>
>Well, supposedly Wittgenstein and indeed Hegel and for thatmatter Kant just
>want to tell us what they think we already know. Remember the owl of
>Minerva?
>
>^^^^^^^
>
>CB: Recently I was wondering if the owl of Minerva thing is the same idea
>as "hindsight is 20/20 " ?
That's part of it. Part of it is also the idea that we are not even in a position to know what has happened until it is over; while it is happrening, we understand it using necessarily inadequate apparatus from earlier stages. Afterwards we have the advantage of having learned ftrom the experience. Remember for Hegel the story is already over.
>CB: I was looking a Husserl. Phenonmenology strikes me as the same as
>positivism. But then he claims it is different.
Rorty agrees with you there, and there's something to that, for all the differences. Phenomenology tends to be very skeptical of science and to take ordinary experience as specially privileged. Positivism is presented as a theory of science.
It's hard for me to see where there is room for being anything else, if
one is so focussed on phenomena and still reject Hegel/Marx approach of
looking beyond appearances.
>
>^^^^^^^^
But Heidegger's phenomenology is quite different and very much insists in
going beyong appearances. It's not like Husserl at all. I find Husserl quite
the bore, myself. I like Merleau-Ponty, though.
>
>
>CB: One commentator I read in the past considered that Heidegger, Nietschze
>et al. reflect (unconsciously ! turnabout is fair play), particularly in
>their irrationality, the aggravated alienation of the imperialist stage of
>capitalism. Again a form of petit bourgeois rebellion. Calling it petit
>bourgeois doesn't mean it is not justified or even the basis for
>combination with more radical forms of anti-capitalism.
Right, the diagnosis may be correct, but it doesn't tell you anything much about the value of their thought.
>However, it is difficult for me to see where N and H's thought has
>contributed to the left side of the movement. As you say, for whatever
>reason, Heidegger interpreted his own thought to mesh with Nazism to some
>extent.
There has been a lot of effort in the last 30 years to reclaim Nietzsche for the left, not only the French New Nietzscheans, buta lso people here like Tracy Strong. I say you can get out of it what you will, but it's not historical. That doesn't mean that right wing critiques of bourgeois society can't be valuable.
As for Heidegger and Nazism, well, I think he reposnded more to the blood and soil anti-bourgeois stuff in Nazi rhetoric than to military might and mass murder. That nasty passage about the analogy mechanized agriculture and the gas ovens has to be taken quite literally, he disapproved of tahts ort of thing, not on our grounds, but on his. Nonetheless he hasa very deep critique of the inauthenticity of alienated life that the left can learn from even if we reject his solutions.
>But Heidegger must be examined for that "rational kernel" I guess, as
>paradoxical as it might seem. I mean Hegel was part of a reactionary govt.
>too.
No comparison. The Prussian govt was merely reactionary, it was not a totalitarian machine of mass murder. And Hegel was just a professor, a civil servant in virtue of that. He was also pretty radical, basically a defender of liberal democracy and a proto market socialist.
jks
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