> This seems to me a far more severe indictment of Heidegger and of the
> criterion of "authenticity" than anything I have read in the
> attacks on
> him. I really can't have any opinion on Heidegger myself; I don't know
> enough about him. But to bring out heavy philosophical artillery on
> these instances trivializes the artillery (i.e., this makes mockery of
> "authenticity" as a serious perspective on human life).
The meaning of "authenticity" Chris attributes to Heidegger has a parallel in Marx.
Marx has appropriated from Hegel the "idea" of human being as the potentially fully "free" being. This means ultimately a being able to perceive truly. (This is also what I take Husserl to mean by the term "transcendental ego".)
This is itself a knowledge claim, but, at the very least and in contrast to any claim that explicitly or implicitly denies it, it doesn't imply "solipsism of the present moment".
Marx also claims that, when truly perceived, "being" in general and "human being" in particular will be seen to harbour the potential for a "true realm of freedom". The claim that the human will is potentially a "will proper" and a "universal will' is an essential aspect of this. An actuallized "universal will" - i.e. a will grounded wholly in true perception (in "reason") - wills a life of "freedom". This is the "good" life defined by the fully free activities creating and appropriating beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition. It's also the "authentic" human life in the sense that it's the life that actualizes the human "essence".
Such a life is also the fulfillment of the "will to power" in the sense that it requires the full development of human "powers". This is why Marx identifies the "true realm of freedom" with "the development of human powers as an end in itself".
The development of "forces of production" expresses the development of these powers and is a prerequisite for the realization of the true realm of freedom because, among other reasons, this development makes possible the "free time" required for such a realm by minimizing the time taken up by activity in the "realm of necessity". It also makes possible the universalizing of the conditions required for full individual development, a prerequisite for the universalization of relations of mutual recognition. Marx attributes this insight into the possibilities created by the development of "technology" to Aristotle.
“‘If,’ dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, ‘if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers' shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.’ And Antipatros, a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm
The creation and maintenance of the true realm of freedom is a process of never-ending "struggle", an idea that, like the idea of "internal relations", appropriates an idea of Heraclitus. This idea is embodied in the role assigned to "class struggle" in the historical process of "bildung" that ends in the actualization of this realm.
"Struggle" also characterizes the realm itself, but here it is the constant struggle required to maintain the self-mastery required for a fully free life. This, I take it, is the claim made at the end of Faust.
None is of freedom or of life deserving Unless he daily conquers it anew. With dangers thus begirt, defying fears, Childhood, youth, age shall strive through strenuous years. Such busy, teeming throngs I long to see, Standing on freedom’s soil, a people free. Then to the moment could I say: Linger you now, you are so fair!
Understood in this way, the essence of "humanism" and "technology" isn't expressed by Auschwitz.
Ted