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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: politics of the university#4 « Previous | |Next »
October 22, 2004

As we have seen Heidegger connects the possibility of philosophy (questioning) with the reform of the university (unity of the disciplines). He then links this to both the historical crisis he is living, which became manifest in WW1 and to a phenomenology and hermeneutics of everyday life. The historical crisis leads to an awakening that is supposed to re-establish Germany's dignity.

Heidegger connects these different strands thus:


"The self-assertion of the German University is the orginal, common will to essence. We regard the German University as the the "high school" which from science [Wissenschaft or true knowing] and through science, educates and disciplines the leaders and guardians of the fate of the German Volk.The will to the essence of the German university is the will to science as the will to to the hisorical spiritual mission of the German Volk as a Volk that knows itself in its state. Science and German fate must come to power at the same time in the will to essence. And they will do this then and only then when we--the teachers and students--- expose science to its innermost necessity, on the one hand, and, on the other, when we stand form in the face of German fate extreme in its extreme distress [Not]."

A complex passage!

How do we make sense of it? We have dealt with the science/philosophy relationship before. More here. The reform is to unify the disparate disciplines of the liberal university through shared commitment to ontological questioning.

Heidegger goes back to the Greeks to reconnect with a particular historical moment. He interprets this as a time when the culture of one Volk (people) rises up against the totality of what is and questions it and comprehends it as the being that it is. This is what the German people needed to do in the 1930s: to confront nihilism in general and the metaphysical assumptions that underpinned nihilism.

In many ways this connection between philosophy and politics reaches back to Fichte, who established a constellation of four concepts (crisis, nation, leadership, and order) which allowed him to mediate between philosophy and politics. I suspect that Heidegger modelled his rectorial address on Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation.

It is at this point that spirit or Geist is introduced by Heidegger:


"If we will the essence of science in the sense of the questioning, unsheltered standing firm in the midst of uncertainity of the totality of being, then this will to essence will create for our Volk as world of innermost and most extreme danger, ie., a truely spiritual world."

What then is spirit? Heidegger first says what it is not:


"...spirit is neither empty acumen nor the noncommittal play of wit nor the busy practice of never-ending rational analysis nor even world reason; rather, spirit is the determined resolve to the essence of Being, a resolve that is attuned to origins and knowing. And the spiritual world of a Volk is not its cultural superstructure, just as little as it is its aresenal of useful knowledge... and values; rather , it is power that comes from preserving at the most fundamental level the forces that are rooted in the blood and soil of a Volk, the powerto arouse most inwardly and to shake most extensively the Volk's existence."

And we come back to Derrida's, 'Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question' from whence we began. For this is the very passage that Derrida selects to comment on. Heidegger's finishes the paragraph by connecting spirit to historical destiny:

"A spiritual world alone will guarantee our Volk greatness. For it will make the constant decision between the will to greatness and the toleration of decline the law that establishes the pace for the march of history upon which our Volk has embarked on the way to its future history."

Derrida interprets this asHeidegger elevating the spiritual, as determining historicity as spiritual and engaging in the exalting celebration of the spirit. It tightly links the self-affirmation of the university and the being-German of the people and their world.

previous start.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:27 PM | | Comments (0)
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