Comments

  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    Heidegger isn’t silent on the question of the good. — Joshs

    What does he say?
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    I believe Arendt eventually forgave him - I don't think she was aware of the extent of his involvement with Nazism though. — Manuel

    Their relationship raises many questions. What she might have known and whether she looked the other way is not something I will attempt to decide.

    ... what's the point in judging people with standards they did not have ... — Manuel

    I don't see it as matter of judging but of understanding what is said in terms of the situatedness of thinking, in the sense of not being able to fully escape the perspectives of one's time, and of context, of what a term like 'man' and what conditions are put on it.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    And Nazism had considerable popularity in Europe and the US — unenlightened

    Before the civil rights movement in the US I suspect that the prevalence of Nazism diminished mostly because Hitler and Germany became the enemy in WW ll.

    Do you also worship power? — unenlightened

    Power? It has its attraction, but for many it is more a matter of counteracting power. And, of course, power comes in many forms.

    More to the point of the topic, we all have our prejudices, and no doubt the future will see us differently than we see ourselves. Remove the beam from you own eye and all that, but don't blind yourself in the process.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    Not many of those whom he influenced became Nazis though — Manuel

    That may be but some notable Jewish students he influenced,including Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Jacob Klein, turned against him, at least initially, because he was a Nazi. But this is not to say their thinking moved passed Heidegger because Heidegger was a Nazi.

    But let's not then pretend that Hume, Kant and Hegel were not racists — Manuel

    Quite the opposite. These things should be brought into the conversation, but that is not to say they should be "cancelled".
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    To be a dasein is to already be in the midst of being with others in a world. — Joshs

    Right, and so, 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.

    Time for Heidegger always comes from the future. — Joshs

    Right again. And again, we must consider what this means apart from the text. What responsibility do we have for what happens? What is the gift of Heidegger's "es gibt" (it gives)? As with the notion of God's will, we have no way of determining whether to stand with or against what will happen. It seems clear that the future will bring increased threats that imperil our existence. Do we welcome global warming as what the future brings? 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?
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Mikie


    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:

    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, 436 Macquarrie & Robinson, 384)

    [Added: I see that @waarala already cited this passage].

    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.
    (II,5, 438, 386)

    As summarized in the SEP:

    This 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.
    Heidegger SEP
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    why so much insistence on him being a Nazi? — Manuel

    He was a Nazi. No need to insist on it. Why is it important? I think his address,The Self-Assertion of the German University, linked to earlier, makes it abundantly clear. His understanding of being and time, of history unfolding, cannot be separated from what he claimed had come to be in that here and now, of what the call of conscience, what authenticity resolutely demanded of this people and only this people who were to follow the Fuhrer (literally the leader) and play a central role in world history and the truth of Being.

    I too was drawn to Heidegger. Like many, I sensed that he had something mysterious and important to disclose. That thinking plays an essential role in to bringing being to presence. In time I came to think that pursuit of the question of "Being" is like chasing the wind. An oracular prophet without a revelation.

    This is not to deny his influence or the value of reading him. He is certainly seductive, but it is for this reason that we must be most critical. The idea of harkening to being, of an openness to what is to be, is not, as he would have it, being responsive to being, but an abdication of responsibility. We all know what came to be in the 20th century.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    except that he did away with what Arthur Miller described as executive tailoring, which is almost prerequisite in Washington. — NOS4A2

    If anyone else said this I would assume it was a joke. His ridiculous coiffure, his orange make-up, his years with speech coaches, he is the textbook example of executive tailoring.

    In historical terms he is either a folk devil or folk hero depending on where one’s allegiance lie. — NOS4A2

    He is a demagogue. On this we agree. But I do not agree with Rothbard when he says:

    For it is one of the most admirable qualities of the demagogue that he forces men to think

    Nor can I agree with him when he says:

    Demagogues probably first fell into disrepute in the 19th century, when most of them were socialists.

    It was common to cite Plato on the dangers of demagogues when Trump was elected.

    And this appeal can be made most effectively by the demagogue--the rough, unpolished man of the people, who can present the truth in simple, effective, yes emotional, language.

    Trump, with his penchant for gilding toilets and putting his name on everything, would take offense at the idea that he is rough and unpolished, although he does pretend to me a man of the people when he is not bragging about how special he is.

    Rothbard's demagogue is a libertarian. Trump is completely without a political or social ideology.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    The Folk is for Heidegger not simply one group or community or people or another. It is a special people with a special historical destiny. The is clearly seen in the Rectorate address. It has been argued that Heidegger's speech is largely rhetorical, designed to please the Fuhrer, and not indicative of his own beliefs. This no longer seems tenable.

    If we will the essence of science understood as the questioning, uncovered standing one’s ground in the midst of the uncertainty of the totality of what is, then this will to essence will create for our people its world of innermost and most extreme danger, i.e. its truly spiritual world ...

    And the spiritual world of a people is ... the power that most deeply preserves the people’s earth- and blood-bound strengths as the power that most deeply arouses and most profoundly shakes the people’s existence. Only a spiritual world guarantees the people greatness. For it forces the constant decision between the will to greatness and the acceptance of decline to become the law for each step of the march that our people has begun into its future history. (3)

    The first bond binds to the national community [Volksgemeinschaft]. It obligates to help carry the burden of and to participate actively in the struggles, strivings, and skills of all the estates and members of the people.

    The second bond binds to the honor and the destiny of the nation in the midst of all the other peoples.

    The third bond of the students binds them to the spiritual mission of the German people. (4)

    But we do will that our people fulfill its historical mission. (6)

    It could be argued that Heidegger underwent some kind of transformation between the publication of TB and the Rectorate Address, but it seem more like that when he says in BT:

    those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself-those among whom one is too.

    He is not talking about mankind but rather those with whom he is one, his people, the Volksgemeinschaft. Heidegger's antisemitism is not simply a personal bias or dislike, it is for him of world historical significance.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    So imagine substituting “jews” for “they” in B&T. Would that make any sense whatsoever? No. It’d be completely incoherent. — Mikie

    Right, because "jews" are not included in Heidegger's 'they', 'those', and 'others'. These terms all mean 'us', those who are like Heidegger. It makes no sense if we think in terms of the dichotomy 'us vs. them'. The way he phrases it fuels the accusations of his deliberate concealment.

    I think it’s worthwhile to go back and look to see if there are any connections, given what we know now. — Mikie

    Tom Rockmore's On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy (pdf) came out in 1991, but the book only lends support to what was already well known.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Mikie


    Right, he does not say. I filled in the blank.

    They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself-those among whom one is too.

    Heidegger is using the terms 'they', 'those', and 'others' as terms of inclusion rather than exclusion.

    If we look at The Self-Assertion of the German University address from a few years after the publication of BT I think it is clear who it is that is being included and excluded.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I’ve pored through the details in the Russia case and many others, and the conspiracy theories are just as bunk now as they were then. — NOS4A2

    I am as reassured as I would be if I blind man told me what he did not see.

    You can go back to any page in this thread to confirm that. — NOS4A2

    One need not go back very far in order to see how you lump things together:

    I honestly don’t care because everything to the anti-Trump brigade is a serious matter until one looks closely. Every conspiracy theory regarding Trump, whether it was Russia collusion or his tax returns, have been massively and comically overstated, and as a result has turned justice into nonsense, journalism into a joke, politics into circuses, and the US into clown world.

    It’s gotten so bad that one can adopt a contrary belief without any evidence to do so and he’ll be right most of the time.     — NOS4A2

    Who cares? After years of Russia collusion, Covid propaganda, Ukraine warmongering, January 6th handwringings, and all the deep-state dinner theater news outlets have spoon-fed us these past few years, — NOS4A2

    You say "until one looks closely", but you do not look closely. Even with the Mueller report you did not look closely.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    What do folk make of these recent developments? — Banno

    It is good that the case against Heidegger has been made persuasively, but his Nazi sympathies and antisemitism have been known for a long time. It is, however, now more difficult for his apologists to separate the man from his philosophy.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I remember when establishment supporters swore he was a treasonous, Russian asset, and now this ... — NOS4A2

    Have you repeated this enough to actually believe it? It is likely you do since you admit:

    I don’t know nor care about the details. — NOS4A2

    Are you aware that when you bury your head in the sand the world does not disappear? There is plenty of evidence that Trump was and is a Russian asset. What evidence? Evidence you do not know and don't care about.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Mikie


    Heidegger's discussion of others in BT reads differently once one is aware of Heidegger's antisemitism:

    To avoid this misunderstanding we must notice in what sense we are talking about 'the Others'. By 'Others' we do not mean everyone else but me-those over against whom the "I" stands out. They
    are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself-those among whom one is too. This Being-there-too [Auch-dasein] with them does not have the ontological character of a Being-present at-hand-along-'with' them within a world. (BT 1.4, Macquarrie & Robinson translation, 154 German 118)

    Who are those from whom he does and does not distinguish himself? It is the Volk (the Folk) from whom he does not distinguish himself. Or, as @180 Proof put it Blood and Soil
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    In 1969 Stanley Rosen published "Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay". It can be described as Plato against Heidegger. Rosen said:

    Nihilism is the concept of reason separated from the concept of the good.
    — Fooloso4

    It's a nice quote but I'm not sure I fully get it. Can you expand?     — Tom Storm

    Basic to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is the desire for and pursuit of the good. This must be understood at the most ordinary level, not as a theory but simply as what we want both for ourselves and those we care about. It is not only basic to their philosophy but basic to their understanding of who we are as human beings.

    Phronesis, often translated as practical wisdom, is not simply a matter of reasoning toward
    achieving ends, but of deliberation about good ends.

    For Heidegger consideration of the good is replaced with the call of conscience. The call of conscience is not about what is good or bad, it is the call for authenticity. Its primary concern is not oneself or others but Being. He sees Plato's elevation of the Good above being, that is, as the source of both being and being known, as a move away from, a forgetting of Being.

    In more general terms, how severing reason from the good is nihilism can be seen in the ideal of objectivity and the sequestering of "value judgments". Political philosophy, for example, is shunned in favor of political science. The question of how best to live has no place in a science of politics whose concerns are structural and deal with power differentials.
  • Opinions on Francis Macdonald Cornford's translation of The Republic.
    ↪magritte


    I bookmarked the page. Thanks.
  • A Summary of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
    ↪Sam26


    In the game of chess certain moves are prohibited. The rules are specific to the game. One could make that move in a game that is like chess with the exception of allowing that move. The same holds for language games.

    When Wittgenstein says parenthetically:

    Theology as grammar (PI 373)

    this is not an appeal to logical syntax. It is, instead, about looking at how theological terms are used. What they mean for those who use them. The role they play in the life of those who believe. One might devise or derive rules, but the game is not determined by rules, but rather by what is felt and experienced and believed, by how the words resonate, by how one is moved, by how one is compelled, by how they matter.
  • The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction
    It should be noted that since antiquity the question has not been whether or not Aristotle held that the heavens are eternal but rather whether what he claimed was true or not.

    I know of no credible scholarly work that supports MU's claims. Are there any?
  • Where do thoughts come from? Are they eternal? Does the Mindscape really exist?
    The claim is all thoughts are pre-existent (just as the trees we encounter when we walk in a forest are pre-existent). — Art48

    Reading this after the Heidegger thread that unfortunately has been relegated to the Lounge, I see the potential for a grave risk. Heidegger attempts to avoid political and ethical responsibility and put in its place "heeding the call of Being". We are not the source of our ideas and so our only responsibility is to heed or fail to heed the call of Being. T
  • A Summary of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
    if everyone is using different terms for their starting points — schopenhauer1

    More to the point, it is about using the same terms with different demands on the meaning of the terms. It is not about shutting down constructive debate. It is, rather, about trying to get to an agreed starting point or marking the differences in starting points.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The establishment’s base is resting their hopes on the word of a porn star, a lawyer who plead guilty for lying, and a political district attorney. — NOS4A2

    And this is how the game of dissimulation is played. Trump and his followers object to legal investigations, but at the same time attempt to discredit statements made, the truth or falsity of which might be established through such investigations.
  • A Summary of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
    This doesn't take away from my main point, that there is an underlying logic to language, viz., in the use of grammar (syntax) or the expanded grammar that Wittgenstein refers to. — Sam26

    There is a difference between the logic of a language game and an underlying logic of language. Analogously, the rules of chess are not an underlying logic of the game.

    Rather than an appeal to an underlying logic Wittgenstein appeals to what we do. More specifically, to the metaphysical demands philosophers put on words.
  • A Summary of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
    ↪Sam26


    One can play chess according to the rules and not play logically.

    What one says within a language game is not thereby logical.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    He was a perfect rendition of the demagogue who leads the fight against the establishment. — frank

    His anti-establishment rhetoric helped to get him elected, but he is no "man of the people". He is every bit the kind of elite he rails against.

    the establishment is neoliberal — frank

    Trump is neoliberal.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    It is unfortunate that this has been moved to the lounge. The article speaks for itself. It does not require a thesis or demonstration of commitment in order to justify it as serious or philosophical.

    A quote from Heidegger cited in the article:

    The danger is not [National Socialism] itself, but instead that it will be innocuous via sermons about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.

    Heidegger's quote is a telling variation of Plato's " the Just, the Beautiful, and the Good".

    Another quote from the article:

    Heidegger’s 1936 praise of Hitler and Mussolini for introducing a “countermovement to nihilism,” intended as praise for their invocation of the Nietzschean will to power.

    In a 1955-56 lecture course published as "The Principle of Reason", Heidegger discussed the leap of thinking, the leap of reason:

    Being and reason: the same. Being: the abyss (SG 93).

    In place of Plato's Good Heidegger puts Reason.

    In 1969 Stanley Rosen published "Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay". It can be described as Plato against Heidegger. Rosen said:

    Nihilism is the concept of reason separated from the concept of the good.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It’s typical of his critics — NOS4A2

    It is typical of apologists such as yourself to jump to Trump's defense by making vague accusations that portray him as an innocent treated unfairly by the media, the courts, politicians, and anyone else who, because they dare to question the legality of Trump's actions, are part of a deep state conspiracy.

    the establishment base — NOS4A2
    ?

    Empty rhetoric. Trump, his Republican supporters, Fox News, the Federalist society, big money supporters are all entrenched part of "the establishment".
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Michael


    What form does he want and expect these protests to take? Given what has happened in the past, it does not seem likely that they would be peaceful.

    But this is typical of Trump. It is clear that he does not want his day in court. Above all else is the court of public opinion. But in a selective rather than general sense, that is, limited to the opinion of his followers.
  • The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction
    theories put forward by the Pythagoreans — Metaphysician Undercover

    He does not present them as theories put forward by the Pythagoreans. The premises are his own. In the beginning of 1.2 he repeatedly says "we" not the Pythagoreans.

    those quotes come from a small part of the beginning of Bk 1, ch2 — Metaphysician Undercover

    Except for the first two all of these quotes come from chapter 3, not from "a small part of the beginning of Bk 1, ch2.". And the first two do not come from the beginning of the chapter.

    You look at Bk1 Ch2, then completely ignore all the logical arguments made throughout ch 3,,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Aristotle makes the distinction cited above between primary and compound bodies. What is true of compound bodies is not true of primary bodies. The arguments you are referring to are not refutations for the simple and obvious reason that they are about compound bodies not primary bodies.
  • The Unsolved Mystery of Evil: A Necessary Paradox?
    ↪boagie


    It is one thing to say that the irrational religious meanings of the term needs to be negated. It is quite another to say:


    Evil is irrational religious baggage, much of which is about offending an imaginary friend. — boagie

    and:

    It is an unhealthy concept that needs to be abandoned. — boagie

    There is nothing irrational about the Hebrew Bible term ra', Many scholars prefer to translate it as the tree of good and bad. There is nothing there about an imaginary friend. It is about what men do.

    You perpetuate the very thing you are trying to eliminate by carrying the baggage you want to leave behind.
  • The Unsolved Mystery of Evil: A Necessary Paradox?
    Evil is irrational religious baggage — boagie

    The irrational religious baggage is something you and others are carrying.

    You are conflating a particular reified belief with the much older and more basic meaning which is that evil is what is bad, what causes suffering, hardship, and adversity.
  • The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction
    the vehicle of intelligibility is the phantasm or neural state encoding sensory content -- and it is identically the action of the sensible on our nervous system. — Dfpolis

    Melodie Stenger, with the support of Aristotle, suggests that the reason why something appears to one person to be one thing appears to another to be another is that the action of phantasia moves in both directions. To put it differently, things do not appear to be as they are simply because of how they are but because of how the particular person is. It is not simply the work of the imagination but of the imagination of a particular person, of their character, of their beliefs and experiences.

    From Nicomachean Ethics:

    But suppose someone were to say that all people aim at the apparent good, but they are not in control of how things appear [phantasias], but rather whatever sort of person each one is, of that sort too does the end appear to anyone. So if each one were in some way responsible for one’s own active condition, then each would be in some way responsible oneself for how things appear [phantasias]…(1114a30-114b20)
  • Opinions on Francis Macdonald Cornford's translation of The Republic.
    I don't recommend either Jowett or Cornford, except if nothing else is available.

    I recommend Allan Bloom(pdf) It is what I used when I was teaching.


    I have not read this translation but in general his translations are very good Sachs
  • The Unsolved Mystery of Evil: A Necessary Paradox?
    ↪Wayfarer


    Genesis has the concept of the ways of things but not of their nature. The movement of the snake, moving one way in order to go in another, reflects its duplicity. Only part of what it tells Eve is true. Part of what it says is equivocal - on the day you eat you will not die, and part is a matter of what it does not say.
  • Goodness and God
    People's observance of the influence of their gods on the world is on a par with the fact that our mutually agreed belief in the value of a paper note influence the functionality of economies and financial systems. — Benj96

    An agreed upon practice and something about which there is no agreement about anything is not on a par.
  • The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction
    The failure to distinguish between two different kinds of bodies, terrestrial and heavenly or primary body, leads to false assertions and conclusions.

    De Caelo On the Heavens:

    These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. (269a30)

    On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them ; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. (269b14)

    It is equally reasonable to assume that this body will be ungenerated and indestructible and exempt from increase and alteration (270a13)

    If then this body can have no contrary, because there can be no contrary motion to the circular, nature seems justly to have exempted from contraries the body which was to be ungenerated and indestructible. (270a17)

    The reasons why the primary body is eternal and not subject to increase or diminution, but unaging and unalterable and unmodified, will be clear from what has been said to any one who believes in our assumptions. Our theory seems to confirm experience and to be confirmed by it. (270b1)

    If then there is, as there certainly is, anything divine, what we have just said about the primary bodily substance was well said. (270b10)

    And so, implying that the primary body is something else beyond earth, fire, air, and water, they gave the highest place a name of its own, aether, derived from the fact that it ‘runs always for an eternity of time. (270b21)
  • A Summary of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
    If white turns into black some people say “Essentially it is still the same”. And others, if the colour becomes one degree darker, say “It has changed completely".
    (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value 42)
  • Goodness and God
    ...if God is all existants. — Benj96

    To go from "if" to "is" is a conjuring act.
  • The Unsolved Mystery of Evil: A Necessary Paradox?
    The snake is the hero in this story. — Tom Storm

    In my story too it often is.
  • Goodness and God
    If one starts from the belief that God exists and that God is good, then it follows that good exists. But the same holds for any number of things. If one starts from the belief that God exists and that God is X, then it follows that X exists. Play the old Mad Libs game, replace X with any adjective, and it is clear just how pointless this is.
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