[Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism - NYTimes.com
Peter Smagorinsky
smago@uga.edu
Mon Mar 31 12:23:41 PDT 2014
And let's not forget those slave-owning Founding Fathers.
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 2:32 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism - NYTimes.com
I have been following the discussion on Heidegger with interest. Last week I was teaching on Hannah Arrendt's ideas of education, trying to tie back her unique views both to her relationship with Heidegger and to her observations at the Eichman trial. On a student's recommendation I am watching the move "Hannah Arrendt" which is very good if you have the time. One of the ideas it brings up is that perhaps we have it wrong when considering Heidegger some kind of personal monster (and I have never enjoyed Heidegger as a philosopher so I have no dog in this fight). Perhaps instead Heidegger was a very weak man who loved his position as a professor and rector and did not want to jeopardize it in any way. To maintain his position he had to see Jews as less than human. He could not bear to think of himself as a person who would destroy others for the sake of his career so he rationalized his hatred with some of the ideas found in the black notebook. This is not to excuse Heidegger in any way, but to bring him closer to the everyday life we lead - do we know people, professors who would engage in the same type of rationalization, perhaps with a socially safer topic, but also destructive to the victims of the powerful.
Paul's point really resonated with me. We treat Oliver Wendell Holmes as if he was some grand jurist, just a step below founding father. And yet he was an extreme eugenicist, and I believe some of his views were destructive to African Americans and other populations as Heidegger's were to the Jews. Are we allowed to even denounce Holmes? Have his personal opinions been whitewashed by history? Why?
I can also see the other side I guess. I know the debates surrounding Paul de Mann a bit better. He was a Nazi collaborator (I know, ironic when considering other current threads). Was he just a person looking to maintain his position. But then Satre's arguments ring true - each person must be held responsible for his own choices from moment to moment because in many ways there is nothing else.
Complex problems I suppose. But back to the beginning, the danger is not when philosophers might become monsters, but when professors become simple bureaucrats.
Michael
________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] on behalf of Peter Smagorinsky [smago@uga.edu]
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 1:59 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism - NYTimes.com
I can't recommend too highly Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, for a spectacularly detailed and compelling account of this process.
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From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Preiss
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 1:37 PM
To: lchcmike@gmail.com; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism - NYTimes.com
That's an interesting question. The protocols of the elders of Zion, the antisemitic libel, was first published in Russia and then extensively used by Hitler. Umberto Eco writes a fantastic fictional account of the origin of the Protocols in his last novel, The Prague Cemetery. If anything, the novel shows that XXth century antisemitism crystallises many cultural threads and that many influences were reciprocal. Afterwards, during the Soviet era, antisemitism should be understood as a part of the mechanics of Stalinism. Specially iconic are the events associated to the so-called doctor's plot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot) and the so-called night of the murdered poets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Murdered_Poets)
On Mar 31, 2014, at 2:17 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> What a tortured and tangled history with both Kant and Hegel in it.
> In my personal experience, anti-semitism in Russia was more intense
> than any I had previously encountered in the U.S. Does the influence
> of German philosophy and psychology on Russian thought which has often
> been discussed on xlchc/xmca link up with anti-semitism in the two
> countries in the same way?
>
> For those who were mystified by my reference to *Jew Suss* the
> wikipedia entry provides relevant background. The story begins with a
> novel by an anti-fascist writer which is then inverted in a fascist
> film. I liked the novel at the time I read it many decades ago.
>
> mike
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 9:52 AM, rjsp2 <r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Joris's translation is available at
>> http://www.pierrejoris.com/blog/?p=317
>>
>> and there is more at the Wikipedia page on Celan:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Celan which I just edited to
>> provide the right link to Joris's blog. (This is work avoidance, you
>> will realise.)
>>
>> Rob
>>
>>
>> On 31/03/2014 16:34, David Preiss wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Mike,
>>> I yet don't know whether addressing the issue from the point of view
>>> of Heidegger's writings is relevant. I am aware that for many people
>>> in the philosophy departments what is attractive as a scholarly
>>> activity is to elucidate whether his philosophy has substantive
>>> connections with a Nazi worldview. I can understand why is
>>> interesting to them. And, yet, I doubt that the masses adhering to
>>> nazism got it from reading Heidegger or other philosophers as the
>>> nazism of the german populace was quite basic and quite naturalized.
>>>
>>> What I think is the real problem is how to judge the actions of
>>> intellectuals during times where the worst side of humanity takes
>>> center stage. Thus, I think that Heidegger has to be judged
>>> according to what he did, what he publicly said as regards the
>>> Holocaust (before, during and after). And we don't need to read the
>>> black notebooks to learn that his moral stature is not compatible
>>> with the sensitivity he shows in some of his writings.
>>>
>>> Alas, poor Celan, whom expected something different from him until
>>> the
>>> end:
>>> http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/joris/todtnauberg.html
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mar 31, 2014, at 2:18 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Among the many things to read, that was an interesting summary of
>>> the
>>>> black
>>>> notebooks, David.
>>>>
>>>> Am i correct in interpreting the link between heidegger and
>>>> anti-semitism t, according to this account, to run through the sin
>>>> of rationalism and its epitome in mathematics as "calculation"
>>>> presumably linking rationalism and money lending, and hence the
>>>> historical steretotype as in *Jew Suss*?
>>>> Or is that too simple?
>>>>
>>>> Is the anti-semitism endemic to the philosophy or contingent
>>>> invasion of a historical German cultural narrative?
>>>>
>>>> (signed)
>>>> The blind man with a stick
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 7:47 PM, David Kellogg
>>>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>> -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391),
>> an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in
>> Scotland (SC 038302).
>>
>>
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