What Is To Be Done

[Imp!]

This thread is physically revolting.

Recycle? "Conquer something"? Write a book? Find a cause?!

Oh I'd like to hear your plan, betcha got something good up your sleave...:Smug:

 

[Justin S.]

Oh I'd like to hear your plan, betcha got something good up your sleave...:Smug:

Actually, I've got a bag of tricks right here, full of bullshit about issues, missions, a kaleidoscope of messianic displacement, full of affirmations of the will, replete with glorious conquering. All I need is your help in intellectualizing it a bit.

 

[Justin S.]

Is that why you didn't have anything better to contribute than a long-winded 'do nothing...'?

If thats what you make of my words, you most certainly did not read them.

 

[Nile577]

I don’t understand rationalist psychology or politics.

I am completely in agreement with Justin. ‘Tend the coals of thought’ is a very elegant expression. The ‘decline’ of the West is the rise of ‘productionist’ metaphysics. That is, thought that disposes, systematises and ‘brands’. Those wiser, older and more intelligent than I will speak more powerfully here but the ‘problem/solution’ hypothesis is simply a continuation of the technological gestalt that holds our thought hostage.

The most offensive corruption of National Socialism – that which in essence should disclose nature (the volkland) - is the implementation of holocausts, conquest, battle and warfare. These things neither disclose, nor revere, but fix Being as a one dimensional, Jungerian nightmare of will-to-will. That is, a ‘storm of steel;’ a quest for power for its own sake. This was the great error of the Third Reich. The pagan ‘fatherland’ was disposed for power; turned into a wasteland rent with shells.(Later note: Which is not to suggest that there is some 'good' kind of national socialism, but rather to show how 'national' socialism perverts - through racial persecution and conflict - the socialist ideal for something to be, as Marx said, the heart of a heartless world. It's the same dangerous idea that Zizek writes about: Heidegger tried for a change but it was a disatrous error; this shouldn't mean we should never attempt change again.)

That half of Black Metal recognises this and half does not is something I hope to address in a forthcoming paper.

Also, an acquaintance with the work of Virginia Woolf – particularly The Waves – would belie the wisdom of any statement that denounced the entire Bloomsbury movement.

Much of this thread is horrible indeed.

 

[Justin S.]

A thoughtful and engaging post, my friend. Needless to say, we share similar stances on these matters.

Indeed, the glimpse of National Socialism was lost in the will-to-will of the Reich. However, the essence of the movement was not some sort of pacifist agrarian nostalgia (make no mistake, I am not implying this of your statements). Rather, it sought to preserve the most extreme danger, that of the properly spiritual. A danger that is absent in the technological systematicity of mass rallies, ideology, mechanized warfare and extermination.

A fleeting moment:

"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. For “spirit” is not empty cleverness, nor the noncommittal play of wit, nor the boundless drift of rational dissection, let alone world reason; spirit is the primordially attuned, knowing resoluteness toward the essence of Being. And the spiritual world of a people is not the superstructure of a culture any more than it is an armory filled with useful information and values; it 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."

-Heidegger's rector address, 1933

 

[Crucified Spartacus]

I don’t understand rationalist psychology or politics.

I am completely in agreement with Justin. ‘Tend the coals of thought’ is a very elegant expression. The ‘decline’ of the West is the rise of ‘productionist’ metaphysics. That is, thought that disposes, systematises and ‘brands’. Those wiser, older and more intelligent than I will speak more powerfully here but the ‘problem/solution’ hypothesis is simply a continuation of the technological gestalt that holds our thought hostage.

The most offensive corruption of National Socialism – that which in essence should disclose nature (the volkland) - is the implementation of holocausts, conquest, battle and warfare. These things neither disclose, nor revere, but fix Being as a one dimensional, Jungerian nightmare of will-to-will. That is, a ‘storm of steel;’ a quest for power for its own sake. This was the great error of the Third Reich. The pagan ‘fatherland’ was disposed for power; turned into a wasteland rent with shells.

That half of Black Metal recognises this and half does not is something I hope to address in a forthcoming paper.

Also, an acquaintance with the work of Virginia Woolf – particularly The Waves – would belie the wisdom of any statement that denounced the entire Bloomsbury movement.

Much of this thread is horrible indeed.

so we shouldn't be denying death according to justin, and according to you we shouldn't be seeking power and waging war, so where does that leave us in terms of doing something about the system which embraces these values? it seems like both of you are stuck in the realm of critique.

 

[Nile577]

A fleeting moment:

"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. For “spirit” is not empty cleverness, nor the noncommittal play of wit, nor the boundless drift of rational dissection, let alone world reason; spirit is the primordially attuned, knowing resoluteness toward the essence of Being. And the spiritual world of a people is not the superstructure of a culture any more than it is an armory filled with useful information and values; it 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."

-Heidegger's rector address, 1933

I am left speechless by the power of that quote...

(Later note: I think this is where you see - as Justin S later says - Heidegger's thinking bursting through the historical moment. There is the disastrous and opportunistic importation of 'blood' and 'earth' imagery, and the awful knowledge we have of the horrors of National Socialism to contend with, which make the passage very difficult to read, but there is also the appearance of Heidegger's search for a spiritual identity of mindful thinking aside from empty 'idle talk' and 'metaphysics' that goes back to his earliest works and emerges from his inquiries into primal Christian lifeworlds. It is a tragedy that this desire became aligned with National Socialism (and Heidegger's personal behaviour as rector is often indefensible). It is also a tragedy if this spritual identity becomes a form of biological or ontological racism. I missed the obvious reference to Marx in the passage but H. is wrong to be dismissive of Marx as in many ways their thinking is closely related (as Marcuse realized). Heidegger also could have done with reading some Shakespeare as he'd find there evidence that 'wit' and humour go a great way to establishing culture and rootedness - is Falstaff not the most rooted character in literature? What I take from the passage is a desire for something like Rilke's sense of poetic meditation expanded to a form of social brotherhood; this makes it even more disheartening when one considers the appalling doctrines of national socialism.).

 

[Crucified Spartacus]

I am left speechless by the power of that quote...

yeah, well heidegger was notorious for his escapism from society. i guess everyone should just grow some vegetables in their backyard and everything will be fine.

 

[Nile577]

so we shouldn't be denying death according to justin, and according to you we shouldn't be seeking power and waging war, so where does that leave us in terms of doing something about the system which embraces these values? it seems like both of you are stuck in the realm of critique.

I am not convinced you understand my post.

It is not that we should 'avoid' power. It is that the 'will to power' has become the 'will-to-will.' That is, a desire for power simply for its own sake. We must also reappraise what is meant by ‘power.’ Poetic disclosure is more 'powerful' than technological disposure because it offers a correct begrifflichkeit (context of ideas) for understanding Being. The tragedy of disposive, functional thinking echoes in the words of Robert Oppenheimer upon his unleashing of the atomic bomb: 'I am become death, destroyer of worlds.'

If you will tease some sort of distasteful 'mission statement' from me, I will suggest nothing less than that we will a fundamentally new way of thinking. Unless we gain an ontological understanding of Being, we are destined to misappropriate the ek-sistential conditions of Dasein.

How bitter, in such circumstances, how appalling the advent of death must be:

"Did we speak about "end" and "totality" in a way phenomenally appropriate to Dasein? Did the expression "death" have a biological significance or one that is existential and ontological, or indeed was it sufficiently and securely defined at all? And have we actually exhausted all the possibilities of making Dasein accessible in its totality?

We have to answer these questions before the problem of the wholeness of Dasein can be dismissed as nothing. The question of the wholeness of Dasein, both the existentiell question about a possible potentiality-for-being-a-whole, as well as the existential question about the constitution of being of "end" and "wholeness," contain the task of a positive analysis of the phenomena of existence set aside up to now. In the center of these considerations we have the task of characterizing ontologically the being-toward-the-end of Dasein and of achieving an existential concept of death."
- Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

 

[Crucified Spartacus]

If you will tease some sort of distasteful 'mission statement' from me, I will suggest nothing less than that we will a fundamentally new way of thinking.

yeah, well thinking doesn't change the world, action does. if you want to categorize thinking as a form of action, then it is a very ineffective form of action. thinking has it's role, and believe me, i do my fair share of thinking about all these complex aspects of life heidegger deals with, but maybe we are not only amusing ourselves to death, as neal postman suggested, but also thinking ourselves into escapism/ineffectiveness which is ultimately a sort of living death within the confines of mass industrial society.

 

[Justin S.]

I am left speechless by the power of that quote...

I am nearly moved to tears at the thought of this being delivered on the steps of Universität Freiburg in the midst of the upheaval of 1933; faculty and students enraptured by a true happening, when these were more than just words of a "quote", the daring, ek-static leap of a new reality.

I resemble a broken man when I attempt to reckon this moment with the current state of my world, nevermind the University.

 

[Nile577]

yeah, well heidegger was notorious for his escapism from society. i guess everyone should just grow some vegetables in their backyard and everything will be fine.

Why should 'be fine' be a worthwhile 'goal?' What is 'escapism' and how was Heidegger 'notorious' for it? How do you demonstrate an ontological understanding of 'society' in your 'argument?' I am not convinced that mocking a profound, indeed the most profound, hopeful and influential thinker into farce is anything other than transparently hypocritical against your seeming desire to 'change' things.

Perhaps you should take the advice of Voltaire that your post here cries out for in way of repost?

 

[Crucified Spartacus]

Why should 'be fine' be a worthwhile 'goal?' What is 'escapism' and how was Heidegger 'notorious' for it? How do you demonstrate an ontological understanding of 'society' in your 'argument?' I am not convinced that mocking a profound, indeed the most profound, hopeful and influential thinker into farce is anything other than transparently hypocritical against your seeming desire to 'change' things.

Perhaps you should take the advice of Voltaire that your post here cries out for in way of repost?

Heidegger spent a large portion of his time in universities, writing, talking, researching, in other words, do very little in the realm of what i would call action. in fact, he doesn't even seem to advocate much of anything beyond your "new way of thinking" proposal, which i agree is important, but limited.

i think his little cottage can be seen as a form of escapism as well. also his reluctance to deal with the nazi question post-WWII is another sign of his disengagement from the world beyond ideas.

think about it. what did his comment about only a god saving us really mean? i'm sure it can be interpreted many ways, but no interpretation comes to mind that would lead me to believe he wasn't throwing in the towel concerning concrete, beyond thought action.

 

[derbeder]

heidegger's inaugural address as a rector in 1933 is infamous and for good reason. the address goes he has a certain conception of what science and philosophy was like in ancient greece and he thinks that this conception should be embodied in german universities at that time. what needs to be added to the greek way of thinking is an even more radical questioning attitude that he finds in nietzsche. at this point in the address we find the paragraph that justin s quoted. there are lots of things one can argue about in the material so far, but i want to point out the following passage instead.

Out of the resoluteness of the German students to stand their ground while German destiny is in its most extreme distress comes a will to the essence of the university. This will is a true will, provided that German students, through the new Student Law*, place themselves under the law of their essence and thereby first define this essence. To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded “academic freedom” will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what was done and left undone. The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. In future, the bond and service of German students will unfold from this truth.

[*Translator’s note. Proclaimed on 1 May 1933, the neue Studentenrecht sought to organize students according to the Führerprinzip in an effort to integrate the universities into the National Socialist state.]

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. From now on, this bond will be fixed and rooted in the existence of the student by means of Labor Service[Arbeitsdienst].

The second bond binds to the honor and the destiny of the nation in the midst of all the other peoples. It demands the readiness, secured by knowledge and skill and tightened by discipline, to give the utmost in action. In future, this bond will encompass and penetrate the entire existence of the student as Military Service[Wehrdienst].

it is difficult not to be appalled by what heidegger is saying here. he understands academic freedom to be merely "a lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations," and finding this undesirable, he suggests that it be abolished. university students should now be bonded by a new student law. and according to this law students have obligations to the labor service and military service as students. one may think (for whatever reason) that as a citizen one has obligations to do military service, but this makes little sense qua student. there is much to discuss on the matter of academic freedom, but it is clear that heidegger has a very distorted view of it. it is a grave mistake to try to justify such a totalitarian student law. but to do it through reflection on what science and philosophy was like in ancient greece makes the whole thing look even more ridiculous.

too much has been written on heidegger's nazism. if anyone's interested they can turn to this literature. but it is probably a better idea to study being and time: division 1 and the lecture notes from the 20s instead of wasting time on his dubious affairs in the early 30s.

 

[Justin S.]

Rather than appalling, I find the essence of the address to be a radical first step in a transformation of thinking that was at the heart of all his efforts. This is not a "political error", but his thinking bursting through the perforations created by the historical moment, the National Socialist movement (however flawed). No greater mistake can be made than to focus on the early Heidegger, extracting its segments from context, from the human thinker, and storing it in an "armory filled with useful information" that is "compatible" with rationalist/idealistic ideology. Anything frightening was a product of the power structures of the times, which holds the same, as rigidly and absolute, today.

Derbeder's criticism of the senselessness of labor and military service for students "qua students" (being more suited for general "citizens") points again to the misunderstanding of Heidegger's transformative thrust. Thinking, mindfulness, knows no compartmentalization, resists all arbitrary and artificial fragmentation. When reading "philosophy"...mindful. When steward of the land, laborer of the harvest... mindful. When preparing a trench for a coming assault, when steadfastly rushing into the death and madness of war for your spiritual world... mindful. "Thinking is".

Nile577 spoke similar words in the recent "jargon" thread:

"This thread is excellent evidence of how philosophy is dishonestly appropriated by social discourse as something 'external' to action and supposed 'concrete truths.' Until it is recognised that all thought is philosophy, that ‘philosophers’ are not a specialist ‘group,’ and that thinking IS, continental thought will continue to be dismissed arrogantly and pretentiously by a standard of ‘clarity’ that lacks consideration, subtlety and taste."

Heidegger had this to say of his address in his 1966 interview with Der Spiegel:

"'The Self-Assertion of the German University.' In no other rectorial address at the time was such a title risked. But have any of those who polemicize against this speech really read it thoroughly, thought it through, and understood it from the standpoint of the situation at the time?

... But today, and today more resolutely than ever, I would repeat the speech..."

 

[speed]

Stephen Toulmin, a wonderfully interesting Wittgenstein-inspired philosopher, advocted the following four returns of philosophy to classical humanism (pardon the quote from Wikipedia--Im lazy):


A return to oral communication and discourse, a plea which has been rejected by modern philosophers, whose scholarly focus is on the printed page; a return to the particular, or the individual cases which deal with practical moral issues that occur in daily life (as opposed to theoretical principles which have limited practicality); a return to the local, or to the concrete cultural and historical contexts; and finally, a return to the timely, from timeless problems to things whose rational significance depends on the timelines of our solutions).



I was reminded of Mr. Toulmin's ideas, found in his excellent book Cosmopolis, after reading some of the Heideggerian comments. I am not advocating them (although I do strongly support two of the ideas), just throwing them out there.

 

[Seditious]

yeah, well thinking doesn't change the world, action does. if you want to categorize thinking as a form of action, then it is a very ineffective form of action.

Mind is the forerunner of all things. Thought is the necessary first act. If you have no clue what needs to be done all you can do is think, for any other act would be in ignorance.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Nile mentioned the importance of understanding Virginia Woolf - i will quote from a chapter written about her by one of my favourite authors, Theodore Dalrymple, author of "Our Culture, What's Left of it".

He consideres Woolf to be an important figure in the degeneracy of British society.

"Virginia Woolf's name is not normally associated with great affairs of state, of course. Quite the reverse. She regarded them with a fastidious disgust, as a vulgar distraction from the true business of life: attendance to the finer nuances of one's own emotional state. Along with the other members of the Bloomsbury group - that influnential and endlessly chronicled little band of British aesthetes of which she was a moving spirit - she was dedicated to the proposition that beings as sensitive as they to the music of life ought not to be bound by gross social conventions, and that it was their duty(as well as their pleasure) to act solely upon the promptings of the sympathetic vibrations of their souls. In a demotic age, however, their justification for personal license could not long be confined to socially superior types such as themselves. Before very long, what was permissable for the elite became mandatory for the hoi polloi ; and when the predictable social disaster occured, in the form of a growing underclass devoid of moral bearings, the elite that had absorbed (indeed reveled in) Bloomsbury's influence took the growth of the underclass as evidence that their original grudge against society and its conventions had been justified all along. The philosophy brought about the disaster and the disaster justified the philosophy.

 

[Norsemaiden]

so we shouldn't be denying death according to justin, and according to you we shouldn't be seeking power and waging war, so where does that leave us in terms of doing something about the system which embraces these values? it seems like both of you are stuck in the realm of critique.

I agree with you. And we have to remember that it is a privilege to have the time and the standard of living that allows us to think at all. Of course hunter gatherers would have plenty of time for thinking, but that was in the past before they had to cope with enemies that were wiping them out and destroying their way of life.

Power was not an issue for these people until they came up against others who had more power, more force, and threatened to take their precious lifestyle away from them.

Now it is a fact of life in the world that one must either individually or collectively wield power in order to have any control over the destiny of our people rather than be overpowered by others. There is a battle for power going on and there is no escaping the need to defend ourselves, if not to push forward with the view that attack is the best form of defense.

"Might is Right" - Rights are taken by force or given and protected by a force, so without sufficient force, you have no rights.

 

[speed]

Nile mentioned the importance of understanding Virginia Woolf - i will quote from a chapter written about her by one of my favourite authors, Theodore Dalrymple, author of "Our Culture, What's Left of it".

He consideres Woolf to be an important figure in the degeneracy of British society.

First, I was unaware Russell was part of the Bloomsbury group. Frankly, as an American (and not a big follower of Woolf, Forster etc), I was unaware of this group, so I had to do some research. I cannot find the Russell link.

Anyway, I merely quoted Russell. I love and hate Russell. I think he did what philosophy should do but doesnt--clear excellent writing and thinking on common everyday subjects. And Heidegger, who's ideas and thinking is actually somewhat straightforward, seems to take the opposite view. This is my source of antagonism towards him. But I've mentioned this many times before. I just dont know why he felt the compulsion to cloud his ideas in such ridiculous verbage.