Abstract
The political implications of Heidegger’s philosophy are often misunderstood as perilous by his critics. In particular, they contend that he is ignorant of ethics and his idea of an-archic praxis is harmful or meaningless for public life. In my view, however, such critique is not proper. For Heidegger, Dasein has nothing to do with selfishness, but is a being based on original ethics. Unlike metaphysical ethics, original ethics thinks that laws and ethical directives are assigned according to the dispensation or sending of Being, which conditions, determines, and makes ethics possible. In addition, the an-archic is different from the nihilistic, the anarchic, or the antimoral. In contrast to it, an-archy in Heidegger means the openness that possibilities exist intrinsically and indeterminately on the ontological level. In my view, the weakness in Heidegger’s political philosophy does not lie in the fact that it is harmful, meaningless, or ethically egoistic, but rather in the fact that he never descends to a dialectical assessment of the determinate claims of this or that political program.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition, translated by Theodore Kisiel and Murray Greene (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971), 251. Marx’s admonishment has also a problem because he “localized” that peril, and it is far from established that Heidegger’s concept of truth frees the way for totalitarianism. On the problem of Marx’s admonishment, see Reiner Schürmann, “Political Thinking in Heidegger,” Social Research 45/1 (Spring 1978): 191–221.
- 2.
There have been lots of debates on Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism as a rector since the end of the Second World War . The views on his involvement may be divided into four categories: First, some critics maintain that Heidegger’s engagement was the logical consequence of his metaphysical, totalitarian philosophy. This category includes Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), and Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life (New York: Basic Books, 1993). Second, there are those who agree partly with their positive relationship. According to them, Heidegger’s “early” philosophy was closely related with his Nazi involvement, but after the “Kehre” Heidegger resigned his metaphysics, and opened his “later” era which provided post metaphysical assumption, and which had no relationship with his Nazi involvement. This category includes Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990), and Jacque Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and Question (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). Third, some contend that Heidegger’s involvement was not merely an outcome of his work, but rather of his “Weltanschauung.” Habermas, for example, asserts that Heidegger, from the start, cut off the road from historicity to real history, and also missed the dimension of socialization. This category lists Jürgen Habermas, “Work and Weltanschauung,” Critical Inquiry 15 (1989): 431–445. Lastly, there is a view that Heidegger’s engagement with Nazism had no relationship with his thought, early or later. His involvement was just a political error which did not reflect his philosophy at all. Heidegger himself made this argument, and his apologist also agreed with it. Concerning the apology by Martin Heidegger himself, see “Only a God Can Save US”: The Spiegel Interview (1966).
- 3.
Stephen K. White, “Heidegger and the Difficulties of a Postmodern Ethics and Politics,” Political Theory 18/1 (February 1990): 88. In my view, the idea of the “collectiveness” of action still presupposes a sort of unity in action, and thus remains in the realm of metaphysical thinking.
- 4.
This question had been raised soon after the publication of Being and Time. In his “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger remembers that he has for a long time been trying to determine precisely the relation of ontology to a possible ethics , and that article is indeed a revised version of a letter written in response to the question by Jean Beaufret.
- 5.
Renée Weber, “A Critique of Heidegger’s Concept of Solicitude,” The News Scholasticism 42 (1968): 537–561.
- 6.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et Infini: Essai sur L’Exteriorité (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), 13.
- 7.
Emmanuel Levinas, En Découvrant L’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1967), 169.
- 8.
Ibid., 170.
- 9.
Luk Bouckaert makes an interesting comparison between Heidegger and Levinas. According to him, both philosophers express some kind of passivity in man, which goes beyond the will and serves as a foundation for it. Whereas Gelassenheit in Heidegger is a yielding to the hidden essence of the truth, substitution in Levinas is the passivity of somebody who is accused by the Other and at the same time entrusted with the responsibility for everything and everybody, thus giving rise to restlessness and a movement from the I to the Other. Therefore, Levinas is more ethical to emphasize the imputation of responsibility. However, in my view, such an interpretation of responsibility is one-sided. For Heidegger, responsibility means to respond, and to respond does not imply to submit but to question. I will concretely discuss the Heideggerian meaning of responsibility in the later part of this essay. Cf. Luk Bouckaert, “Ontology and Ethics : Reflection on Levinas’ Critique of Heidegger,” International Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1970): 413–414.
- 10.
John Caputo, “Heidegger’s Original Ethics ,” The New Scholasticism 45 (1971): 130.
- 11.
Martin Heidegger, The Essence of Reasons , translated by Terrence Malick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 87.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
The Heideggerian meaning of “original ethics ,” is quite different from the metaphysical meaning of ethics. According to Fred Dallmayr, contemporary ethics has it in common to draw sustenance from trends of traditional metaphysics. For example, the ethics of “liberalism” basically coincides with the formulation of universal rules, rules that either are grounded in reason as such or else are derivable from argumentation in a universal discourse. Beholden in some manner to Kantian thought, this view clearly revives problems endemic to rationalist ethic: how can abstractly (or noumenally) conceived rules be at all relevant to concrete human practice? How can rules be transferred to specific instances without engendering an infinite regress of rules (for the application of rules)? In response to these dilemmas, another approach—sometimes styled “virtue ethics”—stresses character formation in concrete historical contexts or traditions, thus making moral conduct prominent. This is a substantive (nonprocedural) ethics. However, according to Dallmayr, the crucial aspect neglected by both contemporary ethics is the dimension of freedom —ontologically speaking, the correlation of being and nonbeing. By anchoring his argument in this correlation, Heidegger intimates a post-metaphysics that bypasses the form-substance, norm-experience dichotomies by introducing “original ethic.” Fred Dallmayr, “Heidegger on Ethics and Justice,” in The Other Heidegger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 106–107, 126.
- 14.
In this regard, as John Caputo points out, the (original) ethics of Being and Time is to be found not in the discussion of conscience, guilt, etc., but in the discussion of “world” and the way that Dasein “dwells” (habitat) in the world. John Caputo, “Heidegger’s Original Ethics ,” The News Scholasticism 45 (1971): 133, n. 8.
- 15.
Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 235.
- 16.
Bernard J. Boelen, “The Question of Ethics in the Thought of Martin Heidegger,” in Heidegger and the Quest for Truth, ed. Manfred S. Frings (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1968), 78.
- 17.
Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 197.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Ibid., 198.
- 21.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 339.
- 22.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” 238–239.
- 23.
Ibid., 238.
- 24.
Boelen, “The Question of Ethics in the Thought of Martin Heidegger,” 80.
- 25.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” 236.
- 26.
Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 6.
- 27.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 63.
- 28.
Bernard Dauenhauer, “Renovating the Problem of Politics,” Review of Metaphysics 29 (1975): 639.
- 29.
The term “the principle of anarchy” is borrowed from Reiner Schürmann. He uses the term in order to show that Heidegger’s intention is not simply to destroy metaphysics but rather to provide an epochal transition. Cf. Reiner Schürmann, “What Must I Do at the End of Metaphysics,” in Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context, eds. William McBride and Calvin O. Schrag (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983), 58–59.
- 30.
Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 55 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979), 367.
- 31.
John Caputo, “Beyond Aestheticism: Derrida’s Responsible Anarchy,” Research in Phenomenology 18 (1988): 60–62, 65.
- 32.
Michael Oakeshott, “Political Education,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 57.
- 33.
Dana Villa contends that the Arendtian conception of action is aesthetic in the sense that it admires great action because it possesses a beauty that illuminates the world. This kind of aestheticization is political, which is distinguished from the Nietzschean aestheticism, the aestheticism of the artist. Dana R. Villa, “Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action ,” Political Theory 20/2 (May 1992): 299.
- 34.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 205.
- 35.
Thomas Sheehan, New York Review of Books, June 16, 1988, 44.
- 36.
Michael E. Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity : Technology , Politics, Art (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 4.
- 37.
James F. Ward, Heidegger’s Political Thinking (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), xxi.
- 38.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” 221.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lee, D. (2016). Is Heidegger’s Philosophy Ethically Meaningless?. In: Jung, H., Embree, L. (eds) Political Phenomenology. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 84. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27775-2_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27775-2_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27773-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27775-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)