Heidegger

re: Tue, 08 Jul 2008
From: Anthony Crifasi
Subject: Re: SEP article on Heidegger, etc.

Anthony,

After years of others’ scholastic attention to Heidegger’s political
context, I don’t know what you could mean by “THE question of
Heidegger and Nazism.” Is there such a thing to Julian Young’s
_Heidegger and Nazism_? Hugo Ott’s _Heidegger’s Politics_? “The”
question seems to be YOUR question, OK:

A> According to Heidegger’s description of authenticity in SuZ, …

G: In what regard? Searching the archive on ‘authenticity,’ it
appears that the most extended focus on this was Allen Scult (a
pleasure to know you’re a subscriber here, Allen!):
 http://heidegger.an-archos.com/archive/h…

Perhaps you could repose your question relative to Allen’s short
discussion.

A> …would it have been possible to have been an authentic Nazi?

G: No.

——————————
re: Tudor Georgescu

T> Speaking of authenticity, one has also to speak of moral
conscience.

G: Yeah, yet: Moral conscience is a matter of authenticity, so one
should dwell with authenticity first.

T> One cannot be authentic without having a moral conscience.

G: I’d agree to that.

T> Therefore, the question is: could people endowed with a moral
conscience perform the Holocaust?

G: No, the question is: Could people having an AUTHENTIC sense of
conscience perform the Holocaust?

Clearly: NO.

T: The answer given by empirical science (Milgram, Zimbardo,
Cialdini, etc.) is that over 66% of the normal people do not have any
form of moral conscience (other than late regrets about electrocuting
to death another person, after only half an hour of getting educated
by laboratory personnel).

G: That’s a false claim (a misunderstanding of Milgram, in
particular). Anyway, the trend in contemporary moral psychology is
that moral sense is somewhat hardwired (though, so is freedom to grow
up badly—to lose one’s more-or-less innate sense of empathy, for
example). Reifying others (as not “my” kind, when actually they ARE
us, too) is a matter of excluding them from derived, adult moral
sense, not a matter of lacking moral sense altogether. Such
reification is worse than fallenness; it’s a diseased moral sense, an
expression of implicit, if not rampant, nihilism. To say the least,
jargonistically: It’s an inauthentic comportment with one’s ownmost
capacity for identification—or belonging together in the Same
(with-being/Mitsein). Reifying others’ humanity is a severe failure
of one’s ownmost capability for humanity. (The “Letter on Humanism”
was not about denying that we must advance a proximal decency, some
intuitional sense of our shared humanity.)

T> …unlike two thirds of the populations, who would not be
principally opposed to perform the Holocaust may times over, simply
because having a moral conscience is scarce,…

G: What a cynical, if not nihilistic thing to say. (My saying THAT
touches YOUR sense of conscience, which is already always shared with
others, in their own ways.) But I can agree that:

T> They are prevented from such reflection [on death] by the answers
they take for granted from religious or materialistic insights,…

G: But this fallenness doesn’t commonly imply nihilism. Apparent
sheep aren’t really wolves. They may be half awake, but that itself
implies a capability to fully wake up.

Indeed, though:

T> Unless the vast majority of people will have a moral conscience,
mass murder will be repeated over and over again, as in Rwanda,
Bosnia, Sudan, etc.

G: Part of the end of philosophy is to never let such appreciations
be forgotten.

T> Heidegger’s contribution is to raise awareness about one’s own
death,…

G: Proximally, to be sure. But the point of awareness is to educe
renewal that lasts.

T> …contributing thus to spreading moral conscience.

G: I do agree. Our age is as thought-provoking as Heidegger’s. But
now we’ve learned that it won’t take nuclear war to burn out our
species.

..

Posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 6:00 am
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