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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 and Kant « Previous | |Next »
May 5, 2004

Gary,

I have been doing a lot of reading on Heidegger and I must say that I am coming to have grave reservations about many of the things you say about him. For instance, on 17 April, I think it’s completely false to say that Heidegger ‘is talking about the “fundaments” of everyday existence and is making public mood a subject of philosophical concern’. You might like to read him that way but it is certainly not what he is doing in Introduction To Metaphysics or indeed any other work, as far as I can see. In fact, the whole of his oeuvre is completely lacking in any real sense of history. There is endless talk about the darkening of the world but this is no substitute at all for history. It has more in keeping with Christian ideas, such as found in the book of Revelation. They both touch on the actual world in more or less the same way.

Anxiety cannot be made into something that characterises the contemporary Australian mood. The mass of people are in a state of forfeiture, in the sense of Being And Time, whereas anxiety or dread is a state of those engaged with Being, the exceptions.

In fact, I think he’s much closer to the analytic philosophers than you suggest. In particular, like them, he is a system-builder. The book on Kant isn’t an analysis of Kant along the lines of Benjamin and Adorno. Rather, it’s Kant read from the perspective of Being And Time. In the forward to the English edition, Langan describes the Kant book as beginning the second aspect of the task began in Being And Time, ‘a rethinking of the whole course of that historical coming to be of “Being” and “Truth”.’ Don’t let this quotation fool you, though – there’s no history in this book. As far as I can see, the historical process was completed with Socrates and Aristotle. Parmenides is a goody and Heraclitus a baddy. Whereas Benjamin and Adorno want to maintain the basic Kantian approach but resurrect metaphysics in the face of the damage done to it by an over-emphasis on empirical experience, Heidegger had no such intention.

On my reading, it is also doubtful that the distinction between the early and the late works are as you describe them. They certainly don’t save him from accusations of existentialism, and existentialism isn’t neither here nor there, as you suggest. It relies on a rudimentary and thus unstated metaphysics, in much the same way as empiricism and positivism. Unless you consider what is at stake in existentialism you will not understand Bataille’s position. In one of your entries last week you suggested that Bataille was an example of someone who remained tied to subject-object metaphysics. This is wrong. There is something close to Benjamin in Bataille’s notion of inner experience if it is seen as an attempt to break the dominance of empirical experience that bedevils the Kantian system. Bataille acknowledges the sets of ‘relations that enframe and shape us’. Dissolution is a response to them. Bataille is much closer to Plato than Descartes. Indeed, he can profitably be seen in relation to, and in contrast with, the tradition of neo-Platonism.

Point me to the sections where the environment becomes an issue. I can’t find any. And its’ pretty hard to see how it could have a place. It’s got nothing to do with what Heidegger is after, as far as I read him. He’s concerned with ontology, not the environment.

| Posted by at 3:39 PM | | Comments (1)
Comments

Comments

The environment is ontology.To understand the environment is to understand the technological mode of being that we live within and shapes who we are.

The "ecological" Heidegger is the late Heidegger: it is the Heidegger of The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.

In the early Heidegger of Being and Time you do have the ethics of concern and care as a part of everydayness.