Dasein and Der Fuhrer (update over fold)

‘Da Sein mit dem Führer’ –
Allerdings nur solange Da-Sein ist, das heißt die ontische Möglichkeit von Seinsverständnis, »gibt es« Sein. Wenn Da Sein nicht existiert, dann »ist« auch nicht »Unabhängigkeit« und »ist« auch nicht »An-sich«. Dergleichen ist dann weder verstehbar noch unverstehbar. Dann ist auch innerweltliches Seiendes weder entdeckbar, noch kann es in Verborgenheit liegen. Dann kann weder gesagt werden, daß Seiendes sei, noch daß es nicht sei. Es kann jetzt wohl, solange Seinsverständnis ist und damit Verständnis von Vorhandenheit, gesagt werden, daß dann Seiendes noch weiterhin sein wird.
Die gekennzeichnete Abhängigkeit des Seins, nicht des Seienden, von Seinsverständnis, das heißt die Abhängigkeit der Realität, nicht des Realen, von der Sorge, sichert die weitere Analytik des Daseins vor einer unkritischen, aber immer wieder sich eindrängenden Interpretation des Da Seins am Leitfaden der Idee von Realität. Erst die Orientierung an der ontologisch positiv interpretierten Existenzialität gibt die Gewähr, daß nicht doch im faktischen Gang der Analyse des »Bewußtseins«, des »Lebens« irgendein wenngleich indifferenter Sinn von Realität zugrundegelegt wird.

But you only will understand it if you understand the difference between ‘Dasein’ and ‘Da Sein’.

@johnq “As you say, this kind of thinking doesn’t necessarily lead to Nazism, but I think it’s fair to conclude that it led Heidegger there.”

I don’t know about that, for the simple reason that when people favour something in politics, they tend to find rationalizations for that thing that are couched in their preferred idiom. Hence, we can find utilitarian justifications for European settler colonialism or eugenics (for example) without drawing the conclusion that utilitarianism would necessarily lead to the support of either.

on the other hand – if you were (‘sein’) there (‘Da’) around 1933 in Germany – my German Grandfather told me that there was a very high probability that your
‘Dasein’
lead to become a member of the Führers Right Wing Racist Science Denying NSDAP.
(as it was ‘the sink’ in Germany at that time)

I am a philosophical amateur and I kept an open mind on the issue for many years, but the more I read the more I feel (based on my own political and philosophical beliefs) that the two, in Heidegger’s case, are connected. Combine the emphasis on rootedness with white supremacy and you get Nazism, and the elevation of the kind of peasant culture Heidegger preferred is white supremacy.

I see many writers trying to (in my opinion) square the circle and come up with a version of rootedness that would be differentiated from Heidegger’s Nazi version (even assuming he had both a Nazi and non-Nazi version). Many of them are outward-facing against the Heidegger-detractors, and some are more interested in including those curious about white supremacy on the one hand, and cutting down criticism from detractors on the other, than building defenses against them. But it’s possible I haven’t read the right books yet.

In an abstract analytical sense the connection may not be logically necessary, but sociologically it seems a tight one.

There is also a leap in discussions of Heidegger from what seems to be a phenomenology of the ordinary person interacting with the physical world (hammers and such) to an abstract praise of the ordinary person that leaps over what many ordinary persons find interesting about the phenomenology of hammers. It raises questions but suggests that hammers are uninteresting after all, a kind of bait and switch, or more charitably, a direct path from hammering to the infinite, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Sorry if that isn’t clear, I’m drawing a bit on a Partially Examined Life podcast on Being and Time.

The OP is interested in the tightness of the connection between Heidegger’s Nazism and his general philosophy, and the framing seems to be that it would be a win for his philosophy if the connection were looser rather than tighter. Of course, this is correct insofar as his philosophy entailing Naziism would indeed be a refutation of it. But there are also reasons his philosophy could fail to entail Naziism that would be very unflattering.

I have developed this sense of another “great” philosopher, namely Kant. Kant is notorious for the dated social views he claimed to follow from his theory–sometimes these claims were (relatively) harmless, like masturbation being wrong, sometimes more clearly toxic, like suicide being always wrong, except for rape victims, who are required to commit suicide to avoid dishonoring humanity. Contemporary Kantians have been at pains to show that these views do not actually follow from Kantianism proper, and instead can be safely written off as the prejudices and failings of the man himself.

In a sense, I think this is right. His explanation of why masturbation is wrong, for instance, is clearly far from a deductive application of how own theory. But then again, his explanation of why lying violates the categorical imperative is also clearly far from a deductively valid argument. Indeed, after years of study, it is hard for me to make out these arguments at all, particularly under the interpretive constraint that, whatever they are, they are supposed to be compelling to rational beings as such (and hence the admissible premises and inference rules cannot include any clear substantive commitments on which rational beings could differ).

So, while I think it is true that Kantianism as a theory does not entail the prejudiced conclusions that Kant himself espoused, that is for the highly unflattering reason that Kantianism as a theory is too unclear to entail anything at all, not even the standard conclusions, like the wrongness of lying, that proponents generally want to hang on to. It is empty verbiage which can be appended in front of nearly any conclusion, and therefore is as compatible with nonprejudiced views as with prejudiced ones.

I haven’t spent nearly the same amount of time reading Heidegger as reading Kant, and I have spent zero time reading Heidegger’s secondary literature or arguing with Heideggerians, but I have wondered whether my (obviously highly tendentious) diagnosis of the relationship between Kant’s philosophy and his particular social prejudices might also apply there.

I took a course on Being and Time back in around ’65. That was before all the revelations of Heidegger’s enthusiastic support for the Nazis. Nevertheless, I finished the course convinced that Heidegger’s philosophy was essentially fascist. I haven’t been in the philosophy business for a very long time, and I don’t really remember how much of my conclusion about Heidegger’s politics was reasoned out and how much was just a hunch. I stick by it, though. Indeed, what worries me is that Heidegger’s thinking remains, if not cogent, at least seductive to this day. What’s worse, if only for me, is that it’s hard to separate out the politically poisonous moments of his philosophy from those that seem crucially illuminating. Philosophy is genuinely dangerous!

I don’t have a synonym to offer for Dasein—I leave it in German in my writing and thoughts—but “wherever you are, you’re somewhere” captures a lot of it.

When thinking about where-this-kind-of-thinking-inevitably-leads, I was reminded of J Glenn Gray, one of the earliest proponents of Heidegger’s work in the US, who was also the author of The Warriors, perhaps the best philosophical account of war fighting from the point of view of combattants (with a preface by Hannah Arendt) that draws on his personal experience of fighting against the Nazis in WW2. Recommended, btw.

What “mrmister” said (about Kant) @15:

I’ve read a good deal more Hume (the Treatise, the Enquiry, Dialogues/ natural religion) than of Kant (just some select excerpts of the Phenomenology, secondary works, etc.), but just enough Kant to think that maybe he was only partly awakened from his dogmatic slumbers. I am sure that obscurantists* such as Kant, Hegel, other (mostly German) philosophers (right up through our old friend Heidegger), have what they think is a clear idea of what they are writing in the moment; but they often fail spectacularly in communicating that idea. They could have done with a bit of advice from Wittgenstein: “What can be said, can be said clearly”, followed up by a liberal dose of “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”

*Yes, I am well aware that in confessing to not being able to penetrate some of the verbiage of these very famous philosophers, one sets oneself up for being called “obtuse” or something similar, or worse, by some paragon of perspicacity patrolling these threads (Well, no stj in this case, given his status as banned from JQ’s threads. But surely there is some brave soul who can take up the slack?).
* * * * *

@mrmister: Just to clear up my confusion on this point, you are the original “mrmister”, no? The commenter @3, who styles himself (presumably) “mistermr” is a relative newcomer (he once said he commented before under a different ‘nym, AIR) who identifies as Italian. Hope I’ve got it straight now!

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The way Louis Menand handles Heidegger and Sartre in his very long (and in certain respects slightly maddening) book The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War is interesting. For a while Menand quotes, among other things, certain bits from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and explicates them.

Then, at the bottom of p. 74, he apparently says to himself: Uh-oh, I’m supposed to be writing for a general audience here, maybe I should say something they can (more) readily grasp. And he proceeds to write the following:

Leaving aside the atheism, Sartre’s definition of freedom is consistent with the German philosophical tradition. It is the definition used by Kant, Schiller, Hegel, and Marx: freedom is transparency (understanding one’s situation without mystification) and self-mastery…. Your actions should be choices, not reactions. You should think for yourself.

Still, there is nothing quite like Sartre’s idea of freedom in Husserl or Heidegger. For Heidegger, the end of thinking is a state whose features are not entirely clear, but that could be called quasi-mystical. Gelassenheit — release, serenity, a “letting be” — is a term he eventually chose for this state. The aim is to achieve an awareness of things; it is not to change them. For Sartre [as for Marx], the aim is not contemplation. It is action. Philosophy proper falls by the wayside…. This part of Sartre’s thought took some of its inspiration from a completely different mode of expression, American fiction.

Also, on de Beauvior and Heidegger, here’s an opening paragraph from a chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir:

This chapter explores ways in which Heidegger can be seen as decisive for Beauvoir’s philosophy and why it is important to consider this. Showing philosophical influences and connections is, in my view, important only if it adds to the analysis and understanding of a philosopher. In regard to Heidegger and Beauvoir, I definitly believe this to be the case. Reading Beauvoir with Heidegger can deepen our understanding of Beauvoir’s view of human being and their relationship to the world and to others. This approach might be called hermeneutical in the Heideggerian sense: it reveals new meanings without assuming that a final comprehension is ever possible.

Eva Gothlin, “Reading Simon de Beauvoir with Martin Heideger, Cambridge Companion to de Beauvoir. (As Gothlin is an expert on de Beauvoir I’m willing to take her word for it that the intellectual relationship is important, though it also seemes so from reading both authors.)

Heidegger was inherently anti-modern, so there always was and is a dangerous, right-wing or totalitarian potential in his ideas. When the Nazis took power he tried to weaponize his ideas through them, though he was revolted by their vulgarity, but hey, if you want to make an omelet…

Things got really ugly once the war started when he recycled the vilest anti-semitic tropes in the Black Notebooks – he adds not a racist, but cultural antisemitism to his anti-modern agenda, the Jews are now standing in the way of the cultural renewal he envisions.

How Hannah Arendt dealt with all this, I don’t know, it would be interesting to read their letters.

All this doesn’t mean one shouldn’t read Heidegger, especially the shorter stuff: e.g. Holzwege, Der Satz vom Grund – just as one should read Nietzsche, Paul de Man etc.

But it has to be a reading on a very high level, probably best is a seminar type situauion.

William S. Berry, I hear you, but I find it sad that oftentimes lack of initial understanding leads to dismissal and claims of obscurantism, while I believe that the so-called continental philosophy would speak to most people if properly explained.

Regarding existentialism I can recommend this very entertaining, but surprisingly in-depth account of some of its proponents’ life and work:

Sarah Bakewell: At the Existentialist Café

What does it mean to “properly explain” philosophy though – to put it into context for a reader or student? Is it like literature, where I can get insights from David Copperfield without being a male Victorian orphan? Or are the words supposed to be self-explanatory if I know the definitions and think about the logic long enough – like a physics textbook?

Is the anti modern aspect of Heidegger essential to his thought? If so, it’s odd that it’s so infrequently discussed.

What does it mean to “properly explain” philosophy

I would say:

close reading with a good teacher to understand the terminology and internal logic of the text

and (especially in Heidegger’s case)

a historical and biographical approach to unravel the influences and motivations that might have inspired the text.

Is the anti modern aspect of Heidegger essential to his thought?

Yes. Heidegger’s rejection of modernity is a big part of the whole program. He wanted to establish an approach to the world that is somehow pure and direct, not cluttered by thought and technology. That is the fascinating aspect of his thinking, but also the dangerous one. The impulse is anti-democratic, as well as anti-semitic since he sees “the Jews” as an osbtacle to such and approach.

It would be pretty funny if Matt changed his handle to MrLister (I know it should really Dr but I think that’s also true of at least one of the Misters).