And we all can make arguments for why any of these figures here shouldn't be as influential. — Manuel
And this is coming from someone who thinks less of his work than I used to. But, I cannot deny it has value, just like people here get massive amounts of value from Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or Husserl, Ayer, etc. And we all can make arguments for why any of these figures here shouldn't be as influential. — Manuel
Guessing a bit, the point in many of these threads, so far as I can see, is that Heidegger is not only, say, unintelligible or hard to understand, but also that because he was a Nazi, he is not worth reading.
If it's not something like that, then why so much insistence on him being a Nazi? — Manuel
Dumb question but is Heidegger an important figure in philosophy? — Tom Storm
why so much insistence on him being a Nazi? — Manuel
Absolutely read him like a Nazi. Does that mean a phenomenological "sense of community", as Heidegger's described it, is a Nazi concept? Remains to be seen. — fdrake
It’s not a sense of community. The “they” can be thought as something like Freud’s superego— the sense of what “they” think and “they” believe. The masses, the mainstream, the general culture, this vague sense of “what one does.” — Mikie
(II 5, 436 Macquarrie & Robinson, 384)But if fateful Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, exists essentially in Being-with Others, its historizing is a co-historizing and is determinative for it as destiny [Geschick].This is how we designate the historizing of the community, of a people. Destiny is not something that puts itself together out of individual fates, any more than Being-with-one-another can be conceived as the occurring together of several Subjects. Our fates have already been guided in advance, in our Being with one another in the same
world and in our resoluteness for definite possibilities.
(II,5, 438, 386)But if fate constitutes the primordial historicality of Dasein, then history has its essential importance neither in what is past nor in the "today" and its 'connection' with what is past, but in that authentic historizing of existence which arises from Dasein's future.
Heidegger SEPThis phenomenon, a final reinterpretation of the notion of resoluteness, is what Heidegger calls primordial historizing or fate. And crucially, historizing is not merely a structure that is partly constitutive of individual authentic Dasein. Heidegger also points out the shared primordial historizing of a community, what he calls its destiny.
When the contemporary reader of Being and Time encounters the concepts of heritage, fate and destiny, and places them not only in the context of the political climate of mid-to-late 1920s Germany, but also alongside Heidegger's later membership of the Nazi party, it is hard not to hear dark undertones of cultural chauvinism and racial prejudice. This worry becomes acute when one considers the way in which these concepts figure in passages such as the following, from the inaugural rectoral address that Heidegger gave at Freiburg University in 1933.
Orienting towards language mean orienting towards "average meanings" that every one understands. Within "they" is discussed about "tables" etc and every one already understands what table is. Functional communication means that every one is "they". There has to be always common ground for the understanding and communication. However, the more this "commonness" itself is pursued the more the discussion about the matter itself becomes "mere" conversation or conventional behavior. Normally, in our every day understanding the intentions remain more or less empty i.e. we are orienting towards vague indications. — waarala
“Words are not terms, and thus are not like buckets and kegs from which we scoop a content that is there. Words are wellsprings that are found and dug up in the telling, well-springs that must be found and dug up again and again, that easily cave in, but that at times also well up when least expected. If we do not go to the spring again and again, the buckets and kegs stay empty, or their content stays stale. To pay heed to what the words say is different in essence from what it first seems to be, a mere preoccupation with terms. Besides, to pay heed to what the words say is particularly difficult for us moderns, because we find it hard to detach ourselves from the "at first"" of what is common; and if we succeed for once, we relapse all too easily.”
What a word first seems to be “satisfies the demands of common speech in usual communication. Such communication does not want to lose time tarrying over the sense of individual words. Instead, words are constantly thrown around on the cheap, and in the process are worn out. There is a curious advantage in that. With a worn-out language everybody can talk about everything.”
It is not simply a matter of his character, or attitude, as if it just personal. It is not just a matter of how poorly Heidegger treated his Jewish students.
Heidegger's understanding of history is guided by notions of providence, fate, and destiny: — Fooloso4
“Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with” “Being-with existentially determines Da-sein even when an other is not factically present and perceived. The being-alone of Da-sein, too, is being-with in the world. The other can be lacking only in and for a being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with, its possibility is a proof for the latter.” When one feels alone in a crowd, “Their Mitda-sein is encountered in the mode of indifference and being alien. Lacking and "being away" are modes of Mitda-sein...[Being-with-others]”. (Being and Time, p.113.” “…an "innerworldly" being has being-in-the-world in
such a way that it can understand itself as bound up in its "destiny" with the being of those beings which it encounters within its own world.”
“Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.” “ The existence of the Moment temporalizes itself as fatefully whole…” (BT)
To be a dasein is to already be in the midst of being with others in a world. — Joshs
Time for Heidegger always comes from the future. — Joshs
Not many of those whom he influenced became Nazis though — Manuel
But let's not then pretend that Hume, Kant and Hegel were not racists — Manuel
And Nazism had considerable popularity in Europe and the US — unenlightened
Do you also worship power? — unenlightened
Quite the opposite. These things should be brought into the conversation, but that is not to say they should be "cancelled". — Fooloso4
we need to take our noses out of the book and consider what it means to be in the world with others on the level of our everyday experience of being with others, how we and others treat each other. What does it mean to "hearken to Being"? Isn't the question of the good of essential importance with regard to what will happen? Isn't it our responsibility to say yes or no? Why is Heidegger silent on this? — Fooloso4
I believe Arendt eventually forgave him - I don't think she was aware of the extent of his involvement with Nazism though. — Manuel
... what's the point in judging people with standards they did not have ... — Manuel
Heidegger isn’t silent on the question of the good.
— Joshs
What does he say? — Fooloso4
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