitt-phile reviewer responded angrily that I was unfair to
>Schmitt by comparing him, in an opening paragraph, to the "crypto-fascists"
>Heidegger and deMan! Everybody has their own reclamation project.
>
>While Schmitt had the strongest political links to the Nazis, earning him
>the title 'crown jurist' of the Nazis, certainly Heidegger's role in
>academia during Nazi rule was more significant than some of his apologists
>would like to admit, and his lack of a forthright, post-WWII self-criticism
>is really quite telling. In this regard, there is, of course, the infamous
>remark in which he compares the Holocaust to the mechanization of
>agriculture as comparable crimes against human authenticity. This may not
>be deeply grounded in the conceptual work, as Justin argues, but it does
>show, at the very least, incredibly poor -- perhaps, criminally poor, as in
>reckless disregard of actual consequences -- judgment. I'll be damned if I
>can figure out what a lefty Jew like Hannah Arrendt ever saw in that old shit.
>
>I think that Chantal Mouffe's work on Schmitt is quite good. She extracts
>what she sees as the critical insight of Schmitt's 'friend-enemy'
>definition of politics -- that politics, contrary to Habermasian utopias,
>is intrinsically conflictual -- from his particular formulation of it --
>that the political opponent must be the enemy, with the logical,
>fascist/Stalinist/totalitarian conclusion that the political opponent must
>be eliminated. This critical approach differs greatly from the _Telos_
>assimilation of Schmitt, which sees his work in a much more favorable
>light. We need to grapple, IMO, with the most powerful and most intelligent
>work of our opponents, and that is what Mouffe does. Some avoid Schmitt
>altogether, as if you would somehow be contaminated by merely thinking
>about the ideas; others think he can be appropriated in pretty much
>unproblematic ways. But to really grapple with the work in a critical way
>-- that is a different story.
>
>One of the reasons to grapple with Schmitt in this way is because of his
>unacknowledged influence in Western political science and legal thought --
>from Leo Strauss in political philosophy to Hans Morgenthau and Henry
>Kissinger in international relations to Frankfurt School legal types like
>Frantz Neumann and Otto Kircheimer.
>
>As for German, well, we all have our pleasures and displeasures. I view
>this in terms of neo-classical opportunity costs. Would it better to be
>able to read Plato in the Greek, Virgil in the Latin, Rousseau in the
>French, and Hegel in the German? In the abstract, yes. But how much time
>and effort does one give up to learn the language, and what does one get in
>return? If I had that kind of time for undirected scholarship on my hands
>[I don't], I would rather spend it doing a serious study of Nietzsche, who
>I never got to. Is that because language is not exactly my strongest native
>talent? Perhaps. All I know is that for all the effort I invested in Hegel
>and Marx, I came away with some minor emendations in the earlier texts on
>the way folks translated a variety of terms, with different connotations,
>as class. Perhaps this is itself a difference about what the process of
>translation means -- I see it is as invariably a process of interpretation.
>Some translations are pretty poor interpretations; some are pretty good;
>but there is clearly, from my point of view, no correct translation. Why
>pretend you can step out of that hermeneutic circle, I ask myself?
>Especially, when -- as in my case -- you know that your skill is not going
>to come close to that of a professional translator.
>
>Leo Casey
>
>>Dallmayr's pretty good; I know his philosophy of social science work.
>>
>>Schmitt is much worse, politically, than Heidegger. H was a romantic
>>anticapitalist who hated the falsity of bourgeois life, and through a
>>combination of personal weakness and political naivete ended up with the
>>Nazis, whom, however, he only served officially briefly before retreating
>>into inactivity. I actually do not think there are instrinsic links between
>>H and the Nazis. He resonated to their Blood and Soil rhetoric and their
>>rejection of modernity, capitalist and communist; and, unfortunately, to the
>>sort of very traditional German antisemitism that sees the Jew as the
>>representative of modern, commercial, bourgeois society (sound
>>familiar?)--but world conquest, mass murder, the torchlight rally, aren't
>>really part of his perspective. Schmitt's another story. His philosophy of
>>the Enemy is genuinely fascistic, and not just in resonances; and he was
>>personally committed to and very active in the Nazi Party all the way
>>through. He was the only fisrt rate mind to make that sort of commitment.
>>Heidegger's relation to Nazism is much more equivocal.
>>
>>As far as not learning German, it's your loss. The published translations of
>>Marx rage from workmanlike to unreliable, and that includes the "approved"
>>Moore and Aveling translations. I have a translation of the Section of
>>Capital I on the Fetishism of Commodities that I did some years ago for a
>>study group I was in; it's better--at least more accurate--than anything in
>>print. The translation in print are pretty bad. I should probably try to
>>have my version published. The better translations of Hegel (e.g., Miller,
>>Knox) are OK (the worse, like Baille, are awful), but Hegel doesn't
>>translate very well at all. I wish I had time to learn Latin and Greek too.
>>I envy Joanna for knowing them.
>>
>>- --jks
>
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