The Latest Heidegger Controversy

Court Merrigan writes,

I wonder if you'd like to weigh in on the newly-intensified debate surrounding Heidegger.  Should the man's odious politics disqualify him from being taken seriously as a philosopher, as this book newly translated into English seems to indicate?

You may have seen this article, also, on Faye's forthcoming book.

This is apart from whether Heidegger's philosophy should be taken seriously in the first place.  Many, I understand, do not think so. 

I'm very curious to see where you stand on this and, more generally, the question of whether a philosopher's biography ought to be considered along with his body of work. 

I should begin by saying that I haven't yet read Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy.  But if the NYT article is to be trusted — a big 'if' —  Faye's book

. . . calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.

If this is what Faye is saying, then his book is rubbish and ought to be ignored.  Hate speech?  That's a term leftists use for speech they don't like.  No one in his right mind could see Heidegger's magnum opus, Sein und Zeit  (Being and Time),  published in 1927, as anything close to hate speech.  The claim that it is is beneath refutation.  Nor can his lectures and publications after 1933, when Hitler came to power, be dismissed in this way.

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Why Do We Judge People By Their Attire?

In Chapter 42 of his Essays, Montaigne remarks that

We praise a horse for its strength and speed, not on account of its harness; a greyhound for its swiftness and not its collar; a hawk for its wing and not for its jesses and bells. Why then do we not value a man for what is his? . . . If you bargain over a horse, you remove its trappings, you see it bare and uncovered . . . . Why, when estimating a man, do you estimate him all wrapped and muffled up? . . . We must judge him by himself, not by his attire. (Tr. E. J. Trechmann)

I am tempted to agree by saying what I once said to my mother when she told me that clothes make the man, namely, that if clothes make the man, then the kind of man that clothes make is not the kind of man I want to be. (Women are undeniably more sensitive than men to the fact that the world runs on appearances. They have a deep intuitive understanding of the truth that the Germans express when they say, Der Schein regiert die Welt.)

But there is another side to the problem, one that the excellent Montaigne ignores. A horse does not choose its bit and harness, but has them imposed on it. A man, however, chooses how he will appear to his fellows, and so choosing makes a statement as to his values and disvalues. It follows that there is some justification in judging by externals. For the externals we choose, unlike the externals imposed on a horse, are defeasible indicators of what is internal. In the case of human beings, the external is not merely external: the external is also an expression of the internal. Our outer trappings express our attitudes and beliefs, our allegiances and alignments.

Adorno the Clean-Shaven on the Beard

Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 123:

The beard is the oppositionist costume of juveniles acting like cavemen who refuse to play along with the cultural swindle, while in fact they merely don the old-fashioned emblem of the patriarchal dignity of their grandfathers.

It seems fair to observe, however, that Adorno and the men of his generation were just as oppositionist in refusing to sport the beards that graced the jowls of their fathers. 

Wonder: Theaetetus 155 d with Aristotelian and Heideggerian Glosses

Plato puts the following words in the mouth of Socrates at Theaeteus 155 d (tr. Benjamin Jowett): "I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder."

Aristotle echoes the Theaetetus passage at 982b12 of his Metaphysics: "It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them." Martin Heidegger, commenting on both passages, writes in Was ist das — die Philosophie?:

Das Erstaunen ist als pathos die arche der Philosophie. Das griechische Wort arche muessen wir im vollen Sinne verstehen. Es nennt dasjenige, von woher etwas ausgeht. Aber dieses "von woher" wird im Ausgehen nicht zurueckgelassen, vielmehr wird die arche zu dem, was das Verbum archein sagt, zu solchem, was herrscht. Das pathos des Erstaunens steht nicht einfach so am Beginn der Philosophie wie z. B. der Operation des Chirurgen das Waschen der Haende voraufgeht. Das Erstaunen traegt und durchherrscht die Philosophie.

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The Copula: Adorno Contra Heidegger

Adorno Time was when I was much interested in the philosophers of the Frankfurter Schule.  That was in the 'seventies and 'eighties. Less interested now,  I am still intrigued by Adorno's critique of Heidegger. Is it worth anything? For that matter, are Heidegger's ideas worth anything? Let's see.

I will explain one aspect of Heidegger's notorious Seinsfrage, an aspect centering on the role of the copula in predicative sentences/judgments. True-blue Heideggerians may not recognize much of their Master here, but I'm a thinker not an exegete. I will also consider what Adorno has to say in criticism of Heidegger in the section on the copula in Negative Dialektik.

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Action and Existenz: Blondel and Heidegger

Maurice_Blondel Commentators on Maurice Blondel have often noted the similarity of his thought to existentialism. Blondel’s concept of action, for example, is remarkably similar to the concept of existence that we find in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre and other existentialists. Herewith, a brief comparison of action in Blondel’s L’Action (1893) with Existenz in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (1927) with a sidelong glance in the direction of Jean-Paul Sartre.

One doesn’t have to read much Blondel to realize that he uses ‘action’ in a broader way than is philosophically usual. Thus he does not oppose it to theory or contemplation. It includes the latter. Action in Blondel’s sense is a "synthesis of willing, knowing, and being . . . it is the precise point where the world of thought, the moral world, and the world of science converge." (Action, 40) Thus action is not the same as will when the latter is contrasted with intellect: action is at the root of both intellect and will. Action, we could say, is man’s Being, as long as we do not oppose Being to willing or knowing. (I write ‘Being’ rather than ‘being’ to mark what Heidegger calls the ontological difference between das Sein und das Seiende – but I can’t explain that now.)

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Political Correctness Can Be Deadly: The Case of Nidal Malik Hasan

A militant Muslim lets out with the jihadist battle cry Allahu Akbar! (God is great!), mows down 43 unarmed fellow soldiers, and liberals and leftists refuse to call him what he is, an Islamist terrorist.  The Left stands revealed in its moral cowardice and political correctness for all to see.  Charles Krauthammer's Explaining Away Mass Murder nails the essential. 

Paul Edward’s Heidegger’s Confusions: A Two-Fold Ripoff

(This was written 30 January 2006.  Paul Edwards, though he made some significant contributions to contemporary philosophy, was a notorious Heidegger-hater.  I slap him around good in this piece, ending with a nice polemical punch.  He asked for it, and he deserves it.  Not that I think that much of Heidegger.  Recently, controversy about the old Nazi has erupted anew.  More on that later today or tomorrow.)

I recently purchased, but then returned, Paul Edward’s Heidegger’s Confusions (Prometheus, 2004) when I found that it is nothing but an overpriced reprint of previously available materials. Twenty dollars for a thin (129 pp.) paperback is bad enough, especially given the mediocre production values of Prometheus Books; but the clincher was my discovery that there is nothing in this volume that has not appeared elsewhere. Edwards and his editors didn’t even bother to change the British quotation conventions in two of the reproduced articles to their Stateside counterparts.

There is also the question of the quality of Edward’s Heidegger-critique, a topic that needs to be treated more fully in a separate post. But for now a comment on Edwards’ refutation-strategy in his second chapter, "Heidegger’s Quest for Being." (What follows summarizes, but also extends, the discussion in my article, "Do Individuals Exist?" Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. XX (1995), pp. 195-220, and my book A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002), Chapter 4.)

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All Legislation Legislates Morality

One often hears people say, 'You can't legislate morality!' People who say this are often people who confuse the genus morality with the species sexual morality. But even upon acquiescence in this genus-species confusion, it is obvious that we can, do, and ought to legislate morality. After all, we have laws against rape, and we ought to have them. Rape is both immoral and illegal, and it is right that it be illegal. The fundamental problem, however, is the confusion of morality with sexual morality. That the two are distinct should be self-evident, hence I won’t spare the reader the pleasure of providing his own examples. But perhaps I should give one example to prime the pump of the reader's thinking. Suppose a woman poisons her husband in order to collect on a life insurance policy. The act is immoral but has nothing to do with sex in the way that committing adultery has something to do with sex.

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Proud To Be a Human Being

It’s a hell of a thing to be a consciousness encased in flesh and riding on a rickety skeleton. A precarious predicament, exposed as we are to the rude impacts of a physical universe that cannot even be called indifferent. A mere reed, but a thinking reed, an engineering reed. A reed who risks his hide to explore and to know.

In the westbound lane of U. S. 60 a huge tractor rig appears, escorted by police cars and hauling a long flat-bed trailer atop of which sits a monstrous turbine or reactor core. A surge of pride energizes me, a pride in belonging to a species of animal that envisages and implements great projects. I am reminded of the exhiliration I felt as a man of twenty two returning from a six month European sojourn. As we took off from London’s Heathrow, I glanced out at the wings and the jet engines and contemplated the audacity of essaying to ride through the air on a controlled explosion.

How pusillanimous and shortsighted, therefore, those who balk at space exploration. Have they stopped to consider what ‘satellite TV’ means? Are they aware of how those communication satellites were placed in their geosynchronous orbits? Do they think that money spent on a Mars expedition would be wasted and better spent on terrestrial needs? That’s an illusory way of thinking.

Had all the time and money spent on pure research and exploration over the centuries been spent on alleviating immediate needs we would have none of the technological wherewithal with which we most marvelously and most efficiently — alleviate our immediate needs.

‘One Man’s Terrorist is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter’

Often and thoughtlessly repeated, 'One man's terrorist in another man's freedom fighter' is one of those sayings that cry out for logical and philosophical analysis. Competent analysis will show that clear-thinking persons ought to avoid the saying.

Note first that while freedom is an end, terror is a means. So to call a combatant a terrorist is to say something about his tactics, his means for achieving his ends, while to call a combatant a freedom fighter is to say nothing about his tactics or means for achieving his ends. It follows that one and the same combatant can be both a terrorist and a freedom fighter. For one and the same person can employ terror as his means while having freedom as his end.

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Peter Lupu on My Gun Rights Argument

A guest post by Peter Lupu.  Editing by BV.   BV will respond to PL in the ComBox.  Here in his own words is the argument that BV presented:

In “Deriving Gun Rights from the Right to Life” Bill presented a powerful argument on behalf of gun rights that is grounded on the right to life. The argument is based on the assumption that the right to life is a natural right and, hence, is logically prior to positive law, where by positive law we mean a law that is enacted by society. In addition to the principle that natural rights are logically prior to positive law, Bill’s argument features two additional very important principles.

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Wonder at Existence

Existence elicited nausea from Sartre's Roquentin, but wonder from Bryan Magee:

. . . no matter what it was that existed, it seemed to me extraordinary beyond all wonderment that it should. It was astounding that anything existed at all. Why wasn't there nothing? By all the normal rules of expectation — the least unlikely state of affairs, the most economical solution to all possible problems, the simplest explanation — nothing is what you would have expected there to be. But such was not the case, self-evidently. (Confessions of a Philosopher, p. 13)

What elicited Magee's wonderment was the self-evident sheer existence of things in general: their being as opposed to their nonbeing. How strange that anything at all exists! Now what could a partisan of the thin conception of Being or existence make of Magee's intuition of existence?

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Nausea at Existence

Nausea Existence is often 'invisible' to  analytic types well-versed in logic, for existence is "odious to the logician" as George Santayana sagely remarked in Scepticism and Animal Faith  (Dover, 1955, p. 48) It is so odious, in fact, that they need to mask it under the misnamed 'existential' quantifier. So I need to resort to extreme methods to bring it into view I will quote from Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea. 

Now it goes without saying that I don't agree with Sartre that existence is an unintelligible surd. For me it is the opposite of unintelligible. But what I will borrow from Sartre is the insight that existence is extralogical: it is precisely not what Quine said it was whn he said that "Existence is what existential quantification expresses."  So let's consider the famous 'chestnut tree' passage.

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