Long Sunday

A Correspondence

"A philosopher can be deceived regarding political matters; in which case he will openly acknowledge his error. But he cannot he deceived about a regime that has killed millions of Jews - merely because they were Jews - that made terror into an everyday phenomenon, and that turned everything that pertains to the ideas of spirit, freedom and truth into its bloody opposite. A regime that in every respect imaginable was the deadly caricature of the western tradition that you yourself so forcefully explicated and justified. And if that regime was not the caricature of that tradition but its actual culmination - in this case, too, there could be no deception, for then you would have to indict and disavow this entire tradition. " Marcuse writing to Heidegger about his silence regarding National Socialism

Only a god can save us?

I have been quite discouraged by recent political events, particularly in the US Senate where the democrats continue to curl up in the fetal position, pee on themselves and ask for forgiveness. Secretary Strangelove and President Nimrod have admitted that the insurgency in Iraq is strong enough to continue for years. And though the citizenry are uneasy, not many people seem to care.

Amidst the current climate this infamous phrase of Heidegger’s came to mind. Of course, it occurred during the notorious Der Spiegel interview where Heidegger is attempting to settle accounts and fabricate more lies about his relationship to the Nazis movement. Without getting into the bottomless morass of that controversy, I wanted to take a moment and think about what is suggested by the phrase. It seems to me that there is something relevant to our current situation:

Philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. That is not only true of philosophy but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poetizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering; for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder.

Traditionally, this quote has been seen in one of two ways. The obvious reading is that Heidegger has given up and thrown in the towel, that the overwhelming technological domination of the globe has taken hold to such degree that all is lost. The only thing left is to mourn the loss and wait for the next dispensation of Being to occur eons from now.

But the other way is to look at this quote (and the Der Spiegel interview in general) within the larger context of Heidegger’s body of work. What is of particular interest is the meaning of "god" and "save." Notice that Heidegger does not refer to the one God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, nor to the many Gods of Greek polytheism. The god he is referencing is associated with the "Es Gibt," that which grants the various dispensations of Being. What gives is not a thing and is not subject to human control. It gives because it gives.

Saving has a deep resonance for Heidegger and he deploys it in many contexts. Perhaps the most relevant is the appropriation of the Holderlin line "But where danger is, grows the saving power also."

This quote is referenced in "The Question Concerning Technology" where Heidegger identifies technology as dangerous for at least two reasons: (1) It threatens to obliterate our awareness of the "truth" of Being and (2) It threatens to contaminate all other alternative modes of revealing (like art and philosophy).

He now looks to apply Holderlin’s epigram to the extreme danger of Enframing. If Gestell is the extreme danger then the redemptive power must also lie within it: "the essence of technology must harbor in itself the growth of the saving power."

The key lies in the fact that Gestell not only commands us to disclose beings in terms of standing reserve - Gestell can only disclose beings in and through us. The world and all that is in it only reveals itself in the process of human activity. Though we are not in control of this process, we are an active participant to the degree that we "belong to the coming to pass of truth." The saving power reveals itself in our ability to bare witness to unconcealment as such, recognizing the dangers of the technological form of disclosure, and realizing that Enframing is only one mode of revealing among others. This is why Heidegger says that "all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it." The granting that sends technological disclosure is also the granting that has the power to send something else. It is in this insight that we are "granted" human freedom.

What I find compelling in this account is that it points to the contingency of all systems, no matter how monolithic they may appear. Though many find Heidegger’s account too fatalistic, he demonstrates that it is possible to grapple with an experience that we do not yet have words to describe. In doing so he begins the task of thinking of an alternative way of being.

There is much that I dislike about Heidegger: His Black Forest, tree hugging fetish, his Grecco-Germanic prejudice, and the fact that he was a rather despicable human being. But none of this eclipses the grandeur and audacity of his thought. He still was one of the great philosophers of the 20^th century. In revisiting his path of thinking I hope to get insight into our own way of being and living today. Consider this attempt a prolegomena to future work.

A Parapraxis and a Half

Your author is thankfully not going to follow the latest ‘meme’ (why do I dislike that word so much?) and list how many books he owns. He could list all the books whose price he has ‘self-lowered’ (as the Autonomist euphemism goes). But no, instead he is going to tell you about what he has been reading in the library, and following Thomas Mann’s perceptive comment, display “that childish impulse to force upon the reader verbatim all that the writer has read and drawn his consolation from, instead of allowing it to form the silent and reassuring background of his message.”