So far I've have found from the B&T only one problematic passage with regard to the future events:

"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. Only in communi­cating and in struggling does the power of destiny become free. Dasein's fateful destiny in and with its 'generation' goes to make up the full authentic historizing of Dasein." (385, 436 in English translation.)

But again, Heidegger's standpoint here is phenomenologically "formal" which means that the "destiny" doesn't have any specific ontical (or "existentiell" i.e. empirically concrete) meaning. It can be related to various kinds of historically "thrown" "collective Beings". It, or the whole discussion around it, c a n be interpreted as the ontology of Nazism or any other, in Heidegger's sense, historically "genuine" collective experience.

Cited passage is preceded by this:

"Dasein can be reached by the blows of fate only because in the depths of its Being Dasein is fate in the sense we have described. Existing fatefully in the resoluteness which hands itself down, Dasein has been disclosed as Being-in-the-world both for the 'fortunate' circumstances which 'come its way' and for the cruelty of accidents. Fate doesn't first arise from the clashing together of events and circumstances. Even one who is irresolute gets driven about by these-more so than one who has chosen ; and yet he can 'have' no fate(1)."

Translators comment:

"(1) This statement may well puzzle the English-speaking reader, who would perhaps be less troubled if he were to read that the irresolute man can have no 'destiny'. As we shall see in the next paragraph, Heidegger has chosen to differentiate sharply between the words 'Schicksal' and 'Geschick', which are ordinarily synonyms. Thus 'Schicksal' (our 'fate') might be described as the 'destiny' of the resolute individual ; 'Geschick' (our 'destiny') is rather the 'destiny' of a larger group, or of Dasein as a member of such a group. This usage of 'Geschick' is probably to be distinguished from that which we have met on H. 16, 19, and perhaps even 379, where we have preferred to translate it by 'vicissitude'. The suggestion of an etymological connection between 'Schicksal' and 'Geschick' on the one hand and 'Geschichte' (our 'history') and 'Geschehen' (our 'his­torizing') on the other, which is exploited in the next paragraph, is of course lost in translation."

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 — Fooloso4

One could just as well argue that one’s understanding of Heidegger’s antisemitism will be shaped by how one reads his passages on ‘Others’ in BT. In the passage you quoted, the others he does not distinguish himself from constitute the ‘there’ of the being-there of Dasein, its always already finding itself in a world of relevant concerns and useful things.

“The others who are "encountered" in the context of useful things in the surrounding world at hand are not somehow added on in thought to an initially merely objec­tively present thing, but these "things" are encountered from the world in which they are at hand for the others.”

Is this the claim that is being made in the reviews or in the book itself? Or in this thread, even? — Jamal

Not that exact wording, but something like it yes. If not, who cares? Plenty of thinkers — and artists, and scientists — were fairly nasty people. If the point is to shed some light on that, cool. Not sure what it has to do with questions or arguments though.

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. — Fooloso4

But you said that— he didn’t. At least not in your quote. I read it as conforming to an ambiguous “they”.

Heidegger's view of Nietzsche as metaphysician requires accepting the following as the only way to understand the 'natural' and the role of 'eternal recurrence in The Gay Science:

Meanwhile we want to heed the fact that at the time when the thought of eternal return of the same arises Nietzsche is striving most decisively in his thought to dehumanize and de-deify being as a whole. His striving is not a mere echo, as one might suppose, of an ostensible "positivistic period" now in abeyance. It has its own, more profound origin. Only in this way is it possible for Nietzsche to be driven directly from such striving to its apparently incongruous opposite, when in his doctrine of will to power he demands the supreme humanization of beings — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol II, page 94

Enter the Dasein, stage left:

If we follow Nietzsche's lead and substitute "the philosopher" for "the knower," "the artist" for "the creator," and "the saint" for "the lover," then the phrase we introduced a moment ago tells us that the philosopher, artist, and saint are one. However, it is not Nietzsche's purpose here to concoct an amalgam that would consist of all the things these words used to mean. On the contrary, he is seeking the figure of a human being who exists simultaneously in the transformed unity of that threefold metamorphosis-the knower, the creator, the giver. This human being of the future is the proper ruler, the one who has become master of the last man, indeed in such a way that the last man disappears. His disappearance indicates that the ruler is no longer defined in opposition to the last man-which is what always happens as long as future humanity, spawned by what has gone before, has to grasp itself as over-man, that is to say, as a transition. The ruler, that is, the designated unity of knower, creator, and lover, is in his own proper grounds altogether an other. — ibid. page 127

Nietzsche and Heidegger shared many disenchantments with their cultural milieus. Both admired orders of rank and looked down upon democracy. But this agency Heidegger is putting forward runs afoul of a central observation in Nietzsche's Will to Power:

Morality as a means of seduction--- "Nature is good, for a wise and good God is its cause. Who, then, is responsible for the 'corruption of mankind'? It tyrants and seducers, the ruling orders---they must be destroyed"---: Rousseau's logic (compare Pascal's logic, which lays the responsibility on original sin).
Compare the related logic of Luther. In both cases a pretext is sought to introduce an insatiable thirst for revenge as a moral-religious duty. Hatred for the ruling order seeks to sanctify itself---(the "sinfulness of Israel": foundation of the power of the priest),
Compare the related logic of Paul. It is always God's cause in which these reactions come forth, the cause of right, of humanity, etc. In the case of Christ, the rejoicing of the people appears as the cause of his execution; an anti-priestly movement from the first. Even in the case of the anti-Semites it is the same artifice: to visit condemnatory judgments upon one's enemies opponent and to reserve to oneself the role of retributive justice. — Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 347, translated by Walter Kaufman

Thank you.

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.

So imagine substituting “jews” for “they” in B&T. Would that make any sense whatsoever? No. It’d be completely incoherent.

I think it’s worthwhile to go back and look to see if there are any connections, given what we know now. I’m just not yet convinced of any.

Heidegger is using the terms 'they', 'those', and 'others' as terms of inclusion rather than exclusion. — Fooloso4

Also @Mikie.

You can certainly read it that way. The interesting question, at least for me, is whether you have to. You can also read it as something like "those with whom you have a sense of community", "those you have assumed social relations with". We know how that went for Heidegger. But there is a gap between being able to read him like that (and you should) and being only able to read the ideas like that. Those two things are being conflated.

Absolutely read him like a Nazi. Does that mean a phenomenological "sense of community", as Heidegger's described it, is a Nazi concept? Remains to be seen.

Absolutely read him like a Nazi. Does that mean a phenomenological "sense of community", as Heidegger's described it, is a Nazi concept? Remains to be seen. — fdrake

It’s not a sense of community. The “they” can be thought as something like Freud’s superego— the sense of what “they” think and “they” believe. The masses, the mainstream, the general culture, this vague sense of “what one does.”

You’re all really stretching this if you’re arguing the “they” or “one” or “das man” is somehow referring to the Jews or anyone non-German. It may seem right on the surface, but I really can’t see how it makes sense to anyone who’s spent any considerable time reading Heidegger.

So yes, read him as a Nazi. Read Schopenhauer as an asshole. Read Wittgenstein as an abuser of children. Read Descartes as someone who justified cruelty to animals. Etc. But let’s be careful in making connections that aren’t there— and really don’t make sense in context if they were.

Nietzsche and Heidegger shared many disenchantments with their cultural milieus. Both admired orders of rank and looked down upon democracy. But this agency Heidegger is putting forward runs afoul of a central observation in Nietzsche's Will to Power: — Paine

The ruler, that is, the designated unity of knower, creator, and lover, is in his own proper grounds altogether an other. — ibid. page 127

Do you mean that Heidegger is positing the overman as agency? For Heidegger the overman is a willing, and even though the will for Nietzsche is a complex system of drives it draws from the tradition the notion of a being present at hand , and this notion is inextricable from a metaphysical notion of time. Heidegger claims in What is Thinking that Nietzsche defines the Being of beings as Will to Power. He says that Nietzsche locates revenge as motivated by revulsion against the passing away of time.

“The revulsion arising in the will is then the will against everything that passes-everything, that is, which comes to be out of a coming-to-be, and endures. Hence the will is the sphere of representational ideas which basically pursue and set upon everything that comes and goes and exists, in order to depose, reduce it in its stature and ultimately decompose it. This revulsion within the will itself, according to Nietzsche, is the essential nature of revenge.
"This, yes, this alone is revenge itself : the will's revulsion against time and its It was'." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II, "On Deliverance)

The bridge to the overman leads to the deliverance from revenge, because the overman frees itself from time.

“…will is primal being only when it is eternal as will. And it is that when, as will, it eternally wills the eternity of willing. The will that is eternal in this sense no longer follows and depends on the temporal in what it wills, or in its willing. It is independent of time. And so it can no longer be affronted by time.”

The important point for Heidegger is that Nietzsche conceives time metaphysically as a succession of punctual
‘nows’.

“This passing away is conceived more precisely as the successive flowing away of the "now" out of the "not yet now" into the "no longer now."… Time persists, consists in passing. It is, in that it constantly is not. This is the representational idea of time that characterizes the concept of time' which is standard throughout the metaphysics of the West…. in all metaphysics from the beginning of Western thought, Being means being present, Being, if it is to be thought in the highest instance, must be thought as pure presence, that is, as the presence that persists, the abiding present, the steadily standing "now."

“The will is delivered from revulsion when it wills the constant recurrence of the same. Then the will wills the eternity of what is willed. The will wills its own eternity. Will is primal being. The highest product of primal being is eternity. The primal being of beings is the will, as the eternally recurrent willing of the eternal recurrence of the same. The eternal recurrence of the same is the supreme triumph of the metaphysics of the will that eternally wills its own willing.”

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. — Fooloso4

The point he is making in BT concerns the fact that who we are as Da Seins is a function of our dealings with the things of our world. Furthermore , all of the objects we deal with in our world get their sense from our actual pragmatic use of them, and this use includes other people with and for whom we are using these objects. Thus, who we are does not come before our dealings with things and other daseins. Rather, we are in the world with others in a fundamental way before we are simply who we are part from others. The solipsist self is a derivative form of being with others. This runs complete counter to your analysis of the relevant passages in terms of our choosing one group of others for inclusion over another group. Being with others as he means it here is not the product of a choice.

Is post modernism a critical aspect in obtaining a better reading of Heidegger?

You can certainly read it that way. The interesting question, at least for me, is whether you have to. You can also read it as something like "those with whom you have a sense of community", "those you stand in assumed relation with". — fdrake

Not without profoundly distorting the sense of this line of thought in BT. There are other writings of Heidegger where he specifically singles out the German volk, but this in not at all the point of these passages in BT. The relation between my Dasein and other Daseins here has nothing to do with choosing one group over another, but of how the intelligibility and sense of my engagement with the world moment to moment is guided by a pre-existing context of relevance.

↪Joshs Is post modernism a critical aspect in obtaining a better reading of Heidegger? — Tom Storm

I suppose it depends on who you put in the postmodern camp. On the conservative side, there are those who read him in close proximity to Kierkegaard , Levinas and Wittgenstein. Some associate him with critical theory types like Adorno, and then there are the poststructuralist readings which I favor ( Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida).

It’s not a sense of community. The “they” can be thought as something like Freud’s superego— the sense of what “they” think and “they” believe. The masses, the mainstream, the general culture, this vague sense of “what one does.” — Mikie

Aye we both know what it is. I emphasised the normative belonging aspect, you emphasised the normative imposition aspect.

Again, the Dasein was Hitler-compatible ... And even after the war Heidi had to be "de-nazified". — 180 Proof

If someone's right about what it means to be a human being, it should apply to everyone - so a concept like Dasein should apply to people regardless of the ideology they believe in. We don't have any similar problems with the idea of "subjectivity" being Hitler-compatible, Mao-compatible or whatever. Though I do think it would be a massive coincidence if Heidegger wrote what he did without having the Nazis in mind.

As a matter of hermeneutic scruple, SuZ should be read in that cultural-ideological context; I don't think my characterization above is hyperbolic or uncharitable considering the Völkische Bewegung milieu. — 180 Proof

I agree that it should be read in that context, do you believe the ideas he had should only be read in that context? I've in mind Dreyfus. I don't think it would be fair at all to call his attack on representationalism in AI using Heidegger's ideas a "Nazi attack on representationalism" or "an attack on representationalism using Nazi ideology". Would you agree with that? That the ideas can be put to use at a distance from their birthplace?

Not without profoundly distorting the sense of this line of thought in BT. There are other writings of Heidegger where he specifically singles out the German volk, but this in not at all the point of these passages in BT. The relation between my Dasein and other Daseins here has nothing to do with choosing one group over another, but of how the intelligibility and sense of my engagement with the world moment to moment is guided by a pre-existing context of relevance. — Joshs

Yes. I am writing for people who have not read the book. No one who does not already understand Heidegger would understand a word of what you wrote.

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.

On the conservative side, there are those who read him in close proximity to Kierkegaard , Levinas and Wittgenstein. Some associate him with critical theory types like Adorno, and then there are the poststructuralist readings which I favor ( Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida). — Joshs

Thank you. That's what I was wondering. My understanding is that Dreyfus' reading is now considered somewhat limited, is that your view? Would you class him as a conservative?

As an aside, is there any particular reason to use poststructuralist over postmodern? Is it the role of language based theory over the broader philosophical exigencies (of the latter)?

Thank you. That's what I was wondering. My understanding is that Dreyfus' reading is now considered somewhat limited, is that your view? Would you class him as a conservative? — Tom Storm

Yes, Dreyfus’ approach was linked to his interest in Kierkegaard. He founded what became known as the West Coast school of Heidegger interpretation, which exerted a strong influence on readings of Heidegger in English-speaking countries for many years, but is no longer the dominant approach.

As an aside, is there any particular reason to use poststructuralist over postmodern? Is it the role of language based theory over the broader philosophical exigencies (of the latter)? — Tom Storm

One reason to do so is that, like relativism , the meaning of postmodernism is hard to pin down. Poststructuralism at least points one in the direction of those philosophers who were influenced by structuralism in linguistics and anthropology, as well as phenomenology. Poststructuralists
don’t reject structuralism, they are concerned with the genesis of structures, how to link structure and genesis.

Nice. Thanks again.

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.

Do you mean that Heidegger is positing the overman as agency? — Joshs

At least to the extent it brings about the underlined portion of the quote:

This human being of the future is the proper ruler, the one who has become master of the last man,indeed in such a way that the last man disappears. His disappearance indicates that the ruler is no longer defined in opposition to the last man-which is what always happens as long as future humanity, spawned by what has gone before, has to grasp itself as over-man, — ibid. page 127

Your references are well in line with what is put forward in the Lectures. I disagree with the interpretation for reasons that require their own discussion. But even if one were to accept the 'metaphysic' Heidegger derives from Nietzsche, the observation about time still has Heidegger at variance with other ideas about revenge, such as the one I quoted from Nietzsche's Notebook. The dynamic there is to show how belief systems provide a sense of value from punishing others. So, how can the idea of change from that form of exchange include a blatant example of it?

And if there is going to be an appeal to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, let it include:

For 'punishment' is what revenge calls itself; with a hypocritical lie it creates a good conscience for itself.....

Has he unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth? And who taught him reconciliation with time and something higher than any reconciliation? For that will which is the will to power must will something higher than any reconciliation; but how shall this be brought about? Who could teach him also to will backwards? — Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Redemption, translated by Walter Kaufman

:fire:

Heidegger was a philosopher, not an ideologue or pampleteer. Being and Time isn't a derivative treatise of Mein Kampf; it is, however, like the Nazi bible (which Heidegger wholly endorsed and recommended in an extant letter to his own brother) as I described previously

... anti-modernist, pre/ir-rationalist ("blood"), agrarian ("soil"), totalizing & oracular. — 180 Proof

He did not find his "thinking" compatible with that of most modern thinkers during inter-war years Europe but Heidegger enthusiastically embraced Hitler's "ideas" as compatible with his own, and enough so that he promptly jumped on the Nazi bandwagon after 'the Reichstag fire' and subsequent Enabling Act decree when most other notable, modern, (non-Jewish) German philisophers (e.g. Jaspers, Gadamer, Carnap) had not.

Of course, taken out of context, you have a point about a statement like my saying "Dasein is Hitler-compatible". Consider (scroll down):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/658391 "der Fūhrerprinzip"-compatible? :chin:

I agree that it should be read in that context, do you believe the ideas he had should only be read in that context? — fdrake

No. The historical-cultural-political context is, however, the most relevant context to the question of the degree to which Heidegger's political affilitation and activity are reflected in his major philosophical work which he had so recently published. Other contextual readings, in this case, may provide nuances which supplement our understanding of the text but they are too ancillary to exculpate SuZ of its ideological affordances.

[deleted]

He was a piece of shit as a person, I used to be a big fan, am now much less so, but not because I already did not know of his involvement with Nazism. What can be added to this? It's stupid, ignorant, reprehensible, immoral and add all the other words you want.

But when you have a guy who influenced SO many philosophers, of different strands too, from Sartre to Marleau-Ponty, Dreyfus to Gadamer, Rorty to Foucault, Arendt to Zizek, then I'm sorry, there is interesting material in (at least) some of his works. For me, Being and Time is quite special.

I know others have read it and think it total gibberish and mysticism. Fine. Don't call it philosophy if you like. But BT, if not other lectures of his, are important. Nazism surely didn't influence all who followed him...

And this is coming from someone who thinks less of his work than I used to. But, I cannot deny it has value, just like people here get massive amounts of value from Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or Husserl, Ayer, etc. And we all can make arguments for why any of these figures here shouldn't be as influential.

It is what it is.

:up:

I've been grateful to Heidegger, nonetheless, since my earliest philosophical studies in the late '70s for his monumental oeuvre as a/the paragon of how NOT to philosophize - or think-live philosophically (as Arendt points out) - as manifest by the generations of heideggerian obscurant sophists (i.e. p0m0s e.g. Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty et al) who've come and gone in and out of academic & litcrit fashion since the 1950s - — 180 Proof

But when you have a guy who influenced SO many philosophers, of different strands too, from Sartre to Marleau-Ponty, Dreyfus to Gadamer, Rorty to Foucault, Arendt to Zizek, then I'm sorry, there is interesting material in (at least) some of his works. For me, Being and Time is quite special. — Manuel

It’s easier to dismiss his entire ouvre as a colossally irrelevant and dangerous “anti-modernist, pre/ir-rationalist ("blood"), agrarian ("soil"), totalizing & oracular” polemic if you dont relate to any of the names mentioned above.

No. The historical-cultural-political context is, however, the most relevant context to the question of the degree to which Heidegger's political affilitation and activity are reflected in his major philosophical work which he had so recently published. Other contextual readings, in this case, may provide nuances which supplement our understanding of the text but they are too ancillary to exculpate SuZ of its ideological affordances. — 180 Proof

Seems fair enough to me. It strikes me as disingenuous to "rescue" Heidegger's philosophy from Naziism, by invoking its ability to be used to other ends. And for similar reasons, disingenuous to refute other uses of his ideas on that basis.

Needs a "universality of reason" and imperialism treatment I guess.

Good thing I didn't say you couldn't use Heidi's text for anything else. I suppose that would be disingenuous.