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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Heidegger & Nietzsche « Previous | |Next »
March 29, 2004

Trevor,
It is late in Canberra. It has been a hectic day and I only have the energy for a some quick remarks.

Two quick points. One way to explore the issues you raise about Heidegger is to turn to Heidegger's lecture course on Nietzsche during WW2. In this lecture course Heidegger struggles with Nietzsche, and he sees Nietzsche's philosophy as the metaphysics of subjectivity that reinforces, and works within, the humanist tradition.

Nietzsche's text abound with a heroic individualism of the sovereign individual (overman) who raises himself above his culture and who invokes a pathos of distance separating the individual from the herd. These higher types who revalue our values in a nihilistic world are homeless wanderers accompanied by their shadows. At best they hope for a home in a future world. For Heidegger the concern is find a home in the technological world of today.

The other point I want to make picks up on your What is philosophy post. If we turn to Heidegger's Letter on Humanism we find remarks to the effect that modern metaphysics is based on the duality of subject and object and conceals other ways of thinking about our being-in-the-world. he says that must free ourselves from modern metaphysics and its technical interpetration of thinking and its determination of knowing as theoretical. He then remarks that since the advent of modern metaphysics:


"..."philosophy" has been in the constant predicament of havign to justify its existence before the "sciences." It believes it can do that most effectively by elevating itself to the rank of a science. But such an effort is the abandonment of the essence of thinking. Philosophy is hounded by the fear that it loses prestige and validity if it is not a science. Not to be a science is taken as a failing which is equivalent to being unscientific."

That pretty much sums up the ethos of analytic philosophy that I was trained in and struggled against. Thinking was formal logic, philosophy was mostly about the metaphysics and epistemology of science (fundamental physics), there was no shortage of attempts today to reduce the human being to neurological processes and hermeneutics was dismissed as nonsense. Philosophy was about science, period.

One can speak (disparagingly) against that scientific conception of philosophy as I do and still speak in terms of the philosophical tradition that thinks otherwise to the analytic mode of philosophy.


| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:22 PM | | Comments (0)
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