Man
learns when he disposes everything he does
so that it answers to whatever essentials are addressed
to him
at any given moment.
from What is Called Thinking? (1954)
The facts -- where facts never reach the truth of things --
are well known. Martin Heidegger was born in Meskirch, Germany
in 1889. He publishes his magnum opus, Being and Time
(Sein und Zeit), in 1927. 
He
joins the Nationalist Socialist Party in May of 1933, the
year in which he accepts the prestigious rectorship of Freiburg
University. Ten months later, he resigns the rectorship, well
before Hitler assumes full power. He dies in 1976.
For
his brief, 10-month flirtation with Nazism, whose defining
features had not yet been fully articulated, Heidegger has
never been forgiven, in particular, by Jewish thinkers - meaning
those that survived the death camps. [By 1945, half of the
world's 12 million Jews had been exterminated]. Many have
attributed Heidegger's initial attraction to the National
Socialist Party platform to a combination of idealism and
naïveté, and have designated pride and hubris
as the culprits behind his post-war silence. And there are
still others who would have Heidegger situated for all time
somewhere between bad and evil. However mixed have been history's
judgments and pronouncements, we can assume Heidegger, who
could not have avoided self-judgment, was comfortable with
what the world characterized as his 'unacceptable' silence,
since he remained true to it until his death.
Nonetheless,
by war's end, not only was Heidegger's reputation in tatters,
his philosophy, as the extension and product of his highly
flawed person, was undergoing serious devaluation, reasons
enough for us to wonder why, as an act of self-preservation,
Heidegger refused to directly address the issue of his involvement
in the Nazi party and condemn the Nazi platform. George Steiner
refers to Heidegger's "total public silence after 1945
concerning the holocaust and his own attitudes toward the
policies and bestialities of the Third Reich." But what
if Heidegger's silence, in answer to his deepest deliberations,
is precisely that which he deemed necessary to open up the
realm clear thinking requires to manifest itself?
The
word silence comes from the Latin, silens, meaning
to be quiet or still. Today, we use the word to mean in the
absence of sound, the environment of which is favourable to
introspection, interior dialogue and reading, inaudible activities
that grant silence its breadth and density.
Being
and Time is not an easy read, and doubtless, many of
the author's accusers, in mob fashion, without having read
the book, would have formed their opinions on the backs of
others. How should one characterize Heidegger's silence if
he had already decided not to dignify his accusers with a
response? And concerning that elite cadre of 'Heideggerians,'
mostly academic philosophers sufficiently learned to argue
that his flawed philosophy, as an effect, was underwritten
by the flawed man, the cause, he must have concluded that
their agenda-driven extrapolations were unrelated to the adduced
text (Being & Time), which again would preclude
a rejoinder.
The
key to unlocking Heidegger's position on this most troubling
aspect of his life (which apparently didn't trouble him) is
explicitly brought to bear in the methodology he introduces
in his elaboration of Being and Time, the same that
percolates through and invigorates his entire canon. To be
in full possession of this method, which is Heidegger's greatest
and lasting contribution to philosophy, is to hear him speak
through silence.
If
I were to pose a single question on Being and Time
to determine whether or not the reader or student has understood
the essential Heidegger, it would be this: What is the one
word that is constantly referred to but never explicitly spelled
out in Being and Time's 488 pages, and why is the
word deliberately withheld? The reference that radiates on
every page is 'man,' the meaning with which we are so familiar
it need no longer be questioned. We know that man enjoys unequivocal
dominion over the earth, that man speaks in many tongues,
that man wages war, erects monuments, propagates his own kind;
there is no mystery to who he is and how he spends his time.
So by the time the child comes to utter 'man' for the very
first time, the word has been stripped of its mystery and
evocative power. Heidegger understood that if man is to truly
encounter himself, that is set himself on the path that will
disclose his self-estrangement, the word 'man' would have
to be radically deconceptualized, that is severed from all
its familiar contexts and meanings in order to bring about
the conditions necessary for the word's rehabilitation. So
in the earliest pages of Being and Time, Heidegger
introduces the strangest of all words, Da-Sein, which becomes
at once the focal point and obstacle for the reader who finds
himself simultaneously fascinated and frustrated by the word's
elusiveness and recalcitrance, its unwillingness to reveal
its character. But gradually, as an effect and being affected
by the activity of thinking, Da-Sein gestates, it acquires
attributes, and later on, the character of being involved
in a world, so readers who have stayed with the word suddenly
discover that it is not the word but themselves they are discovering,
as if for the very first time, that this Da-Sein is themselves.
It
is through this very deliberate method that the resolute reader
is initiated into the mystery and miracle of his own existence.
Heidegger is proposing that it is not enough to be born once,
effortlessly; but we must give birth to ourselves again, and
through this exercise the outline of what we understand by
the word 'meaningful' begins to reveal its true character.
One
can only imagine the ecstatic, wondrous, humbled state of
mind of the first being who uttered: "I am." And
no matter in how dim a light that initial 'I am' was spoken,
it represents an explosion of light -- not unlike the birth
of a galaxy -- when compared to its contemporary daily usage.
When I report 'I am' hungry or 'I am' sick, the 'I am' is
merely an instrument serving my biological needs, just as
when I declare 'I am' going to rent a DVD or 'I am' going
to Acapulco in January, the 'I am' is invoked as an auxiliary
to describe my intentional life. When 'I am' is used with
such facility and assertion, you can be sure that 'why am
I?' when it could have been otherwise, will never be accorded
the priority it deserves among 'the things' thinking can offer
thought to. Heidegger's entire philosophy is an invitation
to recover the sacred, evocative meaning of words that have
not survived the dulling effects of daily usage which trans-mutes
them into hard and fast concepts so the word itself becomes
the greatest obstacle to what it represents - and thus we
are introduced to Da-Sein, a being with thereness. Heidegger
believed that in order to reach the being of things, the thing,
or the word that stands in for the thing, has to be deconceptualized,
that is shorn from its concept or definition.
In
response to his accusers, Heidegger, in the decisive context
of his methodology, which is the definitive advertisement
for his unmistakable manner of speaking, has not been silent.
Au contraire. From his earliest writings until his
death, Heidegger has spoken eloquently and unwaveringly in
his condemnation of all historical, technical and theoretical
forces that would impose any limits on freedom. That he refused,
by way of public apology, to explicitly condemn Nazi atrocities
speaks to the unaccountable massive failure of the academic
community, exegetes and metaphysicians to grasp the essential
Heidegger, which is his methodology. In the light of unrelenting
character assassination that dogged the author of Being
and Time throughout his career, it redounds to his strength
of character and belief in his philosophical method that he
did not once compromise his life's work for the sake of a
readership that failed in its essential task: To read -- that
is to hear the writer thinking his thoughts and accurately
report on what has been heard. The parallels between Heidegger
and Socrates and the ignorance-based persecution each had
to endure in his own time speaks volumes to what it means
to be ahead of one's time. Speaking empathetically of Hölderin,
Heidegger proposes that the poet is one who has the courage
to live in the destitution of his times. The same could surely
be said of the philosopher.
George
Steiner, about whom it must be said did not shy away from
entering into the public domain his ambivalence toward Heidegger,
and isn't one to let anyone off the hook even remotely connected
to Third Reich politics, refers to the "lyrical humanity"
of the later Heidegger. If not to Heidegger's post-war silence,
to what then is Steiner referring?
