Interesting, thanks. I can see how this reflects your view that "the two bodies of work are two aspects of the same thinking," while yet providing room for a correction, and also providing a way of preserving the philosophy. Overall, this seems like a reasonable approach. I would like to read the entire article.

All we ever get to in these sorts of threads are, 'Heidegger was a philosopher of genius with significant flaws.' Not such a remarkable observation. At least we are now broadly conceding that H had Nazi sympathies, I remember a time when Heidegger acolytes would deny this and get quite angry at the merest suggestion of it. I haven't read Heidegger - I've tasted bits of him, however the work is far too complex for me and I'm not interested enough to pursue it. But I am willing to accept his work as brilliant - I see no contradiction between flawed or 'bad' people (however this is measured) who also produce innovative, prodigious work. I suppose the obvious question we keep coming back to is: do his flaws contaminate his thinking? I'm sure one could make a case for anything in this space.

People should read Heidegger all they like. I don't seek to ban his books. I myself am inclined to avoid whenever possible those who, inter alia, think and are determined to tell everyone that certain groups of people (including themselves) are distinctive in spirit, or have a special place in the world, are especially a part of or have a unique understanding of "Being" or who knows what else is said to qualify as the kind of mystical-religious-philosophical locus of ultimate reality some of us need to manufacture, which in any case cannot be defined or understood through the use of reason; who think reason itself is detrimental to attaining what's true or real, and believe that it should be replaced by something or other like dancing, or marching, exercising, working (because it makes us "free") or running about the mountains in lederhosen pretending to be a peasant. Particularly when they are, also, unrepentant Nazis.

People should read Heidegger all they like. I don't seek to ban his books. I myself am inclined to avoid whenever possible those who, inter alia, think and are determined to tell everyone that certain groups of people (including themselves) are distinctive in spirit, or have a special place in the world, are especially a part of or have a unique understanding of "Being" or who knows what else is said to qualify as the kind of mystical-religious-philosophical locus of ultimate reality some of us need to manufacture, which in any case cannot be defined or understood through the use of reason; who think reason itself is detrimental to attaining what's true or real, and believe that it should be replaced by something or other like dancing, or marching, exercising, working (because it makes us "free") or running about the mountains in lederhosen pretending to be a peasant. Particularly when they are, also, unrepentant Nazis. — Ciceronianus

Wolin gets Heidegger half right in this respect. Heidegger did indeed reserve a special place for his own parochial culture over others. In his mind rural culture was better suited to grasping Being urban culture, the German volk grounded in blood and soil were better suited to this thinking than ‘rootless’ jews or other foreigners. What Wolin doesnt get is that the thinking of Being itself is a thinking of pragmatic engagement that in its particularities clashes with the structures of totalitarian political institutions. Wolin believes that at the heart of Heidegger’s concept of being is nothing but right wing fascist philosophy dressed up in mystic poetic terminology. But his philosophy is profoundly different from the sorts of conservative philosophies that were fashionable at the time, and still appear today. So Heidegger’s thinking appears as something new and radical but tied to the vestiges of parochial nationalism.

It's always easier to moralize than it is to be moral. — Pantagruel

Yeah, but....

1
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged.
2
For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

I'd say it's Heidegger that has the plank in his eye. He didn't fail to embody his own ideals. What he ultimately deemed as authentic living was just a bad ideal that he successfully lived up to.

But, as @Joshs has already pointed out -- Levinas and Derrida have more right to condemn Heidegger than me, and they both use his philosophy. So, for better or worse, I think he's worth reading. (as a Marxist, that's damning praise, but praise all the same)

The Nazi death camps is not something that occurred two centuries ago and was not a widely embraced social norm. However reprehensible slavery was, to be a slave was not to be put to death. The rejection of slavery as a social norm was an acceptance of the inherent value of human life. — Fooloso4

I'm glad you have such a fine-grained sense of absolute moral right and wrong. You are to be congratulated.

As I said, debating some particular moral decision of Heidegger's, ok. Otherwise, I let the man's work speak for what it is, which is what it is designed to do. I've read my fair share of Heidegger, I don't feel like I've been morally polluted by any suspect ideologies. I do feel like the man has some valuable insights. Your mileage may vary. Perhaps he was transformed by the experience. Lots of saints started out as sinners. The study of saints (hagiography) recognizes the conversion to the opposite as a common theme, what Jung called enantiodromia. Who is to say? The human experience is complex.

a fine-grained sense of absolute moral right and wrong. — Pantagruel

Does one's sense of right and wrong have to be fine grained and absolute to know that the extermination of human beings was wrong in the twentieth century?

I do feel like the man has some valuable insights. — Pantagruel

I agree.

Lots of saints — Pantagruel

Saint Martin Heidegger?

Does one's sense of right and wrong have to be fine grained and absolute to know that the extermination of human beings was wrong in the twentieth century? — Fooloso4

Nope. And Martin Heidegger wasn't personally culpable for that. The people who were were tried, convicted, and punished. And there have been (and continue to be) lots of other modern genocides resulting in millions of deaths. For context.

And Martin Heidegger wasn't personally culpable for that. — Pantagruel

He supported it though. The Fuhrer and the extermination of Jews and others was, in line with his Protestant provincialism, fated. It is the sending or giving of Being, to which the authentic Dasein must hearken. The German people are Heidegger's chosen people, doing God's work on Earth.

He supported it though. The Fuhrer and the extermination of Jews and others was, in line with his Protestant provincialism, fated. It is the sending or giving of Being, to which the authentic Dasein must hearken. The German people are Heidegger's chosen people, doing God's work on Earth. — Fooloso4

Yes, your use of the term "support" is sufficiently vague to endorse what I've been saying. I don't doubt he was a representative of a certain set of ideologies alive at that time. I have not seen any damning citations that implicate him as a sinister architect, nor any indication that his philosophy is polluted, which is the real issue.

Yes, your use of the term "support" is sufficiently vague to endorse what I've been saying. — Pantagruel

Reading his Rectoral Address should give you some idea of what support means.

...any indication that his philosophy is polluted, which is the real issue. — Pantagruel

His philosophy is amoral. No distinction is made in order to distinguish between what Being gives, which is to be accepted and supported, and what is to be rejected. He does, however, make use of the distinction for example in his criticism of technology.

It is as if he were to criticize the death camps because of their efficiency.

His philosophy is amoral — Fooloso4

:up:

Does that mean you agree with the statement or that you approve of philosophical nihilism?

It's a reasonable assessment. Not every philosophy purports to an ethical dimension. That doesn't entail philosophical nihilism. I'm certainly not a philosophical nihilist. I believe philosophy should aspire to actualization. I believe in the instrumentality of the awareness of truth.

I see no contradiction between flawed or 'bad' people (however this is measured) who also produce innovative, prodigious work — Tom Storm

Again, I think it depends on whether Heidegger's philosophy implicates the moral sphere. For an ethicist to produce a work of great import and then choose actions which are deeply flawed is incongruous. For a philosopher whose work implicates the moral sphere the incongruity is not as great, but it is still present. For someone whose work has no relation to the moral sphere, there is no incongruity.

And then this gets into 's point about "philosophical nihilism." It is easy to swallow the idea that a logician, for instance, can produce work unrelated to the moral sphere. But Heidegger is doing and purporting to do something much more fundamental ("metaphysics"), and there is much more at stake in considering whether that fundamental sphere is amoral.

Not every philosophy purports to an ethical dimension. — Pantagruel

The problem is evident in the Introduction to Being and Time. Heidegger claims that the question of the meaning of Being is the fundamental question, the human question. H. says that we must make the inquirer, Dasein, transparent in his own Being. To ignore the ethical dimension of human being is to make what he intends to make transparent opaque. We are not only social animals, we are ethical animals, even if we do not always speak or act that way.

From an earlier post in this thread, quoting from Heidegger's The Beginning of Western Thinking: Heraclitus. Quoted by Wolin:

The danger is not [National Socialism] itself, but instead that it will be innocuous via sermons about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. — Fooloso4

The absence of the Just should be noted. Heidegger replaces it with the True. Was the substitution intentional? An indication of Heidegger's disregard for man as anything more than a mouthpiece for Being?

Basic to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is the desire for and pursuit of the good. This must be understood at the most ordinary level, not as a theory but simply as what we want both for ourselves and those we care about. It is not only basic to their philosophy but basic to their understanding of who we are as human beings.

For Heidegger consideration of the good is replaced with the call of conscience. The call of conscience is not about what is good or bad, it is the call for authenticity. Its primary concern is not oneself or others but Being. He sees Plato's elevation of the Good above being, that is, as the source of both being and being known, as a move away from, a forgetting of Being. — Fooloso4

That doesn't entail philosophical nihilism. — Pantagruel

Because of the centrality of Dasein, in this case it does.

To ignore the ethical dimension of human being is to make what he intends to make transparent opaque. We are not only social animals, we are ethical animals, even if we do not always speak or act that way. — Fooloso4

I totally agree with this assessment. However, at best we can call this neglect. I don't believe it invalidates his thinking, however it certainly is a major flaw. One should definitely read Heidegger with an awareness of this caveat. Sometimes people are most blind to what they most need to see. Often.

The problem is evident in the Introduction to Being and Time. Heidegger claims that the question of the meaning of Being is the fundamental question, the human question. H. says that we must make the inquirer, Dasein, transparent in his own Being. To ignore the ethical dimension of human being is to make what he intends to make transparent opaque. — Fooloso4

Heidegger doesn’t ignore the ethical dimension of Being, any more than Focault, Deleuze and Guattari ignore ethics in their work. One cannot properly think responsibility and justice without an understanding of Being. The question of Being is in its essence an ethical question. This is a central idea in Derrida. I think you’re looking for a prescriptive ethics and, not finding it , infer the total
absence of an ethical dimension.

Many authors have taken such as stance. For instance, Todd May writes:

“Second, however, is the question of whether poststructuralism admits of an ethics at all. In a
discourse that emphasizes the local and the contingent, is there room for principles of evaluation that are, if they are not to be mere personal reactions to situations, universal in scope?”

Again, I think it depends on whether Heidegger's philosophy implicates the moral sphere. For an ethicist to produce a work of great import and then choose actions which are deeply flawed is incongruous. — Leontiskos

I’m sure your actions, from the vantage of a century or so hence, will come to be construed as deeply ethically flawed.

I’m sure your actions, from the vantage of a century or so hence, will come to be construed as deeply ethically flawed. — Joshs

But how many times does this poor argument need to be unmasked? Here are some places where it has already been done:





(Conflating cases where "a century or so" is required with cases where "a century or so" is not required is inadmissible.)

But how many times does this poor argument need to be unmasked? Here are some places where it has already been done — Leontiskos

Lovely. I highly recommend Jean Luc Nancy’s The Banality of Heidegger for an antidote to Wolin’s book. To summarize, Heidegger absorbs the anti-semitic tropes from his culture, but not without reinterpreting them. For instance, he rejects the biological, racialized concept of jewry. Jewry represents for him a mode of thinking, a technicized, logicized instrumentalism that he traces back to Plato and Aristotle and which Jews co-opted from the Greeks and spread to Christianity and which reaches its apex with Enlightenement science. He considered Nazism to be the ultimate expression of this technicized thinking. Nancy argues that the ethical tools Heidegger provides in
his thinking can be used to insulate against the very essentialism that Heidegger succumbs to.

It should be noted that Levinas, who was strongly influenced by Heidegger but who offered a philosophical critique of his work, essentializes the jews in a different direction. He argues that we can discern two currents or styles of thinking in Western philosophy since its origins, the Greek and the Jewish. The Greek current focuses on neutral truth and the Jewish deems the ethical as fundamental.

For the record, my personal view is that ethics is not Heidegger's primary focus. I concede its "relative absence" in the interest of ongoing discussion. Either way, I don't think it is central to the thesis of the OP.

↪Joshs For the record, my personal view is that ethics is not Heidegger's primary focus. I concede its "relative absence" in the interest of ongoing discussion. Either way, I don't think it is central to the thesis of the OP. — Pantagruel

Without determining whether Heidegger offers an ethics, and, if he does, without defining the nature of this ethics, it seems to me we can’t counter the implication of the OP, which is based on Wolin’s book Heidegger in Ruins. That is, the question is, is Heidegger’s reputation really in ruins? Wolin wants us to conclude that the ethical implications of Heidegger’s work, its most important feature, are dangerous and deserve to be left in ruins. I agree with the many who have been influenced by his philosophy that the method of grounding ethics his work offers is relevant and important.

One cannot properly think responsibility and justice without an understanding of Being. The question of Being is in its essence an ethical question. — Joshs

This requires an explanation. What is the connection between Being and ethics? Rather than address this you invoke the names of Focault, Deleuze, Guattari, and Derrida, but still no defense or explanation of your claim.

you’re looking for a prescriptive ethics — Joshs

No, not at all.

And then this gets into ↪Fooloso4's point about "philosophical nihilism." It is easy to swallow the idea that a logician, for instance, can produce work unrelated to the moral sphere. But Heidegger is doing and purporting to do something much more fundamental ("metaphysics"), and there is much more at stake in considering whether that fundamental sphere is amoral. — Leontiskos

I don't hold to a view that because someone may be problematic that this bleeds into all their activities. But this is for a different thread.

What is the connection between Being and ethics? — Fooloso4

The essence of a thing, including an ethical value, is to be found in the contextual particularity of our involvement with it. This precludes universalizing ethics.

Heidegger absorbs the anti-semitic tropes from his culture, — Joshs

What does this mean? Is absorbs another word for accepts? Does his reinterpreting them liberate him from these prejudices? Or does his thinking not rise above the pedestrian?

For instance, he rejects the biological, racialized concept of jewry. — Joshs

Yes, if only they would act less like Jews.

The essence of a thing, including ethical values, is to be found in the contextual particularity↪Fooloso4 of our involvement with it. this precludes universalizing ethics. — Joshs

And how does an understanding of Being relate to the contextual particularity of our involvement?

Greek ethical notions such as phronesis and areti are in opposition to universalizing ethics, and manage quite well without embracing Heidegger's destining of Being.

The essence of a thing is not the meaning of Being. Our involvement with it can take many forms, including building extermination camps.

Greek ethical notions such as phronesis and areti are in opposition to universalizing ethics, and manage quite well without embracing Heidegger's destining of Being.

The essence of a thing is not the meaning of Being. Our involvement with it can take many forms, including building extermination camps — Fooloso4

Yes, Greek culture was a paragon of ethical humanism. They didn’t have the technology for concentration camps, but they were able to manage the technology of slavery quite well.

You did not address the questions I asked.

If you do so I will address your criticism of the Greeks. I will say this much. I do not mean Greek culture but the Greek philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle.

I don't hold to a view that because someone may be problematic that this bleeds into all their activities. — Tom Storm

I don't think anyone in the thread has proposed such a view.