Balzac

Why he matters.

Heideggerian Restlessness

"Heidegger's thinking does not come to rest. Each time we believe we have finally arrived at the goal and prepare to latch onto it we are thrown into a new interrogation. Every resting point is shaken. What seemed to be the end and goal becomes a departure for renewed questioning. If Descartes sought an unshakable foundation for philosophizing, Heidegger tries to put precisely this foundation in question."

--Walter Biemel, Heidegger, pp. 8-9.

The Heidegger Stone

"To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world's sky."

Thus did Heidegger think, and such was his accomplishment: a body of work that stands still in the philosophical world's sky like a "Rosetta" stone--a device that enables the translation of the Western philosophical canon (Plato to Kant) from metaphysical speculation (the search for substance or a bedrock of "whatness" or quiddity called "Being") into a new, and different, direction of thought and practice. Heidegger abandoned the presiding pretense of Western metaphysics (that there is an Archimedean standpoint upon which one may place a philosophical lever to "move the world") and adopted, instead, a more humble prospect: a new place from which to pose the question of how things hang together. The move from "what" to "how" is the true hallmark of Heideggerian genius.

The greatest difficulty with Heidegger's project is encountered in his insistence on pouring this new wine into old wineskins: he does not abandon the old metaphysical vocabulary (a la Wittgenstein) but attempts to invest it with new significances. The result of this strategy is much tortured prose. The most important prerequisite of Heidegger studies is perseverance. Through perseverance, the stone that the builders rejected becomes the chief corner stone.

The Heideggerian Republic

Heidegger bids us to enter "the clearing"--the place where we no longer impose upon the found world our own notions of how that world is "supposed" to "hang together" (to be). He acquired this ideal from his teacher Husserl and held on to it tenaciously throughout his life. He bids us to abandon the will-to-power over nature (i.e., our heavy reliance upon modern technology) and texts (i.e., interpretative schemes that amount to little more than special pleading for inherited dogmas). He admonishes us to have faith in Being itself (the world's own way of "worlding"). He asks us to see the world with renewed wonder. In the Heideggerian republic, poets rule and philosophers are banished. In the Heideggerian republic, phenomenology is king.

Perennial Heideggerian Frustrations

D. F. Krell points to Heidegger's own awareness of "the surreptitious predominance [in Being and Time] of certain forms of thought and language rooted in the metaphysical tradition" that he claimed to be bringing to an end, "such as the idea of 'fundamental ontology' or the readily adopted translation 'truth' for aletheia" (Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, 33).

Though aware of the problem, Heidegger never adequately addressed it. As a consequence, there are those who find in Being and Time cover for their own metaphysical agendas.

And then there is, of course, that brief period of about 10 months or so when he allowed himself to be seduced by the excitement of National Socialism--an error, in retrospect, of ghastly proportions.

Krell notes: "That his early engagement in the Nazi cause was a monstrous error all concede; that his silence [after the war regarding Nazi atrocities committed during the war] is profoundly disturbing all agree; whether that error and the silence sprang from basic and perdurant tendencies of his thought remains a matter of bitter debate" (ibid., 28).

One can certainly find suggestive clues in Heidegger's thought that potentially point the way to his enthusiasm for Hitler's movement: a deep thread of political conservatism may be detected in some of his writings. Then again, one could interpret Heidegger as on a path parallel to Tolstoy's.

These are perennial Heideggerian frustrations that defy resolution.

Reflections upon the Flaw in Heidegger's Byzantine "Golden Bowl"

Martin Heidegger's obsession with "origins" and "primordiality" undercuts his insistence upon "existential authenticity." This is an unresolved conflict that runs throughout the body of his work, becoming ever more pronounced as time goes on. It is the worm in the Heideggerian apple, the flaw in his Byzantine "Golden Bowl." While purporting to release us from the demands of the "One" or the "They" (depending upon the translation), the freedom that Heidegger promises whenever he moves beyond the bald assertion that Dasein's "authentic" nature is "revealed" as "thrown" is significantly gerrymandered by his claim to have "recovered" or "disclosed" the "authentic" nature of being-in-the-world. It is understandably unsatisfying to be left with "thrownness," but it is equally troubling to find oneself manipulated in the direction of someone else's idea of "authenticity." So much for liberation from the "They."

One can hear his own deep (and prudent) anxieties about self-creation "speak" from his texts. It is difficult to imagine that this is the song he would have us hear. There is much bluff in Heidegger's oracular prose. He is a man who whistled, compulsively, whenever he passed a graveyard. He counseled resolve in the face of death; did he achieve it?

I do not wish these reflections to be regarded as mere ad hominem attack. At 16, I first encountered Heidegger in William Barrett's Irrational Man and was seduced by many of his ideas; every few years I return to his writings and the scholarly commentary on them; I puzzle through them again and again. At this point in my life, I think it fair to say that I am "stuck" with Heidegger. That said, I will not dishonor him with sycophancy.

The Paris of Appalachia

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania