Why was Heidegger a Nazi?
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articul8
Dishonest sociopath
I'm trying to outline Adorno's critique - It's obviously not an easy area, so stick with it! Liberal humanism is ripe for critique (which is why Heidegger gets an ear in contemporary continental philosophy). But there are reactionary and progressive ways of making this critique. Heidegger essentially thinks the whole of western modernity and hence its philosophy should be undone. Adorno thinks that this solution offers only a relapse into barbarism (and so MH' actions in collaborating with Nazis kind of proves his point). Adorno doesn't understimate the flaws in the enlightenment project but thinks that philosophy needs to discover its own limits and bear witness to the injustice of contemporay life - not just try to appeal to some purified primordial Being.
anyway Adorno: it's not that the subject is an adequate ground of philosophical truth (it isn't). But all thinking is necessarily mediated by subjectivity and related concepts which share a common context in historical experience. (despite claims - like those of Heidegger following Husserl that they phenomenologically bracket it out. They don't - history is infused in the philosophical vocabulary they employ, even if negatively).
Adorno's point is that the Subject is an inadequate starting point, but there's no way of avoiding it. His 'negative dialectics' are about demonstrating the inadequacy of subjectivity/western philosophical discourse from within - to demonstrate using concepts the inadequacy of the conceptual vocabulary available to us. Heidegger's attempt to metaphysically purify language by appealing to Ur-concepts is a symptom of his will to undo the history of western modernity.
Heidegger offers a meta-philosophical attack on traditional philosophy by attacking its origins in modernity. Adorno provides a critical theory of society.
anyway Adorno: it's not that the subject is an adequate ground of philosophical truth (it isn't). But all thinking is necessarily mediated by subjectivity and related concepts which share a common context in historical experience. (despite claims - like those of Heidegger following Husserl that they phenomenologically bracket it out. They don't - history is infused in the philosophical vocabulary they employ, even if negatively).
Adorno's point is that the Subject is an inadequate starting point, but there's no way of avoiding it. His 'negative dialectics' are about demonstrating the inadequacy of subjectivity/western philosophical discourse from within - to demonstrate using concepts the inadequacy of the conceptual vocabulary available to us. Heidegger's attempt to metaphysically purify language by appealing to Ur-concepts is a symptom of his will to undo the history of western modernity.
Heidegger offers a meta-philosophical attack on traditional philosophy by attacking its origins in modernity. Adorno provides a critical theory of society.
gorski
customised free radical
Heh, 2 days not on the net and all Hell breaks loose...
Just a few "contributions"...
Marcuse was his pupil, if memory serves and did his PhD with H - without checking: on Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity... But how deep a trace did that leave in his thinking - dunno... He was quite radical in Reason and Revolution and so on... Heidegger and that just don't see eye to eye at all, methinx...
A radical critique of Heidegger would have it [speculatively starting] that "at the beginning there was - Future!!!" [Kangrga and co., for instance] Or we're not Human and can't ever produce anything essentially new... Young Marx faces this dilemma when debating [some of] Hegel's conclusions: if he's right and nothing essentially New is going to happen from now on - the very meaning of existence is at stake here... And he does try hard there...
The circular notion of time [the Antiquity, in line with Nature and its natural course of development, from a beginning, development and back to where it all started], as opposed to a linear one [from an absolute beginning to an absolute end, as in Christian] or Modern notions of time ["nuclear" time or the multidimensional one, where all dimensions of time run in a parallel manner, at the same time, where all the possibilities are in the game, as it were] are at the very bottom of these debates. There are studies that show Heidegger got his own from Nietzsche and hasn't really acknowledged it [and many have taken to it, especially on the Right in Germany and most "thinkers" and philosophers in France]. I think Adorno is dead right here, in his critique, if I understood it correctly, that he relapses into Pre-Modernity and drastically so!
One more thing: an interpreter [the name escapes me now] suggested, after a careful analysis of his language and "methodology", that, unlike Hegel's strict method and proper development of notions, Heidegger's notions "slip" from one another, rather than strictly follow. Could it be that, in such a case, one can more or less easily "manipulate" which way to navigate to prejudices/values/"deep convictions" of one sort or another [just my working hypothesis based on a "gut feeling", don't worry, I haven't done the hard work to prove it and don't intend to...]
As to who started it all: if I remember well these issues were taken up by Dilthey, initially through problems of Hermeneutics, i.e. our capabilities to interpret whatever happened before us and the need for every new generation to write their own History and re-interpret for themselves their own relationship to it. Seems forgotten now, somehow?
Just a few "contributions"...
Marcuse was his pupil, if memory serves and did his PhD with H - without checking: on Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity... But how deep a trace did that leave in his thinking - dunno... He was quite radical in Reason and Revolution and so on... Heidegger and that just don't see eye to eye at all, methinx...
A radical critique of Heidegger would have it [speculatively starting] that "at the beginning there was - Future!!!" [Kangrga and co., for instance] Or we're not Human and can't ever produce anything essentially new... Young Marx faces this dilemma when debating [some of] Hegel's conclusions: if he's right and nothing essentially New is going to happen from now on - the very meaning of existence is at stake here... And he does try hard there...
The circular notion of time [the Antiquity, in line with Nature and its natural course of development, from a beginning, development and back to where it all started], as opposed to a linear one [from an absolute beginning to an absolute end, as in Christian] or Modern notions of time ["nuclear" time or the multidimensional one, where all dimensions of time run in a parallel manner, at the same time, where all the possibilities are in the game, as it were] are at the very bottom of these debates. There are studies that show Heidegger got his own from Nietzsche and hasn't really acknowledged it [and many have taken to it, especially on the Right in Germany and most "thinkers" and philosophers in France
]. I think Adorno is dead right here, in his critique, if I understood it correctly, that he relapses into Pre-Modernity and drastically so!One more thing: an interpreter [the name escapes me now] suggested, after a careful analysis of his language and "methodology", that, unlike Hegel's strict method and proper development of notions, Heidegger's notions "slip" from one another, rather than strictly follow. Could it be that, in such a case, one can more or less easily "manipulate" which way to navigate to prejudices/values/"deep convictions" of one sort or another [just my working hypothesis based on a "gut feeling", don't worry, I haven't done the hard work to prove it and don't intend to...
]As to who started it all: if I remember well these issues were taken up by Dilthey, initially through problems of Hermeneutics, i.e. our capabilities to interpret whatever happened before us and the need for every new generation to write their own History and re-interpret for themselves their own relationship to it. Seems forgotten now, somehow?
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