
Heidegger and the Politics of 'Besinnung'
- an anti-fascist reading of the later Heidegger
Abstract
The paper argues that
Heidegger’s later thought is of an essentially anti-fascist nature. By
critically engaging several of Heidegger’s later texts the paper makes the
attempt to transport Heidegger’s mode of thinking (i.e. Besinnung) into the
sphere of the political. Towards the end of the paper attempts will be made to
spell out how ‘a politics of Besinnung’ leads to very real political
interventions.
Introduction
Martin Heidegger (1989-1976) is – still today – a
highly contested philosopher. In what sense? The fact that he was an active
member of the Nazi party (NSDAP) and that he temporarily functioned as rector
of Freiburg University from late April 1933 promoting the Führer-principle and Gleichschaltung
makes many a reader's approach to the writings of this philosopher
problematically awkward to say the least. My impression is that still today he
is not welcome in certain politically correct academic circles, and what is
more, he is shun from the public debates that seem to freeze him out as nothing
but yet another Nazi ideologist. Nonetheless, what I want to do in the present
paper is to argue that Heidegger's later thought is essentially anti-fascist,
and that it even projects the possibility of a radical alternative to fascist
as well as contemporary politics. This alternative, as we shall see, is what I
choose to call a 'politics of Besinnung'.
The Essence of Besinnung
In order to account for the essence of Heidegger's
later thought we will, for explanatory reasons, focus on a single text.
Digressions will, of course, be made, but only when these are appropriate in
relation to the overall narrative of the main text of our investigation. The
text we will be focusing on is ‘Die
Zeit des Weltbildes’ (abbreviation: ZW) originally presented as a
lecture in 1938 – i.e. four years after Heidegger withdrew from the post as
rector at Freiburg University, which means that already at this point he had
been given the opportunity to make thoughtful reflections on his own political
aspirations and the essence holding sway within the political movement of
National Socialism. In ZW Heidegger even gives us certain hints at or
fragments of no less than an explicit critique of National Socialism in the
mode of Besinnung (see Heidegger 1977:
99-100), but before I even begin to discuss the relation between the
Heidegger’s later thought and the politics of National Socialism, let us take a
look at the essence of Besinnung itself.
As an
archetypical example of his later thought Heidegger begins ZW by making
an announcement concerning what he will be questioning. In this case
he will be questioning concerning the essence of the modern age. Now, in order
for Heidegger to begin to sound out the essence of the modern age he must first
question concerning the essence of modern science because this above all else
is an essential phenomenon of the modern age due to its ubiquitous presence. We
just have to think of some of the things that have been produced by means of
scientific progress, which we regularly encounter on a daily basis. Take, for
example, televised weather forecasts, industrially produced equipment to be
used in the kitchen, electrically driven elevators and escalators, digital
advertisement on huge billboards in city centres all over the world, etcetera.
The list goes on forever it seems. Thus, due to its ever encroaching presence
science has gradually become essential to understand when one wants to grasp
the essence of the modern age in general.
Now,
on Heidegger's account, the essence of modern science is what he calls Forschung, and thus in order to make
progress in our investigation concerning the essence of modern science and in
order to make progress in our investigation concerning the essence of the
modern age, we must account for what he takes Forschung to be. Initially, the
kind of knowledge produced as results by Forschung is essentially determined by
the specific Vorgehen that tacitly
secures the way in which beings as a whole are to be experienced, handled and
rationally processed by the science in question. This tacit dimension of the
Vorgehen of Forschung that goes into the scientific production of knowledge by
opening up the specific realm of entities to be investigated by the particular
science in question Heidegger calls Grundvorgehen,
and this is, in turn, itself determined by the projection of a scientific
ground plan, the so-called Grundriss.
Now, in order to illustrate the way in which these essential aspects of modern
science (i.e. Forschung, Vorgehen, Grundvorgehen, Grundriss) relate to one
another, Heidegger accounts for the way in which the particular science called
physics operates in order to produce the kind of knowledge that it does. We
will go through Heidegger's account of the essence of the science called
‘modern physics’ in order to let the essence of his later thought appear not
just in abstracto, but in concreto.
As
any other modern science physics accomplishes the production of objective
knowledge in a specific way and it is the specificity of this way of production
that Heidegger wants to bring to language. The specificity of physics is to be
found in an analysis of its Grundvorgehen in terms of the projection of the
Grundriss. As Heidegger puts it: “Durch den Entwurf des Grundrisses und die
Bestimmung der Strenge sichert sich das Vorgehen innerhalb des Seinsbereiches
seinen Gegenstandsbezirk.” (Heidegger 1977:
77) In this sense, due to its presuppositions, modern physics is to be
qualified as mathematical. What does this mean? On Heidegger's account the term
'mathematics' stems from the Greek notion of ta math?mata designating
“was der Mensch im Betrachten des Seienden und im Umgang mit den Dingen im
voraus kennt” (ibid.: 72). Now, in order to sound out the mathematical essence
of physics we must question concerning the presuppositions made by the
projection of the Grundriss. Because physics is the particular science that
studies natural phenomena with respect to their material corporeality and
motion, and even though physics can do so in a variety of ways, “der in sich
geschlossene Bewegungszusammenhang raum-zeitlich bezogener Massenpunkte”
(ibid.) remains for it the indispensible work hypothesis par excellence.
Because physics cannot be the science of natural phenomena experienced, handled
and rationally processed as causally interacting material bodies in three-dimensional
space and time without its essential Grundvorgehen and its tacitly projected
Grundriss, physics cannot – as long as it is the science that it is – get to
know itself as the science that it is. Whereas the objects of modern physics is
made to appear in the external world from the perspective of the physician
under certain circumstances, the tacitly projected Grundriss and the specific
Vorgehen of modern physics that makes the objects of modern physics appear in
the way they do cannot itself be made to appear under these specific
circumstances. An essentially different perspective is called for in order for
the science called ‘modern physics’ to appear as an object of inquiry, and when
this perspective emerges ‘modern physics’ will appear as something essentially
different than an object in three-dimensional space and time. Thus, in order to
be the science that it is, physics must in advance carve out its Gegenstandsbezirk without questioning
the implications of such a carving out, and this – we might add – is what
happens in ‘the lab’ (e.g. the European Organization for Nuclear Research also known as CERN
(see, for instance, http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/About-en.html)).
Now, in the term ‘Gegenstandsbezirk’ the most fundamental of the presuppositions
of physics is concealed. This German word is a compound expression made up of
the nouns ‘Gegenstand’ and ‘Bezirk’ respectively. Whereas Gegenstand is
normally translated into English as ‘object', its literal meaning can only be
heard in its German form. When understood literally Gegenstand is properly translated
into the neologism 'against-standing', and thus it denominates that which in itself appears for us as something different from ourselves. Gegenständigkeit, Heidegger tells us in another of his later texts,
is the mode of unconcealment of beings as a whole holding sway within modern
physics as mathematical. (Heidegger 2000: 45) Consequently, modern physics was not enabled to
see the light of day before beings as a whole were made to stand over against
merely observing human beings. Modern physics, we are now in a position to
conclude, is the scientific production of knowledge enabled by the rule of
Gegenständigkeit with respect to the causal interrelations of moving material
bodies in three-dimensional space and time. Only the kind of questioning
concerning physics as a mathematical science with a view to its Grundvorgehen
and projected Grundriss as essential to its production of objective knowledge
of the natural world can manage to reveal what physics qua physics is. Only
this kind of questioning is, according to Heidegger, worthy of the name
Besinnung. For him “Besinnung ist der Mut, die Wahrheit der eigenen Voraussetzungen
und den Raum der eigenen Ziele zum Fragwürdigsten zu machen.” (Heidegger 1977:
75)
The Fascist Core of National
Socialism
In this section of my paper I will try to justify the
claim that National Socialism is essentially a kind of fascism, but due to the
fact that my paper is a 'philosophical' paper I will not venture to account for
the otherwise necessary amount of historical data needed to back up the more
general features of National Socialism that I will try to flesh out. What I
will do is to account for some of the fundamental characteristics of National
Socialism and I will do so from a philosophical point of view. As a direct
consequence of this methodological choice I will be doing some cherry-picking
which entails that I will not go into the historical details concerning, for
instance, the systematic extermination of the Jewish people in, say, Poland
during the early 1940s. Whereas the historical fact that the Nazis used the
insecticide Zyklon-B as a means of getting rid of large numbers of camp
prisoners is of immense importance if one wants to draw a decent picture of the
essence of National Socialism, lengthy descriptions of the technical apparatus
used in the process of mass murder seems to be of less significance in this
regard. In any case I neither have the amount of pages nor the historical
education needed to carry out such detailed analyses. My account of National
Socialism will be put forward with a view to the essence of things – i.e. in
the mode of Besinnung.
Revealing
the fascist core of National Socialism will be the first step of our
investigation concerning whether or not Heidegger's later thought can be said
to embody an essentially anti-fascist trend. In my account of the essence of
National Socialism I will consult a recent publication that has already
received quite some attention and renown: Robert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of
Fascism from 2005.
On
Paxton's account ‘fascism’ can definitely be given specific characteristics,
but any absolute definition will miss the crucial point, namely that fascism
ushers in the transformation of politics into aesthetics. (Paxton 2005: 17) One
of the main implications of this radical transformation of the public
'discourse' – or, perhaps, the abolition of any such – was that reasoned debate
concerning what were to be done politically could no longer be pursued
democratically. No 'true' consensus could be established because, as Paxton puts
it, ”[t]he truth was whatever permitted the new fascist man (and woman) to
dominate others, and whatever made the chosen people triumph.” (Ibid.: 16) As a
consequence of this essentially idiosyncratic concept of truth and political
decision making, the term 'fascism' cannot be used in the same definite way as,
say, liberalism, conservatism and communism. These classical '-isms' can, more
or less accurately, be given a proper definition whereas 'fascism' is
principally impossible to define in absolute terms. When compared to the
traditional political '-isms', fascism turns out to be, as Paxton says, a
relatively 'disparate' phenomenon – its concrete manifestation varies in
accordance with the particular people and state in question. In this way ”each
fascist movement gives full expression to its own cultural particularism.”
(Ibid.: 20) For these reasons Paxton wants to do away with the talk about
fascist 'ideology', as if fascist regimes were based on a definite set of
central dogmas. This view, we might mention, is in sharp contrast to the claims
of fascist leaders who often stressed the centrality of ideas in their
respective movements and political interventions. (See ibid.: 218) Nonetheless,
on Paxton's account, fascism is not an intellectual invention. What is, on the
other hand, an invention is the belief in ”[a] linear pedigree that leads
directly from pioneer thinkers to finished fascism” (ibid.: 38). Consequently,
the world's perhaps most famous – and in respect to our investigation most
relevant – fascist leader, i.e. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), cannot be reduced to
the political by-product of a long tradition of philosophical industry destined
to bring about mass oppression, systematic extermination of the enemy and the
military state of exception. On the contrary, Hitler must be viewed as an
extreme instantiation of the tendencies already thriving in the post-World War
I Europe. ”The experience of World War I”, Paxton tells us, ”was the most
decisive immediate precondition for fascism.” (Ibid.: 28) One of the traumas of
World War I was the increasing fear for ”the collapse of community under the
corrosive influences of free individualism.” (Ibid.: 35) This collective fear
made the German people vulnerable and receptive towards the essentially
reactionary and hostile rhetoric that in the end reduced all of their problems
to be caused by 'the Jew' alone. This kind of rhetoric is exactly what one
finds in Hitler's infamous Mein Kampf, which is considered to be the
main text of the National Socialist movement. (See Olesen 2010: 73-75)
At
the beginning of my account of the fascist core of National Socialism I
mentioned the radical transformation of politics into aesthetics. This meant
first and foremost the abolition of reasoned debate and rational deliberation
as the means of political decision making. Instead of, what seemed to them, long
winded parliamentarism the fascist leader introduced affectivity as the means
of drawing voters in a (still) democratic environment. In this way a
fundamental shift took place as regards the mode of political action in general
once the fascist leader had gained the power of government. The political has
no longer anything to do with agreed and deliberate consensus between legally
equal citizens, but – on the contrary – has to do with mass seduction and crowd
persuasion. To illustrate the fascist 'aesthetification' of the political,
Paxton describes Hitler's approach in the following way: ”He played skillfully
upon the resentments and fears of ordinary Germans, in incessant public
meetings spiced up by uniformed strong-arm squads, the physical intimidation of
enemies, the exhilaration of excited crowds and fevered harangues, and dramatic
arrivals by airplane and fast, open Mercedeses. [...] While the other parties
were firmly identified with one interest, one class, or one political approach,
the Nazis managed to promise something for everyone.” (Paxton 2005: 65-66) What
we see is an intensely 'popularist' approach to the political as such. Now, the
extreme popularism and vulgar will to power qua domination of the
fascist Nazis grew to the extent that, according to Paxton, ”[w]ill and action
became virtues in themselves, independently of any particular goal” (ibid.:
34). In this way fascist politics can be described as an essentially
'superficial' manifestation of the political due to its immediate arousal of
the senses, its profoundly pathetic rhetoric, and its reactionary unification
of the masses by virtue of pointing out the common enemy (in the case of
Hitler and National Socialism 'the Jew') as its predominant mode of political
practise. To support this view of the National Socialist propaganda I will
mention what has recently been emphasized by Søren Gosvig Olesen, namely that
the 'electrifying' speeches of the National Socialist leaders (including, and
perhaps especially in the case of, Hitler) mainly consisted of ”a monotonous
repetition of certain words [...] repeated in rhythmic disjunctions” (Olesen
2010: 21, [my translation]). To illustrate his point Olesen mentions the obsessive
use of the German words 'Volk', 'Führer', 'Rasse', 'Deutschland', 'Vaterland',
'Nation', and 'Reich'. This obviously machinic rhetoric had a tremendous impact
on the German language in general and altered it significantly – if only
temporarily.
Now
that we have accounted for the relativization of truth, the transformation of
politics into aesthetics, and the – historico-politically considered – fateful
importance of mass seduction through essentially reactionary and pathetic
rhetoric having an immediate sensual impact on the people due to its insistence
on the enemy, we will take a look at the perhaps most essential strategy
and tendency of National Socialism. In fascist states one of the most
fundamental political moves is, on Paxton's account, ”to subordinate the
individual to the community.” (Paxton 2005: 142) The traditional freedom of
interchanging immersion into the private and the public sphere respectively is
removed in order to enable a total control of the ontogenesis of the
individual. To illustrate this we will point to the fact that ”[a]ll children
in fascist states were supposed to be enrolled automatically in party
organizations that structured their lives from childhood through university.”
(Ibid.: 143) In National Socialist Germany nothing short of a revolution of
youth culture took place between the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1939
where ”the Hitlerjugend expanded its share of the ten-to-eighteen age group
from 1 percent to 87 percent.” (Ibid.: 144) By intensifying the degree of
indoctrination of the children of the German people – i.e. its demographic
future – the inherently fascist National Socialists were capable of, to put it
sharply, having ”the public sphere swallow up the private sphere entirely”
(ibid.). By thus uniting the German people through forced indoctrination from
childhood on Hitler and his fascist regime were in a position to exercise their
power in the attempt ”to control the national culture from the top, to purify
it of foreign influences, and make it help carry the message of national unity
and revival.” (Ibid.) In this way, we might sum up poetically, the essence of
the kind of fascism known as National Socialism consists in the will(ingness)
to force the hands of fate, and thus to consciously determine the destinal
direction of a historical people from a finite point of view through the
aesthetification of the political and the use of intensely popularist means in
order to gain the sufficient amount of power needed. German National Socialism
was an inherently fascist kind of politics, and today it shines forth as the
perhaps clearest example of what happens when reactionary and vengeful
tendencies within a people is persuaded and seduced to help bring about an
apotheosis of a single finite human being, thus turning him (in the case of
Hitler) into a seemingly omnipotent Godhead altering and annihilating the lives
of others at will. Thus, in conclusion, National Socialism ought to be seen as
an essentially fascist kind of politics, and we will now turn our attention
towards the anti-fascism of Heidegger's later thought and the possibilities of
a politics of Besinnung.
Towards a Politics of
Besinnung
Now that we have seen that to think in the mode of
Besinnung is the essence of Heidegger's later thought, and that the essence of
Besinnung is to think with a view to Being and the essence of things, the time
has come to make progress in regards to the political implications of Besinnung
itself.
In
his lecture course on Friedrich Hölderlin's (1770-1843) hymn ‘Der Ister’, Heidegger makes several
comments concerning politics. Politics, he tells us in 1942 during the Second
World War, is today dominated by an essential and unconditional Fraglosigkeit. (See Heidegger 1993: 118) Contemporary politics is firmly planted in the
mode of certainty. It is without the ability and will to doubt, it cannot
question concerning the essence of the beings involved in its decision making
processes, and thus it is lost and imprisoned in the realm of mere beings
without a view to the truth of Being. It is, as Heidegger puts it, because the
political is “die technisch-historische Grundgewissheit alles Handelns” that it
is characterized by an essential questionlessness concerning itself. (Ibid.) In
this way we see how Heidegger finds a fundamental connection between the
essence of modern science and contemporary politics. With respect to their
essence they are one and the same insofar as they are essentially characterized
by questionlessness and Gegenständigkeit, insofar as they both are in the
mode of Besinnungslosigkeit. Science
and politics are both realms in which something is constantly being achieved,
in which progress is made in a general sense. For this reason they are both
examples of what Heidegger calls Betrieb,
they are ongoing activity. (See Heidegger
1977: 83) “Besinnung”, Heidegger tells us, “ist weder für alle notwendig
noch von jedem zu vollziehen oder auch nur zu ertragen. Im
Gegenteil: Besinnungslosigkeit gehört weithin zu den bestimmten Stufen des
Vollbringens und Betreibens.” (Ibid.: 96) Now, if we are to give
meaning to the expression 'politics of Besinnung' we must, to begin with,
present it as a radical alternative to the mode of contemporary politics, i.e.
the mode defined in terms of technical-historical certainty, questionlessness
and consequently Besinnungslosigkeit – and we will do so recalling that the
obsessive preoccupation with mere beings due to the aesthetification of the
political carried out by the fascist leaders of National Socialism amounts to
nothing else than the same questionlessness and Besinnungslosigkeit. For this
reason Heidegger's alternative to contemporary politics will also show itself
to be a radical alternative to the National Socialist movement he so vigorously
decided to support in early 1933.
If,
at all, we are to talk about a ’politics of Besinnung’ in relation to
Heidegger's later thought we must do so in the following way. Heidegger invites
us to get to know a fundamentally new possibility for our respective futures; a
new way of dwelling having consequences for our choices as regards what to
affirm and what to reject. The name of this new way of dwelling is, as we have
already intimated, a politics of Besinnung. A politics of Besinnung has to do
with the individual’s mode of political orientation for it has specific
implications for the ways in which he/she is to ponder what to do, politically and
otherwise. Heidegger’s conception of Besinnung has implications for the
political as such, but only indirectly and in a negative sense, for it touches
upon the life of the reader in a general and fundamental sense, and its
foremost concern is that the Being of beings is made to appear in language. The
accomplishment of Besinnung clears the path for the articulation of a poetic
dwelling respecting the truth of Being, and in order to unpack this expression
(i.e. a poetic dwelling respecting the truth of Being) I will consult
Heidegger's 1954 text ‘Bauen Wohnen
Denken’ (henceforth: BWD). But before I do that let us take a
look at a passage from Heidegger's 1934-35 lecture course on Hölderlin’s two
hymns ‘Germanien’ and ‘Der Rhein’:
”Wir hörten schon, dass das
geschichtliche Dasein der Völker, Aufgang, Höhe und Untergang, aus der Dichtung
entspringt und aus dieser das eigentliche Wissen im Sinne der Philosophie und
aus beiden die Erwirkung des Daseins eines Volkes als eines Volkes durch den
Staat – die Politik. Dies ursprüngliche, geschichtliche Zeit der Völker
ist daher die Zeit der Dichter, Denker und Staatsschöpfer, d. h. derer, die
eigentlich das geschichtliche Dasein eines Volkes gründen und begründen. Sie
sind die eigentlich Schaffenden.” (Heidegger 1999: 51, [my emphasis])
We are told that the historical Dasein of a people
(i.e. their Being or essence) emerges from out of poetry, and further that from
out of poetry stems also the knowledge of philosophy and from both springs the
making of the Dasein of the people qua people of the state, i.e.
politics. 'Politics' is understood in terms of the completion of the Dasein of
a historical people, it is their mode of dwelling, and dwelling,
Heidegger teaches us, is closely connected to both building and thinking. In
what sense? In order to understand human being as essentially political, we
must first try to bring the relation between building and dwelling into
question, and this is exactly what Heidegger does in BWD. Here Heidegger expounds the interconnectedness of the three
activities, Bauen (building), Wohnen (dwelling) and Denken (thinking). Building, he tells
us, is not carried out without a view to a certain kind of dwelling because
building is essentially the active appropriation of the immediate surroundings
in the midst of which living is always already taking place, and thus it is
essentially characterized as a certain 'letting-dwell'. In this way, building is
to be understood in terms of techné –
a Greek word that Heidegger uses to designate a mode of revealing beings as a
whole. (See, for instance, Heidegger 1994a: 72 or Heidegger
2000: 14) For this reason building is not to be reduced to
a neutral production of, say, a table made of wood or a metal fence. Building
is essentially a letting-dwell in the sense of an appropriation of one’s immediate
surroundings with a view to a certain kind of living – whether or not it is
known to be so by the particular carpenter or smith in question. Through
building beings as a whole are made to appear in this or that specific way and
thus building does not leave beings to themselves but appropriates them with a
view to the particular dwelling in question. Thus, for Heidegger, dwelling is
the more primordial of the two, from which it follows that ”[n]ur wenn wir das
Wohnen vermögen, können wir bauen.” (Heidegger
2000: 162) Now, the intimate connection between and
essential belonging together of building and dwelling can only be made to
appear if we have already begun to think. Thinking, it turns out, is what is
crucial in matters of building and dwelling. As Heidegger says concerning the
fateful role of thinking in relation to the appearence of the interdependence
of building and dwelling: ”Vielleicht kommt durch diesen Versuch, dem Wohnen
und Bauen nachzudenken, um einiges deutlicher ans Licht, dass Bauen in das
Wohnen gehört und wie es von ihm sein Wesen empfängt.” (Ibid.: 163)
It is crucial to note that for Heidegger the thinking
of the relation between building and dwelling ”in demselben Sinn wie das Bauen
[...] in das Wohnen gehört” (ibid.). By taking this last remark into
consideration it becomes clear that the kind of thinking advanced by Heidegger
(i.e. Besinnung) is itself pointing in the direction of a certain kind of
dwelling. This, we might add, is in accordance with the trail of thought
pursued in the 1951-52 lecture course ‘Was
heisst Denken?’ in which Heidegger makes manifest the way in
which human beings are essentially ‘uninterpreted’ signs pointing in – for the
human beings in question – unknown directions:
”Wir sind überhaupt nur wir
und sind nur die, die wir sind, indem wir in das Sichentziehende weisen. Dieses
Weisen ist unser Wesen. Wir sind, indem wir in das Sichentziehende zeigen. Als
der dahin Zeigende ist der Mensch der Zeigende. [...] Was in sich,
seiner eigensten Verfassung nach, etwas Zeigendes ist, nennen wir ein Zeichen. Auf dem Zug in das Sichentziehende gezogen, ist der
Mensch ein Zeichen. Weil jedoch dieses Zeichen in solches zeigt, das sich
entzieht, kann das Zeigen das, was sich da entzieht, nicht unmittelbar deuten. Das Zeichen bleibt so ohne
Deutung.” (Heidegger 2000: 135)
From this it clearly follows that Heidegger must
himself be seen as an uninterpreted sign, but in contrast to so many other
signs his thinking disables the pointing in certain directions in order to
safeguard the truth of Being. The direction in which the sign of Heidegger
points is the setting up of protection and the building of defences against
human decadence in the form of, say, fascist politics transforming human beings
into greedy masters of Being itself. On Heidegger's account this transformation
of human beings into spurious masters of Being can never be accomplished for
the following, phenomenologically cogent reason: ”Der Mensch kann zwar dieses
oder jenes so oder so vorstellen, gestalten und betreiben. Allein, über die
Unverborgenheit, worin sich jeweils das Wirkliche ziegt oder entzieht, verfügt
der Mensch nicht. […] Der Denker hat nur dem entsprochen, was sich ihm
zusprach.” (Heidegger 2000: 18) Human beings are always already in the midst of
a certain clearing that reveals beings as a whole in a specific way – this
holds true in the case of fascist leaders as well as in the case of Heidegger
himself. The clearing towards which the sign of Heidegger is pointing is the
enabling condition for a poetic dwelling respecting the truth of Being. But in
order for this kind of dwelling and its enabling clearing to be brought about
man must first have taken upon himself the task of being ”der Hirt des Seins” (Heidegger 1994b: 71). As the shepherd
of Being man struggles to fight back the scientifically decadent and politically
fascist attempts to force the hands of fate, as we saw in the case of National
Socialism, and he/she does so out of an essential concern for Being itself.
That Being comes to presence in such a way that it conceals its ownmost coming
to presence is what Heidegger calls ”das Gefährlichste der Gefahr.” (Ibid.: 68)
In order for human beings in the mode of fascism to appear as the masters
Being, Being must itself always already have been furnished with a determinate
phenomenal appearance, and if this has been done successfully, if human beings
are made to tacitly believe in the possibility of an ontic intimacy with Being
itself, Being is exactly what has been lost out of sight, and thus the value
and questionworthiness concerning Being as the essence and truth of beings has
vanished just as well. In this way human beings are made to dwell in the mode
of Besinnungslosigkeit without a view to neither essence nor origin, lost in
the obsessive preoccupation with mere beings.
From
these considerations it now follows that the three activities so essential to
human being – building, dwelling and thinking – are only truly connected when
'proper' dwelling is brought about through thoughtful building itself. Proper
dwelling, for Heidegger, is in need of both building and thinking, but it does
not take place until building and thinking is made to listen to one another and
thus 'practically' pay heed to what the other activity is pursuing. Only when
building listens to thinking and thus becomes thoughtful, only when thinking
listens to building and thus becomes constructive is proper dwelling allowed to
be in the first place. The achievement of proper dwelling on earth is the
meaning of poetic dwelling respecting the truth of Being. Proper dwelling is
'poetic' insofar as it manages to appropriate the immediate surroundings in the
mode of human productivity (i.e. building), and it takes place 'respecting the
truth of Being' due to its view to the essence of things (i.e. thinking)
functioning as an immanent heuristics for the particular historical people in
question.
Thus,
we are now in a position to reaffirm that Heidegger understands the primordial
task of thinking to be that of rendering the inconspicuous state of affairs
always already propriating within beings as a whole worthy of questioning. Only
if thinking has itself become thoughtprovoking can Heidegger's philosophical
ambitions be said to have been fulfilled (cf. Heidegger 2000: 130), and in the specific
context of BWD his ambitions are fulfilled if and only if, as we saw,
dwelling and building have themselves become worthy of questioning. If this has
happened, if dwelling and building has indeed become worthy of questioning, the
reader – depending on his/her biographically unique set of dispositions and
aesthetic preferences in relation to becoming open to Being – is enabled to
bring about proper dwelling, which will take place when the reader together
with his/her fellow human beings ”aus dem Wohnen bauen und für das Wohnen
denken.” (Ibid.: 164)
Now,
in order to let the political potential of Heidegger's later thought appear in
concreto we will now make the attempt to flesh out the kind of political
praxis that only thrives in the mode of Besinnung. Reflecting on the essence of
philosophy Heidegger says the following: ”Das Entscheidende in der Philosophie [...]
besteht im Fragen, im Standhalten in der Frage.” (Heidegger 1999: 41) If the
essence of philosophy is indeed the act of Besinnung – i.e. 'Standhalten in der
Frage' –, and further that the act of Besinnung constitutes the essence of
Heidegger's later thought, we are now in a position to say that a politics of
Besinnung is a politics that does not succumb to satisfy the immediate hence unquestioned
needs and desires of, say, demanding voters in a democratic milieu. Due to its
inherent anti-popularism a politics of Besinnung is, in this way, constantly
threatened within the boundaries of constitutively representative democracies
governed like corporate businesses within the parameters of a globalized
capitalist economy. It calls for a political praxis altogether different. It
calls for a praxis that enables thoughtful deliberation and wholehearted
questioning to thrive in the face of political decision making concerning the
future of the particular society and people in question. In short, it calls for
the act of Besinnung itself to be integrated into the lives of voters and
politicians – in the case of democratic societies. But due to its essential
anti-fascism a politics of Besinnung can only be brought about gradually
through local changes. It is about a political attitude – not about a
particular party program or other. To illustrate this we will mention the
following examples as possible interventions that might be able to catalyse the
actualization of a genuine politics of Besinnung. A politics of Besinnung would
entail a radical revision of the majority of primary schools in, for instance,
Denmark. It would entail that the students learn to value and respect
wanderlust and questioning instead of epistemic arrogance and objective
certainty, that they learn to relate autonomously to their homework assignments
instead of following a schematic instruction given to them beforehand. It
would, on the other hand, also entail that teachers in primary schools are
educated so that they learn to recognize the virtues just mentioned as of more
importance than the final exam results of the students. It would entail that
the canteens were made to prioritize healthy food and fresh water enabling the
students to learn more attentively and question more vigorously, and to devalue
tempting candy and sugary beverages that only make the students feel tired and
dull their minds eventually generating more noise and frustration in the
classrooms than would otherwise have been the case. The list of examples
exhibiting concrete political interventions in the name of Besinnung could
obviously be extended much further if not simply indefinitely, but we will
leave it at that and turn to the concluding section of my paper.
Conclusion
Politics of Besinnung is the name for any political
intervention that concretely promotes
the virtues of Heideggerian thinking which, as we have seen, essentially
consists in a radical openness to and respect for Being and a profound concern
for and curiosity as regards beings as a whole. Only through such a political
practice are human beings in a position to clear the genuine space for a poetic
dwelling respecting the truth of Being. Only if human beings accomplish to
bring about a political practice that concerns itself with the Being of beings
by embodying a degree of humility and awe towards the act of Besinnung is hope
kindled for a future world without the fascist terrors of the 20th
century. This implies that it will not always be easy to come up with pragmatic
solutions in the face of problems, and it also implies that the inner meaning
of a politics of Besinnung will not be exhausted in any particular party
program. As Heidegger says in ‘Brief
über den »Humanismus«’:
”Der Mensch muss, bevor er
spricht, erst vom Sein sich wieder ansprechen lassen auf die Gefahr, dass er
unter diesem Anspruch wenig oder selten etwas zu sagen hat. Nur so wird dem
Wort die Kostbarkeit seines Wesens, dem Menschen aber die Behausung für das
Wohnen in der Wahrheit des Seins wiedergeschenkt.” (Heidegger 1976: 150-151)
Whereas for some a politics of Besinnung will always
remain a politics of silence and thus altogether not an option, for others it
will bring itself to language and speak forth in the voice of Being. But it
will only be able to do so if the preservers of Being has already emerged in
the sphere of the political.
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