16 - Heideggerean Historicity and Metaphysical Politics

Summary

In spite of the ascendant power of technology and of the universally technicized [gesamtteknischen] mobilization of the globe, hence in spite of a quite specific preeminence of an ensnared [imprisoned, eingefangenen] nature, an altogether distinct fundamental power of Being [Grundmacht des Seins] is on the rise; this power is history, which, however, is no longer to be represented as an object of historiography.

In the following, I shall be mostly concerned to try to do two things. One is to explain, insofar as I understand it, some aspects of Heidegger's attack on the classical German philosophical tradition or “German Idealism.”

I want especially to try to understand his account of the essay he seems to regard as the death knell for this Kantian program, and thereby, he insists, a death knell for the aspirations of modern philosophy itself: These are the lectures Heidegger gave in the summer semester in Freiburg in 1936 on Schelling's 1809 “Treatise on Human Freedom,” the last essay Schelling personally prepared for publication (even though he was to live and lecture for over forty more years).

But, as already implied, for Heidegger, the stakes are very high in what appears to be a very abstract topic. The fact (if it is a fact) that the post- Kantian notions of subjectivity, self-consciousness, freedom, and so on, could not be defended or saved from various objections, is for Heidegger a reflection on the far deeper insufficiencies of all modern philosophy itself, and, indeed, those deficiencies reflect the inevitable nihilism of all post- Platonic philosophy.