Derrida, we have to admit it, was a fairly limp liberal, and as far as I can tell it grows out of his commitment to "undecidability" etc: democracy is the constant deferral of final meaning, the "to-come" etc etc.
Heidegger, on the other hand, was very happy to make a decision. (You remember what his comrade Carl Schmitt said about decisions.) Having argued for contingeny and historicity he decided that an authentic relation to Being grew out of the culture of the German peasant and the civilization that could be renewed by the Nazis.
I think any leftist would have to take Derrida's critique of Heidegger very seriously and then have the courage to make a "decision," but on the opposite side. The best theorization I see of that is in fact in the late Althusser.
On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>wrote:
> At 01:13 AM 11/5/2009, James Heartfield wrote:
>
>
> That is what Derrida saw in Heidegger, a project of dismantling the canon
>> of rational philosophy. It is quite wrong to see that as an historicisation.
>> There is no project of reconstruction. It is only an obscurantist and
>> irrationalistic project.
>>
>
>
> I don't think anything you've said makes what you present here as
> conclusion anything more than opinion.
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>