[lbo-talk] Re: Heidegger, Blackburn

Simon Huxtable jetfromgladiators at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 17 08:20:33 PST 2004


Zizek links Heidegger's Nazi engagement to Badiou's conception of the truth event and as something inherent to Heidegger's philosophy of being. Heidegger's support for the Nazis would be something akin to the evil of staying faithful to a pseudo-event. In a footnote Zizek quotes Jameson as saying that this is Heidegger's one positive political intervention, presumably because he takes the ethical step of not giving up on his desire, wrong as he turned out to be (I can't quote directly as I don't have the book with me; I'm also largely ignorant of whether any Heidegger biography contadicts Zizek's point).

By the way, I found Blackburn's review amusing ('Hooray for Heidegger! Being rules!'), but fully endorse those who are sick to the back teeth of the totality = totalitarianism configuration. I haven't read any Blackburn apart from this, but his wry put-down of Hegel seems to offer nothing ("There may sometimes be some use in the Hegelian idea of a concrete universal such as totalitarianism, a kind of abstract force or pattern always ready to re-emerge in human history, but then there may not be any use in it at all; details crowd in and differences require attention.") except a lapse into non-thought.

Simon


> From: "Chris Doss" <nomorebounces at mail.ru>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Heidegger, Blackburn
> Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:40:40 +0300
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>
>
> Arendt lived in Weimar Germany. I think she was
> perfectly aware that lots of people joined the Nazi
> Perty for reasons that did not involve
> anti-Semitism, among them careerism and having a
> cool uniform making it easier to pick up chicks.
> Heidegger joined because 1) he was an opportunist,
> 2) he was waiting for a movement to come around and
> save Germany and assumed the Nazis were it, and 3)
> he was a political imbecile and a selfish git.
>
> I think that Heidegger probably had an inchoate
> feeling that Jews were sort of yucky. So did most
> Germans (an Europeans in general) at that time. That
> hardly makes him into an abetter at Auschwitz.
>
> Maybe I'm testy about this because the
> anti-Semite-baiting in Russia gets sooooooooo
> tedious. Plus I remember the very inglorious
> "Heidegger wars" of the early 90s when various petty
> and mediocre French intellectuals and their American
> imitators were trying to score points on each other
> by brainlessly bashing Martin. That was a pretty
> disgusting period of intellectual history,
>
> ---
> The heart is a mysterious place, and I would not
> judge
> anyone for her commitments. For all that, it would
> give me pause, as a Jew and a leftistis, to know
> that
> my adored, hwoever brilliant, was a "mild
> anti-semite." As a Jew and a leftist, my erstwhile
> beloved's joining the Nazi Party would be beyond
> what
> I could handle. jks
>
>
>
>
>
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