[Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism - NYTimes.com

[Greg Thompson]

Audre Lourde's words seem relevant to the Heidegger debate and particularly
to the questions that Paul raises:
"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may
allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never
enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real
conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us
here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and
touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose
face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate
all our choices."
Personally, I've gone back and forth on this quite a bit. I tend to feel
that a tool is a tool and while some tools are better for doing certain
things than others, the tool itself has no destiny in itself. Would anyone
argue differently with Heidegger?
Are we saying that his whole system was fundamentally antisemitic? and that
one cannot take up his thinking without being antisemitic?
And similarly, following Paul, can we take up the ideas of any slave holder
or slave supporter or otherwise racist individual without taking into us
their racism?
Interestingly, for me the antisemitism concern with Heidegger seems to be
more problematic than the anti-African concern. (and this supports the
issue that Paul was raising).

-greg



On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co
> wrote:

> Yes, the problem runs deeper than Heidegger:
>
> <http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo3645200.html>
>
> Martin
>
> On Mar 31, 2014, at 4:48 AM, Dr. Paul C. Mocombe <pmocombe@mocombeian.com>
> wrote:
>
> > As an african/haitian, I am baffled when contemporary scholars want to
> ban heidegger from philosophy for his so-called antisemitism.   By their
> logic, people of African descent should be clamoring for the banishment of
> almost all scholars since descartes who showed any sign of racism in their
> writings.
> >
> >
> > Dr. Paul C. Mocombe
> > President
> > The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc.
> > www.mocombeian.com
> > www.readingroomcurriculum.com
> > www.paulcmocombe.info
> >
> > <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: David Kellogg <
> dkellogg60@gmail.com> </div><div>Date:03/30/2014  10:47 PM  (GMT-05:00)
> </div><div>To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> </div><div>Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on
> Anti-Semitism -
> >       NYTimes.com </div><div>
> > </div>Martin:
> >
> > I've only seen short extracts from the "Black Notebooks", but what
> > I've seen suggests that the real problem is not time but precisely the
> > problem of "worlding" which was mentioned earlier.
> >
> > Jews, according to the "Black Notebooks", are an "unworlded" people,
> > and because of that they are necessarily parasitic upon peoples who
> > are deeply and profoundly in the world, i.e. his truly.
> >
> >
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/books/heideggers-notebooks-renew-focus-on-anti-semitism.html?_r=0
> >
> > It's a big world, and there are lots of other things to read. They are
> > only short extracts, but they are more than enough.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
> >
> > On 31 March 2014 10:02, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
> wrote:
> >> Hi David,
> >>
> >> Yes, this always the problem with Heidegger: his appalling politics,
> both professional and personal.  However, the conceptual problem he was
> working on was also important to philosophers with very different politics.
> For example, Lucien Goldmann found parallels between Heidegger and Lukacs
> (ref below). I find it helpful to (try to) understand what Heidegger was
> trying to do, and also understand how a philosopher of human existence was
> unable to prevent himself from becoming a very unpleasant human being. (The
> problem lies in his treatment of time, in my view.)
> >>
> >> Martin
> >>
> >> Goldmann, L. (1979). Lukacs and Heidegger: Towards a new philosophy.
> Routledge and Kegan Paul.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mar 30, 2014, at 7:10 PM, David Preiss <daviddpreiss@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> As an aside to the ongoing references to Heidegger... May be of
> interest or not.
> >>> DP
> >>>
> mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/books/heideggers-notebooks-renew-focus-on-anti-semitism.html?referrer=
> >>>
> >>> Descarga la aplicación oficial de Twitter aquí
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Enviado desde mi iPhone
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson