Thought-Factory.net Philosophical Conversations Public Opinion philosophy.com Junk for code
PortElliot2.jpg
'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'
RECENT ENTRIES
SEARCH
ARCHIVES
Weblog Links
Library
Fields
Philosophers
Writers
Connections
Magazines
E-Resources
Academics
Other
www.thought-factory.net
'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'

Derrida, Heidegger, Spirit#4 « Previous | |Next »
November 2, 2004

This post picks up from the previous post on this topic. Heidegger had argued that the university could help to set off a history transforming revolution in philosophy and he argued that there was a need to reform education as an integral part of this ontological revolution in philosophy. Philosophy is an untimely questioning.

The thread is working off Derrida's Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. This has been read in association with Ian Thomson's 'Heidegger and the Politics of the University' and Derrida helping to set up the International College of Philosophy in order to enable philosophy as a discipline to discover new themes & new problems, which had had no legitimacy and which were not recognized as such in the established universities.

If Australia had developed something akin to an International College of Philosophy, then there would have have been more of radical questioning of modernity and its culture. The moment has gone. Cultural conservatism has re-established itself as the universities become engineered as business institutions. So we are left with pockets, niches and enclaves of resistance and questioning.

In the Of Spirit text Derrida comes to terms with Heidegger's Nazi connections through reflecting on Heidegger's use of the term "Geist." Derrida is critical of Heidegger's conception of historicity as fate or destiny because of the contamination of spirit by (German) nationalism. Derrida interprets Geist in terms of the destiny of the west as a spiritual force and argues that the price of the latter strategy is contamination by the racism and the biologizing of 'blood and soil.' Heidegger does not deconstruct Geist.

Fair enough. There is is always a returning or a haunting in a national culture, especially the culture of the German people in the 20th century. So there is a need to engage in deconstruction of culture: to deconstruct this totality in favor of loosening it up in terms of diversity, disruptions, fissures. In stressing national destiny, rebirth and “Volkish” culture without engaging in a process of deconstructing Geist, Heidegger is seen to align himself intellectually with the idea of “cultural renewal” advocated by the Nazis; the Nazi control of the university, the politicization of science, and the submission of the German university to the Nazi state.

Then things can really take off. Consider this Weekly Standard article by Waller R. Newell, which connects Heidegger to European postmodern leftism to This kind of linkage is saying that we understand the Islamic fundamentalism of a Osama Bin Laden through the work of Heidegger. Behind Islamic fundamentalism sits Heidegger.

For a commentary on this kind of intellectual history read Enowning.

What is missing from Derrida is an engagement with the specifics of Heidegger's questioning: a questioning of our understanding of the metaphysics of modernity, which shapes and enframes our historical mode of being.

What is also missing from Derrida's account is any conception of place. Our experience and identity is grounded in place and this would then shape our understanding of being, the disorientation of modern thought and existence and the history of our understanding of being.

What Derrida does do is to turn to Heidegger's 1935 lecture, An Introduction to Metaphysics where Heidegger connects questioning to metaphysics to history, spirit to world and to the darkening of the world.

previous start

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:56 PM | | Comments (0)
Comments