Transcript Martin Heidegger - University of California, San Diego

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Martin Heidegger
1889-1976
• As I write, highly civilized men are flying over
my head, trying to kill me.
•
George Orwell, 1941
A contemporary judgment
• Victor Farias: Nazi, Nazi, Nazi
Heidegger as Rector
• Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen
Universität. Rede, gehalten bei der feierlichen
Übernahme des Rektorats der Universität
Freiburg i. Br. am 27.5.1933 –The SelfAssertion of the German University: Address,
delivered on the solemn assumption of the
Rectorate of the University Freiburg on the
27th of May, 1933
The “spiritual world”
• “the power that most deeply preserves the
people’s strengths, which are tied to blood
and earth.” This is the “power that most
deeply moves and most profoundly shakes its
being (Dasein.).”
– Cf Walter Harre’– Blut und Boden
Freedom in the university
• The “highest freedom” is namely “to give the
law to oneself.” Heidegger opposes this
freedom to the “so-called academic freedom”
which, he says is merely “negative” (SA, 475).
• What do we make of that? Compare:
• It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have
been reserved to the people of this country, by their
conduct and example, to decide the important
question, whether societies of men are really capable
or not of establishing good government from reflection
and choice, or whether they are forever destined to
depend for their political constitutions on accident and
force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at
which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded
as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a
wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this
view, deserve to be considered as the general
misfortune of mankind.
What should be the relation of knowledge and life: MH
on labor and academic freedom
• Compare:
• “There goes in the world a notion, that the scholar should be a
recluse, a valetudinarian, — as unfit for any handiwork or public
labor, as a penknife for an axe. The so-called `practical men' sneer
at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could
do nothing. … As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not
just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is
essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can
never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a
cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is
cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes
from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I
know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded
with life, and whose not.”
But (elections of November, 1933)
• The Führer has awakened this will in the
entire people and has welded it into a single
resolve.
• No one can remain away from the polls on the
day when this will is manifested.
– Heidegger
– Rector
What happened?
• Hans Sluga: Nazi by accident
• Fred Dallmayr: Nazi by mistake
• Hannah Arendt (see end of course) notes that
the news swept around Germany in the 1920s
that "some-one had started to think."
Sluga
• General qualities of Germany at the time:
• (1) concern with willful action in the present;
(2) focused on and emanate from a place and
group;
• (3) rejection of the "common gradations of
society" in favor of "messianic leadership . . .
in immediate relation to the people"; and
• (4) a premium on self-legitimation
Dallmayr
• Dallmayr means that Heidegger made a
mistake about the nature of National
Socialism, probably in thinking it to be an
"ontological or paradigmatic movement"
– Good in philosophy; terrible in policy
Does the difference make a
difference?
• Compare: “So? I made a mistake.” and “I am
sorry: it was my mistake.”
• Or: Compare: “I stepped on the baby by
accident” and “Honey, I got into an accident
today.”.