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The Commune of Being and Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1971

Graeme Nicholson
Graeme Nicholson
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

One cannot determine whether a book is a work of political philosophy merely by glancing at its contents. Heidegger's Being and Time is a case in point. It offers no discussion of the topics which are commonly thought to constitute political philosophy—the state, the nature of law, human rights, and so on. But particular themes such as these reflect in large part the actual conditions which prevailed at certain times and places, fourth-century Athens and seventeenth-century England, for example, so they must not be thought to constitute an outline of the eternal problems of political philosophy. When a philosopher embarks upon a new line of thought at a different time and under novel circumstances, he may find himself instituting a new vocabulary for the problems of the human community.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 708 - 726
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1971

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References

1 See Schneeberger, G., Nachlese zu Heidegger (Bern, 1962), for the relevant documents.Google Scholar

2 Die Selbstbehauptung der Deutschen Universität (Breslau, 1934Google Scholar).

3 Les Temps Modernes, II (1946-47), 343-360.

4 ibid., III (1947), 115-127.

5 ibid., IV (1948), 370-377. See also Löwith, K., Heidegger: Denker in dürftiger Xit (2nd ed.; Gottingen, 1960), pp. 50–57.Google Scholar

6 For example, Eric Weil, “Le cas Heidegger”, Les Temps Modernes, III (1947), 128-138; Paul Hühnerfeld, In Sachen Heidegger (Hamburg, 1959); Georg Lukacs, Die gerstörung der Vernunft (Berlin, 1954); Hans Jonas, “Heidegger and Theology”, Review of Metaphysics, XVIII (1954), 207-233; Theodor Adorno, Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (Frankfurt, 1964). Two documents of great interest appeared in Les Temps Modernes, I, in 1946: “Entretien avec Martin Heidegger”, by Maurice de Gandillac (713-716), and “Visite à Martin Heidegger,” by Alfred de Towarnicki (717-724). There are three further controversies of interest, in Die Zeit for 1953, Numbers 33 and 39, in the same journal for 1959, Numbers 11 and 18, and in Der Spiegel for 1966, Numbers 7, 11 and 12. Alexander Schwan has attempted a major treatment of the entire question, Politische Philosophic im Denken Heideggers (Cologne, 1965), but it is an unsatisfactory work, which attributes to Heidegger a philosophy of history rather than a political philosophy.

7 The exchange between Jonas (see previous note) and Richardson “Heidegger and God—and Professor Jonas,” Thought, XL (1965), 13-40, is more concerned with religion than with politics, but it exemplifies the same hermeneutical conflict. Jonas relates the philosophy to its milieu, and Richardson is a textual purist.

8 Richard Schmitt has seen this, and refers to anarchism in his book, Martin Heidegger on Being Human (New York, 1969), 250 ff., but he appears to think that anarchism is a viewpoint which cannot grasp social phenomena at all.

9 This is most clearly stated on p. 167 of Sein und Zeit (9 Auflage, Tübingen, i960). This pagination appears in the margins of the translation by Macquarrie and Robinson (New York, 1962). See also the Letter on Humanism (1947), pp. 8-9, where Heidegger says the analysis of das Man was not intended as a passing contribution to sociology, or as a counter-ideal to the self-possession of a person.

10 Some of the more important statements of this character are found on pp. 68, 99, 100, 150, 175, 176, 179, 222, 293 and 383.

11 I have attempted to show this in: “Camus and Heidegger: Anarchists,” University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. XLI, 1971, 14-23.

12 See especially Sec. 10 and 25 where the anti-personalist consequences of the existential notion of the self are clearly laid out.

13 See Capital, Vol. I, Ch. VII, “The Labour Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value,” especially Marx's point on the tool-maker (in the Moscow edition of 1954, pp. 182-3) which makes a point virtually identical with Heidegger's.

14 It is the following argument that refers to intellectual work, marking off the execution of a project as against idle speculation and gossip: “Suppose that what one (Man) has suspected and surmised should be translated into deed . . . then all interest in what has been realized dies out. Interest, a mixture of curiosity and gossip, only exists as long as one can indulge in harmless speculation. Being ‘in on it’ while one is on the scent, rules out allegiance when the execution of these fancies has occurred. For then one is thrown back on one's own powers. Gossip and speculation lose their force. Indeed they quickly exact their penalty. In the face of the execution of that which one had also surmised, the gossip is ready to point out ‘One could have done it oneself, for one also surmised something of the sort.’ Indeed the gossip is in the long run irritated that what he had long surmised and even urged should now actually occur. He can't surmise any longer.” (pp. 173-4) Farther on, execution of a work project is marked off against business (Betrieb).

15 See references given in notes 16-18 and 20-21 below; see also “Warum bleiben wir in der Provinz?” in Schneeberger.

16 I have mentioned five disclosures, although there are many more. Some texts bearing on these points: for the disclosure of man as to deinotaton, see Einführung in die Metaphysik, pp. 112-126 (English, pp. 146-165) which interprets the chorus of Antigone 332 ff.; for the disclosure of the materials, see “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes”, Holzwege, pp. 35-53, esp. pp. 47f; “Bauen Wohnen Denken,” Vorträge und Aufsätze, pp. 158-162; “Die Frage nach der Techmk,” Vorträge und Aufsätze, pp. 17-27. (The first two texts date from 1935, the last two from ca. 1951.) Heidegger has remarked on several occasions, e.g. in his Preface to W. Richardson's Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague, 1963), pp. x-xiii, that his understanding of disclosure [aletheia) was aided by the study of the Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, especially by the conception of techné as a mode of truth. See also the Letter on Humanism, p. 27.

17 See the Letter on Humanism, p. 5.

18 This is a thesis running through “Bauen Wohnen Denken.”

19 Einführung in die Metaphysik, p. 152 (English, p. 199). Heidegger got into trouble in 1953 by publishing this remark unchanged, for it was taken as evidence that he had still not repudiated National Socialism. See die Zeit for 1953, numbers 33 and 39.

20 In the Letter on Humanism, p. 27, h e says that work in t h e modern world can only be conceived as alienation, and that for this reason the Marxist view of history is superior to all others.

21 See “Bauen Wohnen Denken,” “Das Ding,” “Die Frage nach der Technik.”