Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Nihilism
According to Heidegger, what Nietzsche offers is not an antidote to Nihilism, but the ultimate stage of Nihilism. For, on his analysis, Nihilism is the final phase of a History constituted by the progressive forgetting, by beings, of Being, characterized by an increasing Subjectivism, the predominant ideology of Modernity. And, Heidegger, as the rememberer of Being, is the first post-Nihilist. So, from that vantage point, the status of Being in Nietzsche's System, as either a mere value or even nothing, testifies to the extremeness of his forgetting of Being, and, hence, to his Nihilism. Now, more than Heidegger's account being plainly question-begging, the conceptual scheme on which it is based is crucially flawed. For, conspicuously absent in his History is Husserlian Phenomenology, a post-Nietzschean doctrine of transcendental subjectivity in which Heidegger himself was trained. So, either Husserl is the first post-Nihilist, or else Heidegger is himself a post-Nietzschean Nihilist, according to his scheme. The jettisoning of the latter thus opens up a fresh perspective on the relation between Nietzsche and Heidegger regarding Nihilism. In plainer language, for Nietzsche, Nihilism is aimlessness, the solution to which is not a new aim, but the cultivation of appreciation for motion itself. In contrast, for Heidegger, it is rootlessness, the solution to which is a re-grounding. Hence, Heidegger would need to provide a clear derivation of aimlessness from rootlessness for his accusation of Nietzsche to be not question-begging. As is, he reveals himself to be the more conservative of the two thinkers. Also, his forgetting of Husserl might be due to the Nazi's purge of the latter from academia in the same period, and Strauss's critique of Modernity bears a strong resemblance to his.
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"conspicuously absent in his History is Husserlian Phenomenology, a post-Nietzschean doctrine of transcendental subjectivity in which Heidegger himself was trained"
ReplyDeleteIn what way is Husserlian Phenomenology post-Nietzschean, besides simply coming after chronologically? I don't recall Husserl engaging with Nietzsche's thought in any substantial way. Arguably, Husserl is pre-Nietzschean in that sense.
Who cares what Heidegger thinks? Heraclitus was right, not Parmenides. Nietzsche proved that there's no such thing as "Being"... the uni/multi-verse has disintigrated into panta rei.
ReplyDeleteAs Plato said in his Cratylus:
SOCRATES: Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux, as we were just now supposing. Whether there is this eternal nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heracleitus and his followers and many others say, is a question hard to determine; and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names: neither will he so far trust names or the givers of names as to be confident in any knowledge which condemns himself and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will not believe that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. This may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easily persuaded of it. Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such a doctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you have found the truth, come and tell me.
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Plato, "Parmenides" - If One is not, then nothing is.
1. Nietzsche had little to say about Descartes, but that doesn't prevent Heidegger from linking them in his 'History'. And Husserl quite explicitly represents himself as continuing the Cartesian project that Heidegger brands as 'subjectivistic'. So, on those grounds alone, Husserl is conspicuously absent in Heidegger's 'History'. But, of more immediate relevance, if Husserl is more subjectivistic than Nietzsche, and Heidegger learned from Husserl, than is not Heidegger a 'Nihilist' on his own terms? Heidegger's silence is not an adequate answer.
ReplyDelete2. A lot of people have cared what Heidegger thinks, especially many who know Nietzsche only through him, and some who have derived a political philosophy from him. Ignoring him only encourages them.
3. There will be a posting on 'Ontological Difference' shortly, and I believe that I have previously addressed Heidegger's cowardice, which does not undermine my respect for Being and Time.