Plato-Lovers Hate Heidegger Sensation!
November 28th, 2006, search relatedRelated posts :: Plato-Lovers Hate Heidegger Sensation! :: Plato-Lovers Hate Heidegger Sensation! :: Philosophy :: this medicine has/has not been tested on human animals
An interesting and very vicious attack on Heidegger and Strause from a
PLATONIST POV.
Most of it is trannie drivel - but I had no idea that the nauseating
Philosopher of Nazism was held in so much revulsion by the *classical* trannie
establishment as well as modern philosophy [which sees him more as bad joke than
as a serious thinker.]
Worth a visit if only for picture of Heidegger with his tasche trimmed to
ape Hitler’s and another of him posing with his murderous pals.
A good cartoom of Strausse puppet-mastering the grotesque worst president
in the history of the USA *Gormless George.*
_http://www.picsearch.com/info.cgi?q=heidegger&id=BcK2-O3HUhLFUUYViDUtIqp1xj7A
avnptoA7f97Ikp0&start=141_
http://www.picsearch.com/info.cgi?q=heid…)
*In spite of its prima facie implausibility, this tragic, high-operatic
account of the intellectual history of the West still exercises enormous
influence upon contemporary thinking; the more recent heroes of continental
philosophy still perpetuate it. 6 With both Nietzsche and Heidegger the beginning is
typically made with a claim to an epoch-making insight into the essential
‘nihilism’ of modernity as the final embodiment of a legacy of spiritual
degeneration going back in time. 7 The root cause of this cultural decay, or at least
its crucial symptomatic expression, is declared to be epitomized in the
historical cult of philosophy which as a matter of course elevates thought above
life, plays down the sensible world as ‘mere appearance’, and seeks to
comprehend and subordinate living reality under intellectual principles, the
so-called ideas. The history of philosophy is thus, as Nietzsche puts it, the
history of a lie whose consequence is just nihilism, the culture-negative culture
of modernity.”
The incompetence and incoherence of these critics of Plato is plain for
anyone to see. Academic philosophy has become completely infested with such
learned imbeciles. I recommend Francis L. Jackson’s essay referenced above, which
intelligently refutes the Plato-critics’ specious arguments and exposes them
as pretentious frauds.
Fear and Loathing of Leo Strauss One other misfit merits a brief mention,
because he is the “philosophical godfather” of some of the vilest thugs in power
within the Bush II junta.
Leo Strauss (1899-1973) began his career in Nazi Germany. He was powerfully
influenced by three philosophers admired by the Nazis: Friedrich Nietzsche,
Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. The Nazis worshipped Nietzsche as their hero. As a
young man, Strauss fell under Heidegger’s influence. Heidegger was an avowed
Nazi and continued to teach in Germany under the Hitler regime.
Carl Schmitt, the Nazi philosopher of law, arranged a Rockefeller Foundation
scholarship for Strauss to study Thomas Hobbes in France in 1932 and in
England in 1934. Strauss entered the United States in 1937, ending up at the
University of Chicago in 1949.
the Rockefeller-funded Leo Strauss
Using such frauds as Leo Strauss, the Rockefeller-dominated demonic cabal
deliberately set out to destroy the genuine teaching and learning of the
Platonic philosophy, just as they purposely attempted to destroy American education
in general.*
regards,
Jud Evans.
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…
November 29th, 2006 at 2:21 am
Your precis on Leo Strauss has many factual errors. Let’s start with those:
1) “Leo Strauss (1899-1973) began his career in Nazi Germany.”
Actually, he began his career in Weimar Germany doing research on Maimonides at a Jewish Research Institute. You remember the Jews, right — you know, the ones the Nazis wanted to exterminate.
2) “He was powerfullyinfluenced by three philosophers admired by the Nazis: Friedrich Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt.”
You could just as easily say, and it would be more accurate, that Strauss was powerfully influenced by Plato, Maimonides, Spinoza. Strauss attended some of Heidegger’s lectures in Freibourg in 1922 and probably a few years later at Marburg. He was never a student of Heidegger’s (in any formal sense), and claimed at the time that he didn’t understand him. But he also recognized Heidegger as an important thinker, perhaps the most important in Germany at the time. It’s hard to argue with that judgment. He read Nietzsche, he claims in a letter to his friend Carl Loewith, for the better part of his 20s. The clear implication, however, is that he came to see the weaknesses in Nietzsche’s thought as he started to become a serious scholar. In fact, Strauss’s whole project (if it can be called that), is to argue against the nihilism that he finds in Heidegger and Nietzsche. He was, in a sense, influenced by them, but only so as to refute them.
3) “The Nazis worshipped Nietzsche as their hero.”
This, of course, is wildly exaggerated. But part of the problem here is that Nietzsche’s sister controlled his papers, and she was married to a well-known anti-semite. She released snippets of his unpublished works, and revised his little-known published works so they would be consistent with Nazi ideology. Nietzsche, for example, was always a critic of anti-semitism and ‘the state’ but these passages were removed. Talk of ‘blonde beasts’ and the ’superman’ were, without doubt, appropriated by Nazi propagandists, but Nietzsche’s books, even when “edited” by his sister, were too ideosyncratic to ever be a good fit with Nazi ideology.
4) “As a young man, Strauss fell under Heidegger’s influence.” As I said, he only audited a couple of courses. He was never under Heidegger’s influence in any meaningful sense. Strauss’s PhD work was done under the direction of the neo-Kantian, Ernst Cassirer.
5) “Heidegger was an avowed Nazi and continued to teach in Germany under the Hitler regime.”
Heidegger joined the Nazi party in May 1933 and was quickly named rector of Freibourg University. After a year, he became disenchanted with the Nazis and resigned his position. He did remain in the party, but that was necessary to keep his teaching position and his livelyhood. Heidegger’s relation to the Nazis is a complex topic that has never really been resolved and probably never will be.
6) “Carl Schmitt, the Nazi philosopher of law, arranged a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for Strauss to study Thomas Hobbes in France in 1932 and inEngland in 1934.”
Actually, it was Strauss who pursued a Rockefeller Foundation grant in an effort to get out of Germany. He asked Schmitt to write him a letter of reference in support of his grant application and Schmitt complied based mostly on a review Strauss had written of one of Schmitt’s books. Schmitt did not join the Nazi party until after this (in 1933). The grant was to do work on Maimonides and it was then extended a year so he could do research on Hobbes in England. By that time, it had become obvious that as a Jew, Strauss could not return to Germany. Schmitt it should be noted did join the Nazi party, but he was hounded by the SS for some of his unorthodox views and finally forced to give up his position. There is some research on Schmitt’s activities in 1932 and 1933 that indicates he made significant efforts to get Jewish colleagues out of Germany. That may have been the case with Strauss. It’s possible Strauss and Schmitt never met, or if they did, it was only briefly. Strauss wrote three letters to him, but Schmitt never replied.
7) “Strauss entered the United States in 1937, ending up at the University of Chicago in 1949.”
I believe he entered in 1938, first to an appointment at Columbia Univerisity, but then he taught for nearly a decade at the New School before moving on to Chicago. Toward the end of his life he taught briefly at Claremont-McKenna in California and St. Johns in Anapolis.
For Strauss modernity moves through three phases, liberalism (Hobbes and Locke), historicism (Rousseau, Hegel, Marx), and nihilism (Nietzsche and Heidegger). Historicism, in concrete political terms, becomes communism, and finally fascism. In a way, you agree with Strauss in seeing a connection between fascism and Nietzsche/Heidegger. He thinks these movements are interrelated in that one necessarily leads to the next. He attempted to refute the nihilism of Nietzsche and Heidegger by returning to what the moderns rejected, i.e., ancient political thought especially Plato. This is what makes your comments so strange. You seem to want to set up Plato as an alternative to Strauss, but Strauss is, if not a Platonist, then a serious student of Plato who sought to recover his wisdom for our own time. Maybe if you were to actually read Strauss ….