Btw, there is a current of Heidegger interpretation that also assimilares Heidegger to pragmatism. And certainly Heidegger _intended_ to be subversive academic activity; he wanted to blow up Western philosophy. However, the academic octopus resists subversion.
If it is possible make an academic industry of Nietzsche, who is much less a conventional philosopher than wither W or H, you can do it with anyone -- even with Marx, who wasn't a philosopher at all. Or the pragmatists, who really didn't want anything to with the quest for certainty.
I don't denigrate W's brilliance, any more than I do H's, although I thinking naming candidates for "the greatest X" of a century is sort of pointless; beyond a certain level of genius there's no sensible ranking to be made. (Who's better, Beethoven or Brahms? Robert Johnson or Blind Willie McTell? Charlie Parker or John Coltrane? Michelangelo or Leonardo? Homer or Dante? This is late night college bull session stuff.) I do think both of them are more than a bit gloomy, grim, and Teutonic -- it's clealy not to with being German or Austrian, after all, Nietzsche was German, and he's fun and sparkly.
Jerry, will you stop asking questions that you don't really want answers to? You'd decided that Heidegger is a moron with to say that isn't banal onscurantism and nothing will persuade you otherwise. In the circumstances, the thing to do is to ignore the old Nazis and quietly think less of those of who think he might have something to offer.
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/7/06, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> > My nomination for greatest 20th century
> philosopher is Wittgenstein. I
> > think the only reason he is not hot is because his
> work debunks most
> > academic endeavors.
>
> Humanities Abstracts 1984–Present
> 1051 results for Heidegger
> 745 results for Wittgenstein
>
> Science Citation Index Expanded
> (SCI-EXPANDED)--1980-present +
> Information Social Sciences Citation Index
> (SSCI)--1980-present +
> Information Arts & Humanities Citation Index
> (A&HCI)--1980-present
> 3,947 results for Heidegger
> 2,871 results for Wittgenstein
>
> Wittgenstein is pretty hot among scholars, though
> not as hot as
> Heidegger, probably for the reason you mention. No
> matter -- the
> masses prefer Wittgenstein to Heidegger:
>
> Google
> 6,540,000 for Heidegger
> 9,560,000 for Wittgenstein
>
> On 5/9/06, Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com>
> asked:
> "Somebody tell me what this stuff [Heidegger's
> thoughts on death: "an
> impassioned freedom towards death"; death is
> "possible at any moment";
> etc.] is good for?"
>
> Good for preparations for war (cf. Domenico Losurdo,
> _Heidegger and
> the Ideology of War: Community, Death, and the
> West_, 2001,
>
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573929107/002-8046937-0870429?v=glance&n=283155>)
> . . . or suicide bombing.
>
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com