Later Heidegger
Only a god can save us.--Martin Heidegger, 1966.
Why am I so drawn to the philosophies of old men, or more particulary the philosophies of brilliant young men grown old? Does the ever increasing certainty of death add weight to a man's words? I don't think so, we never feel death is near, we cannot ever really grasp it. It never really happens. I think instead that I am drawn to the sense of resignation, or more properly perhaps the endurance, demonstrated in old age. In any case, add these words to the long list of slightly disheartening utterances from great men grown old. (For even more read the late plays of Shakespeare, especially The Tempest: "We are the stuff that dreams are made of.")
4 Comments:
This sort of "deathbed confessional" syndrome seems to be systemic in the late philosophies of philosophers...I am completely (and thankfully) unfamiliar with Herr Heidegger, but one of the biggest problems I have with these "turns" is that they are always very dishonest in their honesty.
The best examples are Nietzsche and Derrida if you ask me because they are "faith-proof" but in the end take such contradictory positions in light of their earlier work. For instance, Derrida..."undeconstructible ideas," no! I am sorry but no human concept is "undeconstructible" unless by sheer will-to-avoidance. If all is text...or slightly less radical, concepts are linguistic phenomena, then they have an etymological substance that can be parsed through and "deconstructed" so to say...that deconstruction, and really post-structuralism, are ultimately very unsatisfying is no excuse for doing an "end-around" of their implications out of a "will-to-life" vs. a "will-to-knowledge."
How do you like that segway! Nietzsche, I am sorry, after a lifetime of brilliant criticism of all the prevailing "will-tos" and "valuations" and the "egoism of systematic philosophy" don't tell me that you have a system and have "discovered the will-to-power" in all traces of your investigations...let me remind you of an earlier Nietzsche who, very humorously, mocked the Kantian "discovery" of faculties...well, after Nietzsche (and even before, aka Schopenhauer) German philosophers began "searching willy-nilly in the bushes" for "will-tos."
There is no doubt that Immanuel Kant was a better and tighter systematizer than Nietzsche, and Nietzsche was correct to criticize some of the absurdities of his system (which brings me to your past post about "learning a new way of thinking" in order to understand Heidegger...all good systematizers require this, its like the admission ticket into the coherence of their system...the real question, as demonstrated by Nietzsche, is whether these coherences survive critical or "outside" thinking...quite often they do not because they depend on an assumed yet unproven [sometimes unacknowledged or unbeknownst to the thinker] central force, in relation to which coherence is maintained...this force is the "faith" inherent in all structural or constructed systems...it is the faith that is lacking in the purely destructive thought of people like Derrida, Nietzsche, and pure Socrates...and it is the "faithfulness" that appears desperately in the last instance to try to make a coherent structure out of unsatisfying purely destructive lives, i.e., "undeconstructible ideas," the "will-to-power," and the Socratic mythological escape from the aporetic)...but Nietzsche's later quasi-systematizing would have fallen under the acidic mockery of the young Nietzsche just as all the others had...its denying the brilliance of a younger mind because, in retrospect, the later thinker has found it unpleasant to live alongside this insight...
Nietzsche in particular should never have been so dishonest since I have read dozens of pages (often superfluous and not worthy of my oh so precious time) where he tirelessly criticizes the human ability to equate truth with what makes us comfortable, even when it is obviously untrue...
I take these "deathbed conversions" as the honest testimony that one has found life uncomfortable alongside the indeterminateness of thinking or their ideas...this is good to know, but not a negation in itself.
yeah i think your comments are pretty much right on. (i still cannot deny my fascination for this, what is it, resignation to metaphysics?)
though i must stick up for Dr. Heidegger and say that he actually undergoes the reverse of the typical journey. Being and Time is an attempt to discover Being itself, that is, the whole project is one of a fundamental metaphysics.
Later Heidegger abandons this (perhaps why the purely destructive Derrida claims him as an inspiration) and concentrates on "becoming" rather than "being." (incidentally i read a recent criticism of derrida that is not unsimilar to yours.)
What I like about the quote is that it acknowledges that "becoming," well, kinda sucks. He does not propose that any god is actually forthcoming--so it's not quite as dishonest as Derrida or Nietzsche. I am inclined to forgive Nietzsche anything because I believe he was an artist, and art is all about salvation. He is entitled to yearn for it and create it artistically, wouldn't you agree? Did the late Nietzsche ever write on tragedy or Shakespeare?
Derrida is trickier because as far as I can tell he couches the undeconstructible within his deconstrution of metaphysics--it is, as you said, the lynch-pin that holds it together, and as such is fundamentally dishonest if he wishes us to think of deconstruction and "futurity" (another concept of Derrida's you may or may not be familiar with, but i bet you get the idea--"a never arriving moment") as some sort of "way out." (does he? if not he is a nihilist and, i would be inclined to argue, a pessimist of a sort. neither of these things would apply to someone who believes in the undeconstructible.) What do you think?
I would like to read his account of this "undeconstructible" but i am willing to bet it is more like "don't deconstruct this for your own good" kind of thing. unless he is thoroughly dishonst i bet he acknowledges that in some way, probably underhanded though--we know what the french are like.
An italian nihilist i am reading (he is an optimistic christian nihilist tho!) named Gianni Vattimo nails Derrida pretty well, and seems to anticipate Derrida's late move by stating that deconstruction is an implied emancipation from metaphysics. says it is a "metatheoretical" position. (i am proud to say i noted this myself in an essay of Derrida's I read recently.) that's not explaining it very well, but you get it in your own terminology already so maybe there is no need to explain it.
Would you not say that Derrida's undeconstructable terms like justice are not really Heidegger's "for-the-sake-of" in a different guise? As such they are anything but a human and therefore finite concept or notion. Indeed they are, by their nature, always possibilities and never actualities.
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