Martin Heiddeger-- Wrongheaded Genius

Postmodernism has been strongly influenced by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). He worried that humankind would be dominated by its own creation, technology and was very critical of modernity and liberal democracy. Modernity’s preoccupation with individualism was corrosive and he rightly saw modernity leading to relativism and pluralism. He saw these developments as threatening social cohesiveness and making it difficult for individuals to seek or attain nobility and greatness. Modernity’s assault on hierarchy, he feared, reduced opportunities for heroic virtue and the flowering of high culture. He believed that self-denial was valuable, saw the difference between self-interest and the moral good" and saw courage as a very attractive virtue. He rightly complained that modernity promoted self-interest rather than self-sacrifice, and that it offered few incentives for courage His complaints about modernity were very similar to those of Nietzsche.
. Modern rationalist society, he charged, was preoccupied with creature comforts and material welfare. Modern society, he insisted, lacked the means of addressing people's spiritual needs and placed too much emphasis upon public relations and public opinion. Though many postmodernists favor a somewhat anarchistic democratism, he questioned the value of democracy. Heidegger a'reed with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) that western, Judeo-Christian culture h!d self-destructed. Heidegger called for careful study of western intellectual history so that it can be demonstrated that the so-called great books were only the products of given cultures and time periods and that they reflected the limitations inherent in rational consciousness. Though he saw historical studies as essential¬ he thought all of Western history was the "history of an error [objectivity]." Western man, he thought, made the great mistake of thinking objective truth was possible. This meant all morality was grounded in specific cultures and societies; none have deeper meanings that transcend cultures.
Heidegger acquired much of his distaste for modernity from his very traditional Roman Catholic background. He studied to become a Jesuit priest, but gave up on Catholicism because it focused too much on universals and eternity and too little on history and historical process. He thought it was more important to attend to the here and now and real existence. To do that, one needed to carefully study change over time and culture is continually reshaped. In Heiddeger’s being-centered philosophy, there is nothing that proves God exists. Yet he admits the possibility that God could exist.
He briefly thought he could learn something from Protestant thought about learning of higher things and the nature of existence by focusing on the hear and now. This was because some Protestant thought was built on the idea that faith and Christianity must have a transformative effect that grips its believers and the way they go about life. He thought maybe this was essentially the same as gaining access to humankind’s "primordial" experience of being. Deciding that Protestantism offered no help here and that it was also ill-conceived, he moved on to other approaches. At this point, one could argue that his work became at least as anthropological as it was philosophical. In time, he thought that there could be some inkling of the question "What is? 9Being)" by listening to the verbalizations of others. It was in the words of the poet that we, in some mystical way, get the best answer to the question. The painter Paul Klee took a similar approach, believing that the impersonal universe somehow communicates its essence to us through the art. This might represent a sort of "mysticism with nobody there." Because it was concluded that the existence of God could not be established through science or rigorous logic, the best remaining option seemed to resort to a near-mystical process in order to find meaning to basic questions of human existence. It might be added that some serious pornographers have argued that a golden age of understanding the nature of being might best be ushered in by unleashing elemental forces through pornography.
Heidegger turned to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology to unearth and understand the essence of being. Husserl thought they were timeless but neither psychological nor metaphysical. Husserl his teacher, did think that our intentional experience of the 7orld is somehow rooted in ideas that people have had over time. Heidegger, moved away from the belief that national and nonrational thinking could somehow be tied to common ideational experience. He thought they were rooted in something that was prereflective, being itself.
In Being and Time (1927), he is saying that previous philosophical thought has largely gone down the wrong path because it has not tried to get at the basic problem of being itself. Man makes the mistake of trying to understand the world by using received ideas based these flawed investigations and cultural evolution. To be authentic, a person must reject received culture and the idea that there is self-evident truth. It is necessary to start from scratch. In some ways, his rejection of the Christian God is a metaphor for his argument that people must cut loose from received ways of understanding the world and begin the effort anew. People should accept that they are thrown into existence and must come to terms on their own with what they can make of life and the fact that they will eventually die. In their "Being-toward-death" it would be helpful if people could transform the community into an authentic collectivity. That would mean breaking with received culture, building a community culture that is consistent with the primordial experience of being, and finding a "hero" leader. His was a radically individualistic philosophy, but it also offered greatest fulfillment through community. The linguistic community, particularly the volk, offers the best approach to getting at the meaning of being. This can best be approached through the self-understanding of a people, as expressed through historical experience. Deeply immersed in the life of the folk, the individual could have a "moment of vision." He seemed to think that Being, Time, History, and even fate, could be the same thing. Briefly the rector of Freiburg University, thought that it was possible for a folk to find its spiritual mission and that universities would, of necessity, serve that mission. In so doing, there would be no further need for debates over academic freedom because these institutions would be more than "knowledge services" or providing mere "scholarly education." Karl Jaspers, a Heidegger student, fretted that his mentor, in turning his back on reasoned discourse, was placing his persuasive powers and prestige "in the service of magic."
Later in life, he had less to say about finding authenticity through collective endeavors. He seemed to think individual could made progress alone and was concerned that technology would prevent the individual from discovering authentic being. He increasingly demanded that technology not get in the way of "letting beings be." This position left no barriers to the glorification of subjective experience, something for which he had faulted modernism. Before any progress could be made, there must be a dramatic departure from existing culture and norms; "widespread destruction was required before anything of lasting value could be built." In taking this position, and in accepting nihilism as a starting point, he joined Nietzsche in laying the foundation for postmodern thought.
Heidegger agreed with Nietzsche that "God is dead," but he eventually concluded that the revitalization of civilization depended upon the emergence of some sort of new god. In 1966, he told an interviewer "only a god can save us now." This absent god cannot be thought into existence; the best people can do is seek him. It is doubtful that many postmodernists would join him in this quest; many accept the term "pagan" to describe their outlook. Heidegger opposed universal moral standards, but unlike many American postmodernists, Heidegger saw emphasis upon narrow individualism, moral relativism and the banalization of values as signs of a dying civilization. For the same reason, he thought that the contract theory of the state, in part because we it meant a "a detachment of the human of the human being from the community." This concern predisposed him to accept the Fuehrer concept.
Max Weber noted that the modernity had disenchanted the world, and Heidegger thought that enchantment, though not from religion, was necessary if humans were to find the meaning of existence. Otherwise, life would be hopelessly impoverished. Heidegger welcomed the Nazis because they presented a golden opportunity to re-enchant the world.
He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945 and repeatedly praised Hitler and Nazi ideals. He hoped he could lead the Leader's (Hitler) thinking, and was deeply disappointed when he did not become the party’s official philosopher. In a 1935 essay, he referred to "the inn%r truth and greatness" of National Socialism and said that the Soviet Union and the United States were "metaphysically the same." When the essay was reprinted in 1953, he let these passages stand. Even after World War II, he praised Nazism as a great but misdirected cultural movement and made comments offensive to Jews. He saw the authentic life as a continual effort to deal with the meaning of being, and, for him, there was no clear distinction between action, thought, and character. Traditional philosophy was dead, he declared, because it did not explain the nature of being. In sweeping away the work of other philosophers, he laid the foundation for postmodernism, but placed at its core a haunting silence because he failed to answer the Being Question.
A partial answer is that being is becoming; it is activity -- especially committed activity-- in which we define what we are. It helps to understand being and becoming in relation to the last great act of life: death. These views fit well with those of the existentialists, who saw life as the process of defining ones self and seeking authenticity. However, their idealism, strenuous efforts to define what was moral, and tendency to battle social evils were not in accordance with his philosophy. The mind, he thought, could neither completely absorb nor shape what existed outside it, and our mental efforts will seldom produce certainties. The best thing the mind can do is to encounter and negotiate with that which is outside it. In the last analysis, this meant accommodating ones self to much of what one cannot change.