Heidegger

Cologne18-Apr-2007

Anthony Crifasi schrieb Wed, 18 Apr 2007 07:13:02 -0500:

> —– Original Message —–
> From: “Michael Eldred”
>
> > Anthony Crifasi schrieb Sat, 14 Apr 2007 23:09:39 -0500:
> >
> >> then the point is that Spain will be religionized - whether by Islamists
> >> alone or by both Christians and Islamists. My point was that the native
> >> secular population have demographically doomed themselves, so if any
> >> “sublation” between religion and atheism is going to occur in Europe, it
> >> probably won’t be to Michael Eldred’s “atheist with room for mystery.”
> >>
> >
> > ME: You could very well be right, or turn out to be right, on this point.
> > Philosophical thinking is not in the business of making historically
> > verifiable predictions. The precious little that philosophy has to offer
> > concerns thoughts, in this case, the thought of mystery without mysticism,
> > or
> > of godliness without a god, of a mystery that can be experienced in the
> > midst
> > of everyday life.
> >
> > No philosophy can ever tell whether, when or how a philosophical thought
> > will
> > realize itself in history. But in the very first place, the thought itself
> > has to be thought, and that’s the philosophical thinker’s job.
> >
> > Looking back, with the onset of the modern age we see the idea (or, in
> > Hegelian terms: the concept) of freedom articulated philosophically and
> > ardently. Freedom is a hallmark of the modern age, not necessarily
> > factically, nor merely as an ideal, but as an historical contour of being
> > which first of all has been _thought_ — starting with the Greeks, and
> > with
> > renewed energy in the modern age. The concept of freedom has become real
> > in
> > many instances. Factically, however, unfreedom predominates throughout the
> > world. All the worse for reality, not for the philosophical concept of
> > freedom.
> >
> > Similarly, the thought (or ontological concept) of mystery without
> > mysticism
> > has been emerging for some time in philosophy, but so far this seems like
> > precious little when compared with the facticity of the world. Such a
> > thought can be true and, at the same time, largely incorrect.
>
> That’s definitely Heidegger, but it is Hegel? Isn’t Hegel’s point precisely
> that the development of Absolute Spirit manifests in factical history no
> less than in thought?
>

ME: You’re right that it’s not Hegel as usually received, nor Hegel in the most
visible thrust of his thinking, but the thought of mystery without mysticism is
nevertheless not alien to Hegel and, since Hegel’s system is a thorough
rethinking and transformation of metaphysics hitherto, such a thought of mystery
without mysticism could even light up in Hegel’s system itself.

First of all, Hegel claims that speculative thinking itself can be the mystery,
which is surprising enough. This aligns e.g. with Heidegger’s 1924 insight that
the “divine” (_to theion_) in Aristotle is “nothing religious”.

Secondly, Hegel himself says that God or the Absolute is “an empty name” to
which only the Logik gives a content, i.e. what the Absolute _is_ is only
explicated in the predicates of the Logik’s categories which are in themselves
“godly” without them having to be predicated of a “god”.

Thirdly, Heidegger, in his 1942/43 paper, pronounces that Hegel’s Phenomenology
and his Logic are both “worldly” (weltlich). This brings Hegel’s allegedly
‘mystical’ pretensions, as so many commentators claim, down to earth.

Fourthly, when one looks at what Hegel’s thinking of the Absolute Idea actually
thinks through in the Logik, one sees that it is the ontological structure of
the world, viz., the categories, both in the narrow Aristotelean or Kantian
sense and the broader sense, including those of essence, ground, appearance,
necessity, freedom, subjectivity, objectivity, etc. Hegel is the first (and
probably last) attempt to think through such categories of being in a thorough,
connected way.

Finally, and not to be underestimated, both Hegel and Heidegger overcome the
subject-object dualism of the modern, subjectivist metaphysics in their
thinking. This has the corollary that Heidegger’s attempt to characterize
Hegel’s metaphysics as subjectivist is doomed to failure.

Both the early and the late Heidegger engage with Hegel as an ontological
thinker. According to a paper by Anna Pia Ruoppo I’ve just read that will be
presented in Chicago this May, the early Heidegger 1915-1919 intensively studies
Hegel as a model for thinking the facticity of the world and history. And the
very late Heidegger in his 1969 seminar with French students is aiming to teach
them precisely Hegelian, speculative thinking! Parallels between Heidegger’s and
Hegel’s thinking abound, e.g. their critique of the ‘transcendent’
interpretation of the Platonic idea, or the “repetition” of analyses in the
Second Division of SuZ and Part Three of the Logik.

With regard to history, too, both Heidegger and Hegel see that it is castings of
being, or Seinsentwuerfe (for Hegel, the concept realizing itself as idea) that
determine Western history. This, however, is not to play down the huge
differences between the two, the main one being that, whereas Hegel sees the
unfolding of the idea of freedom in history culminating in the modern age,
Heidegger sees the necessity of a “step back” from this unfolding to uncover an
as-yet unthought alternative in Western history, viz. the clearing of
_alaetheia_. Whereas Hegel sees the modern world reconciled as the realization
of being, Heidegger points to the oblivion to being. Hegel’s owl of Minerva
flies at dusk, whereas Heidegger looks forward to what could still arrive, to
the advent of a future (Zu-kunft) in which world could shape up in a hitherto
unknown, alternative way.

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_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_-
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Posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
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