Website

1

• Website
• Weber.ucsd.edu/tstrong
• Link to PD110DA
• Or go through the department webpage

2
Martin Heidegger1889-1976
3
(No Transcript)
4
(No Transcript)
5

• As I write, highly civilized men are flying over
  my head, trying to kill me.
• George Orwell, 1941

6
A contemporary judgment

• Victor Farias Nazi, Nazi, Nazi

7
Heidegger as Rector

• Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität.
  Rede, gehalten bei der feierlichen Übernahme des
  Rektorats der Universität Freiburg i. Br. am
  27.5.1933 The Self-Assertion of the German
  University Address, delivered on the solemn
  assumption of the Rectorate of the University
  Freiburg on the 27th of May, 1933

8
The spiritual world

• the power that most deeply preserves the
  peoples strengths, which are tied to blood and
  earth. This is the power that most deeply
  moves and most profoundly shakes its being
  (Dasein.).
• Cf Walter Harre Blut und Boden

9
Freedom in the university

• The highest freedom is namely to give the law
  to oneself. Heidegger opposes this freedom to
  the so-called academic freedom which, he says
  is merely negative (SA, 475).
• What do we make of that? Compare

10

• It has been frequently remarked that it seems to
  have been reserved to the people of this country,
  by their conduct and example, to decide the
  important question, whether societies of men are
  really capable or not of establishing good
  government from reflection and choice, or whether
  they are forever destined to depend for their
  political constitutions on accident and force. If
  there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at
  which we are arrived may with propriety be
  regarded as the era in which that decision is to
  be made and a wrong election of the part we
  shall act may, in this view, deserve to be
  considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

11
What should be the relation of knowledge and
life MH on labor and academic freedom

• Compare
• There goes in the world a notion, that the
  scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,
  as unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a
  penknife for an axe. The so-called practical
  men' sneer at speculative men, as if, because
  they speculate or see, they could do nothing.
  As far as this is true of the studious classes,
  it is not just and wise. Action is with the
  scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without
  it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can
  never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs
  before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot
  even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but
  there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
  The preamble of thought, the transition through
  which it passes from the unconscious to the
  conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as
  I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are
  loaded with life, and whose not.

12
But (elections of November, 1933)

• The Führer has awakened this will in the entire
  people and has welded it into a single resolve.
• No one can remain away from the polls on the day
  when this will is manifested.
• Heidegger
• Rector

13
What happened?

• Hans Sluga Nazi by accident
• Fred Dallmayr Nazi by mistake

14

• Hannah Arendt (see end of course) notes that the
  news swept around Germany in the 1920s that
  "some-one had started to think."

15
Sluga

• General qualities of Germany at the time
• (1) concern with willful action in the present
  (2) focused on and emanate from a place and
  group
• (3) rejection of the "common gradations of
  society" in favor of "messianic leadership . . .
  in immediate relation to the people" and
• (4) a premium on self-legitimation

16
Dallmayr

• Dallmayr means that Heidegger made a mistake
  about the nature of National Socialism, probably
  in thinking it to be an "ontological or
  paradigmatic movement"
• Good in philosophy terrible in policy

17
Does the difference make a difference?

• Compare So? I made a mistake. and I am
  sorry it was my mistake.
• Or Compare I stepped on the baby by accident
  and Honey, I got into an accident today..