The question is: did this longing to ditch rationality turn into in-humanism that set the stage for the Holocaust? — frank

In the wake of the catastrophic defeat of Kaiser's Germany, Heidegger's amoral (Levinas, Adorno) bifurcating of beings into "authentic" and "inauthentic" (Dasein and Das Man ... us and them) seems to have set up the latter as readymade scapegoats for redeeming (or 'purifying') the former. Imho, 'ir-rationality' did not cause mass murder so much as its willing stupification (Arendt) ironically made it much easier for "The They" to not question / not resist Das Führerprinzip (i.e. banality of evil).

Btw, decades ago I'd found George Steiner's Martin Heidegger to be an excellent synopsis – I wonder how well Steiner's interpretation (or my own rationalist, anti-obscurant bias) has aged in light of more recent scholarship on the old Rektorführer.

Btw, decades ago I'd found George Steiner's Martin Heidegger to be an excellent synopsis – I wonder how well Steiner's interpretation (or my own rationalist, anti-obscurant bias) has aged in light of more recent scholarship on the old Rektorführer. — 180 Proof

Don't know. I've mainly been trying to figure out how Being and Time connects to Heidegger's fascism. I read Wolin's Heidegger in Ruins (2023), and it left me unconvinced that there's any obvious relationship. Wolin just sort of suggests that anyone who was that much of a Nazi must have produced radioactive philosophy.

Steiner's work is the first one I've come across that suggests that Being and Time isn't actually supposed to make sense. It's just supposed to be pointing toward some new comprehension (which I think is alluded to in the speech you linked, thanks for that.)

I've mainly been trying to figure out how Being and Time connects to Heidegger's fascism. — frank

Are you open to the possibility that it may have no connection and is more concerned with his attempt to retrieve the way Being was originally encountered before it was conceptually distorted by centuries of bad metaphysics? I can make no sense out of the work, so I'll rely on those who have studied it to let me know. :wink:

The question is: did this longing to ditch rationality turn into in-humanism that set the stage for the Holocaust? — frank

Well, no, I don't see the argument for it. But anyone attending the Lectures on Metaphysics, given in 1935, would have heard that "in speaking of greatness we are referring primarily to the works and destinies of nations" (11); and "The works that are being peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism but have nothing whatever to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the encounter between global technology and modern man) -- have all been written by men fishing in the troubled water of 'values' and 'totalities'" (199).

This sort of thing seems like it would have provided much more aid and comfort to Nazis than anything in Being and Time. The second quote in particular looks to be in line with your question about ditching rationality. I don't know nearly enough about Germany in 1935 to be able to guess how such talk of national greatness would have been received at a university. Nor is it clear to me that Heidegger's scorn for values, in this context, equates to an irrational endorsement of in-humanism. Yet Heidegger is clearly buying in to 1) the concept of national greatness, and 2) the belief that National Socialism offers "inner truth and greatness." If not irrational, then surely nuts.

That document is interesting in how it ties a revival of a "Greek awakening" to his moment. The references to the Republic seem to be a direct appeal to the unified participation in the proposed Ideal city.

There is a desire for immersion at play here.

Being was originally encountered before it was conceptually distorted by centuries of bad metaphysics? — Tom Storm

Heidegger did argue that thesis in many places. It may not be a marker for a particular set of beliefs but does set up a Golden Age logic you have questioned in other places.


Your focus does fit with the politically conservative "cultural war" Heidegger fought earlier as a dutiful Catholic opposing modern expressions of individual liberty. There is a strange twist to his attempt to re-direct the Nazis to his paradigm because many Catholics were put down during that time.

To have been a crucifix on the wall during those confessions....

I doubt this the work of this despicable, loathsome excuse for a human being had anything signicant to do with the creation of Nazism. Rather, he supported it as best he could because it was consistent with his twisted romanticism and mysticism, and in the hope he would be considered its philosopher.

Is this too over the top?

Is it correct to say that, for Heidegger, an authentic life carries no inherent moral content? Does his philosophy largely avoid the concept of the good life? Are right and wrong understood as indirect indicators of taking Being seriously?

Are you open to the possibility that it may have no connection and is more concerned with his attempt to retrieve the way Being was originally encountered before it was conceptually distorted by centuries of bad metaphysics? — Tom Storm

I was trying to understand what Habermas and Adorno were detecting in it. I guess I didn't explain that. :grin:

I can make no sense out of the work, so I'll rely on those who have studied it to let me know — Tom Storm

It's phenomenology peppered with dialectics. It ends up being a zoo of strange creatures which are supposed to be hiding behind the veil of language.

doubt this the work of this despicable, loathsome excuse for a human being had anything signicant to do with the creation of Nazism. — Ciceronianus

It's probably more that he was a creation of the same forces that crash landed in a Holocaust.

The problem for the misanthrope is to figure out how to survive the realization that Heidegger is your brother. You aren't above him. You have the same genes, the same blood, the same permanent stain.

Yet Heidegger is clearly buying in to 1) the concept of national greatness, and 2) the belief that National Socialism offers "inner truth and greatness." If not irrational, then surely nuts. — J

Yea, it was an end-of-history narrative. Ironically, it's twin was Communism.

Thanks, yes I understand parts of his project in overview. But when I’ve read him it seems far deeper and more radical than the overviews would suggest.

As an aside, Hitler was no philosopher - he seemed to be a variety of romantic (all blood, providence, destiny) I wonder how he and his impatient cronies made sense of Heidegger. Can we find any contemporary assessments about how they might have made it fit? It always struck me that populists don’t really do ideas, they do slogans.

As an aside, Hitler was no philosopher — Tom Storm

I haven't read Mein Kampf, but Steiner mentions it more than once in explaining the climate of post WW1 Germany.

It always struck me that populists don’t really do ideas, they do slogans. — Tom Storm

I don't think Hitler was a populist. Populists don't usually have substantial agendas. Hitler obviously did.

Those are difficult questions. Judging from my readings of the Lectures on Nietzsche, the "Last Metaphysic" is the end of finding "value" in a system of the world as conceived as a given condition..

Against that, Heidegger is abandoning a formulation of virtue.

On the other hand, he exhorts his listeners to follow a higher good than their previous understanding permitted. Another thought: The Rector speech speaks of being at war with other people, within and without the borders of the state. Not a great context to talk about the "good" life while glorifying sacrifice.

Works for me, even if that is not the only thing to be said.

I haven't read Mein Kampf, but Steiner mentions it more than once in explaining the climate of post WW1 Germany.

It always struck me that populists don’t really do ideas, they do slogans.
— Tom Storm

I don't think Hitler was a populist. Populists don't usually have substantial agendas. Hitler obviously did. — frank

I’m fairly comfortable with the notion that Hitler was a populist armed with a hate manual: a list of resentments, given a little order by Hess. I don’t think he had ideas as such, he operated with axioms and statements of belief, mostly untethered from reasoning. Interestingly, Ian Kershaw (one of the better AH historians) doesn't regard Hitler as a populist in a strict sense, largely because the label belongs to a later era. He instead frames Hitler as a charismatic authoritarian. That works just as well from my perspective.

There is a desire for immersion at play here — Paine

I think de-individualization is more precise than "immersion" describes what Heidegger is after.

doubt this the work of this despicable, loathsome excuse for a human being had anything signi[fi]cant to do with the creation of Nazism. Rather, he supported it as best he could because it was consistent with his twisted romanticism and mysticism, and in the hope he would be considered its philosopher.

Is this too over the top? — Ciceronianus

No, sir, that's quite fair actually. :smirk:

Are right and wrong understood as indirect indicators of taking Being seriously ["authenticity"]? — Tom Storm

It would seem so.

The problem for the misanthrope is to figure out how to survive the realization that Heidegger is your brother. — frank

As if Schopenhauer was a rambling, antisocial mystagogue ...

It always struck me that populists don’t really do ideas, they do slogans. — Tom Storm

:up: e.g. 'Make A-holes Great Again'.

As if Schopenhauer was a rambling, antisocial mystagogue ... — 180 Proof

That's weird that you brought up Schop. He would confirm that you and Heidegger are two facets of the same diamond.

I think de-individualization more precisely than "immersion" describes what Heidegger is after. — 180 Proof

I was thinking of how Heidegger played hide and seek with Nietzsche's version of Dionysus.

Adam Lecznar's Dionysus After Nietzsche does a great breakdown of which aspects of the "Greek awakening" Heidegger wanted to emphasize or ignore.

So I think it's true that Heidegger's philosophy amounts to a-humanism, which in the wrong hands becomes in-humanism. But why were there so many wrong hands?

The provocative answer is: the rise of naturalism. Eugenics, which reduces people to something like genotype started in Britain and spread like wildfire to the US. During its height, women were being sterilized by state governments with the assent of the Scotus, for no other reason that they had checkered pasts.

Eventually it was discovered that this was all based on deplorable pseudo science, but lurking in the background was the real a-humanism of the naturalist perspective.

That's what caused the Holocaust. Heidegger's himself later blamed it on technology. I'd say that was close, but missing the bullseye.

In the context of the Rector speech, it is helpful to contrast Heidegger's vision with Nietzsche's.

I think my post of three years ago is germane to the role of retributive justice in locating the enemies of the "German people"

Steiner believes that the real Heidegger is not accessible from any of his writings. He apparently had some sort of charismatic presence as a lecturer, and if you never heard him, you're clueless. — frank

No. Heidegger is VERY accessible. Of course, reading B&T does not give one a phd in continental philosophy, and true, one really should read Kant, at least, first. But really, so much of it is very intuitive, not easy, but within reach if one but makes the effort. And one can read his lectures, some of which are admittedly challenging, indeed, but so what. Just read it again.

Being and Time is rather a failed (according to Steiner) attempt to arrive at some sort of new and irrational comprehension of Being. All the neologisms and piles of words are meant to clear the rational clutter that blinds us to the being of Being. In this, it's kin to Surrealism, which seeks to bypass the intellect and express a higher truth. — frank

Failed?? Incomplete, but it is continued in subsequent writings. No, it is nothing like Surrealism. Its primary difficulty lies in its phenomenological ontology, which is radically different from the ground for thinking about the world we grow up with, which is informed by science. One has to make the Husserlian move, which is the phenomenological reduction, and this requires one to suspend the entire world's assumptions in the attempt to discover the essential structure of this world. Kant did this with reason, Husserl did this with intentionality, and Heidegger does this with the full breadth of human existence.

But anyway, the really hard part is NOT looking at the world as if it were appearing as it really is apart from the observation in which it is discovered. Suspending altogether anything science has to say! For science doesn't do ontology. It couldn't care less about what a human being is at the level of basic questions. It doesn't even ask basic questions, so how could it have anything to say about basic assumptions?

And both Surrealism and Heidegger are a kind of stress response to the end of WW1. Steiner says this period in German history is a catastrophic collision with nihilism. Where the period after WW2 was a deafening silence, the time between the wars was a desperate attempt to rise above a dark godless defeat, manifesting as apocalypticism.

The question is: did this longing to ditch rationality turn into in-humanism that set the stage for the Holocaust? — frank

Keep in mind that Steiner's failure to understand Heidegger at its core, and I am sure he has a technical understanding far beyond mine, is due to two things: one is his rootedness in analytic philosophy, which is explicitly bound to the very naturalism, as Husserl put it--as did Quine, Dewey and others. Even Rorty was a kind of naturalist, and analytic philosophy is emphatically against phenomenology. Why? Because there are two kinds of people, those who can actually DO the phenomenological reduction, which is a method moving to the presuppositional ground of everydayness by ignoring what everydayness and its sciences has to say, in order to discover the essential structure of this everydayness; then there are those who may be terrific intellectuals, but cannot do this, cannot make this existential move, and these people are baffled by those those who can and write about it. Analytic philosophers are of the latter type. They just do not understand phenomenology.

Heidegger did not ditch rationality. But he was a phenomenologist, and so he began with the world of what appears, that is, what is there PRIOR to what scientists, theologists, and everyday thinking has to say, and Heidegger is just astoundingly reasonable; the trouble is, what he is talking about is a threshold field of issues and themes that language models at hand cannot deal with. As I see it, Heidegger takes the lived experience that has always been left out of objective analyses, brings it into a radical exposition (though not nearly as radical as some of the post Heideggerian thinking he inspires), radical because one has to drop physicalism, and its varieties, from foundational talk completely! Physics is right, rigorous, important, productive, and so on, and phenomenology admits this freely. It is just that physics is not philosophy. SImple. Those who are bound to science to address philosophical issues are simply looking in the wrong place.

The Holocaust: Heidegger's human dasein IS, in its content, a mirror image of the nation: the institutions, the pride, the "folkish"(?) sense of values, the language, the caring, the attitudes, and on and on. This leads to one thing: nationalism.

Steiner's work is the first one I've come across that suggests that Being and Time isn't actually supposed to make sense. It's just supposed to be pointing toward some new comprehension (which I think is alluded to in the speech you linked, thanks for that.) — frank

It sounds like Being and Time didn’t make sense for Steiner. Based on my knowledge of Steiner s philosophical background and perspective, the poststructuralist ideas of Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida probably didnt make any sense to him either.

Why? Because there are two kinds of people ... — Constance

... those who assume "there are two kinds of people" and those who don't.

by ignoring what everydayness and its sciences has to say, in order to discover the essential structure of this everydayness

To what end? :chin:

"The essential structure of everydayness" seems ineluctable blindness to its presupposed "essential structure" ... like, to use a naturalistic example, an eye that must exclude itself from its visual field in order to see. Afaik, phenomenological reduction (i.e. transcendental deduction) is just an overly prolix way for the puppet (e.g. dasein) to show itself its strings (e.g. being-with-others-in-the-world-towards-death) that is only shocking or profound to Cartesians, subjectivists, and other mysterians.

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water. — Freddy Zarathustra, TGS

(Emphasis is mine.)

↪Paine Is it correct to say that, for Heidegger, an authentic life carries no inherent moral content? Does his philosophy largely avoid the concept of the good life? Are right and wrong understood as indirect indicators of taking Being seriously? — Tom Storm

Not a moral content but an ethical process. Authenticity guards against reifying experience into totalizing moral categories, and that is an ethical achievement.

It's phenomenology peppered with dialectics. It ends up being a zoo of strange creatures which are supposed to be hiding behind the veil of language. — frank

Dialectics? You mean Hegelian dialectics?

Hitler was no philosopher - he seemed to be a variety of romantic (all blood, providence, destiny) I wonder how he and his impatient cronies made sense of Heidegger. Can we find any contemporary assessments about how they might have made it fit? It always struck me that populists don’t really do ideas, they do slogans — Tom Storm

Hitler and his cronies couldn’t make sense of Heidegger. That’s why they fired him from his brief position as rector of the German university. He wasn t useful to their cause as they had hoped because his ideas were so abstract.

Eventually it was discovered that this was all based on deplorable pseudo science, but lurking in the background was the real a-humanism of the naturalist perspective. — frank

The irony is that reductive naturalism is the product of Enlightenment philosophy, and is often aligned with rationalist theology and deism, where humanism is more closely aligned with atheistic existentialists like Sartre.

"The essential structure of everydayness" seems ineluctable blindness to its presupposed "essential structure" ... like, to use a naturalistic example, an eye that must exclude itself from its visual field in order to see. Afaik, phenomenological reduction (i.e. transcendental deduction) is just an overly prolix way for the puppet (e.g. dasein) to show itself its strings (e.g. being-with-others-in-the-world-towards-death) that is only shocking or profound to Cartesians, subjectivists, and other mysterians. — 180 Proof

I’ve found it to be shocking ( and also incomprehensible) to realists and naturalists too.

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.
— Freddy Zarathustra, TGS
(Emphasis is mine.) — 180 Proof

I’m with @Constance here. Neither of us find Being and Time obscure. Do you find it obscure?

Oh, the horrors of everyday thinking! Ineluctable to those of us in the common herd, mired in life and living, and its seemingly real problems, neglecting its essential structure.

↪Constance
Oh, the horrors of everyday thinking! Ineluctable to those of us in the common herd, mired in life and living, and its seemingly real problems, neglecting its essential structure. — Ciceronianus

Just make sure your everyday common realities are sensitively geared to the unique particularities of the actual, changing circumstances of the people you care about. Otherwise you run the risk of turning the common , the everyday and the real into abstractions which conceal more than they reveal. Sometimes we need to bracket the abstractions to get to what’s genuine.