Heidegger And The Political.pdf

Blitz / HEIDEGGER AND THE POLITICAL

HEIDEGGER AND THE POLITICAL

MARK BLITZ

Claremont McKenna College

Heidegger and the Political is the kind of topic that Heidegger did not like.

He always claimed to be uninterested in writing an ethics, an aesthetics, or

any other book in one of philosophy’s usual fields. 1 After all, one of his goals

was to put into question the ordinary divisions and subject matter of philoso-

phy. What is the unity from which these splits come about in the first place,

and how crisply articulated are they? Indeed, are even the usual terms through

which we study these subjects—the division, say, between subject and object

or between what something is and that something is—well grounded and

articulated? The fields of philosophy and the concepts we use to explore them

arise from and occur within this broader unity and ground, and it is to this that

Heidegger wanted to attend.

Heidegger also was wary of “Heidegger and Politics” because he did not

enjoy discussions that touched on his support for the Nazis, and how, one

might ask, could any discussion of his politics fail to do just that? Although

Heidegger’s amazingly subtle understanding of “is” usually enabled him to

say what his support of the Nazis “was” without lying, there was much that he

would have preferred to remain covered up. Heidegger by and large told the

truth, but not the whole truth. 2

Still, we are justified in examining Heidegger and politics on grounds that

stem from Heidegger himself and not merely from our external interests,

however urgent. Heidegger claimed from the beginning to the end of his work

that a unique connection exists between man and being. In one way or

another, being and man find their home in each other, although men necessar-

ily and at the same time have a wandering eye. 3 The openness of human

beings to being, and thus to beings as a whole and as such, is the basis for

every other characteristic and activity. Moods, discourse, ordinary and extra-

ordinary private and public attachments, art, work, philosophy, and states-

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manship are all grounded in this essential relationship. Now, if we were to ask

earlier thinkers to name a subject whose heart is in one sense man’s soul and

in another sense the being of all the other beings but that is, most of all, about

how the powers of man and nature (and studying them) belong together,

political philosophy would be as likely an answer as any other. It would not be

the only answer, but it would certainly be a plausible one for Aristotle and

Plato. The city and its laws in a certain sense are about or include everything,

especially when we remember that philosophers and poets are citizens, what-

ever else they are. 4

Heidegger’s discussion of man and being, moreover, always includes ele-

ments that are as practical as they are theoretical. This is obvious in Being and

Time and the lectures preceding and immediately following it. In his later

publications too, however, he also discusses what “in any other man” we

would call practical issues and phenomena: action, the gods, the polis and its

regime, the will, history, National Socialism, Americanism, simple imple-

ments, and leadership, among others. 5 Several of these topics are essential

and not just discussed by the by. Again, were we to ask where in the past such

issues are discussed, practical philosophy—rhetoric, ethics, and, above all,

political philosophy—would be a plausible answer.

So, because Heidegger deals philosophically with many practical phe-

nomena and because his basic understanding puts man and being in each

other’s center, studying “Heidegger and the Political” is not only a product of

our current academic divisions or of our concern about his Nazism. Studying

what is political, as well as studying other issues from the point of view of

how they enter into man’s political rule, is a sensible way to come to under-

stand Heidegger generally.

Of course, Heidegger claims he is not engaged in practical philosophy,

and he calls nothing that he does political philosophy. And he mentions many

usual topics of political philosophy only glancingly, if at all. Thus, whatever

similarities in subject matter we might find, he would argue that his attention

is directed to a different place. In his later works, he claims to be oriented to

something other than what attracted the attention of any of the previous phi-

losophers: he is now considering what, qua philosophers, they needed to

ignore. In Being and Time and the accompanying works, his claim is not so

radical, but the intention of his thought is the same—namely, one that is

pointed to an area that previous philosophers took for granted.

Nonetheless, unless we are completely convinced that what these matters

“are” is to be located in the realm that Heidegger uncovers and that what he

discusses is a priori to the causes and grounds of human study and affairs,

then we should not take for granted the apparent priority or, at least, incom-

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169

mensurability of his subject with the philosophical study of human things.

The subject of politics (and its philosophical study) is central not because it is

an interesting area to which one would like to apply Heidegger’s thought but

because it is a different way to consider the status of what Heidegger uncov-

ers. Given that a new view of practical affairs is important in his work, and

given especially that if neither man (or philosophical “psychology” or con-

sciousness) nor “being” (or ontology or philosophy of “nature” or objectiv-

ity) but something about their correlation is the ground of things, then politi-

cal philosophy (and here we think especially of The Republic ) is a likely

alternative or competitor. Studying Heidegger and the political is an espe-

cially fruitful way to challenge or confront him because politics as a subject

and the ways in which political philosophers have studied it suggest imma-

nent limits and alternatives to Heidegger’s analysis.

Heidegger, of course, did not say this, and his silence should give us pause.

Indeed, it would be fairly easy for a Heideggerian to imitate how Heidegger

might try to show that political philosophy is limited by being merely meta-

physical, even if it is a place where the commonality of man and being is

genuinely established, or that in fact it largely borrows from metaphysics and

establishes nothing by itself, or that it is for the most part merely technical

and useful. But our real pause should come from recognizing that Heideg-

ger’s investigations and political or practical philosophy cannot be simply

assimilated, whatever the similarity in subject and purpose. This will enable

us to see where exactly the transformations are that Heidegger seeks to effect,

what they are, and what their merit is. Nonetheless, and most crucially, we

should not become hesitant because we assume in advance that Heidegger

has in fact uncovered a new, comprehensive, and significant territory in

which everything else must take its place.

To confront Heidegger properly and to place correctly his own explicit

remarks about “the political,” we must consider Heidegger’s own purpose

and goal. This means that we must explore what Heidegger is seeking when

he seeks “being” because this is the (usually explicit) subject of all his lec-

tures and publications. I will discuss this in several ways, hoping in the end to

have generated some understanding.

One way to approach Heidegger’s “being” is to see that he is seeking the

correlative to what is most distinctively human (and in this sense, he also

seeks what is distinctively human). What is our language as such, and what is

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it about; what are our feelings as such, and what are they about? What are

these and what do they deal with when they are considered simply in them-

selves and are not considered to be caused or brought about by something

alien to them such as mechanical motions? What exactly is the distinctive

freedom that is aligned with these traits, and how “are” other things as they

matter to or are dealt with by our freely exercised characteristics? What are

the elements in things (including ourselves) that, although we do not create

them, can be what they are only when we allow them to be?

What is distinctive about us in this way is said to be our “being,” and what

is correlated to it is what other things are, beings as such, beings in their

being, including our own being as one of the things that we understand.

Beings in their being, as opposed to concrete characteristics that they have in

their being and to which we respond, are the proper and distinctive human

“objects.” And our proper and distinctive humanity, what our feelings and

language do as such and are about is to see, articulate, and respond to this

being. To see beings “as such” is to see them in their being, and to see them in

their being is precisely to see this “as such.” The ability to see beings as such

defines all men and is not the exclusive preserve of philosophers or poets,

although there is something special about “creators.” 6

III

Why does Heidegger claim that our being, that which uniquely defines our

traits and characteristics, is our relation to beings as such, including our own

being? One answer is that something’s “being,” how it “is,” stands for what is

unavoidable about it. Being is that about us and things that is always already

there, whatever else is. (Heidegger, of course, has a new understanding of

what this unavoidability is and how it happens.) It is embedded in any demar-

cation whatsoever, including the demarcation of ourselves. 7 Any way in

which we see or deal with something as this or that requires that we already

have articulated it as this thing that it is and not something else. A hammer

can be used as a hammer only because we first see that it is a hammer, which

in its case means only because we have already articulated a realm of rele-

vance and significance within which things—in this case the hammer—can

be ready for use.

This “a priori” relation to beings as such might seem too primitive and ele-

mentary to count as what we are distinctively, let alone primarily. In a sense,

however, all philosophy makes this claim. For Plato, Aristotle, and (accord-

ing to Heidegger) the pre-Socratics, what something is is its nature, what

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emerges in the thing on its own or, better, the thing as emerging on its own.

Our own being is to understand things, including ourselves, in their nature.

The fullest understanding (and, therefore, the fullest natural humanity) is phi-

losophy, which sees nature as such. Rather than being guided by an opinion

about justice, for instance, rather than being guided by a view that sees justice

only partially (but is just only to the degree that it sees justice at all), the phi-

losopher seeks to be guided by what justice is simply by nature. This natural

justice (and the other things that are first by nature) already lies in advance in

any particular thing that is in any way just. Alternatively, if what distin-

guishes human beings from everything else is “consciousness” or awareness

(or awareness that is aware of itself being aware of other things or that is

aware of itself being aware of itself), things as they are for that original aware-

ness are how they are simply. Otherwise, they will not have been articulated

in terms of what is most permanent and unavoidable. It is only over against an

ineluctable (self) consciousness that things could stand there in a presence

that allows them to be stably articulated for our own stable fullness; if we did

not see them in terms of our consciousness, our approach to them would be

truncated and subject to change, as would our full freeing of ourselves. As it

turns out, to release beings fully to our consciousness is to release objects that

are fully secured by our subjective consciousness; most significant here is the

release of objects understood as causes and effects within a fully secured

methodological approach. In this way, what is simply objective is what it is in

terms of a subjectively controlled and mastered method that sets out in

advance the genuine being (objectivity) in terms of which things can be

discovered.

One might suggest (as the above discussion indicates) that what Heideg-

ger seeks already has been found and articulated. Our free stance toward a

truth of mathematics is precisely to articulate it mathematically, to know it

through proof rather than reducing its truth and our awareness of its truth to

psychological, sociological, historical, mechanical, or chemical origins. We

are ourselves in knowing it as it is. In what way is this (and its analogues in

other areas) insufficient for Heidegger?

Heidegger would hardly deny that science or philosophy is oriented to

what things are as such. But they take for granted a broader horizon within

which their own understanding occurs. Consciousness and nature, for exam-

ple, mean and matter something to us only within a horizon more original

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